Why Start-up?

Why do startups begin?
Why does your startup exist?

What if you had the resolve to overcome any challenge when starting your business?

Over two years ago I founded a software development company, Trioxis. One year later the team and I moved into Fishburners to build Aree. We’ve always had a strong sense of why we build Aree, though we’ve changed the project path three times already. Each time felt a natural progression — it never felt like a “pivot”. (Read the full story behind Aree).

My friend, Sung Won Cho, who I met at Fishburners, has been on a journey of his own, which I’d like to share, with you along with what I learnt from him.

Six months after my team and I began Aree, Sung and I were paired through Fishburners’ “buddy program” pilot. The program, run by Henry Weaver, aims to bring an element of accountability and direction to founders. Though we were paired for our shared technical inclination, it was my business experience which Sung ultimately found the most useful.

At the time, Sung was working on Vym — “slide decks for your pull request”. Sung told me he decided to build Vym because he noticed the need to better express and present code changes at his old job. In order to work on Vym, he left this job, with only the money in his bank in a foreign country. Sung is certainly courageous.

Our first discussions focussed on Sung’s primary area of concern with Vym — it’s usage. Vym was not organically building the traction Sung had hoped for. As an engineer, he focused heavily on what could be built into Vym to solve the problem.

Sung, to his credit, is a solo founder whose expertise is software development; however his problems required him to use marketing and business development. Surprisingly, he had difficulty with these disciplines.

Sung is intelligent, one of those people able to turn their hand to anything. But as we began approaching problems from angles where Sung’s comfort levels were being stretched, the issue became obvious: Sung’s passion for Vym was not strong enough to drive him outside of his natural comfort zone.

I watched Vym begin to drag Sung down. A cool idea which seemed a great challenge originally, but instead it became hard work that didn’t pay off. Eventually Sung’s resolution to Vym became non-committal. His own passions were no longer the driving force keeping Vym alive.

Soon after, Sung and I went through the exercise of understanding why he started Vym. It became clear that the reason for Vym’s existence did not resonate with Sung’s own.

The next week Sung pitched to me a new project — RemoteBase — a place to find the best remote company suited to you.. But more importantly, he pitched the reason why he wanted to start afresh.

The seed of Sung’s idea came from an unlikely source — a book called “The Game”, a practice developed by a subculture of “pickup-artists” which teaches techniques one can use to “pick-up”. Sung, not agreeing with all the principles of the practice, used the ideas behind it not to find love but social freedom.

You see, Sung was once very shy, socially and professionally. Yet by embracing the idea of social freedom, he developed the mettle to move countries, leave a stable job and join Fishburners to become an entrepreneur. A courageous, liberated risk-taker.

His new found social nomadism allowed him to stretch himself as a person and do what he never thought was possible for himself.

“Freedom is something you can create for yourself” — Sung

When Sung explained all the above to me and how it lead to RemoteBase, it was a breath of fresh air. Vym was interesting and built well, but RemoteBase was obviously something Sung believed in.

I watched Sung wholeheartedly drive RemoteBase through this belief.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Sung wound down Vym, and began user testing RemoteBase to great success. Once he was convinced the idea was a good way to help people achieve the goals of nomadic freedom and self improvement — he flexed his knuckles and put fingers to keyboard. One week later, I saw the first demo of RemoteBase. Then, within the next week, he released it to the public.

After a post on HackerNews, RemoteBase hit the top charts and was receiving over 10k hits per day!

I do not believe it a coincidence. Sung’s drive was the reason RemoteBase was becoming successful.

Unfortunately, RemoteBase was built in lean-startup fashion, on a tech-stack not well suited to the style of usage the application would receive. Servers were going down in the struggle to handle the demand. Sung’s resolve pushed him to do the long days and caffeine saturated nights required to pull RemoteBase out the other side. He was definitely stressed but he remained focussed!

Once Sung had the tech under control, he was excited to begin hustling RemoteBase. Excited to do business development, sales and marketing.

Excited to exit the comfort zone where Vym failed.

It became evident to me RemoteBase meant “something” to Sung. I’m unsure what word encapsulates “something”, perhaps a term nearby passion or ardor. Perhaps it is the spark which exists between creator and creation. Whatever it was, it was certainly there.

Equipped with this “something”, I watched Sung:

• Achieve paying customers on a monetisation model which resonates with him
• Successfully cold call and email several companies
• Devise, execute and re-evaluate a marketing strategy
• Rewrite the RemoteBase code twice
• Write another article which reached page 1 on hacker news; this time RemoteBase stayed up thanks to the rewrites

This “something” is undoubtedly the reason for RemoteBase’s success.

Sung started RemoteBase because he believes freedom is something you can create for yourself. Sung’s own beliefs align directly with RemoteBase. As a result, Sung had the “something” which allowed him the drive to overcome all challenges as his feet.

Looking forward, as RemoteBase grows, Sung will need to build great team who each have the “something” to make RemoteBase the best it can be.

Why did you start-up? Or why will you start-up?
Does/will your start-up mean “something” to you?