Korean startup Beanzsoft’s CEO Lee Joon-taek honed his technology and business skills while working with global giant Samsung Electronics for over a decade. Lee then gathered a group of like-minded efficient engineers and started a unique service, ‘AiTube.’
The startup is set to cater to millions of aspiring YouTubers with its easy-to-use editing technology with ‘AiTube.’ Lee Joon-taek talks with koreatechdesk.com about the company’s goals and its future aspirations.
1. Please tell me about your background and what motivated you to get started with your company?
I worked for SAMSUNG Electronics for 12 years as a software engineer. I was interested in the image processing field. In 2016, AlphaGo was revealed out of the world. I studied about AlphaGo, what kind of technology is applied. I realized that deep learning would solve many problems, which legacy technology could not solve. I decided to build up the company, which provides service with solutions using deep learning technology.
2. What is your current main product, and can you share any previous product pivot story to the current product?
AiTube is the main product that reduces video editing time dramatically. Recently many YouTubers in the early stage can’t outsource video editing because they make little profit. So they have to film and edit their contents. It takes 30min to 2hour to film for 10 minutes of video content.
And it takes 5 to 8 hours to edit for 10 min video contents. So they are suffering from editing video.
AiTube makes faster 6 times or 10 times than legacy video editing service.
3. What is the market opportunity for your service?
As you know, YouTube is big now and still growing.
And many people search for information on Youtube than Google search.
4. What’s your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?
a) Subscription model (monthly, yearly).
b) Selling contents (when they edit video, they need content, background music, pretty image, etc.)
c) Cloud encoding service. (Mobile device has low computing power than Personel computer. It takes a long time to encoding video on mobile. So AiTube encode the video based on editing history)
5. Please tell me more about your founding team?
Our team met at a deep learning study club. We love technology and doing a new service, which is very impressive.
6. How much money have you raised in total so far? When was the recent funding round?
We received seed money in May 2019. It is about $2,000.
7. What are the biggest challenges and obstacles that you have faced in the process of fund-raising? If you had to start over, what would you do differently?
Our team consists of engineers. We don’t have a marketing representative.
I have been meeting people who could be an excellent marketer and make our service grow rapidly.
8. What are your milestones for the next round? And what are your goals for the future?
We make YouTubers reducing their video editing time and enable them to focus on more research on their content and make more useful content.
9. How have you attracted users, and with what strategy have you grown your company from the start to now?
2500 people have joined our service. And 10% of users are using our service altogether now. 90% of users are from overseas.
10. What do most startups get wrong about marketing in general?
Most startups make a product, which doesn’t need many people. They want to make a product, which is necessary for them only. But AiTube is based on the user’s message and feedback. We are continuously updating and changing our services like UI, functionality.
11. How do you plan to expand globally?
We contact Youtuber in the early stage. We make him or her producing their content 4~6 times more. So other YouTubers feel comfortable using our service.
12. How do you handle this COVID-19 outbreak situation for your company’s survival in the future?
COVID-19 makes people interact intact. AiTube service is suitable for this environment. Many lectures are streaming online—some professors film their lectures on AiTube.
13. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? And what advice do you have for someone interested in doing similar things like yours or in a similar direction?
A person is everything for team and service. Everything is done by a person.
Personal
14. How do you keep yourself motivated every day?
Our team has free talking time, at that time we can talk about anything about our service and our team. If there is a problem, we talk about that problem as our own. We are encouraging each other.
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