Digital Nomad Building a $5M+ E-Commerce Business: IntelligentLabs CEO Rus Hughes (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to get to a million dollars in revenue?

Rus Hughes: Two and a half years.

Sramana Mitra: What was your inventory strategy during this period? Did you have to finance inventory?

Rus Hughes: We were doing it organically. I kept my cost of living super low. We didn’t take money from the company until 2017.

Digital Nomad Building a $5M+ E-Commerce Business: IntelligentLabs CEO Rus Hughes (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Who was this business partner? How did you become business partners?

Rus Hughes: I knew him when I was living in Brighton. He discovered a business model of how to market products online. He wasn’t sure what product to market. Given that we were both into health and fitness, we thought we’d start a supplement brand to launch supplements for athletes and weightlifters.

Sramana Mitra: What happens next? What form does this take?

Digital Nomad Building a $5M+ E-Commerce Business: IntelligentLabs CEO Rus Hughes (Part 1)

Rus lives the life of a digital nomad. He started life as a techie, and with a very small team and a cofounder, has built a $5M+ niche e-commerce business selling supplements. Excellent story full of lessons and nuances.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Tell me about where you grew up. What is the beginning of the story?

A Conversation on Regional Language Content: Kocowa CEO KunHee Park (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How many consumers do you have currently?

KunHee Park: Five million. If I counted paid subscription, we have over one million.

Sramana Mitra: What’s the monthly subscription fee?

KunHee Park: $6.99.

Sramana Mitra: Do you have a sense of who is paying to subscribe to this? Is it mostly Korean speaking people?

A Conversation on Regional Language Content: Kocowa CEO KunHee Park (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You became the CEO of Kocowa?

KunHee Park: No, CTO in the beginning. My original plan was to stay in the States for a year. After one year, they asked me to be the CEO. That was in 2018. Our seed money was very tiny. Seed money was just $15 million.

Sramana Mitra: That’s not tiny.

A Conversation on Regional Language Content: Kocowa CEO KunHee Park (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Then what happens?

KunHee Park: I could not speak English at all at that time. It was my handicap. NDS is a global company. I could hear Indian English, British English, Hong Kong English, and American English. It was challenging for me. I tried to communicate properly. I tried to learn all the advanced technologies in paid TV technology. It’s based on encryption. There’s very advanced technology across manufacturers and service providers.

A Conversation on Regional Language Content: Kocowa CEO KunHee Park (Part 1)

There’s quite a bit of white space in the domain of regional language content.

KunHee talks about Korean content. It should give you ideas that you can extrapolate into other languages.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start from the very beginning. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Solo Entrepreneur to $10M+ Niche E-commerce Success: DoggieLawn Founder Natalie Youn (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to get to a million dollars in revenue?

Natalie Youn: It took until year two – around the end.

Sramana Mitra: $5 million?