This slide deck is the introduction for a startup incubation program aimed at founders and future entrepreneurs. Week1: What is a startup and lessons learned *The slide materials are based on my startup and entrepreneurial experiences.

1. “What is a startup?”
Week 1

2. Definition of startup
Law firm
Human resources
Cafe
Retail
Food

3. Definition of startup
Law firm -> Atrium, Docusign
Human Resources -> LinkedIn, Gusto
Cafe -> Cafe X, Luckin Coffee
Retail -> Amazon, Shopify
Food -> Zume, Uber Eats

4. Startup = Growth

5. What is a venture backed business?

6. Lessons Learned:
How I failed my businesses and startups

7. Event organizing:
Crazy star

8. Highlights
Good:
- 200 people matchmaking event
- Four times a year
- Per event, revenue was 10k
- Yearly income was over 40k USD
for three years
- Very very good retention rate
(repeat customers)
Bad:
- Didn’t scale
- Didn’t have a scalable business
model
- Didn’t have any way to leverage
customer’s love and feedback

9. Dropoff

10. Highlights
Good:
- Faced the problem and knew the
problem
- Developed a service to sell before
building something (corporation,
website, product)
- Designed a user experience
- Knew where to get customers
- Revenue since day one
Bad:
- Didn’t have an engineer
- Had “Co-Founder”
- Thought about “competitor” too
much

11. Askompass

12. Highlights
Good:
- Had a team
- Pitched to investor
- Shipped the product
- Spoke to many Japanese tour
guides, understood market
Bad:
- There is no use-case
- There are no data
- Not sure there is a need or not

13. Tastexpresso

14. Highlights
Good:
- Joined Yelp Hackathon
- Launched the product
- Tested the ideas with users
- Got user interviews for the product
- Got 50 users
- Made the database by ourselves
Bad:
- Weekly retention was 0%
- Relied only on API for increasing
database
- Didn’t think about the user’s
motivation for coming back to the
product

15. Foxsy

16. Highlights
Good:
- Got a million users
- Became an influencer for a new
platform
- Had a clear business model
- Tested the business model, 1.7%
click rate for branded ads
- Raised money from investors
- Kept talking to users pre-launch
and post-launch
Bad:
- The platform didn’t grow
- Did not build the sticky product
before scaling
- Took for granted the thing the
investor said
- Could not close acquisition

17. Why I failed
● My benchmarks were wrong (find the co-founder, have a technical person,
raise money from VCs, and have a scalable product since Day 1)
● Hired the wrong co-founder
● Didn’t test idea as a hypothesis before building product
● Focused on wrong metrics (vanity metrics)
● Didn’t research competitors properly and deeply
● Didn’t know platform risk (API regulation)
● Didn’t focus on specific users who loved the product a lot
● Investor relationship and how to raise money

18. Lessons learned
● Don’t believe startup myths
● Test your hypothesis
● Do something that doesn’t scale
● Have a lean mindset
● Hack your ideas and processes
● Build something people really love
● Have right metric and growth equation
● Find out the risk: market risk or execution risk
● Ask the right questions to the right people
● Create a network: investors and experienced entrepreneurs who went through
the same process

19. Test your hypothesis
● Who has a problem (describe user or customer persona)
● What is the problem (simple sentence)
● And why is there a problem now?
(Don’t think about the solution yet)

21. Any questions?