He was a TV and radio host. Now, he helps Korean founders tackle their fear of networking

Jooch Nam, manager of WeWork Labs at Yeoksam 2 station in South Korea

This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with Asia VC Cast hosted by Daniel Song where we publish the revised transcripts from the podcast’s interviews with inspiring entrepreneurs and experienced VCs. This is heavily revised from the show’s original transcript. For the full interview, go here.

In this episode, we have Jooch Nam from WeWork Labs. South Korea is the first country in Asia where WeWork Labs has been launched, and Nam manages the Yeoksam 2 station, one of the four locations in Seoul.

Before joining WeWork Labs, Nam spent around 11 years at Educational Broadcasting System or EBS (a leading television and radio company in South Korea), hosting and writing various English programs. He also hosted a culture/travel-related program on Arirang Radio.

In this interview, Nam talks about his career change, what he does at WeWork Labs, and the importance of networking.

How did you make your way from a broadcasting career to a managerial role at WeWork Labs?

I know it’s a very unusual transition. It was a major career change.

My major is international relations at the American University, but I found myself in consulting right after college. Then, I met a KBS news reporter and we became good friends. He asked me to come to Korea to help him out with some political correspondents. So, I did that a little bit back in 2005 and it opened many doors for me in Korea, especially into broadcasting.

One of my close friends was working at EBS. She introduced me to a lot of her friends and they asked me to become one of their guests on their show, and then it just clicked. I realized I’m pretty comfortable in front of a camera, a microphone, and the subject matter, which was traveling.

I also got involved in some personal businesses while I was doing radio and TV. Again, this opened many doors for me, and it somehow led me to WeWork Labs. Last year, I met this guy named Sam Hwang, who is now the head of WeWork Labs in Korea. He asked me to produce more English content for his education business.

But as I started working with him and his team, he suddenly said, “Oh, I just partnered up with WeWork. And I think with your interesting background in broadcasting and business, you’d do well as a Labs manager.” I’ll be honest with you: I didn’t know what a Labs manager does before because I always did my own thing, and I never really considered my personal businesses as startups.

But now I’ve learned what an incubator is, what an accelerator is, and how these programs would have helped me and my businesses in the past. So, my collective experience in the media and in business naturally led me to WeWork Labs.

Tell us about the company.

We provide advisors and mentors, and we conduct office hours for early-stage startups. They’re very hungry to meet VCs and people who have succeeded and/or failed in their own ventures.

We also have a special lecture series and fun events. We make sure everybody mingles and gets to know one another professionally and personally.

Whenever we bring in advisors and mentors, we ask them to talk more about their failures and how they have overcome them. Everybody could relate to that. As you know, there’s a startling statistic that 80 or 90 percent of startups fail, and it’s a scary reality.

What does it entail being a manager at WeWork Labs?

How can one build their own network?

What are your biggest takeaways from speaking with a lot of people from all walks of life?