This post was translated from Korean into English by AI.
I Couldn't Let My Time in the Military Go to Waste
From the moment I enlisted, I was determined not to waste the long year and a half I would spend in the military. A year and a half is enough time to build a decent startup, earn dozens of academic credits, study dozens of technology stacks, or obtain all kinds of certifications. I absolutely could not let that time go to waste.
Even before enlisting, I looked into various ways to develop myself while in the military and made extensive preparations in advance. Of course, not everything went as expected. But one thing that worked out fairly well was the Army Startup Competition.
What Is the Army Startup Competition?
The Army Startup Competition is an event in which people in the Army who want to launch startups form teams and compete. I participated in the eighth competition in 2022, and fortunately, out of 507 teams and 1,666 participants, my team placed among the top 25 and advanced to the finals. We only made it as far as the finals and received the Creativity Award, which was somewhat like a participation award. Still, it was an award from the commanding general (a three-star general, no less!), so I expected to receive reward leave, and it also seemed likely that we would automatically qualify for the Ministry of National Defense Startup Competition.
How Did It Go?
Before enlisting, I had participated in the Software Maestro program and learned a great deal about startups through overseas training. This had given me a basic understanding of entrepreneurship.
Above all, my greatest strength was knowing that the most important part of a startup is its business model. Most people attempting a startup for the first time focus on the idea. They assume that if the idea is good enough, the money will somehow follow.
But the world has six, seven, even eight billion people in it. In reality, virtually any idea has already been proposed by someone. What matters more than the idea itself is how to generate revenue from it. So I quickly settled on a simple idea I had considered before and focused on developing the business model. The idea was to prevent jeonse rental fraud by analyzing real estate registration records with OCR and AI.
Of course, deciding on the business model itself did not take long because there were already established methodologies for doing so. I then conducted research to strengthen the proposal's feasibility and wrote a business plan covering finances and marketing. I don't think it took even a full week to complete the business plan.
Since I still had a little time left, I quickly built an MVP. You can view it here.
I had a training exercise scheduled close to the submission deadline, so I had to finish everything beforehand. In the end, I was able to submit all the materials about two weeks before the preliminary-round deadline.
Then came the waiting. I simply spent the time studying various other things. Eventually, we passed the preliminary round and advanced to the finals, so I created and submitted a presentation deck and video.
After that, there was a Q&A session, but it left a lot to be desired.
- First, we had only five minutes, so the judges could ask just three questions.
- I wanted to conduct the Q&A while showing the slides I had prepared in advance, but that did not go smoothly.
- During one question, a judge mistook material I had included about a competitor for our own material.
- To make matters worse, one judge's microphone was muted, costing us several precious seconds.
- Most of all, I was caught off guard by a question I had not anticipated at all.
Reflections
The product I submitted was not bad, but I think it lacked social impact. Looking at previous winners, ideas with a significant social impact seemed more likely to win. If I enter again, I should come up with a product that can have a more positive impact on society. I also regret not preparing for a wider range of possible questions.