Hi Minchan! You graduated from the LUSEM master’s degree programme in Finance in 2020. Tell us more about what you have been doing since your graduation!
I have been with multiple startup companies for the past couple of years. I visited Korea shortly after graduation, during which I networked with some entrepreneurs from the startup scene. I thought building value from scratch and proving its worth as a member of a new company could be more exciting than the traditional banking sector.
I have been with multiple startup companies for the past couple of years.
I started my career at an IT start up, and then moved on to a semiconductor AI startup. Being in a startup strategy team meant knowing everything within the company. I was involved in almost everything except for coding programs - as big as preparation for investment relations presentations, annual OKRs, product roadmaps, project management and as “trivial” as invoice issuance, tax declarations, HR issues, and building automated systems. Covering both wide breadth and deep depth within a short span of time was very challenging, however, I gained lots of insights on running a business.
You want to grow insight behind the phenomena within the team. You have to actively get involved in everyday tasks to clear away a myriad of roadblocks in the entire company and help the entire team walk towards a common goal. Those involvements can be something as tangible as giving a new framework for new product development for product teams and sometimes be something like mediating miss-communications amongst co-working departments. It’s rewarding when other teams start to look for you to ask for advice when they have issues.
What motivated you to study the Finance programme and what made you decide to study at LUSEM?
The truth is, I did not consider studying master’s degree until 2018. I worked at the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2018 where I had chances to take part in project financing schemes. It was interesting to observe how public interests were analyzed and handled theoretically, pragmatically and financially, however, I was able to notice how certain values were not presented well enough for the related interest parties.
For my studies, I wanted something pragmatic and time efficient - ones where I could gain insight on funding schemes with a firm theoretical background at its base. The one that suited those conditions was MSc in Finance in LUSEM.
When my contract was over, a professor who worked on a climate financing project together offered to join his PhD program on climate epidemiology. I declined that offer, believing the core of the issue was on the lack of individuals who can mediate and communicate the financial value of public project to a wide spectrum of parties. For my studies, I wanted something pragmatic and time efficient - ones where I could gain insight on funding schemes with a firm theoretical background at its base. The one that suited those conditions was MSc in Finance in LUSEM.
Today you work as Strategy Lead at KBEAR in Seoul, South Korea, can you tell us about some of the key projects or initiatives you're currently involved in?
Currently, I moved away from the IT and AI world to a whole new sector because I wanted to experience product life cycles that were faster and easier to experiment with. KBEAR is a startup based in Korea that provides private label brands on various product categories. We do business by giving reasonably priced products to consumers without compromising the product quality by collaborating with renowned manufacturers. For one, HSGN, our high potency skincare brand, went viral within the skincare online community in Korea just by the product quality itself without paid promotions nor marketing.
I have multiple roles for our brands, however, currently I have an emphasis on our skincare products. My current initiative is overseas expansion. We are preparing for a few Asian countries on e-commerce platforms and US FDA registration for export. Starting from getting in contact with e-commerce teams, setting up the logistics through 3PL, brand registration and to renewing product pages, these are some snap shots of the task right now.
What is your favourite part of the job?
Being able to test out hypotheses on products on a faster cycle is my favorite part. Unlike my former companies which had Series A to B investment levels with abstract items, my current company is bootstrapped and serves products that are physically visible. Due to these two differences, resource allocation and project management show different dynamics. It’s a new learning experience.
Our business model is finding successful minimum viable product (MVP) within Korea first and expanding them to overseas, repeating the same process on multiple product categories. There are items that are on the bucket list that we haven’t even began yet. I can’t wait to see how those items will unfold in the future.
What skills and knowledge from your time in the Finance programme and at LUSEM have been most valuable in your career after graduation?
Structured thinking based on enterprise value laid out the backbone of my career. My idea is that as long as you have problem solving skills, it won’t be a big deal which sector you moved on to. Where there is a question, there will be solutions.
Structured thinking based on enterprise value laid out the backbone of my career.
It’s only a matter of how well you can break down the seemingly big pile of jumble into small pieces that you can comprehend. And financially breaking down the functional areas of companies gives a great blueprint for you to start the “medical operation.” You just keep repeating the questions and hypothesis tests.
What is your fondest memory from your studies at LUSEM?
If I narrow it down to “studies”, I would pick being the first batch to study machine learning as the fondest study memory back in LUSEM. I think we had roughly 6 hours of lectures and right after that we had some group projects on ML models on S&P 500. They helped me a bunch when I worked at an AI company.
Closing remarks: There are other things I wanted to share about being in the startup scene that I couldn’t include here. Feel free to reach me out on Linkedin!