When the New Year arrived, the subsidiary projects were fully implemented. And Min-woo Oh, who claimed to achieve everything while maintaining work-life balance, visited Hyun-woo Lee the day after the New Year’s ceremony to get advice.
This was different from his vow not to interfere.
If he wanted to, Hyun-woo Lee was more than willing to help.
Especially since Min-woo Oh, who seemed the most independent, was actively seeking advice, Hyun-woo wanted to share all his knowledge.
“In the future, an era of material and information overload will come. Then, everyone will be able to easily access and freely use information, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“Therefore, in that era, data will be like an energy resource, and the ability to analyze it will be like an engine.”
“You’re saying data will become even more important than it is now?”
“Exactly.”
“Then, the one who gathers the most data will be the winner.”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
“It seems it was a good choice for me to take charge of the data subsidiary.”
When dividing the subsidiaries, Hyun-woo Lee couldn’t help but consult with the four directors.
They each expressed their preferences, and Hyun-woo added some of his own ideas. The Jungle Data subsidiary was also created respecting Min-woo Oh’s choice.
“If others focus on platforms, you can become the best in data analysis. That way, you can be treated with even more value.”
“You’re praising me too much. Even without that, we’ll grow rapidly, so don’t worry.”
Hyun-woo Lee chuckled.
He wasn’t just flattering; he was stating a fact.
“Look closely. Even now, global IT companies are expanding infinitely. The ones that used to provide search services are now combining with shopping, and those that created operating systems are entering the portal site market. This is just the beginning. Later, companies that only handled social media, e-commerce, or search services will invade each other’s territories, leading to a platform war. Who do you think will be the winner of that war? Naturally, the ones with a loyal customer base and a stronghold on data will have an absolute advantage.”
As he spoke, he wondered if he was talking about a too-distant future, but Min-woo Oh seemed to understand it all.
“To win the platform war, you need to hold big data, right?”
“Exactly.”
“Then, to hold big data, we need to entice people to keep using our services. In other words, we need to attract netizens to keep leaving data!”
“Good, good, good.”
“To do that, we need to understand the minds of netizens, or consumers, so we need to research from the consumer’s perspective when creating something.”
“You understand ten things when taught one. It’s so fun teaching you!”
“Okay. Let’s stop here for today. Even though I’m a genius, I can’t put too much in my head at once, so I’ll digest what I learned today and come back tomorrow.”
“Sure, sure. Hahaha.”
The next day, Min-woo Oh indeed came back with a newly designed plan after digesting what Hyun-woo Lee had said.
It was an open social media platform.
“Social media has focused more on groups than individuals, right? This time, it’s different. We plan to capture individual daily lives perfectly.”
Hyun-woo Lee smiled and nodded.
This was the product of what they had talked about the previous day.
To accumulate a vast amount of data and consumer-centered data, such social media was essential.
“Is the true meaning of Face Note about to be born?”
The social media Min-woo Oh originally created, Make Friends, was a mix of Free Challenge and I Like School from his previous life.
Both focused more on communities than individuals, so there were growth limits.
To grow into a global social media platform, Face Note or Twits was essential, and the design Min-woo Oh came up with was quite similar.
“It doesn’t seem like it will take long to create. We just need to tweak the algorithms of the blog and Make Friends a bit. In fact, it might be easier than creating the two separately. Since we know the algorithms through trial and error, we can supplement them to make it perfect.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
“It will exceed expectations. And thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not being annoyed when I come to see you.”
“That’s natural. From now on, this will be my job.”
“Indeed, you will get busier, right?”
In fact, Jungle Holdings, which Hyun-woo Lee operated, didn’t handle development.
The focus was mainly on the financial and human resource development divisions.
This meant that Hyun-woo Lee concentrated on fund execution and manpower input.
Instead, he would not block people from visiting him, as he does now.
So, his plan was to stay in his position, diligently passing on his experience to those who sought advice.
Min-woo Oh was the person utilizing this the best.
“He’s a smart guy. Finding a shortcut without going the long way around.”
The shortcut was, of course, Hyun-woo Lee.
If you ask someone who doesn’t know failure, they’ll tell you the way to success, so why not use it?
However, as they say, seeing is believing. There are many things you can’t succeed in without actually doing them.
Social media was one of them.
Although Min-woo Oh mentioned algorithms refined through trial and error, the real trial and error would come with operating the new form of open social media.
But seeing how quickly they reached the starting stage, it seemed he wasn’t lying about the algorithms.
From this point on, the representatives of each subsidiary began to frequently visit Hyun-woo Lee’s office.
“The online shopping market feels stagnant.”
“It’s inevitable as so many have sprung up. But I don’t see it as stagnation.”
Jungle Communication is a subsidiary centered on portal sites and online shopping.
Sang-won Woo’s concern was that these two forms had been pouring out for years, leading to fierce competition and making it hard to expect explosive growth as before.
Since he took charge of the subsidiary, it would always be compared to the past, so it was natural to be concerned.
“Right now, each shopping mall is focusing its capabilities on attracting supply and demand, so excessive competition is inevitable. But didn’t our Jungle attract the most influential distributors? Even general consumers know us the best.”
This was true.
The first business Hyun-woo Lee started after returning to the past was online shopping.
In the fourth year of his return, the formula ‘online shopping = Jungle’ was established.
With good management, they could continue to grow in the online distribution market through a virtuous cycle of network concentration.
In other words, explosive growth was only possible in the early stages, and now it was time to focus on gradually dominating the market.
That’s exactly what Sang-won Woo wanted.
“What if we expand direct purchases like before?”
In the early days of Jungle, they bought goods, packaged them directly, and shipped them to make a profit.
However, as the order volume surged, they realized it was hard to manage and had to focus on the intermediary role of connecting each distributor with consumers.
“It seems you already know the answer.”
“We’d need a lot of warehouses, right?”
“Yes, and trucks. And the manpower to drive and deliver them. Oh, and people to sort the goods in the warehouses.”
This was similar to what would later evolve into the form of Amazones.
Domestically, it would be similar to what Coupong was in his past life.
“In fact, Coupong also started as social commerce.”
As online shopping diversified, social commerce used systems like SNS, relying on each distributor or consignment company for warehousing and shipping.
Because of this, social commerce companies like Coupong initially preferred items like food, travel, and leisure that didn’t require storage and delivery.
However, the online shopping Hyun-woo Lee attempted after returning to the past was in a mixed-up order.
In other words, they distributed goods that seemed profitable at the time, and now their own system was almost established.
It seemed that Sang-won Woo had the ambition to change things as soon as he took charge of the subsidiary.
“It’s hard to predict how much capital will be needed. But if you want to do it, I won’t stop you. Because if such a form takes root, it will completely dominate the online distribution market in Korea.”
It would cost a lot. But if Sang-won Woo wanted to try, there was no need to stop him.
This meant that their current financial situation was comfortable enough.
Sang-won Woo seemed to ponder for a few seconds.
Then he said,
“Well, I’ll put that plan on hold for now.”
He chose reality over ideals.
Hyun-woo Lee nodded, respecting his opinion.
“Dividing the four of them, one is an action-oriented person, and the other is cautious.”
The former were, of course, Jung-woo Lee and Min-woo Oh. Both Min-woo and Jung-woo were the types who had to try something to know if it was good or bad.
On the other hand, Sang-won Woo and Yoo-chul Jang were more thoughtful and pursued stability over change.
As time passed, these differences seemed likely to determine the colors of each subsidiary.
However, since it wasn’t good for things to flow in only one direction, he thought it might be necessary to later place board members who could complement the tendencies of the CEOs.
“It’s about time to promote the team leaders to executives.”
Jungle had very few executives compared to its size.
Even when dividing the subsidiaries, all the directors became CEOs, so new executives were needed.
Therefore, Hyun-woo Lee upgraded the chief secretaries to director level and promoted the team leaders to director level as well.
Although more than ten new directors were created at once, there were still plans to fill the lacking executives over time.
Seeing such significant changes in the group, Hyun-woo Lee might seem like an action-oriented person like Min-woo Oh or Jung-woo Lee.
But that wasn’t necessarily the case. In his previous life, he was often considered cautious.
Having lived life once and knowing the way to success, he didn’t need to drag things out.
If he was heading in the wrong direction, he had the confidence to correct it anytime.
“Experience is indeed important.”
Here, experience didn’t just mean his past life.
It also meant the experience of failure.
Hyun-woo Lee didn’t always succeed. He analyzed the causes of his failures and stored that data firmly in his mind.
Returning to the past and applying it led to this unprecedented success.
So, if our CEOs fail, it might turn out to be a good thing in the long run.
As someone said, failure is the mother of success.
