The beginning of the beginning

JB, who started a small startup in her late twenties, received a phone call on a business trip to Hong Kong in the winter of 2006. Professor Jong-Heon Park of the Department of Industrial Engineering at Seoul National University told a story over the phone that “a person who has been successful in the IT industry once is starting a new business, and is looking for a founding member to work with.” After returning to Korea, JB was able to meet him soon. It was Brian. After a couple of times, he decided to set up IWILAB with Brian.

“Of course, it was a difficult choice to leave a startup that has been passionate about for the past two years and take on new challenges. There were two driving forces behind the decision. First, I thought I would learn more and grow faster with Brian, who has great experience and prowess. Second, I felt like I could build a much bigger company based on that growth.” Now, after a long time, it seems that JB’s judgment was not wrong.

The memories of the first few years of iWe Lab are not clear to Jay. It was so hard that I could say that I wanted to erase everything. The only memory was “the scene where I was left alone in the office in Jeongja-dong in the morning and shed tears because it was so lonely and difficult”, it was not easy. That was born only when those tears dried up.

Invisible road, road not taken

Before Our mobile messenger application was released, the challenge was tough and the end was not seen. When Brian recruited JB and his best colleagues, there were some who were willing to “want to do something new”. The reason for moving from a so-called “big company” to a small company with 10 or more people was simple. “I want to develop, but the culture of writing more documents is frustrating.”

Iwe Lab had good colleagues who had been united together from before, and also had a common philosophy to stick to the essence of karma. Young, who was CTO, joined in May 2007. Like-minded colleagues Scott and Brandon also worked together one after another.

What Iwe Lab prepared with ambitiousness was a subscription service called “buru dot com”. It was an Internet bookmark collection service, and although we established a US corporation and prepared it for global purposes, the response was not as expected. The next hitter was’wisia dot com’. It was a web service that advocated’collective intelligence’, in which netizens posted information and evaluated. At the end of 2008, he left the US subsidiary and returned to Korea to form an agit with Wijia. Since then, the iPhone 3gs has already made a big splash in the US. The iPhone, before the release in Korea, began to anticipate change. Brian’s decision to create a service based on mobile, not web, followed.

“I haven’t been able to produce such a great success for over three years. I had good colleagues and I had faith in each other, but I couldn’t keep failing like this. I started looking at just 5 years. Until then, I poured everything out and thought I should fold it if it didn’t work.” Spirit says.

Scott, who was an engineer, said, “The project is still going on, but there was no direction, so I was nervous. Intense discussions and conflicts arose between developers and planners. There were times when I thought that I really had to go out now.”

Explosive growth with the Android version

It was not enough to just sign up for iPhone users. Brandon started developing the Android version in line with the release of the Galaxy S. In August 2010, the Android App was released and the number of users exploded. This aims to become a service used by 100,000 people while preparing for its launch. Young says.

“When developing web services, it was really difficult to get 100,000 people to use. Most of the services that were announced so far ranged from 30,000 to 40,000, and the number of subscribers was small. I wanted to go beyond that. But at some point, This application started surpassing 100,000 subscribers a day. It was my first time to see such numbers.”

Jab recalls 2010 when that great thing happened.

“It wasn’t the time when I could say I wanted to and didn’t want to. It was a time when a small team had so much service that they were so busy solving a lot of problems. Traffic increased explosively enough to have to order additional servers before the ordered server arrived, and carriers were keen on the response the users request. Several IT companies launched or prepared competitive products to catch Our mobile app. It was 2010 when all of the crew were running desperately day and night to keep this opportunity.”

Was everyone expecting the growth of this app? Scott replied:

“Our Mobile Messenger is not the first mobile messenger. There are already many similar services in the US and in Korea. However, we were confident that we would be able to provide the service most reliably.”

We made the server the simplest version and continued to tweak the structure while running the service. Of course, it was not a “defective” service, but at least as the number of users increased, it was possible to use it without great inconvenience. Brandon said this group has explosive growth.

“I made it by improving the uncomfortable areas I felt while using the existing mobile messengers. The right service was released at the right time. All the members who created the service had excellent capabilities, and they were fully prepared based on good teamwork. The greatest competitiveness on our team was that it was able to provide the most stable and comfortable service when the number of users exploded.”

Unique working culture

“Unique working culture” is also considered the secret to success. JB says that the entire process of the eight years he had been was “a series of trust, conflict, and dedication.”

“From the beginning, We had a goal of creating a special value and culture for the company. I had a lot of discussions at business meetings with Brian, Dean and Young. We found a notebook in 2008, and our thoughts at the time were written on it. I think that the early cacao culture was actually made by the crew that we were with at the time rather than the executives. The question I asked the most was “What kind of company do we want to create?” The answer to that is probably contained in the early culture. However, there is no right answer in culture. I think that just as the people we work with change, so does the culture. I hope that the current crews will be more suitable for the current app, create a better culture, and make it a company that can contribute more to society.”

Brandon describes the culture of Company

“It seems that none of the early crew wanted to create a traditional company that I had experienced before. ‘Because everyone just does that’ People who were tired of the traditional way of working, wanted to create a different company with Brian. Everyone I worked with, including Brian and Young, loved to discuss and develop services casually. I’m very trustworthy, and I used the English name from the beginning, and I think that helped create our own unique horizontal communication culture.”

Young wanted the crew to work “autonomously”.

“I wanted to create a culture that does it by myself, not by someone else. The culture was naturally formed because the planners did not set the job and gave assignments to the developers, but because people who wanted to discuss and create a project together even if someone did not ask for it.

Brandon’s idea of giving the joy of using various versions of messenger app worked really well. Rather than seeing and planning for the future vision grandly, those who developed and planed from the user’s point of view suggested and implemented the necessary functions. On the first snowy day, “Katok-chang in the snow” was created in a similar context. It takes too long to make and review a plan, so I created a place called “Ka-Talk Lab” and tested it freely. The app screen, which was snowing, did not disagree during the testing stage and was released immediately. With these cases piled up, “self-directedness” has become a keyword that penetrates Our company and products.

The meaning of Our Messenger

Regarding unprecedented success, they all say that it is a “hard to experience once in a lifetime.” Young said, “Can we really experience this level of success again while we are alive? I think it’s difficult. Of course, at the time, there were scattered problems to be solved at the same time as success, so I was insatiable.”

Brandon has a deep relationship with team members. “The notification sound is actually the voice of my eldest daughter. I didn’t know it would be this way, but I am proud that it has become the representative voice of them.”

JB said in the end it seems like everyone is. “I think I was able to become the current member because there were good people. I would like to express my gratitude to all the crew I have been with.”

There is another special meaning that the success gives them. This is the fact that the crew’s philosophy is known to the world that if you thoroughly put users first and create a service, you will be eventually recognized. Intuition and self-direction, horizontal conflict and quick decision-making, and the infinite value created by understanding and dedication to users caused great repercussions in Korean society as a whole.