Alex Jensen: It’s Thursday, December 16^th. You’re listening to Koreabizcast with the KBLA. I’m your host, Alex Jensen, is there something that’s just missing from life in Korea that you think could be added that might not only enhance your own experience but perhaps that of many others? For some people, that’s the kind of thinking that starts a successful business. And today, we’ll hear about one of those stories. First, let me thank today’s sponsor, Eastpoint Partners offering an unparalleled Asia wide network of relationships with corporates, governments, and investors.

Alex Jensen: Now this next interview is near and dear to my own heart, because like, I’m sure many of you listening I’ve many times use the shuttle delivery service here in Seoul. And it’s been a lifesaver on more than one occasion, probably quite literally when you count up all the food consumed. Now on the line, we have Mark Boesch and Jason Boutte who are co-founders of Shuttle. Thank you, gentlemen, for taking the time.

Mark Boesch: Hey, Alex, thanks for the invitation.

Jason Boutte: Yeah, I truly appreciate you having us.

Alex Jensen: Jason, if we can start with you, can you take us back to the inception of Shuttle? Because I understand that you were there before Mark even?

Jason Boutte: Absolutely. Um, so essentially, you know, we have a kind of a unique little story, um, I’ll try my best to condense it and, you know, just kind of, you know, talk your ear off about all the trials and tribulations of our beginning point. But essentially, you know, I had been in the kind of, I guess, club or, you know, venue business before this. And I had a lot of, you know, early nights, me early mornings and late nights in, you know, basically, I was starting to get a lot of food delivered to my house, but it was great. And all and, of course, I’m sure anybody who knows Korea, they know, you know, Korea is known for having, you know, the best options in terms of quickness, and, you know, overall, food delivery is like a well-known thing. But, um, at that time I still felt like there was something missing in terms of the different types of cuisine. Um, and so I kind of approached it from the standpoint of, you know, it’d be great if I could just get a burrito delivered to my house. And this was, you know, back in like, 2013, ish. And then, you know, this idea just kind of kept nagging me, like, what, why isn’t this available where I could just get like stuff that’s, you know, a little bit more, um, I guess, these ethnic type of foods because at the time, it was just like, you know, your typical Korean delivery fare which was like, you know, Jogbal, Tteok-bokki, you know, Gimbab-cheongug, something like that. All these different things that are great, but you just have your own, you know, you want something else at certain times. And, um, I guess, eventually, I just started going on a journey of saying, “Alright, well, is there a way to just go in, see if this thing could possibly be a realistic solution just for me”. And, um, my journey first started with looking up, you know, the different options that might be available online, I tried to see if there was maybe something I was missing that I just hadn’t been exposed to but confining thing, and then eventually, just kind of, you know, led me to say, “Alright, well, why don’t I, you know, stop complaining and try to solve my own problem. And let me see what it would take to solve that”. So, I’m started just trying to see if, you know, restaurants could actually deliver the food, should we, you know, find a delivery driver team should, are they companies that already do this? um, but it kept coming back to, okay, what is the lowest hanging fruit? What can I do tomorrow that can, you know, make this thing a reality? And honestly, the first thing that made this thing kind of become real to me was when I went to a bike shop to just see how much these scooters might cost because I’ve seen them all over the city but had no real understanding of how much they might actually cost. So, I went to a little local shop and, you know, the guy he just happened to be really, really aggressive to this day, you know, I probably have to thank him for putting that idea to just go forward and pull the trigger on this thing because he just did not want to let me leave his shop until I bought something. And, you know, I was just kind of kept asking him how much is it? You know? And he’s like, no, no, you know, get these three for 900,000 won which, at the time, I was like, you’re telling me a bike is like 300,000 won a scooter is 300,000 won like, that sounds like a pretty good day. I don’t know how much bikes and scooters cost. But that felt right. And so, I just on the spot bought three and it just kind of, you know, you hear about those things like the sunk costs fallacy, and you start thinking, Alright, well, I already sunk that cost but in my mind’s eye, I got to recoup this some way. And so that’s what kind of led me down the journey of go ahead and launching our original iteration which was, Ynot-Takeout in 2014. And maybe later in his interview, I can go into more detail. But essentially, we ended up merging with our current partners, Zack and Ben who are co-founders with Shuttle who lo and behold, we didn’t know these guys, but three or four months after we launched, they launched their service called Bird Riders Food Delivery and in 2016 after a really competitive two years of China, you know, carve out our niche in the market, we decided to just go ahead and merge with those guys because we felt that they kind of shared some of the same sensibilities and in culture fits that we felt. And that’s when we officially launched Shuttle. So, Shuttle officially launched in 2016.

Alex Jensen: It’s really interesting to hear that part of the story because I remember seeing both Ynot and Bird Riders around but I for whatever reason, didn’t use either of those services. And it seemed to be when you became Shuttle that everything took off and, and really became a mainstream service that a lot of different people felt they could trust. I mean, delivering food is trust business as well, isn’t it? Mark? What was your part of the story? How do you get involved?

Mark Boesch: Well, I joined Jason, early on in the Ynot-Takeout stages. But basically, I kind of convinced Jason to merge and rebrand the companies. Because Jason, at that time we were competing, Ynot-Takeout was competing against Bird Riders, and we had much of the same clientele. And so, Jason was fairly convinced that we could win against the other group. And my position was that the problem was a lot bigger, and that we were going to require allies to kind of take this thing to the finish line. And so, I was looking to team up with the other group. And so, Ben Hough who’s our CFO now, and another co-founder he, and I kind of played the role in creating kind of bridges between the two organizations so we could merge and rebrand and start again, with more strength and more talent. So that’s kind of where I came in. And I work more on the creative side. So, I came in and sort of helped to rebrand the company and get us set in a position where we could kind of grow and scale from there.

Alex Jensen: And to either of you, what made a big difference. When you became Shuttle and joined forces, how were you able to enhance your place in the market?

Jason Boutte: Well, I felt that Mark is 100% right, you know, the thing about myself, and I have to say, like our other partners, Zack, you know, we’re super competitive. Um, and so we were very adamant that we wanted to, you know, win on our own. But, you know, Mark, luckily was looking at the big picture. And, you know, he noticed the things that we both are good at, and the things we lacked, you know, we came in with the first mover advantage. So, we were able to, you know, get a lot of the really, you know, I guess exciting are, you know, must have restaurants on our platform. And we also were able to kind of get people to know about the whole idea of this kind of bilingual food delivery service before they were able to kind of get it directly, you know, to the same customers and we had the ability of, you know, we also had a Korean co-founder in our partner, Lauren Lee who kind of helped us navigate through some of the difficulties of doing business here in Korea. So those are some of our core strengths at the time, were they, you know, they had their strength was maybe their website was, was more sophisticated than ours at the time. They carry a bigger delivery zone than we had at the time. They were able to get better solutions for drivers at that time, so, you know, when you look at it, and we say, “Well, these guys have stuff that we need, we have stuff that they need”, I think the smart move is to just think of this in the big picture. And that’s when, like you said, it really connected the dots. Because, you know, it’s scary when you think about merging a company, I did a ton of research beforehand, and you kept, I kept reading like, something crazy, like 70-80% of, you know, companies that merge end up failing within the first three years or something like then it had me really worried that the culture fit wouldn’t be there. But, you know, luckily for us, we definitely talked it out with those guys a bunch before we made that decision. One of the most important I think moments for us was, we had a really good little night where we went out for Gogi and soju. And just talked it all out and got everything out on the in open in put everything on the table and, you know, just shared our ambition. And that’s when we’re like, “Okay, I think we can do this”, I think, you know, as a collective, we have a much better chance of, of making real impact, so.

Alex Jensen: The thing that appealed to me massively when you became Shuttle, and it probably would have appealed earlier as well, if I’d been an early adopter as a consumer is the fact that you offered all this in English, and you had a wide range of food. So, it was super easy to use as a foreigner in Korea, essentially. But now, fast forward a few years, there are a number of other huge players who also offer their services either in English or make it very easy to order all manner of food without having to have wonderful Korean skills. So how does the marketplace look for you these days compared with back then?

Jason Boutte: I think people immediately know our value proposition, which is sometimes a little bit, um, it can be a little bit of a, you know, a thing that internally we can feel a little like, “Oh, well, we’re more than that”. Um, but, you know, honestly, it’s pretty good when you have a very clear, um, you know, value prop that people can connect to. And I think a lot of times people can connect and say, well, Shuttle that one that makes people who have language issues the most comfortable. And, um, you know, that’s obviously not all that we are, we were bilingual. So, it’s not that it’s just an English, it’s just a language solution platform. But I think people know that, you know, we have that certain sensibility. And we bring a certain type of, um, you know, I guess, customer service, um, you know, the, the localization that they’re used to from wherever they’re from, um, types of offerings that we’re trying to highlight. I think people start to say, Okay, well, that’s the one even if you know, there’s other players out there. And plus, we do get a ton of really good love and support from our expat community. Because I think when people think about us, they say, well, how do you keep customers when there’s so many people who, you know, it’s, it’s possibly an issue with, you know, people being so constantly transiting. But people when they transit, they in, they tend to tell people, you know, what they experienced when they were there. And one thing that’s been great for us is that we, they do a lot of heavy lifting and say, “Hey, um, you know, while I was in Korea, when I was in Seoul, wherever one of the apps that I thought was very valuable to us was Shuttle”. And that provides us with a lot of the foundation because people tend to trust their friends and people who they’ve gotten to know a little bit more than just some advertisement that could, you know, potentially be not true. So, to answer your question, I think that that’s been kind of what’s kept us kind of growing consistently in being relevant in the ecosystem is just the love from the community.

Alex Jensen: If you, Mark, you talked about the creative side before, how do you approach this competition with some of the local giants, I don’t really want to give them a free advert right now, especially as we’re celebrating Shuttle, but you know, the names that I’m referring to?

Mark Boesch: Sure. I mean, at this point in time of we’ve actually spent the last year redesigning our application. And so, we’ve got a new product that’s going to be coming out in the next month or so. And I think what our goal there was to reimagine food content delivery. And so, what we’re trying to do is put the right content in front of people and to make that as convenient as possible. We are looking at our product in differentiating ourselves in the space through our product, meaning we’re going to put the right offerings in front of you. And we’re going to help you with that choice dilemma. I don’t know about you guys, but I know kind of how Jason shops, and I’ve got something in mind for Jason as well. But our major focus is helping people solve that problem, what am I going to eat today? or what do I want to eat today? And with some of our competitors, I think they’ve been their product feels like it’s more focused on their business and the needs of the business rather than on the needs of the customer. And so, we’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about that and thinking about how are we as the smaller underfunded company going to compete in this this crowded space? And I think the way that we do that is like kind of how Jason said, is by really putting the customer first, and really thinking about what the customer’s needs are, and the problems that exist for them. Because, frankly, the way that some of our competing apps have set things up, there’s too many listings, there’s a lot of advertisements, and frankly, it doesn’t help the customer is kind of on their own to sort of figure out what’s good, what do I want to eat? And for me, every time I sit down on my phone, and I want to order, I want to feel like I want to be inspired. And my wife and I we are looking at our phones together, have that conversation back and forth? How about this? or how about that? I think what the customer needs is a product that that helps them solve that problem doesn’t inundate them with too many listings that only exacerbates the problem. So, we’ve been really focusing on that over the last year. And I’m really excited about the features that we’re going to be releasing over the next three months and six months. And we’ve got a product roadmap here for the next year of really cool stuff.

Alex Jensen: Yeah, I think those are excellent points. And Jason, I would say that the only time I’ve gone outside of Shuttle is if there’s been a restaurant that is not available on Shuttle, but he’s on one of those and the way I find them is by specifically searching them because whereas on Shuttle, you can browse and quite easily find something you want. On those other apps were alluding to, you kind of have to know what you’re looking for, especially if it’s a foreign food restaurant rather than a particular type of food like Kimchi- jjigae, for example. So, Jason, how do you go about actually attracting the restaurants to sign up for you either as exclusive partners or at least to be a good Shuttle partner?

Jason Boutte: Um, we try our best like, like Mark said, just think of it in terms of in the customer said, you know, at first, we were, you know, torn, I would say me and Mark had these disagreements for a long time, like, well, I don’t think that restaurant deserves to be on Shuttle, you know, I don’t like it, you know, but again, just because I don’t I don’t like a restaurant doesn’t mean that the market will not like, you know, we always use the example of a restaurant called Pizza School. You know, we say, well, what are we? are we providing, you know, these really fancy good authentic foreign restaurants? are we providing food that people want need in their life for their daily needs, like, you know, I love a good pizza, that’s authentic in, you know, all these different stock, Roman style, New York style, but sometimes I just want a regular pizza that just feels the void at that specific moment. Um, so, to attract these restaurants, we just tell them the truth that they have fans on our platform, you know, the restaurants want to know that. And it kind of gives them that encouragement that we have this kind of cool symbiotic relationship, like Mark said, with a lot of the other platforms, you can get lost in the sauce, but we really try our best to highlight the stars of the show which are the restaurants, so we try to, you know, put these restaurants in a position where they don’t have to worry about paying these exorbitant delivery, I mean, a listing fees, they don’t have to do anything other than just make great food and we’re gonna try to get them to win, because they deserve you know, those orders instead of just having, you know, 2000 different pizza places. We rather just have 200 of the best that we think our customers will get the most value from.

Alex Jensen: And to further enhance your competitiveness, Mark, are you considering any more tech enhancements or developments to the app or the service as a whole speed is always a big thing as well. And I wonder if there’s any tech advancements that would help with that? Speed and safety, of course at the same time?

Mark Boesch: To be honest with you, the industry changed a lot since we’ve been in the game. And Jason and I know this very well in the early goings, we were, those three bikes that Jason bought was us, we were operating those. And so, we spent a lot of time learning about the last mile specifically, and in how to manage that last mile both in terms of safety but also in terms of speed and order fulfillment. Because in Korea, the expectation generally was, you know, set up around this, 15 to 30 minutes delivery, you had your local chicken shop, or your local pizza shop, or your local Korean Chinese shop, and they were able to get orders out quickly. It’s a little bit different today. And the way the landscape is very different. But the consumer expectation is still for this, like dedicated delivery. And what the customer doesn’t understand yet is that this is, this is expensive, it’s expensive to have one person go pick up your delivery.

Alex Jensen: So, I also want to ask a little bit about the other parts of your future and where you plan to take the service. Jason, if we can turn back to you on this as well. As far as I’m aware, Shuttle started as a Seoul service and remains the Seoul service. I have no idea if you’re already operating in other cities or if you have plans to do so could you clarify for us?

Jason Boutte: Sure. I mean, essentially, we have expanded outside of Seoul. Um, you know, originally, we were just in one neighborhood in Seoul but um, you know, as we saw that there are more and more people who found value from the service we provided, we tried our best to be very thoughtful and logical about our expansion. Um, you know, because I’m getting a little bit nerdy here and forgive me, but in our industry, you, you have to be very thoughtful about where you expand because it’s expensive to expand us specifically, like Mark said, the cost of providing these delivery drivers, the delivery solution is an expensive, you know, part of the business, the photos that you have to take to get the restaurants on boarded the sales people who have to go and convince the restaurants to join all of these things, all in to, all being said, Can range up to like $500 to, you know, even more per restaurant that you get you sign up. So, we’ve always tried our best to be thoughtful about where we provide service. So, to answer your question. Yeah, we started Itaewon expand it into Sinchon then into Gangnam. Then, um, you know, did a little bit more within Seoul, like Jung-gu and Seocho in wait a book, we also expanded to different parts of Korea in general which were originally Pyeongteak Anjeong-ri which is near the Humphreys military base, and then as well as Songtan in and that’s the American Airbase, and then we expand it to Busan the beaches there, and they and in Gwangalli some of the other areas, and then also in Daegu. So, we’re just kind of trying our very best to get the most, you know, strategic locations in Korea so that we can keep being valuable to the people who need us. Because I think one of the biggest kind of critiques, I’d say people always give us is, you know, we’d love to use Shuttle, but they’re not in our area. So, we definitely slowly, but surely trying to get more and more expansion throughout Korea.

Alex Jensen: And what’s the story that I heard from the early days where a driver went all the way across the bridge in Seoul to Daegu? Is that true?

Jason Boutte: Yeah, that’s actually one of the Bird Riders stories. That’s that was one of my favorite ones. I heard from those guys when we first started having conversations about merging was like “Hey, so tell me if you’ve ever had a problem like this with the driver” so I don’t want to butcher this story. But essentially, um you know, they were doing, you know, their deliveries they were giving the information to the drivers to KAKAO and so the driver didn’t see it on the actual map, he just saw the address. And he, you know, put it in his GPS. And it’s, you know, lo and behold, it said Daegu. And again, you know, is anybody who knows about the Korean address system, it can be a little tricky. I remember having some issues myself when we first started because I have a very bad natural sense of direction. But um, this guy, you know, he hadn’t been on the job long. And he saw it said a certain neighborhood. And again, in Korea, you can have multiple, you know, similar addresses but in different parts of the country depending on, you know, the Dong, especially when the Dong says, this is back when they were using the Dong system more often than that, this is, you know, so he saw that and he saw, ‘Oh, Daegu’ so this guy just hopped on the interstate instead of driving. And then they the CS team, you know, after a while they like, “Oh, shouldn’t be done with that ordered. I was just around the corner” because it had been over 30 or 40 minutes, and they check in with the guy. He’s like, Yeah, I’m almost there, like almost there. What do you mean almost there? He said, I think I need another hour and a half. They like an “Hour and a half?” It should be in like, you know, Itaewon or whatever. Like, “Oh, I’m going to Daegu”. So, poor guy was on the interstate trying to drive this food over the Daegu cuz I guess he just felt like, you know, the customer is always right.

Alex Jensen: Wow. Incredible. Great story to finish with that. Mark, Just to come back to you to give you a final word. I was told you a little bit about the technology before. I mean, where do you see Shuttle in 5 even maybe 10 years’ time? Can you see nationwide deliveries perhaps drones flying around the sky, bring yourself food?

Mark Boesch: Really depends on what you mean, not air flying drones. I don’t see that as ever being a practical solution. Maybe some robotic vehicles in some cases. But no, I wouldn’t see that. But actually 2022, Shuttle got some plans to get more nationwide. So, we’re going to be getting a lot more coverage next year and getting to a lot more places. We’ve got some strategic plans where we can do that. But I think Shuttle as a food content program, or the platform is going to be interesting. We’ve got a lot of ideas about like I said earlier, how we’re going to help people solve that problem of what do I want to eat today. And so, I’m really looking forward to that and going down that rabbit hole to, you know, really solve this food content delivery idea.

Alex Jensen: Yeah, we’ll still be left with the problem of what to watch on Netflix but at least our food will be taken care of. Mark Boesch and Jason Boutte. Thank you, both of you. It’s been wonderful to hear about Shuttle’s story and great inspiration for takeout this evening, I’m sure.

Mark Boesch: Cheers, Alex, we appreciate the opportunity.

Jason Boutte: Awesome. Thank you so much, Alex.

Alex Jensen: Just hearing that story how Shuttle developed it takes me back to what I said at the start. What else could be added here now or in the future? Well, I’ll leave you with that thought. Let me just say we will be taking a break over Christmas and into the new year. But tomorrow, we’ll be reflecting on the last 50 plus episodes and plans to come. And thanks to Eastpoint Partners for making today’s episode possible.