Amazing new technology and first work experience

Who has expected that? We, Junho Kim and Seungil Kim got an opportunity to work as a salesman. On the first day of SLUSH we helped owner of Korean company as translators while we were walking around to visit company booths. One Korean company suggested us to work for them. So, on the second day, we work as employees. We tried to sale and promote their brands and products. Also, to get some investment, we attracted many investors and conference participations. It’s not easy to get this kind of opportunity as a student. We could experience valuable things as “freelancer”.

And we got two interviews on the first day of slush. The first interview was from the Korean company (ATTO CUBE), where Jun and Seung could work as salesmen. The company’s business is educational contents. They develop software and hardware. Their actual products were puzzles with application and reflector. The product is for children education and medical cure for Alzheimer’s patients. They were trying to get customers from Korea, Europe and North America. Furthermore, their core business model is through contents and they tried to focus on that. Because they believe, that content had competitiveness and durability for the long run. Also, their distribution is B2B for Korean market where it is B2C for European markets. But they have some problems when getting into global market. Because content is highly related with nation’s culture and structure. So, all contents have to be differentiated with each country. So, they would like to get some feedback for localization through SLUSH.

Second interview was with Finnish company “Intelles Informatica”. This company deals with sensor unit for elderly people. This product is cared by elderly people who live alone or need care in long distance. The sensor unit catch the behavior patter on elderly people and report to their families or friends through the application. However, there algorithm is the key value proposition in their products. Currently they’re doing pilot tests. Their business model includes selling services for older people. Also, they’re aiming the whole Scandinavian market in the next year. They are specialized in algorithms. So they can get advantage in global market with this specific specialization. However, there are a lot of culture differences. They felt difficulties to evaluate all the different countries and markets w   hen becoming global. They already have a lot of partners to work with. For now, they’re only concentrating on this health and elderly care service. But, they believe that same solution can be used for different purposes in different countries.

We think, their business model that doesn’t make a profit from the machine but from service payment could be a solution for nowadays situation.

On the Second day of SLUSH, we heard a lecture about the ‘Future of payments’. The lecture was about payment industry which is one of the most scaling industry in the world. The Speaker of the Lecture was Kevin Dallas who is the Chief product officer of ‘World Pay’. We had a good opportunity to listen how the No.1 company of the world expects the future. Kevin Dallas said that there were 3 main points that we should keep in mind about the future payments. The Fist factor is ‘Invisible payment’. Invisible payment is everywhere. In case of Uber, just one ‘click’ for choosing the driver, the payment process “Customer to Uber, Uber to Company” Progress is completed. This “one click” payment is the future (you don’t need any card or cash!) The second factor he said was “De-centralization”. It means that in the future the money and the banks will work at the same time interactively. So in the future, when you pay for something, wherever you are, it doesn’t matter which finance institution makes the transaction. The third factor is “Identity”. In the future, we don’t have to carry our criteria like passport anymore when we pay. Because, the social-data in the internet might be used as a tool for conforming us and it make people to be free of those kinds of documents. But he said this might occur another problem in terms of privacy. To make an innovation in Fin-tech, there should be efforts to develop a technology, which also ensures the privacy.

Especially, Simon Knoerzer thinks that the classic banking system, which we know already, will fortunately distinguish and make space for new fair and efficient technology. He also pointed out that he already uses online private banking and that he buys the financial product like funds, ETF and stocks directly without and intermediates.

 

The course “Internationalisation of Small and Medium sized Businesses (5 ECTS)” is the first course of the “Business in the Baltic Sea Region (15 ECTS)” extensions studies.  During the course students plan and manage small internationalization projects and actively support SMEs to enter foreign markets. This is done in co-operation with the Digas project, supported by the European ERASMUS+, KA2 programme.