Watcha's Park Tae-hoon: "Why Should Everyone Watch the Same New Movies?"... A Platform That Respects Preferences Blossoms

Digital Innovator Relay Contribution ④ Watcha CEO Park Tae-hoon

Editor's NoteSince the spread of COVID-19, the 'digital economy' has stepped firmly into our daily lives. Ordering food and shopping contactlessly through digital platforms has become a familiar routine for people of all ages. This change is not merely a byproduct of the pandemic. At the core of this transformation, which is reshaping our way of life entirely, are the 'digital innovators' who sought to solve problems with new digital technologies and ideas.

The business models they proposed have been recognized in the global market and are now drawing attention as new growth engines for our economy. On the occasion of its 33rd anniversary, Asia Economy listened to the voices of five digital innovators pioneering new paths domestically and on the global stage.

Park Tae-hoon, CEO of Watcha

It has been 10 years since I started my business. During that time, many acquaintances asked me for advice on starting a business. My advice was always, "Don't start a business."

There are 99 reasons why you shouldn't start a business. However, those who do start a business find one reason that compels them to do so despite those 99 reasons. No matter how much people around them try to dissuade them, they will do it anyway.

From my freshman days at KAIST to my time as a developer at Nexon serving as an industrial technical personnel, I had been meticulously saving many startup ideas in Excel files. The technical keywords that ran through the numerous startup ideas I organized in Excel were 'personalization,' 'automation,' and 'recommendation.' Watcha is ultimately a tech startup that began with the judgment that the flow of technology would evolve into these three.

I saw movies as the field most suitable for automated recommendations based on individual preferences and started there. At the time, machine learning technology was rare, so we introduced it to develop a recommendation engine. Watcha now provides predicted ratings through over 600 million content data points, supplies about 90,000 pieces of content that satisfy various individual tastes, and furthermore, executes data-driven content development and acquisition.

However, the items or technology trends mentioned above were not the reasons I started the business. The one reason I started was that there are diverse people in the world, and I disliked that the world forces everyone to do the same thing. It was not a grand dream to change the world. It was simply a dissatisfaction with the question, "There are people with diverse tastes in the world, so why do we all have to watch the same latest movies?" I had a desire to create something where diverse tastes could be respected even a little.

If I started a business because of the one reason that must be done despite 99 reasons not to, now I have to do 99 things I don't want to do to do the one thing I want.

I believe doing the things you don't want to do is directly linked to the growth of the entrepreneur and the startup. The process of doing unwanted tasks reveals your shortcomings and weaknesses and is a process of supplementing and solving them. From trivial tasks like organizing receipts or issuing tax invoices to the ironic task of creating a single rule that applies to everyone to build an organization where everyone's diversity is respected, to persuading indifferent investors, and earning money to grow the business.

Among these, the most important is repeatedly acknowledging that your hypothesis has failed and revising it with a new hypothesis. Admitting that your judgment was wrong and that our hypothesis failed is not easy. You have to bear the concerns and criticisms of investors and the disappointment of colleagues who trusted and followed you with your bare body.

Watcha also repeated numerous failures. For example, after the successful launch of the WatchaPedia service and achieving successful user numbers, we decided to strengthen community functions and added social networking service (SNS) features to communicate with users and share movie-related comments. However, looking at user reactions and service statistics, it was a failure, and many users left. The hypothesis that monetization would naturally occur in various ways once quality big data was secured also missed the mark, and we faced a crisis close to bankruptcy. Of course, after these failures, we focused more on the essence of WatchaPedia, launched Watcha, and took a full-fledged leap into the OTT industry, making it a very valuable failure that led to growth.

Comparing 10 years ago when I started the business to now, personal tastes are much more respected through technology, and the world has become more diverse. In the content market, the concept of 'popular content' has lost power compared to the past, and now creating and finding content that fits individual tastes is the market's focus. The one thing I wanted to do is gradually being realized.

However, I am still buried in many things I don't want to do to achieve the one thing I want. To create Watcha's vision and goal of 'a more diverse world where everyone's differences are recognized and individual tastes are respected,' Watcha and I are growing amid countless unwanted tasks.

Park Tae-hoon, CEO of Watcha