Startup Grind Seoul 7th Event with Ludolf Ebner-Chung (Naldo)

For Startup Grind Seoul Chapter’s seventh event, we invited Mr. Ludolf Ebner Chung, founder of Yogiyo and current CEO of Naldo to join us at our monthly fireside chat at Maru180. He provided us with wonderful insight – from thought process to execution – into how he was able to bring existing offline markets online.
Before going into specific how-tos, he shared in great detail his success story with Yogiyo. When he was initially looking into this food delivery market, there were already two very obvious market leaders “Baedaleui Minjok” and “Baedaltong.” VCs claimed that the market had already been saturated. However, at the time, these were telephone services, not online services. Yogiyo then decided to bring this analogue business online.
At first, Yogiyo went online with a website. However, realizing the high penetration of smartphones in Korea, Yogiyo quickly decided to take a turn and launch a mobile app. From then on, growth was exponential and marketing was key. Here is how Yogiyo was able to market effectively:
1. Long Tail Keywords: Yogiyo registered 500,000 long tail Google keywords that are more specific and approachable for the user. They were able to create an algorithm to create such an extensive list from permutations of a few essential words.
2. App Market: Yogiyo understood what took to be a recommended app on the app market so they bought downloads outside of Korea to make sure their app would not be lost.
3. TV Marketing: Ludolf mentioned numerous times that TV Marketing is very effective and yet overlooked. Though the cost of production is high, there is a great advantage of getting close to the consumers, which is crucial for B2C. Using VOD commercials was also effective for Yogiyo since it guaranteed consumer would be in front of the TV for a while.
Ludolf then introduced us to Naldo, a user-friendly online ‘quick service’ platform. Similar to Yogiyo, he took ‘quick service’, an undervalued and fragmented offline market, and brought it online. Naturally, he took a similar B2C approach as Yogiyo but realized quickly that this market is more effective B2B. Since most Korean companies use some kind of ‘quick service’, Naldo had to convince these companies to use Naldo instead.
Wrapping up his experience in the founding of two successful start-ups in Korea, he wanted to stress the following points.
1. Learn from your mistakes and act quickly: Yogiyo quickly realized a better opportunity as a mobile app, and it launched the app in a matter of 8 weeks!
2. Learn from users: The app does not have to be fully optimized before launch. Test it out first to see if people actually use it. Then, improve it but do it quickly.
3. Hire the right team: Developers are crucial but they are for the product. If the product works, you need marketers who will be able to take it to the next level and prove to investors.

Thank you again Mr. Ludolf Ebner Chung for sharing your experience and insight with us! Thank you to our sponsors (The Asan Nanum Foundation, SparkLabs, Samsung OIC) and to our partners (Whatap, Uber, Kiwi Productions, MangoPlate and Limotaxi)! We will see you at our next event on March 18, 2015 at Maru180!