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?

The Power of Bootstrapping: Achieving Small Exits for Capital-Efficient Startups

I’m a big advocate for building small, capital-efficient startups. Not all entrepreneurs need to chase Unicorns. Not all investors need to chase Unicorns. There are many more viable ideas for those smaller ventures and there are considerably more opportunities for their exits, which means cashing in earlier on your hard work.

One type of exit is under $50 million, and to achieve that, your strategy should be to build a capital-efficient company that shows product-market fit in an efficient, bootstrapped manner.

That capital-efficient strategy is required for all stakeholders to make money when harvesting through smaller exits.

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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 Mini-MBA in Entrepreneurship for Working Professionals

Most adult professionals have jobs, families, and other responsibilities. People working in the tech industry have big salaries to forego if they want to start a company.

For ambitious folks who want to start a technology startup while working full-time, having a job means your income doesn’t depend on the immediate success of your startup business. We call this method Bootstrapping with a Paycheck and take entrepreneurs through the whole bootstrapping using a paycheck process with excellent case studies.

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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?