From Google Forms to Startup Success: The Journey of Yeonpick

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Yechan Park and Kiseok Suh are the co-founders of Yeonpick, a dating app for college students in South Korea. In this candid conversation, they share the ups and downs of their entrepreneurial journey - from humble beginnings using Google Forms to reaching product-market fit and eventually pivoting to new ventures. Their story offers valuable insights into the realities of building a startup, making tough decisions, and continually evolving as founders. They discuss how they validated their initial idea, scaled the business, faced challenges as the company grew, and ultimately decided to explore new opportunities. Throughout the interview, Yechan and Kiseok emphasize the importance of getting products into the market quickly, learning from customer feedback, and being willing to adapt.

Some key takeaways from our conversation:

1. Start simple and iterate quickly. Yeonpick began as a basic Google Form for college student matchmaking before evolving into a web app. The founders emphasize the importance of launching a minimum viable product as soon as possible to start learning from real users. They launched their initial web version in just two weeks, knowing it wasn't perfect but would allow them to gather valuable feedback.

2. Product-market fit often comes in stages. For Yeonpick, seeing strong adoption when moving from Google Forms to a web app was an early sign of product-market fit. Later, changing the frequency of matches from every 3 days to every 2 days led to a significant revenue jump, further validating their model. The founders describe the excitement of seeing their hypotheses proven correct through real-world results.

3. Growth challenges emerge as companies scale. As Yeonpick grew, the founders faced new obstacles like team conflicts and slowing growth despite adding more employees. They learned that simply adding headcount doesn't necessarily accelerate progress, and managing a larger team requires different skills. These growing pains led to moments of self-doubt but also valuable learning experiences.

4. Know when to pivot or explore new opportunities. After hitting a growth ceiling with Yeonpick, the founders made the difficult decision to maintain it as a cash-generating business while exploring new ventures. They realized the college dating app market had limitations and their passion was waning. This led them to launch new projects in areas like underground idol management and data labeling.

5. Building without outside investment offers flexibility. The founders chose not to raise venture capital for Yeonpick, which gave them more freedom to pivot and explore new ideas without pressure from investors. However, they note that having additional capital can accelerate growth in some cases, so the tradeoffs should be carefully considered.

6. Founder mindset and team dynamics are crucial. The co-founders emphasize how their complementary skills and shared commitment to entrepreneurship have been key to their partnership. They've learned to focus on the overall value created rather than worrying about individual contributions, which has strengthened their working relationship over time.

7. Market size matters, but niches can be powerful. With their new ventures, the founders are more cognizant of total addressable market. However, they've also found success by dominating smaller markets like the underground idol industry in Korea. The key is having a path to expand beyond the initial niche if desired.