Sarah Lee, Co-founder of HOPEnglish and Her Opinion on Doing Business in Korea

This interview is part of the In2Korea insight series. Take a look into the minds of passionate entrepreneurs who talk about their business and decisions they have made. The second entrepreneur of this series is Sarah Lee who is the co-founder at HOPEnglish.

Could you give us a short introduction about yourself?

I am Sarah Lee. I was born in Seoul, educated 3 different states in US, and I have been growing with the language education technology platform startup called HOPEnglish in Taiwan. Our product is all about making high quality language education available for everyone through developing innovative digital solutions. We are just finishing up with the localization of our English learning app to fit Korean digital English learning market, and I’m excited to test it first here in Pangyo Startup Campus thanks to In2Korea’s help.

What’s your role in that company? Are you a founder? Are you the CEO?

First, we are the creators of the web-and-app-based interactive English learning platform combining cognitive science with personal adaptive learning to bring an optimum learning environment onto everyone’s palm and fingertips. As of today, HOPEnglish is used by more than 30k paying customers globally.

I initially joined this venture as a partner for a new team, but after a year and half my official title is the Korean co-founder. I honestly don’t think title matters, but it’s still a nice recognition of my work and I can use it for the interviews like this.

However, I like to think myself as an expansionist because I’m mostly responsible of repping our product on the International scale to create opportunities to grow and expand our startup. In the end of the day, I spend my time and effort on the sales and business development sides more than others. Ultimately, my goal is to help make HOPEnglish become the next apple of language EdTech solutions.

What makes your language app special? There are so many apps, online programs, books etc.?

We solved two of the biggest problems every language learner faces. First is finding the right amount and method of review you need to make the learning materials stick to your brain. Our exclusively patented strategy-based learning system provides a simple yet comprehensive five-step course schedule: learn new material, review in three different ways, and evaluate by dictation test. With this effective process, language learners can enhance their memory significantly, and gradually acquire languages without ever having to memorize vocabulary word for word.

The second grand challenge for learning English is finding the exact, fit level course. Everyone has studied English at some point in their lives and it can be extremely hard to find the right material to efficiently improve proficiency. Using big data and machine learning technology, “HOPEnglish” provides an adaptive learning system that offers each individual a tailor-made curriculum based on their level, interest, and learning curves. With three patented intelligent analysis techniques including lecture content analytics, personal interest analytics, and learning behavior analytics, the curriculum of our system caters to every single student who has a passion for learning foreign languages.

Do you think this is the future of language learning and if yes why do you think so?

Absolutely. I think personal adaptive learning systems is going to be the game changer of the e-learning industry in next few years. Right now so many resources and time is wasted on inefficient language learning systems that are not specifically made for individual students. I strongly believe the atomization of the process of personalizing learning materials and processes through the machine learning and big data technology has the key to the answer for this problem. That’s why we continuously re-invest our revenue into our data science R&D in order to develop further useful technology.

Why South Korea?

South Korea has the highest per capita spending in education especially in the digital English learning market. This means if Koreans approve the product, the product work. I know it’s weird to compare, but just like plastic surgery market, e-learning industry has become Korea’s most famous trade. I believe achieving success in Korea will be a huge milestone and source of pride for everyone in our team.

What made you decide to join the In2Korea program?

To ship out our localized product legally in Korea, we decided the best way is to incorporate a branch office in Korea. When we were just starting to look for an office space and the legal and accounting partners, my newsfeed of Facebook showed that NIPA had launched a new program to support foreign startups to establish businesses in Korea. It came at a perfect timing, giving us such a serendipitous starting resource.

What have you learned/gained so far from joining the program? What else do you expect to gain?

Obviously the best part is the free office space in the very center of the tech sector in Korea, Pangyo Techno Valley. On top of that, In2Korea offers very easy access to professional help in the forms of both group sessions and 1 on 1 sessions. So far I have participated in a couple group sessions on incorporation process and taxation information in Korea, and I found them very helpful. Personally, my favorite part of being in the program is the managers of In2Korea. They have been exceptionally friendly, kind, helpful and welcoming to everyone in the program. I feel extremely fortunate to have met them through the program.

How is business different in Korea compared to your home country? Are there many other startups or entrepreneurs from your country here?

I’m Korean but I have worked in Taiwan and US. I perceive Korea to have the most opportunities for high-potential global startups to grow because of its digital market penetration rates and huge government fundings for foreign startups. I believe Korea government is serious about creating more of a diverse startup ecosystem here and you can easily see that effort from how many grants, competitions, and events they organize every month. Those business networking parties are especially helpful to meet likely minded global entrepreneurs and discuss how to make successful business endeavors in Korea.

If you could give advice to a start-up about coming/going out to Korea what would it be?

Keep track of all the events, grants, competitions etc. Just for being here for one month, I hear about so many great one, and all the different government branches seem to have different projects going on for various types of startups. It might be worth your time to research them all and keep a schedule of good ones.

Would you say there is a different business culture and if so how will/did you adapt to the local culture?

Absolutely. In Korea, your age matters a lot. They will expect you to behave in certain ways for certain age relationships. I was born here but I still get confused at times. So if you’re completely foreign to it, it will be very educational to invest some of your time reading online about Korean way of thinking and psychology before you come. In2Korea staffs can also guide you to some of the fascinating business culture practices. You just have to ask!

What have you achieved so far? If you have any achievements in Korea so far, I’d love to hear about those, but you can also tell me about achievements before Korea.

One user I met through an offline events I used to host in Taiwan stuck out when I heard this question. She had been using HOPEnglish app for more than 1 year. She told me that before using our product she didn’t know how to speak English at all. At the time, she was going through a hard time in her life, and one of the reason of that was because she quit her acting career. But then she found out about our product online and she said she became almost “addicted” to it. Since you often don’t hear people saying that they are “addicted” to an education app, I felt amazing. She used the app daily for one year straight, and now she is almost fluent in English. Sharon, who became my real friend, just got married to a Taiwanese American who doesn’t speak much Chinese, which means they mainly communicate in English. I feel very accomplished when I hear stories like this from our real users.

Also, we have over 100+ global companies using our products, including internationally-renowned companies such as Google, Yahoo, HP, Michelin, Foxconn, EVA Air, Deloitte, PWC, KPMG, etc., and the number of companies which use our system as on-the-job training material is still increasing.

Lastly, we just finished 500startup accelerator program in Japan and started selling our product in Japan.

Next achievement will hopefully come from Korea.

What do you like about your job?

I love imagining what kind of milestones our team will reach in a couple years. I have good reasons to believe that our company will play a big part in helping people achieve high language goals with fully digitalized solutions. With most other language learning programs focusing on light learning and edutainment aspect of the EdTech, I hope that we can be provide the deep learning solution to help serious language students become fluent in any language in the future.