John Yoon CEO and Sue Nguyen of SeoulZ talk with Alex Jensen about their brilliant idea of taking content written for Naver and taking it global through Google SEO.
As John says, “ A lot of content is on Naver, all we are doing is repackaging it and making it more Google friendly. This is because if I ask 100 people in the UK or US, do you know what Naver is? I think one may say yes. So, we take this content and make sure it gets maximum exposure on Google.”
Both John and Sue had experienced Korea before, and then left not knowing about the Korean startup scene. Then John came across the wealth of information that lives only in the naververse. He realized that if he could repackage this for global search engines, then he would have something to offer the companies themselves, as well the ecosystem supporting them. SeoulZ was born.
Seoulz has grown into Korea’s leading independent digital media resource covering the latest tech news, events, and trends for the Korean Startup Community.
Their mission is to inform, educate, and connect the global startup community with the Korean startup community. Over the past 5 years they have come to become the place for news about startups in Korea.
D-2 Korean Presidential Election: Merger, Major Pledges & Record Early Voting
Alex Jenson 0:08
You’re listening to koreabizcast with the KBLA. It is already March 11, would you believe it? As we march on into 2022. Spring is every week, I think more and more here and something about Fridays, that makes me reflect on that and perhaps change weekend plans accordingly. This is an opportunity on koreabizcast for us to delve a little deeper into one of those great business stories we love to hear about. We have on the line with us, John Yoon, and Sue Nguyen. They are the co founders of SeoulZ. SeoulZ is a really interesting website. If you go there, literally, Seoul and then a Z or z.com. There’s loads of tech news. And we’re going to find out why that is the case with John and Sue, both of you, thank you so much for taking the time.
John 0:56
Thanks, Alex.
Sue 0:57
Thank you, Alex.
Alex Jenson 0:59
John, you are in my homeland of the UK right now. So I’ll start with you just to prove that distance is of no consequence. In fact, in this era, like why not work on the other side of the world at hours that suit you, especially in a field like tech and working online? Tell us more about SeoulZ? And how you how it all got started?
John 1:19
Oh, yeah, sure. I’ll give you a brief rundown, I actually moved to Seoul in 2010. To start working, I actually started work as a English teacher, like most Kyopos, cutting list at High School University, but my brother was actually in the tech startup scene. And in 2013, he kind of like said, Hey, join my startup where that startup scene is really, really booming. And then I didn’t know a lot about startups I didn’t know even knew what an accelerator was a VC, all that stuff. So when I started to learn about it, obviously, I use Google. And I’m like, Hey, there’s such a great booming scene here. I can’t find any information on Google in my brother’s like, Ah, you’re supposed to use Naver. And I’m like, What’s Naver? And I just realized, oh, my gosh, there’s all the information and content about just everything about Korea is pretty much all on NAVER. And it’s very had a weak presence on Google. And that’s when I first started to get the idea of, because I knew about TechCrunch, I knew about some of the startup media. So I’m like, oh, Korea really needs like, English based startup media that that was back, you know, that time, I didn’t really put further thought into it until 2017, when I was working for a digital media company. And I wanted to kind of go back when I was working with my brother, that’s when I met Sue, we kind of worked in this, that startup company together. Once the once that broke up, Sue went back to Germany, and I ended up working at a digital media company who was organizing this huge, multi million dollar global Festival at COEX. And it’s called Startup festival. And we only had about three or four months to actually prepare. And that’s when I called Sue. I’m like, Sue, I need your help, you know, come back to Korea. And then once we did that, that’s when I pitched idea to the digital media company to start this tech, tech media site. And they were all for that. And then once we started to work on it, me and Sue realized, oh, my gosh, so we had to take orders from this company who didn’t know the vision of this, let’s actually start our own. And that’s what SeoulZ ended up becoming.
Alex Jenson 3:27
It’s actually a really interesting story. Because, well, the whole thing is interesting. And I’m looking forward to unwrapping the SeoulZ chapter of it. But this idea of problem solving is very important in starting a business, it comes up as a recurrent theme. But there’s another message there as well, which is why not do it on my own. Or why not do it with this person instead of the way that I’m being forced to do it, which is not quite right. And that’s that’s a great motivator, isn’t it? Sue? If we could bring you in as well, just to take a quick tangent because I’m quite interested in Germany angle, you’re originally from Germany, you come to Korea, then you go back to Germany, and then you bounce back again. Can you put that into words, that little part of the story.
Sue 4:08
So basically, the first time I came was for an internship. That’s where I first met with with John and we were working together. I got into the startup scene for the first time at that time, as well. And I was just so fascinated because that was like 2016, I think and I went to so many events here in Korea, and you know, how Korea is really fast adapting new technologies. So I was really, really surprised how advanced it was. So I thought it was really interesting seeing going to all these like startup events and seeing all these companies and ideas and I just really, really enjoyed it. And when I was doing my internship at the company, it was like for a short time, which is why I went back to Germany. And then I was actually finishing up like my studies and Trying to find a job when John messaged me and told me Hey, I have a job for you in Korea if you want to come back again. So I thought, Okay, actually, why not? I really liked it back then I thought it was really interesting. So I’ll just give it a shot. And then I came. And that’s how I’m still here.
Alex Jenson 5:18
Well done for making that movie. You guys have really taken off. SeoulZ I mentioned briefly before the website. In fact, there’s a lot of questions just about this that we can start with. Maybe we should we should begin with the with the selection of the stories themselves.
John 5:34
Yeah, I actually do a lot of focus a lot of content around SEO. And I kind of, there’s a lot of SEO tools out there that shows what is trending. And what are the keywords that are pretty much people around the world are looking for when they’re looking to Korea, but that’s the kind of like the chicken and the egg, right? Because Korea kind of lacks kind of has a closed ecosystem. Like, I don’t know if you know, Alex, but like Korea, like there’s only a handful like, like six or seven countries in the world where Google is not number one. And like China, Russia, and for some reason South Korea is on that list. And yeah, it’s very closed. And so the, the people’s interest in Korea, whether in the tech scene all can be found through a lot of SEO tools. And that’s the first thing I go to I look at art, what are people interested in? What are people looking for? Let’s build content around that.
Alex Jenson 6:30
Kind of has that look of global tech website? So you don’t feel that it’s something you stumbled into off, Naver, for example, if that makes sense. Yeah. How did you get the design, right?
Sue 6:41
So my background is actually in design. I initially wanted to do editorial designs, I did want it to kind of like, work for a magazine and do the editorial layouts and all that. But now these days, no one really reads magazines or newspapers anymore, right? It’s all online. And that’s when I started shifting. And I was always like, really interested in designing things. So now that we have our own website, I just went full on in I, I yeah, I just really like making things looking like look aesthetic and nice, because I think it’s part of the storytelling as well. It’s not just what you write or read, but also the way how it looks adds to the experience. So that’s why we Yeah, that’s why the site looks like it looks like..
Alex Jenson 7:33
Coming back to the the selection of topics themselves. So the one of the first ones I see here from February 24, top Korean medical startups, incorporating AI technologies, you got lunate, Korean medical AI software company, and they’re apparently trying to conquer cancer, which sounds wonderful, all power to them. And then from there, it’s a whole list of other startups that I’d love to have more time to talk about. But but there’s a top 10 essentially. So can you talk to us a bit more about these, these startups? How they get in touch with you and how that process goes?
John 8:08
Yeah, sure. It’s very rare that startups get in touch with us. Like I said, they’re focused more on the Korean market and Naver, all this information is pretty much out there. So we curate a lot of a lot of the content to kind of give more of a global exposure to a lot of the startups that are, you know, looking to branch out. The reason for like most of the cut, because we’re a small team, it’s very hard to do features on every single startup, I would love to do that. But in order to get the max exposure and bring in as many startups as possible, we need to do more of a more of a list more of a just a overall view of a particular industry, which is why a lot of research goes into it. Yeah, if we had a larger team, we could be more in depth. But yeah, all of this is already out there. A lot of content is on NAVER. We’re all we’re doing it is all we’re doing is repackaging it and making it more Google friendly. Right. So when people are searching, no one’s going to search on Naver. I asked if, if I ask 100 people in the UK, do you know what Naver is, I think may be one would know what Naver is? Everyone uses Google. So that’s the whole point is can we show this content and make sure it shows up on Google to get the maximum exposure for these startups.
Alex Jenson 9:25
The reason I asked about startups approaching you and I appreciate that not every single one of them would be aware. But they must have a desire to have a stronger global presence. Are there consulting services, for example, that they can talk to you about ways of better approaching the global market rather than just sending a press release into the ether?
John 9:47
Yeah, that but that’s the strategy for Korea for a long time, right? They have a press release. And their job or a manager’s job is to spread that press release to as many media outlets as possible. And that’s been this strategy for. And if they have to pay, they don’t they want to pay as little as possible. But that duplicate content, the same contents were being spread is terrible for as far as SEO or just, it might be up on Google for a day, but then it’s going to get lost. But then I know why they do it, right, they need to report to their higher ups, like, hey, look, I got all these medias covering our company, here’s 10 links. And the higher ups are like, Oh, great job, you know, next month, let’s try to get more links, you know, to the same article that’s been regurgitated over and over again. And so it’s an education. Part of it. We meet a lot of companies, right, we meet a lot of Korean startups, and we kind of sell them on the idea of why that’s wrong and what you need to do, right? It’s, but it’s a hard sell, because it’s their mentality has been this way for so long. That, yeah, it’s gonna cost more time, more money. But in the end, it’s so much beneficial to have content that’s up on Google for an extended period of time, maybe even forever. But it takes time, it takes a little bit more money. And a lot of the Korean startups are not fully on board. But yeah, there’s many startups that are they understand what we do. And they would they love working with us. And, yeah, that’s just how it goes. We mainly we reach out to startups trying to convince them, not the other way around.
Alex Jenson 11:23
So this is obviously reliant on Korea, maintaining its global interest, because it’s completely career focused. As the hook Are you confident, having staked your base here, moving back from Germany, that careers stock will remain high?
Sue 11:41
I believe so. It’s the tech, but also the culture is getting really hot. Like globally, right, everyone’s really, really interested in Korea these days, because of the entertainment industry, gaming and the beauty. So there are so I think, many things that are getting more exposed, which is why I also believe that we did a really good start up, we did a really good job with SeoulZ, for starting so early, and being the first ones to actually provide more information and more content that is in depth to the global audience.
Alex Jenson 12:21
And John, one of the major challenges people have seen here consistently over the years, and this is underneath the wave. It’s the way that startups are funded, for example, a lot of government funding available for those who seek it or who are offered it. There’s also the desire for private funding, which can be a very different situation altogether. There are some exciting platforms like Podium Star, we connected with them recently. And I know that’s featured on your website, by the way, but what do you think of the balance of the way that startups seek funding?
John 12:58
From my years of experience I’ve uncovered there for over eight years, there’s been a kind of a shift, right? When you start a startup, you know, you raise a seed funding, whether it’s through angel investors, whether it’s through friends and family, and then you know, you, you build your product or service and you try to get some traction, you know, once you start either breaking even or starting to turn a profit, you still go to the, you know, VC firms try to get you a bigger funding amount. Right. But I think the trend that has been happening, which I personally am against, and I think it’s hurting the Korean startup scene are pretty much companies that are, you know, unprofitable, right? They’re losing money, but they’re growing, they’re growing at a rate where it’s, that can’t, that can’t be matched by other companies. And a lot of the VC firms are, I think, probably prioritize prioritizing growth over profit, right. And so when you have companies that are losing millions and millions and millions of dollars a year, but they continue to get funding, that kind of sets it up sets a an example of what VCs are looking for. And so I think a lot of the Korean startups, as the shift happens, they can’t get funded, right. And so that’s where the government side comes in. And I feel like as a ecosystem as a whole, we kind of need to look at that. And see this is healthy, right? To have all these kind of the leaders in the Korean startup space where they lose money, but then they grow. And they get additional funding, and they get to their next series, whatever it is. It’s it’s kind of damaging for a lot of the up and coming startups, in my opinion, which is why I think the role of the government is very important, because funding has been kind of changed.
Alex Jenson 14:49
Speaking of the role of the government, things could change quite a bit in a couple of months. We’ve just had the election this week, as close as it could really possibly be. Can you imagine it’s almost like a coin toss, it could have gone one way or the other. And the impact for smaller businesses and bigger businesses may prove to be quite a significant one. Based on what Yoon Sukyeol has been promising an environment that sees less regulations. In other words, he’s a smaller government role to get out of the way of business growth. Do you both feel quite optimistic?
John 15:23
Yeah. So for me personally, I don’t really follow Korean politics, politics too much. But I what I do know is, I think a lot of Koreans are in small business owners are angry, and they’re frustrated. And I think a lot of the candidates probably I don’t really follow it, but I’m guessing that they kind of position to position themselves as more of an outsider, where they’re not a part of this political scene where they want to make change. I’m not sure what what their policies are to both of the candidates Lee Lee and Yoon, but I’m guessing their pitch to the Korean people are is you know what I’m going to, I’m an outsider, I’m going to I’m going to make some changes. But I think that’s politics, right? They say they say they’re going to do something to get elected. And then whatever, for whatever reason, those policies and things don’t end up, panning out. And I feel like I’m optimistic. But from my years of being in Korea, nothing really changes too much that the wealth gap continues to grow. And I think that’s going to be similar until someone really disrupts someone, there’s really disruptive comes in and then really changes everything.
Alex Jenson 16:33
Well, I mean, for you guys, for example, this promise of ease regulations, greater flexibility in the labor market, based on your own experience with your company, or the companies that you are interacting with writing about whatever the case may be, do you see those as being major obstacles? Or? Or when you see people being unhappy? What is it that they’re complaining about more than those?
John 16:57
Yeah, so like you said, regulate less regulation, I feel for most of the startups that we talk to, is great, right. But then, like I said, The problem is, many of the big, big companies that have really found success, kind of, in my opinion, need some government intervention. I’ll give you an example. For example, let’s say there’s a coffee shop, Starbucks, and then a competitor, which is a startup, another coffee shop, which, which offers better coffee, but higher prices, right. So they both get their their target. Audience sometimes I’ll go to Starbucks, if sometimes I go to this startup, a coffee shop, if a third company comes in, that offers high quality coffee just as much as a startup, but at cheaper prices, they’re gonna dominate the market, right, and they’re gonna grow in that coffee shop should not exist. But that coffee shop is funded by huge VC firms that have deep pockets. And so they could stay in business and they could lose money, it’s fine. Once that happens, obviously, that first coffee shop, that startup is going to go out of business, right. And I think that’s what’s happening with a lot of businesses and startups in in Korea, where they can’t compete and have to deal with these monsters that are, you know, like, had that have total market share. And while they want regulate, to be lifted, it’s like, they want almost an equal opportunity. And some of the practices I don’t want to get into, into in depth, but there’s some shady practices that some of the top big players are doing that pretty much suppress any up and coming startups that are looking to enter their space.
Alex Jenson 18:37
Sue, is there something else that you’d like to add in terms of a message that you’d like to share with, with the community here, areas that you think need to improve? could do even better? Or common issues that you hear being raised?
Sue 18:52
I can only speak more like photo foreigner community. Because yeah, I don’t know, particularly about Korean stars, because we win at the startup, global startup center, we we have more friends, foreigners, co founders. And I think one of the things is that I, with the Seoul Google startup center going down, it was a very, it’s a big loss for foreigners, startups, like entrepreneurs scene. And I think there needs to be more things like that, because I also I noticed that there are a lot of people these days coming to Korea to actually start a company. And I think one of the reasons is because Korea has such a dynamic startup scene, but then there are so many like foreign founders, but they’re they’re not getting as much support, like, let’s say a Korean founder, right. And I think there needs to be some, some changes in that direction. But it isn’t going to happen. I don’t know. It’s probably going to take some time. Until that happens, yeah.
Alex Jenson 20:02
Well, John, do you want to final word on that? And like what you were saying before about the balance between public and private funding even for the foreign companies that we’re talking about?
John 20:11
Yeah, I think the Korean government has been doing a great job of not looking to bring in. I think they got a lot of bad press from the Uber incident where Uber tried to come in and and obviously, things didn’t work out. So those kinds of things were a global companies have a difficult time entering Korea, they want to get I think, go away from that narrative. And they’ve been really aggressive in from, you know, those key startup challenges, a lot of programs that are looking to bring in companies, foreign entrepreneurs into Korea or companies to grow their presence in Korea. I think the Korean government has done a great job in that. I think they could do a better job as far as just in promoting entrepreneurship as a whole for for the youth. I think that’s probably one of the few ways they could get out. Or they can make, you know, a real impact in Korea. I think that’s something that he could work on in the future.
Alex Jenson 21:06
It’s interesting, you mentioned Uber because it’s not impossible to do very well. Here is a foreign company, even a foreign company that comes under fire like Netflix, that’s another one of your trending topics on SeoulZ.com. Netflix in Korea, an overview of their expansion plans in South Korea. You also talk about why Korean startups should not apply for a patent here. I’m just giving a couple of teasers because we can’t touch on all these subjects now. But people might want to go to SeoulZ.com and check out some of these issues as they stand and perhaps we can also revisit them in the future. It’s been great having an introduction to what you guys do John and Sue cofounders of souls. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you.
John 21:48
Thank you so much.
Sue 21:49
Thank you.
Alex Jenson 21:51
And I’d like to invite you if you want to share your story with us or you know, a great business story that you think should be shared on this platform info@kbla.net But we’ve also got LinkedIn if you search KBLA otherwise, see you again on Monday.