“With machines performing complex tasks, it is up to humans to prioritise data”

Sciences Po alumnus Sunghan Kim has recently been named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list. In his role as principal product owner at Coupang—the world's fastest growing e-commerce site, known as the "Amazon" of South Korea—he has developed a fraud detection system to identify reviewers not associated with sellers. Alongside Coupang’s founder, Sunghan Kim has helped turn the platform into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise within four years. Interview.

You graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Sciences Po in 2011. Can you tell us about your path from Sciences Po to Coupang?

While at Sciences Po, a professor told me that I should read at least three different newspapers about a given event, because each fact can be interpreted differently by different individuals. Having already lived, studied, and founded startups in Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York, Andover, and Seoul before coming to France for the undergraduate programme, I wanted to spend a few more years learning in different environments. I chose to do a double Master’s degree programme at LSE and Peking University to broaden my perspective and understand how the two different countries raise those who may one day run their governments. Unfortunately, ailing health interrupted my studies and brought me back to Seoul. I ended up joining the most prestigious law firm in Korea, with the intent of becoming a lawyer specializing in intellectual property. But my past experiences founding tech startups prompted me to reconsider my choice; I quit the firm and became a product manager at NCSOFT, one of the largest game developers in the world.
 
While at NCSOFT, Korean portal Naver (the so-called Google of Korea) decided to provide $100M in funding and selected 100 or so people like me to train as competitive software engineers. I took up the offer and specialised in mobile programming at Naver's institute. During my time there, I formed a team with engineers at Naver, SAP Labs, and Seoul National University's Big Data Lab to found an artificial-intelligence-based machine translation developer. I was then approached by Amazon in Seattle and Coupang, and I decided to pull my business and programming backgrounds together and become a product owner at Coupang, the world's fastest growing e-commerce company. I am currently a principal product owner, tasked with turning Coupang into a destination for product research.

What skills and knowledge do you think future entrepreneurs should acquire at university to be successful in business?

With the advent of shared data and facilitated access to such information, I do not believe one should strive to acquire specific knowledge. There is, however, an undeniable demand for those who possess the skill to pinpoint, decipher, and utilise knowledge for any given initiative. I constantly ask myself, "What job are we doing for our customers? What are we hired—by the customers—to do?" This type of question helps me understand how we can create or improve a product, and I spend a significant portion of my time analysing data, deciphering trends, and strategizing a product. Since I track hundreds of metrics on a daily basis, it is crucial to know which data to focus on and how to prioritise. 
 
At Sciences Po, I remember always being bombarded with more information than I could take in, but I eventually got used to creating a systematic framework and arranging key information to deliver a convincing argument. The intellectual training at Sciences Po honed my judgement and continues to help me make sound decisions. With machines performing increasingly complex tasks on our behalf, it will be up to us, humans, to know which data to ignore or keep, so that we can steer our products or businesses in an intended direction.

In 2013, South Korean President Park Geun-hye came to office with plans to form a “creative economy" driven by a vibrant startup culture in the tech industry. Is South Korea a favourable environment for entrepreneurs today?

I actually benefited from the Park administration's efforts to develop a "creative economy" when my last AI-based machine translation startup was supported by several government agencies.
 
Despite the recent political impasse, the newly elected President Moon Jae-in vows to inject $2.2B annually to support startups and SMB's, create a fund for young entrepreneurs, make it easier to found a company, improve the credit loan system, allow entrepreneurs to receive funding up to three times (to alleviate the fear of failure), encourage conglomerates to pump out more in-house startups, and facilitate exit by listing 20 startups annually on the KONEX, a securities exchange for SME's.
 
The increasing number of Korean "unicorns"—startups valued at more than $1B—and frequent news about startup acquisitions not only by the traditional players, like Naver or Kakao, but also e-commerce, cosmetic and food companies, show that the domestic environment has become much more mature. For foreign entrepreneurs, the K-Startup Grand Challenge, which offers free flights, office space, stipends, and cash, and the OASIS visa programme may be competitive benefits when incorporating a startup in Korea today.

Related Links 

• Learn more about the Sciences Po Undergraduate College
• Learn more about the Sciences Po School of Management and Innovation