I grew up poor. I know what it feels like to be excluded from services because you can't afford them. KakaoBank exists because regular banks forgot about regular people.
A messaging app is not a messaging app. It is the front door to a person's digital life. Once you own the front door, you can build anything behind it.
When 93% of a country uses your product every day, you stop being a company and start being infrastructure. That comes with a responsibility most tech founders don't think about.
I left Samsung because I realized I would spend 30 years building someone else's dream. I wanted to spend 30 years building my own — even if it failed.
Technology should reduce inequality, not increase it. If your platform makes rich people's lives easier and poor people's lives harder, you've built the wrong thing.
The chaebol system taught me what I didn't want to be. Korea doesn't need more inherited empires. It needs more people who build from nothing.