Sae Hyung-jung remembers a time when he was worried about not having enough money for his next meal.
He was 20 years old and had just started an artificial intelligence (AI) company that helped students improve their college entrance exam test scores—but it wasn’t going well.
“I had so much debt and even had to use my credit card to pay my employees’ salaries,” Sae told CNBC Make It.
Ten years later, the serial entrepreneur’s life paints a completely different picture.
I was so obsessed with making it work because it was my own product.
Sae Hyung-jung
Founder and CEO, oVice
Today he is the founder and CEO of oVice, a virtual office platform designed to bring the collective energy of physical office spaces to remote teams.
According to oVice, the platform allows, for example, occasional check-ins with colleagues without the “formalities of online meetings”.
The company’s headquarters are in Japan, where Sae, a South Korean, now lives.
Late last month, oVice raised $32 million in a Series B funding round led by a group of investors from Japan and abroad. The latest funding brings the total capital raised to $45 million.
According to Sae, the company generates $6 million in annual recurring revenue.
CNBC Make It learns what the young entrepreneur learned from his failures and how a new start-up ultimately emerged.
Flexibility is key
The biggest problem with the failed AI project was that it “didn’t find the market,” Sae admitted.
“My AI platform specialized in the one exam that foreign students had to take to come to Japan,” he shared, referring to the Japanese University Admissions Exam for International Students (EJU).
Sae, who studied in Japan in 2017, took the same exam and had difficulty preparing for it.
“There were not many books that I could study for EJU… I collected questions from local university exams and developed an AI that generates questions to improve students’ grades,” he said.
“But (back then) there were only 1,000 people taking the exam each year, so it was (a) really small niche market.”
Investors told him that he needed to expand the market so they could invest in the start-up.
But Sae said he was stubborn. “I said no. I want to solve this problem.”
Despite his determination, the platform struggled to stay afloat and as Sae simply put it, “It failed.”
“I was so obsessed with making it work because it was my own product.”
He eventually sold the company, which helped him pay off his debts and gave him the “fresh start” he felt he desperately needed.
Still, Sae didn’t give up – because entrepreneurship is a “continuous journey,” he said. Furthermore, it wasn’t his first taste of failure.
At 18, he founded a trade brokerage company that connected companies with suppliers and distributors in Japan and South Korea. But after a year, Sae had to close the shop.
“Back in 2011, there was a big earthquake in Japan. It was crazy…my customers (in South Korea) imported products from Japan, their purchase prices doubled.”
If you are flexible, your chances of success are greater.
Sae Hyung-jung
Founder and CEO, oVice
Seeing how unsustainable the company was, Sae decided to close his company and pursue university studies in Japan instead.
As he looked back on his experiences, he realized that adaptability is crucial to entrepreneurship.
“If it doesn’t work out, it’s okay. I’ll start something else. If you are flexible, you have a better chance of success.”
An idea is born
Throughout his university and graduate studies, Sae worked as an AI and blockchain consultant. In February 2020, his role took him to Tunisia – which is about 925 kilometers or 575 miles from Italy.
At that time, the Covid-19 virus was spreading rapidly throughout Italy, resulting in rapid spread the epicenter of the first coronavirus outbreak in Europe.
“The Tunisian government said that you have to go out tomorrow because we are imposing a lockdown. But flights to Japan only happened once a day, so that was impossible,” Sae said.
Sae was stuck in Tunisia and had to work remotely along with his colleagues in Japan who were also working from home.
But he quickly became frustrated with remote work because there was little collaboration between employees.
Doing remote work… It felt like a blackout, you no longer know what’s happening in the company.
Sae Hyung-jung
Founder and CEO, oVice
“In the office, I could ask for project updates and quickly identify bottlenecks, or I could discover problems based on conversations I somehow overheard,” he explained.
“But doing remote work, communicating on Zoom, Slack… it doesn’t give you the same experience. It felt like a blackout, you no longer knew what was happening in the company.”
Sae decided to take matters into her own hands and recreated the office space division concept – online.
For example, its virtual office platform allows users or their avatars to approach a colleague to start a conversation or have a casual conversation – similar to a physical office.
Don’t want to be overheard? You can “lock down” the conversation or take it to a private virtual meeting room, Sae said.
After Sae took two weeks to build his first prototype and share it with his colleagues, he realized that he enjoyed his creation immensely.
“Because I enjoyed it so much, I think people who feel the need to be in an office will also be happy.”
oVice launched in Japan in August 2020, and Sae said there was a huge increase in companies paying for the service as they realized the pandemic wasn’t going away anytime soon.
“Companies started thinking about communication and engagement during remote work, and oVice helped with that.”
Switch to hybrid working
Sae’s new venture has been very successful over the past two years due to the pandemic.
But as countries around the world eased restrictions and workers returned to offices, oVice shifted its focus to companies adapting to what some are calling “the new normal” – hybrid working.
“A lot of people now say: I like being in the office, but if my company decides 100% to go to the office, I will quit. And companies know this,” Sae added.
“Yes, we are returning to the office, but that doesn’t mean (online collaboration) will disappear.”
Sae remains confident that its platform will continue to thrive as workplaces move toward hybrid work and pre-pandemic normalcy.
It was nice to experience some failures, they taught me important lessons.
Sae Hyung-jung
Founder and CEO, oVice