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Ask HN: Is there anyone who is looking to expand their business to S.Korea?

11 points by groquest ↗ HN
Hello, I'm a 28 year old native Korean.

To explain a bit about myself: My lifelong goal was to become a game developer, but I was forced to choose pharmacy as my university major under my parent's pressure. Ten years fast forward, I ended up with a master's degree in pharmacology and three years of experience in a pharmaceutical company. (In Korea, every male citizen is required to serve two years in the army. Alternatively, you can apply to work in a scientific field for three years to compensate.)

As soon as the three-year mandatory period was completed, I had called it quits. That was three months ago. Afterwards, I began to make game in my room.

As a result of fiddling with various projects in my spare time, I was already experienced in Python, Javascript, C++, Obj-C.

Within a month, I succeeded in finishing two simple iOS games called "Jumpy Rabbit" and "Don't Touch 2048". Well, I'm not proud of those two games because they are spin-offs of the popular games (Flappy Bird, 2048). During the development of my third game, I began to feel burnt out. The motivation was dwindling, productivity plummeted. I know this is just a small setback and I will continue to make games. But I see there are other ways to make a living.

Nowadays I keep reading these successful startup articles in HN and think: "Why isn't there such thing here in Korea?".

Is there anyone who is looking to expand their business to Korea, or even localize their game to Korean? Maybe I could help. I don't have any experience in entrepreneurship, but I'm a good learner (my English is self taught) and given enough time, I believe I'm up for most tasks. Feel free to contact me at groquest@gmail.com

Thank you for reading.

TL;DR: A native Korean jack of all trades is looking for someone who wants to expand their business to South Korea.

6 comments

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taprun
Could you point out some problems companies have when localizing for Korea? Being able to point out how others have failed, and how you can help us succeed would be a great argument for hiring you. (note: I'm not in a position to hire anyone at the moment)

Also, I spoke to a Brazilian guy a few years ago. He said he took an idea from an American website, translated it to Brazilian had a profitable business in no time.

groquest
In addition the obvious language barrier, different culture and law/regulations are the biggest difficulties I can think of.

I don't know about the failed cases, but a handful of big companies tried to expand to Korea and succeeded (e.g. AirBnB, Uber, League of Legends, Clash of Clans). I still wonder how they managed to expand to Korea. Maybe someone like me reached out to them?

Anyway, I thought medium, smaller companies or even indie game developers may want to hire someone like me and hopefully grow together.

Mz
Can you set up a small website with your intent to do localization work or even just put some of this info into your profile (while continuing to actively participate)? HN tends to move pretty fast. I can't imagine this one post would really get you the kind of attention you need to get anything off the ground.
groquest
Thank you for the advice. I have been thinking about setting up a personal website (even registered a domain) but kept procrastinating. I'll start building one today.