Jae-wook Park, CEO of VCNC, a developer of "Between," a mobile messenger service for couples.2016-12-21
I’m going to hit 10 million global users! CEO Jae-wook Park of VCNC.
Following Japanese IT company DeNA, Japanese venture investment firm Global Brain and U.S. 500 Startups have decided to make strategic investments in VCNC. This is the result of efforts to develop mobile services and secure users throughout the year, and VCNC has increased its global competitiveness by establishing a foundation for Japanese service as well as expanding global services centered on Asia through investment. In addition, VCNC is diligently working to achieve 10 million global users and build a service platform with the goal of early next year.
I met with VCNC CEO Jae-wook Park to listen to important issues such as a roadmap for 10 million users' goals and attracting global investment and mobile commerce business this year.
In the first half of this year, you succeeded in attracting investment from Japan's DeNA, Global Brain, and 500 startups. I understand that we need to coordinate various things, such as harmonizing relationships between existing and newly participating investors and distributing shares. Some say that the so-called "mother-in-law has increased a lot. "What is the synergy effect of Between global investors?
It's been running well so far. There are already seven investment companies, so you think we may nag a lot, but that's not the case at all. Since there are no major shareholders who own a large stake, I can express my right to speak. That's why most investment companies sympathize with and follow our direction a lot.
As investment companies have expanded to various countries, we have started conducting the board meeting in English since this year. Investor companies are also creating a lot of synergy with each other, such as getting to know each other about unfamiliar markets and talking about things that can help each other. I think it's going well without any issues
You have attracted strategic investments from various places, including DeNA, Global Brain, and 500 startups, what type of investment is this?
In addition to some investments, we plan to conduct strategic collaboration with VCNC by acting as a bridgehead for investors to enter the local market when entering the U.S. and Japan later.
Recently, VCNC's business has been growing rapidly across Asia. I wonder what the VCNC business status and plans are drawing this year.
I'm focusing a lot on the Asian market this year. First of all, Korea is the largest market, and this year, I’m going to focus the most on the Japanese market, including Korea. And I think Taiwan has started to grow rapidly since the beginning of this year, so I think growth in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan is an important issue this year. And Southeast Asia is exploring the possibility of Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.
What is the current VCNC global corporation and employee composition?
There are 25 people in Korea, 3 in Japan, 2 in Taiwan, and 1 in Singapore. In the Korean team, 70% are engineers and designers, and 30% are in business development and management support and marketing. Last year, a Japanese corporation was established to hire three full-time workers, and a Singapore corporation will be established soon. Taiwan has currently hired two freelancers, and as soon as we find a monetization model in the Taiwanese market, we will set up a corporation.
Among the overseas markets, Between global business is growing significantly in Japan, and I wonder how you are strategically approaching the Japanese market.
First of all, I'm going to Japan in a similar way to Korea. The big agenda is to "make it like a culture for lovers to use Between." In fact, making lovers use Between is a generalized strategy like culture, and promotions are being carried out in Japan. Specifically, "Why don't you use Between when you're a couple?" This was actually the key point in Korea. Japan is also making a lot of efforts to go in a similar format. In a way, when we talk about those things, it's called "Social Pressure." In fact, the message "My boyfriend or girlfriend is not ready to pay more attention to me" or making me feel that pressure is actually the most important part of the service, Between.
Then, it seems that the Japanese branch of VCNC should focus on localization marketing, but have Japanese members currently hired only marketing personnel?
Currently, there are a total of three employees at the Japanese branch, two developing businesses and one marketing. And one designer will join us soon. Rather than developing UX/UI specialized in Japanese services, we plan to produce design works necessary for marketing, design works necessary for communication with users, and Between-only stickers. Design personnel will play that role in creating localization services in each country.
Between also produced/distributed collaboration sticker items in Korea, so the response was good. In Japan, as part of localization marketing, we need to set up a resourcing window for collaboration projects, how do you plan to prepare them?
Rather than looking for artists in Japan in person, we are discussing with agencies or companies that hired such artists. We are in the process of producing a variety of stickers suitable for Japanese localization, and I think there will be many concepts that will be released in the future that suit Japanese users' tastes. We plan to implement a sticker item strategy suitable for Japan only or for local areas such as Taiwan and Singapore.
I think there will be a lot of overlapping parts between VCNC's Korean business and Japanese business. I wonder which local business you are focusing more on in-house this year.
Rather than looking for artists in Japan in person, we have different points to focus on in those two markets, so I think we should focus on both. So, we established individual corporations in two places, Korea and Japan. The Korean headquarters is an important agenda to test and optimize as many monetization models as possible in Korea and to form a culture that makes Between a more cultural phenomenon. In the case of Japan, it is in a much earlier stage, so it has partnered with good local companies and is conducting tests on how to attract users and make them stay well within Between service. The market related to couple messengers is the most advanced and most mature market in Korea, so we are trying to proceed with the monetization model here, and Japan is looking for ways to attract users in connection with marketing strategies.
Is there a difference between Between users by country? I wonder if there will be a difference between the reaction in Korea and overseas.
This part is very interesting, but Between actually runs a product around the world. What I feel when doing global business with one product is that "couples’ needs are similar in any country." The main need is to save communication and memories and make it easier to look back, so we are focusing a lot on that part to create products. The difference is that each country has a different dating culture. For example, the timing of starting a date and the activities lovers enjoy when dating are quite different.
The age group using Between varies from country to country. Korea's mid-20s are key target users, Japan's sophomores and juniors in college from their early 20s, Taiwan's late teens to early 20s, and the United States' late 20s to early 30s are the most frequently used. Looking at these users' data, when these people develop into serious relationships looks different from country to country, and their dating methods, perspectives, and thoughts on lovers are slightly different. In fact, Between's local market position is different from country to country in line with these cultural differences. It is our big issue to localize each country by encompassing these details.
Since Between is a couple's story, I think there will be a lot of fun stories. Do you have any memorable episodes?
There are so many different stories that I can't pick, but the most memorable thing is the people who send me the wedding invitation. They actually handwritten letters about the process of getting married while writing between. There are a lot of people like that. Their letters motivate us.
Some couples break up and meet again and get married while looking back at the memories stored in Between. When I hear from users, I feel that our service has become a precious memory for someone and a service that influences important decisions in life. When that happens, I'm very proud.
The keyword of this year's Asian mobile market is mobile marketing. I wonder how VCNC is conducting mobile marketing and what is its strategy for the second half of the year.
Key Point marketing in the VCNC business is fan-centered marketing. It provides an environment where they can create viruses using a fan base that likes Between. We're thinking about how Between users can voluntarily create viruses offline and online. In fact, this method is producing the most effective results. Rather than spending money marketing, we are leading our fan base well so that they can voluntarily create good marketing phenomena. We are continuing to find marketing strategies in this way, and we are thinking about how to make them work better.
It seems that viral marketing based on the fan base has also formed a pattern while operating the service for a long time, so can you explain in detail?
In the case of Japan, Twitter is still strong in Japan, so we often induce it to become a virus on Twitter. For example, there are quite a few Between fans who are attached to Between's unique colors and stickers. We hold an event to ask those people to provide Between's additional service products and create viruses on Twitter. They loved it when I selected 100 couples who applied for the event and made and sent Between's MD products. This creates a secondary virus.
There is a marketing channel called Event Box in Between. When the event is held here, tens of thousands of people gather to participate in the event. It becomes the first virus to them, and when we deliver our products to 100 pairs of them, we post authentication content on our account SNS(Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.). Then the secondary virus is re-generated as it is delivered to SNS influencer(Influencers). "Between sent me 'something like this' for me, who is a fan," and people spread to retweets and bookmarks.
In this pattern, the size of the secondary virus is estimated to be about 5 million for each event. If you count the number of applicants and selected 100 pairs of SNS followers, you will get this size. In fact, we have a great marketing effect at the low cost of making Merchandising. However, not only the first and second viruses, but our marketing team collects the contents of the virus and produces content (video, image, etc.) to try the virus again through SNS.
Data and content are produced as one event and the first, second, and third viruses are conducted. I think this marketing method is the most suitable and successful way for our service.
You recently launched Between mobile commerce service in Korea. Are you preparing for overseas markets?
I think the mobile commerce service will start in the Japanese market after Korea. However, I think it is necessary to optimize the service in Korea. It's our first time doing this service, so we expect a lot of trial and error. I'm making a lot of resolutions myself. If we have proven some optimized services in Korea by optimizing them one by one through such trial and error, we will apply the service from Japan.
So, we plan to focus on Korea, Japan, and Taiwan in order and then go to Southeast Asia. So for now, we're going to discuss in what direction we should optimize it in Korea and then lead it with DeNA, a Japanese investment company.
I wonder how you plan to link the user data collected through Between service to the new commercial service.
The focus of this commerce business is that couples who are Between users know "when they need gifts." Since we know important anniversaries for couples such as the start date of the relationship, 100th anniversary, 1st anniversary, boyfriend's birthday, girlfriend's birthday, Christmas, and Valentine's Day, the key is to target those dates and recommend suitable gifts. Men actually think a lot when choosing a 100-day anniversary gift or a 1-year anniversary gift. To relieve Between users' concerns, a good MD properly recommends gifts for anniversaries. In the beginning, we are planning to promote the concept of "solving concerns" and "recommending satisfactory products."
MD, did you form an internal team? Or do you collaborate with an external partner?
It is in the process of collaborating with internal MD and external professional companies. The product is constructed through consultation with the MDs of Tenbyten(10X10). We are building a system that can recommend good gifts to users by planning various special exhibitions such as Gift Exhibition for Girlfriends and Pepero Day Gift Exhibition with MDs from external companies.
CEO Jae Wook Park who participated as a panel for beLAUNCH2014 in May.
CEO Jae-wook Park who participated as a panel for beLAUNCH2014 in May.
I wonder what the roadmap for the entire Between service, including the commerce business, will be this year. You will take a leap forward in the first half of next year, so tell us your plans for the second half of this year to achieve your goals early next year.
First of all, we are focusing a lot on "service optimization" this year. VCNC is also not a mature company, so it goes through a lot of trial and error whenever it makes new attempts. Through such trial and error, I think sales will increase accordingly if the commerce platform can give good value to users, recommend good products accordingly, and people who use this commerce service feel value. Therefore, service optimization is currently the top priority. We plan to apply the optimized service in Korea to the Japanese market in the future.
After three to four months of optimization test in Korea, we plan to find a good Japanese partner around October in the second half of the year and officially start the commerce business around next year.
I wonder what your business goals are starting next year.
Basically, my goal is to secure 10 million users next year. We are preparing for platformization now, so we are trying to secure 10 million users. While working on platforming, we are also building a network of partners in each country. In addition to focusing on the core of each local market, there are also unique needs of local users, and to address these needs, we are trying to build a good ecosystem for local third parties to participate. As one of the important agendas of VCNC, we are now trying to create an environment where we can work with third parties by creating APIs.
What's your target for each overseas market?
It is difficult to subdivide by country because the global total figure has been set, but Korea currently expects to surpass 4 million and easily surpass 5 million. If we surpass about 2 million in Japan, we will achieve good results this year. Other than that, we have not set an accurate target because it is just beginning.
Lastly, can you tell us why you keep doing VCNC?
VCNC's vision is to create offline relationships for people through emotional mobile communication. I think it's a very valuable thing. As the world becomes more and more digital, the proportion of people connected online increases and offline interpersonal relationships become neglected. However, under the irreversible paradigm of "mobilization," someone thought about taking care of offline relationships or people's emotions. I think the service Between can have a good influence, such as developing the relationship between couples who are just starting dating and even getting married. To this end, we have been trying to develop good services, and we are trying to develop one step further by receiving thank-you messages from users who say, "It was well influenced."
And above all, I think providing good products is the best service. This is when an investment proposal came from DeNA. Just in time, the market price coincided with the preparation for the launch of our 2.0 service. At that time, I talked to DeNA in the beginning because I often went on business trips to Japan due to consultations with DeNA. We should focus on developing 2.0 products. It would be nice to proceed with the investment as soon as possible. When I said, "Let's finish it quickly," I think I was rather impressed by us. In fact, investment was not important because it wasn't financially difficult for us. I thought the development and launch of 2.0 products was more important because I wanted to introduce better products to users. The process was very difficult, but thanks to this, investment and product launch were able to achieve good results on time. We will continue to strive to provide good service.
[Source] http://blog.naver.com/platum