Yang-Hyun Chon: Entrepreneurship

2019/10/23

To me, entrepreneurship begins with sensing changes in the times, identifying problems, and redefining the contradictions within them. It has been a process of repeatedly seeking solutions through a different frame of thinking than before.

Business opportunities lie at the boundaries of major changes in technology and the social environment. My first challenge was with Hangame Japan.

In 2000, on the eve of the broadband era, I founded Hangame Japan and distributed a wide variety of free games as a portal. However, charging for each game would create a viable revenue model but make it difficult to attract people. Making them free would attract people but result in poor revenue. To resolve this contradiction, I found a way to keep the games free while charging for avatar items, growing it into Japan's number one game portal.

My next entrepreneurial challenge was Cocone. The essence of mobile is communication, and it is the most personalized device. Since a portal-style approach like that of PCs is not suitable, I incorporated connection-like elements where individuals connect and focused on personalized content with strong character appeal. As a result, we were able to pioneer the CCP (Character Coordinating Play) genre, which is supported by many users.

Entrepreneurship has the power to change the world. Simply defining "starting a business" as setting up a company is not enough. The innovation required to give rise to that "enterprise" is what is important.

Whether it is a service, a product, or an organization, it is about creating something that has never existed before and making a positive impact on people and society. This is what it means to be an entrepreneur. To create unprecedented innovation, one must correctly define things and current problems, and seek solutions with flexible thinking and the power of execution. Consequently, achieving financial results is the essence of entrepreneurship and the way a company should be.

It has been 20 years since the internet began to spread in Japan. Now, it has permeated our lives to the point where there is no boundary between online and offline. Recently, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a fusion of existing industries with new technologies such as AI, IoT, and O2O, has begun.

The world is becoming connected with an unprecedented amount of information and technology. It is precisely because of this era that the value of entrepreneurship is increasing. Students of Keio! Let us start businesses with an entrepreneurial spirit.