This is my essay about how to better prepare your mind for those challenges — about motivating yourself. It is my notion that there are three kinds of motivation that will get you through the highs and lows. It can be misleading to give a one-size-fits-all advice on this, so it’s important to have some level of metacognition rather than blindly sticking to one advice.

1. Vision and purpose.

This motivation is something like “making the world a better place”. This high level “why” keeps your head up high, lets you create long term ambitious goals, and creates deep meaning behind your daily struggles. These motivations are both pure, philosophical, and abstract.

I wanted to change the world and make a huge impact to humanity. I chose startup as the ‘how’, and medicine as the ‘what’. That’s the rationale behind why I went to med school, wrapped up in two sentences. That was what motivated me to go to the study room in a good day.

2. Basic human desires.

The thing is, that abstract concept of elegant motivation will not give the reason to rise up when times get tough. You need something more powerful and raw.

“I have to learn medical knowledge and expertise because I want to create an impact for humanity” did not ring a bell when I had to drag myself onto yet another study session in med school. The big lesson I learned was that high level motivation alone cannot get you through the really bad times. The moments you wake up at 5:30 am to prep for a cardiology round, the late night study sessions that last until 3:00 am, and crunch times right before an exam… these are hard to any human beings.

This motivation is on a lower level of human needs, something more raw and primal. This is for the ‘bad’ days.

In my case it was peer pressure. I did it because my friends did it. Another examples of these would be: ‘I want to be rich’, ‘I want to impress that girl’, ‘I don’t want to be embarrassed’, ‘I don’t want to miss out’. Everyone has one. Thousands of businesses have been created to impress a girl.

3. Unconscious habits.

The last one isn’t even conscious motivation. Yet it’s the most important, most durable fuel of all. You do it because that’s who you are. You do it because you’ve been doing it for the past decade of your life. This momentum, routine, whatever you call it, now defines a part of you.

After a certain time, other conscious motivations get fossilized and consolidated into who you are. You don’t really motivate you on a day-to-day basis, you just chug on with your life unconsciously.

Grit and resourcefulness is now a part of who I am. I just do things. I just solve problems. I just focus on impact. No logic or motivation is really needed except for a couple of down times.

The high level motivation keeps the vision alive in the good days, the low level motivation keeps me raw power to get up in the bad days, and the accumulated lifelong momentum supports everything else.

There’s a different fuel for different situations, and understanding your own arsenal prepares you better for the long haul. To showing up.

When I was PM, my biggest characteristic was the obsession over speed. I wanted launches to be daily, not weekly. I wanted executions to be hourly, not daily. I believed in uncertainty — the notion that no one can really know if a feature will work out or not, therefore every execution must be light and quick. Even when I was an engineer, I have built functioning MVPs within 4~5 days, and tried to cut features that wasn’t necessary to validate the hypothesis.

Some people have embraced this methodology to start their own project — for example, some entrepreneurs are adopting “12 ideas to validate within one year”, and they are executing one by one until there is proven success such as retention or CTRs. Those 12 ideas are often selected upon ideas that could work, instead of ideas that the founder has an emotional relation towards.

Now, I believe this approach is only half right.

“Vision driven” should be the starting point of every startup. There must be a core backbone vision within a founder. Without it, fast iteration and obsessive execution will not have a ground to stand upon. The results of those experiments stack up to nothing. Vision must come first, and then fast iteration should be applied to find a working solution to realize that vision. The prototyping mindset is good for actual iteration; it’s not for starting companies.

Specifically, founders must answer the following two questions:

1. “What future do you want to build?”

2. “Can you do this for 10 years?”
   
   
   

This current mantra of rapid prototyping and failing fast is bad for the startup ecosystem, as it is leading aspiring entrepreneurs to optimize into a small business instead of a world changing unicorn. It pressures founders to look for lean proof of their core hypothesis, which pressures them to resort to incremental and low level validations. This approach is only useful for a handful of easy-to-implement ideas like that of the social consumer internet era.

This is why courage is so important. The startup’s journey is a squiggly line with numerous ups and downs, and the founder’s courage towards the core vision is what keeps the whole ship afloat. The ability to think long term, the grit and hustle to endure the down times — it’s all connected to this core vision.

If you want to go big, do the “10 year test” against your ideas. Use prototyping as a flashlight, not a north star. Codify your visions first, and then bring our your validation toolkit.

If you’re interested, here’s my version of it. If these bold futures excite you, let’s connect at Twitter and LinkedIn.

Ever since I was a little kid I’ve always wanted to make a great impact to the world. I’ve had a tinge of nihilism in my view of the world, and I wanted my life to mean something.

There were 100 billion Homo Sapiens who walked the face of Earth in the past 300,000 years, but the ones we learn about in history are only a handful. I’ve always admired these people, the heroes who have advanced the trajectory of our species. I wanted to make history, and I wanted to go big. This impact-driven attitude runs deep; It really defines who I am and how I view the world.

For a long time, my core vision was “making an impact to humanity”: a very general and audacious feat. But I think the key to life is about realizing that raw, basic instinct into a more detailed and material vision. It is how a boy becomes a man, and how an entrepreneur is built.

As of 2023, my vision is “advancing human lifespan by one year”. An equally audacious feat, yet more detailed and matured. Although I have listed my personal interests in the last essay: The Future I Want to Build, this vision of advancing human lifespan will be the ultimate yardstick of how I measure up my life’s success. There were key moments to this ‘vision maturity’, key experiences and insights that lead to its consolidation. Today, I’m sharing one.

The date is 2020. I am 22 years old, a med school student doing general surgery rounds. Yonsei University is the top private university in South Korea, and the school’s hospital: Severance hospital, is recognized as one of the “big 5” major hospitals in South Korea. It has been a privilege to learn at such a prestigious level of education, because it let me study under the best mentors. Professor NK Kim was a master of colon cancer, and I was assigned to follow him in my first week.

Day 1 was outpatient clinic day. I sat beside Professor Kim and watched alongside every patient who came to the clinic. Some were uneventful post-op follow ups, but some were newly diagnosed colon cancer patients. I remember one married couple, the husband had been diagnosed of colon cancer at the age of 40. They had two kids, of age 5 and 8. When the professor gently asked about their kids, the couple burst into tears. They were crying, hopeless, and I could see the sense of desperation and fear in their eyes. This was their life depending on the disease. I wasn’t prepared for this level of emotion.

And then the professor did something profound. He gently held the couple’s hands, and said: “I’ll have you cured. You came to me with faith, I will not let you down.” Coming from a senior professor who literally wrote the book on colon cancer, the room resonated with conviction. I will never forget that moment in my career. The couple seemed a bit reassured, and the professor scheduled an anterior resection (the cancer operation) later that week.

We as medical students also had a chance to participate in the surgery itself. I remember going into that patient’s surgery with my surgical gown & gloves on, placing my hand onto the patient’s anesthetized body. The surgery took about 4 hours, and the result was beautiful - I’ve checked the patient’s records on the EMR on a regular basis, and he is healthy as ever.

This was the first week of hospital rounds, and it was the first moment of truth for me. This professor has just given someone a new life. My mind was racing. The amplitude of impact was as deep as it could be. This seemed like my path for an impact driven life. And then I started modeling out my future, and how many lives I could save… and the dynamics suddenly all changed again.

Here’s the math:
(1) Professor NK Kim operates on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.
(2) Anterior resection takes about 4 hrs each, so every day the capacity is two cases at maximum.
(3) Let’s assume generously, that a surgeon practices from age 30 to age 70.

Now, the total number of patients = 3 days * 2 patients * 48 weeks * 40 years = about 12,000.

If we assume that Professor Kim gave each patient an additional 40 years to live, then his overall impact on humanity would be 480k additional years.

That was the moment when I realized the intrinsic limitation of medicine. Because medicine was such a labor intensive process, the capacity was heavily limited by the practitioner. Very deep impact, yet such few cases. The structure was inherently unscalable.

If we plot out the impact, it would look something like this:

Around that time, another insightful event have occurred to me.

I’ve been a software engineer since I was 18, and by the age I was doing hospital rounds, I’ve reached the skill level where I could code my own website from scratch to production. As a coincidence, I was working with an instagram influencer to build a small website that lets you test your own MBTI in a fun way. MBTI was a whole cultural thing back then, and I was just looking for a production experience as an engineer.

I built the whole website within weeks, and at the day of deployment, the site reached 500k visitors, thanks to the influencer’s audience. After the whole viral cycle has come to its end, about 1 million views has been reached.

1 million. I was dumbfounded by that number. That was the first project of mine that succeeded at such a scale, and the whole process was super scalable: I did not need additional work between visitor #1 and visitor #1,000,000.

Plotting out the impact, it would look something like this:

And I arrived at my insight. The path was clear to me. I had two unique talents, that could work together.

• Medicine has a high impact intrinsically.

  • There’s nothing like saving someone’s life in terms of magnitude.

• Software has a high scalability intrinsically.

  • There’s nothing like software at scalability.

Combining these two, I believed that I could achieve the best of both worlds, and bring good to the world at a whole new level. The area under this “impact plot” would be my overall contribution to the world.

My life was more of a mission ever since that key moment. I had to bring the best of both worlds. Especially when there are so few entrepreneurs in the world who has the potential skillset for both.

I began to measure my contribution in “total years gained for humanity”. I began searching for problems of this magnitude. And thus, I have consolidated my core vision. If I could increase the human lifespan by 1 year, then I’d be advancing 8 billion years. That’s the goalpost now.

Again, this is a story about time and impact, dreams and visions. My vision is clearer now, and I have a strong sense of calling.

I will advance humanity’s lifespan by one year.

This is my Manhattan Project.

This is my mission.

Medicine

reversing the ‘irreversible’

• This is one of the most hopeless problems that I know. In medicine, certain conditions are perceived as ‘irreversible’ and what’s left is passive care without hope of cure. This loss of function is devastating and permanent for the patient and their family.

• For example, most severe congenital neurologic diseases does not include real hope that the patient will get better someday. Back in med school when doing pediatric rounds, I was daunted by the mere imagination that my child might have a severe congenital neurologic condition. It was like staring into the abyss with no hope ahead.

• This irreversibility is not limited to congenital conditions. Stroke patients cannot expect their motor and sensory function to dramatically get better, even through extensive rehabilitation. Dementia is also a constant degrading process. Autoimmune diseases are conceived as a progressive process as well, and we assume the conditions irreversible.

• This is why a stroke is fundamentally different from a broken arm, because the latter is merely a temporary state of injury and the patient can fully recover to his normal self as if it never happened, whereas the stroke patient is constantly reminded of his/her loss of function for the rest of their lives.

• This falls into the second main pillar of medicine (written in things that won’t change): effectiveness of treatment. There is no cure for these irreversible diseases yet.

• Any medicine that can make the irreversible reversible captures my attention. At the moment the prominent candidates seem to be CRISPR-Cas9, BCI and stem cells. I strongly believe this future must arrive.

superhuman abilities

• A future where biological limitations are overcome through science and technology. I believe these ‘superhuman’ abilities will lead to unlocking new horizons of individual leverage and freedom.

• One example of this is memory. The human memory is volatile, and this leads to a waste of effort for students and knowledge workers. This is a personal problem: I have experienced deep frustration in med school when it felt like such a waste of time to keep memorizing raw knowledge because I couldn’t clearly remember what I’ve memorized 2 days ago. Back then all I wanted was a photographic memory.

• This is an area of enhancing the normal human condition, rather than curing a disease. Advances in neuroscience, new interfaces such as VR/AR and BCI, and advances in AI are making this a highly probable future.

10x accessibility

• This falls into the first main pillar of medicine (written in things that won’t change): Space-time accessibility.

• Hospitals have two roles. The first is a knowledge center, and the second is a treatment center (e.g. surgery and interventions).

• Of these two roles, I believe the first one to be disrupted within a decade, because of AI and the scaling law. I do not anticipate ‘treatment’ to be disrupted as soon, because it would require another breakthrough in another field such as robotics. After all those years and funding, we still don’t have a fully automated self driving car, which illustrates to the difficulty of automating a manual labor.

• I believe in a future where everyone can get medical assistance to a degree of magnitude better than the current status quo.

precision medicine

• Tailoring treatments and prevention strategies to the unique genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors of each individual. A future where all patients receive the most personalized and optimal healthcare possible.

• Genetic sequencing costs is famously decreasing at a faster rate than Moore’s law, and advances in AI are leading to sparks of potential breakthroughs, such as AlphaMissense.

• Control and visibility is a part of human desire, and this is a long-to-be-realized vision of the medical world. This paradigm shift is long overdue because of its difficulty.

• New modalities of data (such as CGMs) unlock new possibilities to connect the dots and shed a light upon our ignorance. I consider these changes inevitable, just a matter of when.

AI

freedom

• freedom of time, freedom of labor

  • I want to build a world where people are not held hostage to their day-to-day labor. Physicians are a great example of these. I want to make people more scalable, so that they can finally live the life they’ve wanted to live.

  • There is discrepancy between short term rewards and long term rewards, another area of human fallacy and a potential candidate for disruption.

• increased leverage of an individual

  • A future where I don’t have to wait for an external expert or an external approval. More power to the individual, more freedom from the system, with no dependencies.

  • Canva, Shopify, and DistroKid are examples of this mentality. Empowering users to do what they desire without an expert’s assistance, democratizing the expert barrier and empowering the individual.

digital eternal life

• I believe a new form of a replicator may emerge: the ‘self’.

• The first two replicators in human civilization were the gene, and then the meme, coined by the famous Richard Dawkins. I believe a third wave can come.

• The ‘self’ is a representation of my preferences, my personality, my synaptic connections. It’s like my brain child, and it can be saved up forever like in <San Junipero> from Black Mirror.

• Imagine every bit of information that makes up who you are, condensed in a chip. That digital self is self-replicating itself inside a virtual world, and the chip itself is stored safely forever like Github’s Arctic Code Vault project.

• This speaks to the ubiquitous human desire of eternal life. I believe this is a more plausible way of achieving eternal life than, say, cryonics.

loneliness

• Humans are wired deep inside our genes to be social beings so we will keep getting gratification from social interactions. Because genes take a long time to evolve, these deeply engrained behavior will not change for the foreseeable future.

• With rapid developments in AI, the world will become more personalized and self efficacy will decrease among people. The need for human touch and human warmth will not change. These depict a more lonely, bleak future for humanity.

• Again a personal note — I have felt my share of loneliness growing up and studying in med school. I do agree that a healthy dose of solitude leads to original thinking and self awareness, but I worry a societal shift in this direction may lead to fragmentation and apathy.

These are the worlds that I want to build, the inevitable future to come.

If you are interested in these agendas, let me know.

Ideas are the bedrock of startups, shaping their potential for growth and speed of success. The quality of the initial idea is often a determining factor in a startup's trajectory, setting the stage for its future. Through trial and error, founders develop a refined "idea filter" that evolves with experience.

Since stepping into the startup scene in 2014 as a high school student, I've immersed myself in learning, from books, articles, and firsthand experiences launching products. Now, with nine years under my belt, I've honed my "idea filter" — a mental framework for assessing and selecting startup ideas with the greatest potential. It's my guidepost for navigating the intricate startup landscape, and I hope it serves as a valuable resource for aspiring founders.

1. something people want

Make something people want. A founder should have a good feel on what people want. To figure out what people want, you need to observe their behavior, not their words. What people want usually falls down into two categories: Fulfilling their desire, or solving a painful problem for them.

The customer’s desire is not easy to change. It’s usually a bad bet to expect on its change (e.g. “people have never done this before, but they will”). Understand and map the customer desire, and surf on the waves rather than trying to fight it.

For example, a productivity product is better suited for a B2B play, because organizations have a stronger desire to increase efficiency and productivity.

2. why now

There must be a valid “why now”. Do not overestimate the novelty of the idea. The same idea would have come across more than 1000 entrepreneurs, who didn’t get the timing right.

A “why now” usually falls down to one of three categories:

1. People have always wanted it, but it's now possible (e.g. science, technology)

2. People have always wanted it, but it's now accessible (e.g. lower price, another distribution channel)

3. People want something new

Factors that create new “why now”s are: Technology, Consumer behavior, Environment, Regulation, Distribution channel. Keep track of these megatrend factors.

3. define impact

I want to put a ding in the universe. I want our existence to matter to the world. I want to change the world with our product.

This is my raison d'être, the idea that's been bouncing around in my head since I was in high school. I want to make an impact that will go down in history. I want to create an impact to the human race.

This is why I was attracted to startups since 2014, when I was 16. This is why I’m sticking in this field for nine years. To me, a startup is the best vehicle to change the world for the good of humanity.

Pick a job that resonates with your life goal. Align your definition of impact towards that goal. This clears up what KPI to ultimately pursue in the long term — in my case, impact on humanity.

4. big markets

Pick a huge market. Or a growing market that will be huge. This cannot be overemphasized. The market sets the tone of growth for the company, and it is an external factor that you should identify first.

Big markets usually touch on really fundamental human needs. Either it's something people use a lot (= capturing time) or something people pay a lot for (= capturing money)

5. focus

Be super focused and sharp. You should do one or two thing exceptionally well, so that users have a clear reason to try your product. You need to clearly define the problem, narrow it down, and be number one in the world at it. If you try to do something vague and broad like "I want to build a superapp," you'll most likely fail. A lot of founders talk this sort of bullshit to pump up their valuation. Don’t do this. Be focused and identify the “not to do”s.

6. growth or cash

As an entrepreneur I want financial success. There are two tracks to this.

1. Hypergrowth ideas

   1. A B2C product that has the potential to grow like crazy with viral growth. This requires high frequency. You need to capture behaviors that people do frequently, e.g. messengers, browsers, marketplaces.

2. Cashflow positive ideas

   1. A product that can generate cash from day one. To do this, you need to pick something that people are already paying cash for. Market creation takes a long time and has a low probability of success.

7. founder-market fit

Founder-market fit is important. Startups are long and hard, so the founder needs something to sustain their efforts. You only live once, and life is short. Startups usually take 5~10 years to succeed, so there must be a realistic expectation as well as being picky about what project to work on. Founder-market fit can be broken down into two aspects.

The first is personal interest. You need to work on a problem that the founder can personally relate to, and is emotionally invested. I like to filter my ideas with “can you invest 10 years of life into that single problem”. Smart people naturally have wide curiosity and interests, but if you really think about it most ideas don’t pass the 10 year test.

• As a medical doctor, I am personally invested in most medical problems. If I can significantly increase worldwide human life expectancy, I’ll pursue that idea with great interest.

• As a former medical student, I am also personally invested in improving human memory, and unlocking the human brain. Most studying efforts goes into memorizing and building this memory base, which is very volatile. This is why I’m interested in AGI, LLM and BCI.

The second is innate strengths. If you ever played sports, you know that everyone has a natural talent in some specific area. The same works for startups. The founder’s natural talents should play well with the domain, and this could be another filter to select which market to play in. For example, if a founder is gifted in creating catchy marketing content, then maybe a GPU optimization AI infrastructure startup is not the best fit for him. These innate strengths are hard to figure out on your own, and the best method is to ask coworkers for feedbacks with radical candor.

• According to my coworkers and mentors, I have natural born talent in execution speed, energy level, rational decision-making, data affinity and obsession, knowledge input, and general intelligence. These innate strengths plays well with most pure software startups. I think I am most close to Reed Hastings and Jeff Bezos, in terms of CEO archetypes.

• On a side note, as a basketball player my innate strength was defense, athleticism, speed, energy level, vocal leadership, and a jack-of-all trades offense, like Andre Iguodala.

8. things that don’t change

You have to focus on things that don’t change. What is the essence of the business? What are values that will not change over time. When you identify and focus on those fundamentals, you can make bets on the long term.

1. ex) Amazon — Fast delivery, Low price, Vast selections.

2. ex) Blue origin — Cost, Reliability, On time launches.

3. ex) Medicine — Accessibility in time and space, effectiveness of treatment, preservation of function. I wrote a whole article about it here.

9. bet on human nature

These are some of my insights on human nature, based on observations throughout life. These human nature are ingrained in the DNA. Do not bet against it. For example, a product that stops you from wasting time might not grow as big as you like it to be, because it bets against the natural wave of human nature.

1. Humans seek fun.

2. Humans like to waste time.

3. Humans are emotional animals.

4. Humans like to be socially praised and recognized.

5. Humans are true to basic desires, such as food, shelter, sex, sleep.

6. Humans watch what others do when they are uncertain.

7. Humans always compare themselves with each other.

8. Humans don't like to lose. Losses are perceived twice as hard as wins.

9. Humans don't like to die in the face of death.

10. Humans are not good at calculating probabilities.

11. Humans are not good at predicting and reacting to exponential situations.

12. Humans are not productivity-crazed.

13. Humans are lazy.

14. Humans don't like change.

15. Humans have a strong need for self-expression. We seek freedom of expression and freedom of speech. (ex. MySpace)

16. Humans go through stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

17. Humans have willingness to pay for another human, rather than to a system. (ex. OnlyFans vs MindGeek)

Outro

As you get more mature and accumulate scar tissue, you get to develop your own filter on ideas. As of 2023 these are my filters, and I expect it to grow over the course of my entrepreneurial journey. With these insights and passion, I’m preparing to start my own startup in 2024. I take my talents to San Francisco.

If you like what you read, follow me.

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One big reason is the absolute time commitment required to become a specialist. In most fields, 20s are not yet old enough to have put in the time to mature their skills. Most of the "great" surgeons are over 50. Many of the "best" senior developers are in their 30s and 40s. People in their 20s have not yet spent enough time to hone their skills, and the specialist track seems tough and tedious like walking towards a North Star far far away.

On the other hand, the generalist path has the risk of insecurity and ambiguity. Especially in the startup scene, as described in the book <Blitzscaling>, the pace of change so fast that it is imperative to hire generalists who are ambidextrous and adaptive. However, having all-around abilities with no outstanding specialty makes you feel as if you are replaceable, and there are times when your various day to day tasks seem to lead nowhere. These people tend to experience career crises when they fall into the notion that they are a master of none, and that their career path is cluttered and irreversibly ruined.

This is a dilemma that I experienced myself for quite some time, so I take these matters to heart.

I'm a jack of all trades — I can build, I can strategize, I can analyze data, I have product sense, and I can sell — all at a professional level. I've even studied medicine in college. There were times when I thought, "Where is this resume leading to?”.

When I was coding, I didn't aim to be the best software developer in the world, and when I was studying, I didn't aim to be the best doctor in the world. I practiced with the mindset of being good enough rather than aiming to be number one in the group. Because our society rewards competition, there were moments when I felt out of line, and that my reward function needs to be recalibrated. Deep down I believed I had the experience and skills as a general problem solver, but it was literally a very generic skill to consider as a differentiating specialty.

After much thought, I recently came up with a definite answer to this slippery balance, and here it is. To summarize, generalists can think of themselves as Taylor Swift, and specialists can think of themselves as Whitney Houston.

Taylor Swift does all the composing, lyrics, producing, and singing by herself. In terms of skillset, you need to be a jack-of-all-trades to pull this off. While she may not be the best in the world at any particular single skill, Taylor Swift is able to produce songs that catch the public's ear, which is why she is immensely successful as a singer-songwriter.

On the other hand, Whitney Houston is super specialized as a singer. She can't compose or produce a song, but she can do that one job: singing, exceptionally well. She's one of the best in the world, and that's why she's recognized and successful as a singer.

Let’s come back to the world of business. Like Taylor Swift, in order for a generalist to be successful, he or she must create a product that sells (= “the entrepreneur track”). There are so many skillsets required to create a successful product — building, selling, recruiting, organizing, and executing — that specialists can't dare to pull off. It's about your intuition, your story, and your product. If you are a generalist who creates something totally new, that is when you become truly irreplaceable. Specialists speak with their skill, and generalists speak with their creation [1].

What follows like a corollary, is the yardstick for how good a generalist/specialist should be in each area.

A specialist's yardstick of skill is relative to their peers. You have to be better than everyone else to be treated well, and you have to train to be number one. In other words, you are rewarded with relative skill, not absolute skill.

Generalists, on the other hand, should have good enough skills to create a product that sells. In other words, they have an absolute yardstick, one that is dependent on the customer of their product. Taylor Swift doesn't need to be the best producer in the industry, she just needs to be good enough to create music that people want to listen to. [2][3]

There's one more thing to keep in mind here. The process of "getting better" is inherently painful, a battle with yourself, and a process that requires time and grit.

In my life, it took blood, sweat, and tears to get good at certain skills. To get good at coding, to get good at basketball, to get good at studying medicine… the process took discipline and grit. This painful process as a rite of passage applies the same regardless if you are a generalist or a specialist. What's different is the extent of how far you have to hone your skills; whether it’s absolute (good enough for customers to buy) or relative (#1 expert in the business). There are no shortcuts that bypass the hard work and perseverance that goes into building your skills.

I'll end this with a personal reflection. I'm a jack-of-all-trades. There were times when I thought, "Where is this resume leading to?”. But now I have a clearer view. I was born to be a generalist, and to succeed as a generalist, I will create a new product and sell it to the world. I'll accumulate the necessary skills to make a successful business, and once I'm good enough, I'll try again and again until I create that product-market fit. I will become Taylor Swift.

Notes

[1] As you move up to the C level, you can't afford to keep contributing as an individual contributor, because the abstraction layer gets too high. Therefore taking on a high-level position in the company is another viable route for generalists to succeed. It's important to note that creating isn't always the only answer, and it's dangerous to think of generalists and specialists as binary, as it's a continuous spectrum where everyone is a mix of each.

[2] Even if you're a generalist, there are times when your skills aren't enough to build a product. That's when you need to convince others with your competence. In the early stages, when the product is before product-market fit, you need to sell yourself to recruit talents, and the better your skills are, the easier it is to convince others. In other words, another yardstick of skill for generalists is the degree to which you can convince others. Especially if you are a CEO with engineering backgrounds, you may need to recruit your engineers in this way, since engineers look up to greater engineers than themselves. (e.g., Guts and Griffith's first meeting in <Berserk>)

[3] There are also areas where specialized knowledge is required to build a business (e.g., deep tech). The difference here is the nuance of "build enough expertise to make a product and then stop" vs. "do not stop and take your expertise to the highest level". In deep tech, you should be in it for the long haul, as market opportunities and problems can only be seen once the founder has reached a certain level of sophistication, often labeled in the form of a Ph.D.

At thingsflow we had a marketing lead, a tech lead, a content lead, and so on — senior specialists in their domain, each leading their team of 5~6 people. So my role as a group lead was more about aligning each team leader into a common bigger picture, rather than interacting with every 30 people in our group.

Organizing the strategy and setting up proper monitoring was definitely a challenge, but the biggest challenge for me was getting the senior team leaders to follow my lead. After all, I was just a young talent with less than 5 years of field experience. Ultimately I was successful in creating that alignment, and I’m going to share how I’ve done it.

These were the three main levers that created followership for me:

1. Show and prove.

2. Help others.

3. Work long hours.

First, show and prove.

Show and prove. Deliver actual impact.
Create success streaks, and build trust from the ground up.

This is the most important lever. And the most powerful one, too.

"Growth solves 99% of organizational problems," says Lee Seung-geun, the CEO of Viva Republica. I found this true.

Growth solves a lot of problems. I don't have a shiny title like ex-Amazon or ex-Google, so I had to prove myself with pure competence, and I needed not only competence in the process (= rational decision-making), but also competence in result (= actually deliver impact). I needed to convince my team of my decisions.

I increased the checkout conversion rate of the web version of storyplay by 5x, which resulted in a 2.5x increase in overall ROAS for the product. This was a big impact because ROAS was a key KR for our quarter. We also achieved 10M views, 100% of our product-wide KR.

As a leader I met all of our challenging quarterly goals, proved my worth, and created a much stronger followership in the process.

Second, Help others.

Help others. Listen carefully in the regular 1:1 meetings and actually solve the problems found in the 1:1s.

I held 1:1 meetings with my team leaders at least once every two weeks. In my experience, this is the fastest way to build human connection, rapport, and trust. We followed the best practices of 1:1s to build rapport, but I also listened carefully to the concerns that came up in the 1:1s and actually helped solve them.

For example, our content leader shared her concerns about the efficiency of our content-creation process. Another occasion, our marketing leader was struggling with advertising budgeting and budget allocation. Another day, our tech leader shared his concerns about how to organize the next sprint.

As I move higher into the abstraction layer, it's easier to help in these situations. Not because I'm better, but because I have access to more information. If you use this information and take action, you can help your teammates solve their problems. Giving and receiving help builds rapport, which in turn leads to followership.

Third, work long hours.

Work long hours. At least 80 hours a week.

Work long hours. Work until midnight, work on weekends. Work 80 hours a week.

While being a group lead, I was executing at a very detailed level as the only PM of our product. I was tasked as an individual contributor for product decision making, product strategy, design reviews, user interviews, and data analysis — while also multi-tasking the leader’s role.

Working long hours does two things: first, it makes you more creative and insightful because you're always fully immersed into work. Second, it shows that the leader is engaged, which builds trust and is an indirect motivator. The teammates get to feel sorry for me, as I’m fully devoting every waking hour to the success of this project, which helps to convey my level of discipline and passion.

This is not a very scalable method, and I honestly don't recommend it for everyone. But it works for me, because throughout my life I've always been successful this way. Every skill that I mastered — basketball, coding, and medical school — was a result of devoted practice and investing large bulks of time. You can’t outsmart practice, and you need to put in the grit and grind. Blood, sweat, and tears.

I do not believe in work-life balance. Skills and achievements are built by hard work and grit. You get results and followers by working long hours.

There were also three mindsets that helped me in this journey:

1. self-assurance

2. optimism

3. repetition

First, self-assurance is an important lever of persuasion. If you believe in it, others will believe in it. Therefore, I must have self-confidence in the blueprint I have envisioned, and this confidence is strengthened as I accumulate success experiences. Confidence → success → more confidence → more success → more confidence... in a positive feedback loop.

This can feel unnatural as a scientist, as we are trained to be constantly skeptical in uncertain situations, obsessing over p values of 0.05. However, as we experience more success, our confidence grows. You can build momentum on this positive feedback loop and make things happen.

If you believe in it, others will believe in it.

Second, be optimistic. If you divide the world into optimists and pessimists, the pessimists are usually the smart, analytical, cynical critics, but it's the optimists who actually change the world. When you exude positive energy, it has a significant impact on the morale of the entire team. Only 7% of communication is verbal, and the rest is non-verbal such as tone and body language. Therefore a leader's attitude and emotions have a huge impact (even if they don't realize it).

I think this is the reason why people from consulting are good at analyzing, but not good at starting being an entrepreneur. It’s because consultants are used to analyzing phenomena by numbers, cleverly explaining them, and making cold predictions, which requires a smart and quantitative mindset. However, rallying a team around a big, bold plan, creating momentum, and generating a sense of purpose and motivation requires a different set of skills: courage, optimism, and confidence. The ability to be optimistic and confident in the face of uncertainty is partly innate and partly learned through experience.

It's the optimists who actually change the world.

Third, repeat. You can't say it once. Say it 30 times. Even if it becomes a meme, at least everyone is aware of the team's big picture direction, blueprint, and priorities. Don't be afraid to repeat your message, and keep consistency.

Repeat with consistency.

These are perhaps some of the biggest lessons learnt here at thingsflow. I've been given a position that seemed daunting, but luckily figured out things in time and created followership while delivering results.

Stay optimistic, stay hungry. These skills would prove to be invaluable in the forthcoming journey.

It's a top-down, "business" approach. Very strategic and calculated, referencing numerous benchmark success cases to follow a known ‘playbook’, and only target big enough markets.

An example: "Our model is to localize an item from company X that has been funded up to Series D in the US. They have proven product-market fit and solved most of the uncertainty, proving as a stellar benchmark. The market size in Korea is X dollars, and considering market condition differences in Korea and the US, our strategy address them with strategy 1, 2, 3."

Or it goes something like this: "This sector is a 1 billion dollar market, but just now transitioning from offline to online, and there are no players who are already performing well, so if we enter and execute well with this product, we can target X percent of this market. Relevant startups are X in India and Y in Germany, both performing well in their sector. They have raised Z dollars in their series D."

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the success model of Facebook's founding story in the movie <The Social Network>. The story of how a college student coded a site in his room and it became Facebook, which took over the world by growing exponentially.

Tumblr was similarly created by a reclusive but genius hacker. Slack was also created as an internal messaging tool, but when it was released to the public, users loved it so much that it became the company's main product. 1Password was a password management tool created by people who ran a web development consulting company. They were trying to solve a personal pain point, but after it was released to the public, users flooded in and changed the main product.

This model of success starts with a small MVP and gradually grows the company based on unstoppable traction, and when you wake up, you're in the middle of a huge market. I would describe it as a bottom-up approach, a "hacker" approach.

I don't think there's a superiority between the two models. Success is success, and there are plenty of success cases to validate both models. Amazon came from the top down (Jeff Bezos saw the internet growing at an insane rate, spent a year thinking about what business could work in it, and didn't start Amazon until he was 30), and Apple came from the bottom up (two computer geeks building computers in a garage).

And I don't even think the two models are exclusive. The bottom-up approach doesn't mean you have to be completely clueless about market conditions, and in the end, you need to be good at both top-down market breakdown and bottom-up product building to succeed, so it's just a matter of whether the founder was more inclined to one or the other when choosing items in the first place.

When I looked at the trend of top-down success stories in early 2022, my impression was that this B2C mobile app era has matured. Since web 1.0 and web 2.0 have matured to a certain extent, this “business” approach seems to lead to more success. The more mature the market, the less uncertainty there is, and the more stable the big-picture, consultant-like people can thrive with their skillset.

On the other hand, in the early days of the Internet and the early days of smartphones, we didn't know what the best practices are, and we didn't know the exact size of the market, the expected behavior of people, or the limits of the technology. The more technical uncertainty there is to a market, the more likely the hacker approach is to win.

In the mid-to-late 2000s, talent with app development skills was very scarce, and no one had a clear idea of the potential of this market. In this market and technology instability, simple apps like Angry Birds and Doodle Jump were able to succeed, and the ability to hack away rather than draw a big blueprint became a differentiator.

Whereas in 2022, app developers have become very common, so the ability to implement development is no longer a differentiator. Instead, there are many references to gauge the size and impact of the mobile market and enough best practices for a mobile product to follow. So the more I hear about these VC-backed startups and top-down startups, the more I think that mobile technology has become a mature technology that is quite predictable.

If there is a conclusion to this article, it is that you should quickly determine what kind of character you are better suited for and go in that direction.

If you’re the type of person who has a fast learning curve in engineering and prefer to get your hands dirty and try out different projects, you should take the bottom-up approach, but you’ll have to pick your fight in an immature uncertain technology-driven market (like generative AI or web3).

If you're conservative in your risk management, like to analyze the game, and want to derive thoughtful strategy based on success cases, you should take a top-down approach, but pick your fight in a large and mature market that have become predictable (like websites or mobile apps).

Again, I think both top-down and bottom-up are valid approaches, and if you can prove with actual success, you deserve my respect regardless of the approach.

In 2023 the era of generative AI, the hacker approach is once again thriving in potential, as there is much value to be realized but with much technologic uncertainty. Hackers, who can build product that users love, would thrive in these market conditions.

I’ve had my career as a software engineer and as a product manager, so I can play both games. I can break down the numbers of a market like a consultant and pick out successful product strategies, while I can also whip up a functioning full-stack MVP product within days. I think this is one of my great strengths as a founder, making me adaptable to any scene.

In these days, I embrace and bathe the uncertainty and serendipity of generative AI. The technology really resonates with me, and possibilities seem endless. Taking the hacker approach, it is now my sole focus is to build something that users love.

For Amazon, there were three things that did not change: Fast delivery, Low price, and Vast selections. At Blue Origin, there were three things that did not change: Cost, Reliability, and On time launches. As he mentions in multiple interviews, by thinking about what won’t change, he could look for the fundamental core value of the business and make long term plans around it.

As an entrepreneur, I decided to follow this methodology into my own field.

As a medical doctor, I spent years thinking about what the "unchanging essence" of medicine is. I have finally formed my answer, and here it is:

1. Space-time accessibility

2. Effectiveness of treatment

3. Preservation of function

If we keep these three enduring values at the center of our approach to healthcare, we will be able to think in the long-term and create lasting values. This is healthcare’s true essence. Let me dive into the details.

First: Space-time accessibility

There are hospitals in rural Italy, and there are hospitals in modern Seoul. In ancient Rome, there were hospitals like Hierapolis, and in ancient Korea, there were hospitals in every major village. Even at the early days of mankind there was a shaman in every tribe who also played the role of the medical doctor.

Medicine has revolved around these hospitals. This is because medical knowledge has been a deep vertical that is not accessible to the public. Medical practices have been centered around these "medical hotspots," which inevitably creates a spatial and temporal accessibility vacuum for the public.

People had to walk a long way just to see the face of a famous doctor like Hippocrates. The same is true in the modern society, where the best doctors are already booked for months, even years. This disparity is an intrinsic problem for any specialist-oriented profession, but in the case of medicine the stakes are high for the patient.

In the case of emergency diseases, there is a golden time for intervention. If a patient suffers from ischemic stroke, you have a 4.5 hour window of IV thrombolysis to give him t-PA. If you miss the window, the next one is between 4.5 hour and 24 hours, to try IA thrombectomy, a surgical procedure. The patient’s survival rate and the treatment of choice is dependent on the clock.

Regardless of how much the state-of-the-art modern medicine develops, the patient needs to reach the “medical hotspot” of the society to access the high quality care. Access to care is an unchanging value that has been with us throughout human history, and is one of the fundamentals of medicine.

Second: The effectiveness of the treatment.

Hospitals have two main roles — One is the center of knowledge, the capstone of modern medical knowledge. The other is the site of treatment, the actual act of treatment. This has also been true since the dawn of mankind.

I believe treatment is the more important of the two. “Medical hotspots” are in fact “treatment hotspots”. Patients come to the hospital as a painkiller. They do want a diagnosis, an explanation, and medical knowledge, but they care more about the actual treatment and its efficacy. In the extreme form, if you make a patient choose between knowledge without treatment and treatment without knowledge, most would pick the latter.

So the effectiveness of the treatment is more important than the accuracy of the diagnosis. The urgency and willingness to pay for knowledge is not high. I think this is where most of the digital healthcare services fail to meet the product-market fit. The effectiveness of the treatment is at the essence of healthcare. Without it, medicine would be an academic endeavor with thin real world value.

Third: Preservation of function

Imagine a doctor saying, "I can perform surgery to treat your condition, but there is a 70% risk that your vision will be permanently lost as a side effect of this treatment." The risk would be devastating, and it won’t be an easy choice.

Psychologically people perceive losses as twice as big as gains. I would need to gain two million dollars to feel the same way about losing one million dollars.

As we age, we gradually lose functions, and as we get sick, we risk losing our daily function. If I get a mucormycosis infection in my hand, I would need a surgical amputation and lose my hand overnight. This loss of function leads to a great sense of loss that is constant. So all surgeries and treatments are designed to preserve as much function as possible. We all want to live as long and as well as we can without losing function, so this is another fundamental of healthcare.

In the face of AI

I believe these core values to hold to be true in times of technologic advances. These are primary desires of the patient in the face of a major illness. People don’t want to be sick. People want to go back to their normal lives. People want effective care when and where they want. These are fundamental needs.

I believe in a future where technology augments these core values of medicine. I believe in a future where these medical needs are better realized through IT and software. It is the future I’ve bet on since I was 17 years old.

In the case of AI, I believe it could greatly increase the accessibility of medical knowledge, and in certain areas provide an effective treatment. I believe this future would come in our lifetime.

It is a risky bet, but it is important enough to humanity to risk failure.

If this vision excites you, join me on this bold mission. Let us make history together.