Entrepreneurship Project

2024 KAIST IP-CEO Global Entrepreneurship Workshop

I am excited to announce that I have successfully finished my journey as the Assistant/Team Leader(Coach) of the 2024 KAIST IP-CEO Global Entrepreneurship Workshop, which took place in both Republic of Korea and the United States (Boston & New York City) from June 16 to August 4.

The main purpose of this workshop was to provide an opportunity to learn the key concepts of business such as customer sagmentation, product desgin methods, team fit, market sizing, competitive analysis, and business model designing and present their work to the company supporting the society based on what they learned. In addition to this, they were also able to cumulate cultural understanding by visiting several historical places in Boston and New York.

For the first few weeks, I have supported organizing a couple of online prework sessions and conducted an additional session in order to help the participants better understand the task that we will be proceeding in Boston. As a prework, our team worked on the basic market analysis focusing on Amramp, which is a ramp production and installation company that our team was assigned. As a team leader, I have provided the guideline that gives the overview of what specific answer needs to be made.

After arriving Boston, we started to take lectures which gave us an insightful information about the core business values. Then, right after taking the lecture, we started to apply those new knowledge to our project. As the team leader and a coach, I assisted the team throughout this process by sharing my past experience and my own insights that I have accumulated. Eventually my base idea of improving Amramp's product and making a mascot worked well, being greatly complimented at the final speech.

Throughout the workshop, I could not only learn new things and practice it by applying to the actual business as a team leader, which for me, was the extension of what I have done last summer's Consulting & Entrepreneurship camp, but also as the assistant of this program, I could gain valuable experience of supporting the program work well. Furthermore, by utilizing these priceless experience, I will be continuing the project that I have started with this workshop with our team member and the new mentor to better develop what we have done previously.

Reflecting on Spring 2024's conelize Activities

Throughout the Spring 2024 semester, I have continued my position as the leader of conelize. To achieve the goal of connecting individuals and resources, human and/or material, which can be the catalyst for achieving their dreams, we planned and held various events this semester just like last semester.

The first event was the Spring 2024 conelize Idea Competition. The event began on May 8th with an information session (Day 1) and had a two-week preparation period before concluding with an idea presentation (Day 2) on May 20th.

The purpose of it was to create opportunities for students to contribute to society by presenting ideas that they have as a team. For the ideas, the topic given was “Problems and Solutions for Team Projects in college life”. To give a better understanding of the topic and help the participants start their project, on Day 1, we invited Suk In (Claire) Jung Jung as a guest speaker for the special lecture regarding the topic. In addition to the lecture, an information session delivering specific details about the competition including the grading criteria was conducted.

On the day of the idea presentation, after the two-week preparation period, a total of three teams made the presentation. Faculties were invited to the presentation so that the contents of the students' presentations could be applied to the courses in college. I would like to thank Professor Claude Drolet M.Ed. and Professor Richard Prasad for coming to the event and giving feedback after the presentation. I would also like to sincerely thank all the participants who did their best to organize their ideas during the given time and present them.

The second event was the Spring 2024 conelize Networking Conference, which was held on May 30th. This event was the improved version of the IGC Networking Conference that I conducted in the Fall 2023. The event was planned and conducted with my colleague Seongjun Park and intended to help students naturally learn how to properly communicate with people who have different opinions from them, while also helping them network with new people.

During the two-hour event, more than 30 students and professors came and went, participated in conversations, and talked in depth about the prepared topics. To make it easy to continue the conversation, simple and fun topics were initially prepared, and in-depth topics requiring careful thinking were gradually provided. Along with the preparation made, as a facilitator of the event, we have mediated the conversation and encouraged everyone to talk equally.

By conducting the two events, as last semester, I was able to feel rewarded in that I saw participants enjoying the event and having good experiences through it. Other than this I was also able to learn the elements to be careful about when planning the event through experience, and I was able to have an idea on improving the event that I will be conducting in the future.

Camstart Incubator Program

I’m excited to share that I have successfully completed the Camstart Incubator Program and obtained a certificate of completion! My journey of developing a hashtag#socialenterprise with the Camstart team began on January 13 and ended on March 1. At the end of my journey, I presented my results in the 2024 hashtag#pitchcompetition, which I had prepared for two months.

Throughout the Incubator Program, I learned the concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP), scaling up process, and funding strategies. This allowed me to reflect on the things that I already knew and learn something new that I didn't know. Using these concepts that I obtained from the Incubator sessions, I have been working on the business model for the socialenterprise. During the process, I had a meeting with the Project Consultant (PC), Supitchaya Poonlarp , who was my advisor for the overall project. By having a weekly meeting and discussing the plan, I got a lot of support.

My initial idea for the project was an online cooperation tool that helps create the best team with a set number of people based on the user's personality trait and the type of work. The reason for choosing this was that I wanted to solve the degradation of efficiency due to incorrect teaming. However, while working on the market research and conducting interviews, I found out that I could not implement this idea in an actual business for now. Also, I have realized that there was a clearer problem in the Republic of Korea, which was that people in Korea were experiencing intense stress and it became a major social issue. After realizing this, I had to pivot from my original plan, leading me to a new idea of a handwritten letter delivery service, which provides a tailored handwritten letter to people who have requested mental support. The idea became the subject of the final presentation and further became one of my action goals for this year.

By experiencing all of these, I not only obtained the knowledge of creating the social venture but also learned about the attitude I had to have in the process of proceeding with the project. This is not limited to this experience, but it will also apply to many projects that I can proceed and participate in in the future. A good example is the attitude of calmly modifying the existing content and planning new things to do in the future, especially in situations where plans change in the middle of the project.