Since she founded Locket one year ago, CEO Yunha Kim has completely reimagined the way we interact with our lock screens and caught the attention of major news outlets around the US.

Deemed one of advertising’s “30 most creative under 30,” the 24-year-old is an innovative force determined to deliver the content you love right to your lock screen. Today, her app leverages user preferences and browsing habits to personalize lock screens on over half a million Android devices.

One ordinary week in early 2013, Yunha was racking up the typical 80-100 hours at her investment banking job. One brilliant idea and a quick market sizing exercise later, she promptly quit her job that same week, having decided to build a fresh new app with no technical or startup experience.

In the past year, Yunha has lived off $2 meals, sacrificed her personal life, overcome numerous business challenges, and even secured funding from celebrity investor Tyra Banks. Read on to hear her story.

Beginnings

Pursuist: You quit your banking job only a week after coming up with the Locket concept. Walk us through what was going on in your mind!

Yunha: Yeah! I would say there were two sparks.

One was that I was working long hours during the holiday season and I realized I really didn’t like my job. Had I learned much? Sure I was getting faster at Excel, I was learning… but I certainly didn’t feel like it was enough for me. Eight months into banking, I was looking at private equity.

But these weren’t things I was crazy about…and since I’m a workaholic, I figured that I might as well do something that’s meaningful. Should I be a doctor? [laughs]…I even filled out the med school app. Clearly I didn’t know what to do. That was one aha moment.

The second aha moment came one day when I was staring at the image of a daisy on my Android lock screen. Most social media sites were not allowed on our work computers, so I was probably checking my phone hundreds of times a day, staring at that ugly daisy. That really got me thinking though — someone needs to do something with the lock screen!

Pursuist: Most people can’t stomach the risk of starting a venture. Interesting concept aside, what motivated you?

Yunha: Well, for me my number one fear in life is regret. I would hate it if ten years down the road, I missed out on meaningful experiences due to my own reluctance. And besides, I figured there wasn’t much I could lose…

That whole process took me about a week. It was actually very nerve-racking to think about going to see the global head of my department and be like “Hey I’m an Analyst, I’m eight months into it, and I’m quitting…”

During that one week I had made an investor deck for Locket and decided to show it to him. To my surprise, he was actually super impressed and asked for a printed copy to keep. He even gave me two free weeks to work on the idea ASAP, which rarely happens in banking.

That day when I got home, I remember looking around my apartment and thinking gosh, how the heck am I going to afford all of this?! I clearly needed to look for other housing, and I probably couldn’t eat sushi anymore…. [laughs]

Pursuist: The typical entrepreneur usually has a technical background, which is not where you come from as we understand. How were you able to overcome this?

Yunha: A lot of people ask me how I did it without the technical background, and what books they should read to learn this. Actually I think when it comes to entrepreneurship, the earlier you jump into things, the faster you’ll learn on the job.

So I’d tell folks, you don’t always need to learn how to code and design, sometimes it’s much more efficient to focus on what you’re good at. For example I’m very good at getting people excited about what I’m doing and bringing in good talent. We were better off that way, as I was able to bring in a team full of rock stars.

Even to this day, I’m not necessarily building anything…I’m supporting my team, thinking about how my team can build a better product, how they can stay focused, etc.

Team

Pursuist: You mention team often, so how did you build your team?

Yunha: It was Paul Jang and me at first. Paul was a close friend of mine from high school and college. When I first asked him to join, he actually said no. Unlike me, he loved his job and was being compensated a lot. His bosses were the best people ever, so it just didn’t make much sense for him to quit and work on this uncertain thing.

So I asked him to at least help me model out the Locket concept, and since he’s really good at Excel he just market sized the whole thing.

When he saw just how much money we could make at only 1% of the market, he was sold on the spot. He called me at 5 am that morning and was like, “crap, we have to do this!” He had convinced himself.

Pursuist: How did you two build the first Locket app together?

Yunha: Paul wasn’t a hard-core engineer and we clearly needed a developer, so we put up job postings at Columbia and NYU and then conducted like a hundred interviews.

We didn’t really focus on how accomplished or experienced someone was…instead we wanted someone who was super passionate about building something cool. Kaushik fit that bill perfectly. Despite not knowing us too well, he moved in to live with us shortly after he joined, and soon we all became really good friends.

Pursuist: So after Kaushik joined, you guys were able to create the first Locket app and raise some funding?

Yunha: We actually got our initial $500K before our product even launched, which usually doesn’t happen. We were just sooo lucky, since investors really liked our team. Despite the fact that we were so junior, we were passionate and had a fresh idea.

In fact we were able to close a round within two days, and that initial funding got us over the hump and allowed us to focus on building the product. More substantial funding from Tyra Banks came later when we began to see continued success.

Pursuist: What are team dynamics like now? How do you have conversations and make decisions with your team?

Yunha: We all have different opinions, so open, clear communication is very important. When we have different ideas, we take our egos out of the conversation, try to find alignment with core business goals and ultimately go with what’s best for the company.

You know, one way to do it is to decide upfront who will make the final decision. Let’s say we decide to spend an hour discussing a new feature, but then it’s Paul’s call at the end. Instead of focusing on championing one idea, he has the responsibility to go with what’s best for the company.

I can say all this easily, but it’s not always easy to execute…[laughs]

Growing Pains

Pursuist: It’s impressive how much you were able to accomplish in such a short amount of time. During those initial few months, what were your friends and family thinking?

Yunha: My parents? They didn’t really agree with me at first. Like typical Asian parents, they wanted me to be a professor or lawyer or doctor. So first of all going into banking was a deviation. When they saw how much money I was making out of college in banking, they thought, maybe this makes sense.

But when I said I was leaving after 8 months, they thought I was lost. They weren’t super excited, but at the same time they were like, OK she’s young, let her figure it out by herself. Fortunately things worked out. Now that we have funding and the product is up and running, my parents are even using Locket…and they like it!

Pursuit: What about your friends? How have they felt about all this?

Yunha: Well the thing with start-ups is that, once you get in, you are so focused. I don’t have much time to hang out with friends. They are all supportive and excited for me, and we chat once in a while, but we don’t really hang out that often.

I really miss my high school and college friends. Actually my best friend in college got married recently, and I missed her wedding in Korea because Locket was on the verge of releasing something. I felt really, really bad about that.

There have been a lot of times when I felt irresponsible, and at the end of the day, I can’t make everyone happy.

Pursuist: Interesting. Given this, how do you stay grounded? What is your sense of purpose?

Yunha: Good question. You know, I don’t have that inspiration every single day. Sometimes I wake up and have no idea what I’m doing. Sometimes I see the app download number going down and I’m like shoot, what are we going to do now?

However, I really do like the team I’m working with, and even if things aren’t working out…when I work with people I like, it gives me that energy.

Every day the purpose is different. One day I can be fully invested in developing a new feature, and another I might be mentoring a new hire. For example, recently it was a year since the company founded and the founding team hadn’t celebrated an anniversary, so I found the best place for us to go and enjoy — Vegas!

Pursuist: Do you have doubts or insecurities?

Yunha: Yeah definitely. Like I said, sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing. That was one of the first problems I had to get over as a leader — thinking I should know everything, I shouldn’t be afraid, I should know what’s wrong vs. right…

I think the biggest thing was I didn’t want my team members to see that I don’t know those things, and for the first few months I was struggling because of this fear.

I mean we have people twice my age on the team who’ve been doing the same thing for 20+ years. So how do you lead a team, especially with people who are older and more experienced than you?

I believe that as a leader, you build credibility and unwavering confidence when you open up with the fact that you’re not an expert, but are willing to learn and collaborate with experts. I’ve decided to be much more open and honest, and as a result I’ve become increasingly sure of myself.

Pursuist: Yunha, one of the last things we wanted to touch on was your article describing the pros and cons of being a female entrepreneur… (For our readers, the post is linked here — https://medium.com/startup-on-the-road/19ce929c9679)

Yunha: The media often distorts my story — they misquote me to underscore why it sucks to be a female entrepreneur.

For me, the reason I wrote that post was because I was frequently getting that question: what’s it like being a female tech entrepreneur and what are some of the challenges? I feel like the whole industry is trying to prove that point…but I also think you can come up with thousands of reasons why it’s so awesome being a female entrepreneur as I started to outline in the post.

I mean really, just think about it. Before focusing on the female entrepreneur, there are lots of challenges to being an entrepreneur in general. Creating a product, getting funding, building a team — these are not easy things.

I think when you’re worrying about being female vs. male, at that point you’re probably over the hump, so there’s really not so much to worry about!