This article summarizes the content from a previous entrepreneurship course I attended.

1. You cannot discuss business ideas without considering the market. Consider which people’s problems you are solving (market size) and assess how severe and rapidly growing the issue is. For example, 10 years ago, there were no environmental startups. The problem existed but wasn't significant, and no one was willing to spend money on it. Now, spending on environmental issues has increased.

How Significant is the Problem?

• Scope of the problem (how many people?) → at least in the millions

• Severity of the problem (to what extent) → Is the problem severe enough that people are willing to pay any amount to solve it (indicates willingness to pay, e.g., the cost of curing cancer)?

• Growing problem → Growing more than 20% annually.

• Profitable problem → Target market in the billions (e.g., environmental problems are now addressed by various solutions, not just NGOs).

• Frequency of the problem → How often does it occur (consider the total amount, not just daily occurrences)?

💡 Even if not all are included, at least one strong yes or two good yeses are necessary to move to the growth stage.

Competitive Advantage (1)

You need to determine what makes you better than your competitors and how to systematically implement your competitive advantage. Decide what you are exceptionally good at.

• Competitive advantage can change anytime. It's crucial to understand your current competitive edge.

• Price competitiveness → Competitive advantage arising from cost structure:

  1. Unique sourcing that allows us to get supplies cheaply.

  2. Low cost structure enables us to sell products at a lower price to customers. However, sourcing can change, and various factors can affect this.

• Marketing → e.g., Can you attract a large number of customers without spending money?

• Human resources → Do you have an Avengers-level team for the business?

• Barriers to entry → High hurdles that can prevent competitors from entering (e.g., patents, sandboxes, technology, limited government permits).

Competitive Advantage (2)

These aspects are becoming important in all industries.

1. Product Advantage

When implemented online, can users easily use the product?

• Superior user experience, 2) Collecting data to improve user experience.

• If a virtuous cycle (virtuous cycle) is established through data collection, your competitive advantage can increase over time.

• How can you collect more and better data from customers?

• How can you improve customer experience based on that data?

• These considerations are the most important.

2. Execution

• No competitive advantage matters if you don't execute. Extract execution points based on data and implement them.

• However, executing is both the essence of business and the hardest to explain.

• Business boils down to doing things, so everything ultimately comes down to execution.

• How can you build an organization with good execution capability?

• How can you create a culture where there is no fear of failure?

3. Scalability (Can It Grow Explosively?)

• Timing → This depends on an accurate analysis of the market. (Does the market open rapidly due to external factors like regulation, law, or society?) The reason for doing business is rapid expansion, and timing is the way to achieve the J-curve. Everyone agrees on this. If timing is right, marketing costs decrease, the industry converges, and building logistics centers becomes a trend. Regulations loosen, and appropriate legal frameworks develop as the scale grows. Hang on until the timing is right.

• Number of problems → How few problems do we need to solve? (Do we need to increase partners, educate customers, get government approval, and lift regulations? If so, it's a challenging business.) The types of problems change at different stages of the business. Monthly revenue of 100 million vs. 1 billion presents different problems. e.g., Kurly's internal issues. Unexpected hits are painful. It's good to brainstorm potential problems when the business scales. Preparing and predicting in advance is beneficial.

• Economies of scale → Does the same input yield the same output? Does efficiency improve as the scale grows? This applies to traditional businesses too. Logistics center efficiency improves as the scale grows from 1-10 to 10-100. Revenue improves with growth, which is reinvested for further growth.

• Network effect → Adding one user increases the utility for existing users. (Does the number of new users increase as the number of users grows?) This applies to the user side too. The larger it grows, the cheaper it is to gather more users.

4. Entrepreneur's Will

While various important factors in evaluating business ideas have been discussed, personally, the most crucial factor is the entrepreneur's will.

At the core of everything is the question of how much you want to pursue this.

Initially, our competitive advantages were different from what they are now. Each time we faced a problem, the founding team and those involved at the time broke through because we couldn't give up. If there is no market, create one.

Maintaining existing competitive advantages requires effort. Different issues arise at different business scales, and founders must evolve accordingly.

Even if you don't enjoy meeting people, you must do it because it's crucial for business growth. This involves explaining to relevant authorities. The person changes. An entrepreneur must repeatedly question if they can commit to this value. Explain this value multiple times. Without question, this is a vital issue, and not solving it would be regretful. Seeing seemingly impossible businesses succeed in the startup industry shows that even without a market, if there is a will, it can be created. A complete non-engineer can become a developer and achieve it somehow. A 25-year veteran investor says that with will, anything can be made.

• Is it a problem I understand and empathize with?

• Is it a problem I am passionate about solving?

• Am I confident I can solve this problem well?

• Is it a problem I desperately want to solve?

• If you have such determination, you can overcome obstacles even if they don't fit the criteria mentioned earlier.

• With strong will, an entrepreneur can achieve anything.