A Foundation Only a College Student Could Build
All Time was an online community app where undergraduates and alumni from every university gathered.
On the day TA Medical signed an agreement with the Veterinary Medicine department at Korea University, Kim Siwon posted something there.
Founder of a startup run by an undergraduate student, and now in a business partnership with Korea University’s Veterinary Medicine department.
Among the title lines packed with trivial daily chatter, Kim Siwon’s post immediately caught people’s attention.
“If he’s an undergraduate, he must be a college student. What did he even do with Korea University?”
People clicked on the post with equal parts suspicion and curiosity.
The post explained, right from the start, that he was looking for journalists who could help distribute PR coverage for TA Medical in the future.
From the first line, the purpose of the post was unmistakably clear.
The following paragraphs went on to explain in detail what products TA Medical was building, and what kind of potential the company itself possessed.
Even its hackathon awards and television appearances were listed.
What the post barely touched on, however, was the fact that TA Medical had actually signed a business agreement with Korea University’s Veterinary Medicine department.
“I’ll share the specific details and any additional materials for PR distribution gradually with the journalists who get in touch. Please contact me if you’re interested. Thank you.”
In the end, the message was simple: if you wanted the details, you had to reach out.
“That’s insanely cool. So college students from our school made this?”
“What? Isn’t that just an ad post?”
“If they made a good product and are asking alumni for support, that’s still different from a random ad, isn’t it?”
“It’s definitely impressive, but it’s still advertising.”
Most reactions split neatly in two.
Some people were astonished that a college student had made a product that had even been featured on television. Others found the whole thing a bit flat the moment they realized it was promotional.
But those opposing reactions worked together to turn Kim Siwon’s post into a trending post.
And thanks to that, journalists who became interested in Kim Siwon started to appear as well.
“Hey, did you see this post?”
“What post?”
“Apparently some Korea University computer science students made an AI and signed some kind of agreement with Korea University’s Veterinary Medicine department.”
“Really? Has it been released already?”
“Not even yet. But they said they’d give you more material if you contact them.”
“What is that supposed to mean? Show me.”
Even if they never read Kim Siwon’s post directly, the ending—where he openly said he was looking for journalists—meant that friends and acquaintances of those journalists spread it all over the place.
Thanks to that, Kim Siwon received calls from multiple journalists and was able to successfully distribute their PR article.
Not only did they get articles that openly promoted the product, but even Kim Siwon’s own act of posting promotional material on a community site was covered as news under headlines like “A Young Entrepreneur’s PR Strategy These Days.”
But once the articles actually went out, Kim Siwon started to wonder whether he had done the right thing.
Wouldn’t it have been better to contact journalists directly? I’m starting to think I should’ve just done that instead of posting it.
Posting on a community site had both advantages and disadvantages.
The advantage was that information could be delivered to a large number of people.
The disadvantage was that you couldn’t directly control the scope of who received it.
Depending on the nature of the community, it could even damage the company’s overall brand image.
I told you to post it because it was All Time at Korea University. The more people at Korea University who hear about it, the better.
Why? There are people calling you an attention seeker for posting on a community app, you know.
Fortunately, All Time was a community that had started with students sharing class schedules and lecture reviews.
It was an app that college students almost had to use, so there was no broader public backlash over the fact that he had used the platform itself.
If anything, what got emphasized was the fact that TA Medical’s founder was a Korea University student.
Wouldn’t it be better for you if people at Korea University mentioned TA Medical even one more time?
Why? Even if some people are trash-talking it?
The difference between a company nobody’s heard of and a company people have heard of at least once is huge.
People tend to feel resistant toward brands they’ve never heard of.
But they do tend to feel curiosity toward brands they’ve heard of even once.
Korea University was one of the most prestigious universities in Korea.
Its university hospital was also one of the largest in Asia.
So at this stage, what mattered more was increasing the odds that students and faculty at Korea University would feel curious about TA Medical.
“Hey, I heard your department did something with students from computer science?”
“I’m taking that class, and they were already saying they’d introduce some new tech tomorrow.”
“Damn. Did they bribe somebody or what?”
“Looks like Professor Shin Dongjin pushed it through.”
“Aren’t the students from other departments asking a ton about what the product is?”
“You too? Yeah, me too. They keep asking me like I’m supposed to know, and I have no clue.”
Naturally, the Veterinary Medicine students—the people most directly involved—had no choice but to learn about TA Medical.
Even the students who would never actually use the product kept getting asked about it so often that they couldn’t help but become aware of it.
“I heard the Veterinary Medicine department is doing something with college students. Did you hear about it?”
“Yeah. The TA told me. Pretty interesting.”
“Aren’t there more concept products like that overseas? Why are they doing something with undergrads specifically?”
“Supposedly the accuracy is ridiculously high. I heard even one of the Veterinary Medicine professors invested in the company.”
“Really? How accurate does it have to be for that?”
“No idea, but I heard they’ve even been on TV a lot.”
The talk about TA Medical spread beyond the Veterinary Medicine department and into the ears of other professors as well.
A college student founder who’d been on television was working on AI with a professor at Korea University.
It was impossible not to make for an entertaining conversation.
“You don’t think they’ll come after our university hospital’s radiology department next, do you?”
“If they had a product for our department, I think that’d actually be pretty good. Fast X-ray analysis and then getting right into surgery matters.”
“Human-targeted products still have low accuracy. Wouldn’t the dog version be even worse?”
“JH Medical was reportedly considering investing in the human version, or at least adopting it.”
“JH Medical?”
“Yeah. They messed around with the contract and took a stock hit because of it, didn’t they?”
“Weren’t they just a bunch of engineering students?”
“Weird. Huh.”
And the talk about TA Medical even reached the ears of the medical school professors at Korea University.
From the professors’ point of view, they had no idea why JH Medical had suddenly set its sights on engineering students who knew nothing about medicine.
“Well, maybe I should hear them out?”
So naturally, a few doctors also began wanting to hear more about it in detail.
That made everyone at TA Medical busy, but it took a long time before anyone began to feel that busyness as a burden.
Kim Siwon’s first semester of his third year was built on an insane schedule.
Classes, business meetings, television appearances, and outside work to secure his living expenses—one after another without a break.
On top of that, probing emails about TA Medical’s products kept coming in nonstop, so there was never any spare time to speak of.
At one point, he even ended up putting a cot in the club room and sleeping at school.
Even so, Kim Siwon never once wandered around looking disheveled.
Even during today’s three-hour meeting with the professors from Korea University’s Veterinary Medicine department, he didn’t let out a single yawn.
“When did you say a product with stomach foreign-body detection or patellar luxation screening would be possible?”
“That wouldn’t be a version upgrade so much as a new product launch, so I think we’d need at least a year.”
“I heard the current product was made in only about a month. Is it really that different?”
“The actual preparation period was a bit longer. Still, we’ll do our best to implement it as quickly as possible.”
“Good. You know we’re only making these requests this hard because we don’t treat Representative Kim Siwon like just another student, right?”
“Yes, thank you.”
No one who communicated with Kim Siwon ever felt the weight of how brutal his schedule was.
That was because the Kim Siwon they met never showed a trace of impatience or fatigue.
As a result, even the professors at Korea University’s Veterinary Medicine department, who had once harbored doubts about him, had no choice but to acknowledge him as the head of a company.
“I heard you’re also making AI for human use. How’s that going?”
“We’re moving forward one step at a time toward release.”
“After that comes out, you’re not planning to suddenly abandon the pet AI side, are you?”
“We plan to keep both as separate product lines.”
“You’re not aiming for an acquisition, are you?”
“No. We’ll take it all the way to an IPO and lead it to becoming a major corporation.”
In fact, there were even people who worried he might give up on the business altogether.
Because he was such a remarkable young man, handling such astonishing technology, they had come to support him from the heart.
“Then how about I set up dinner sometime with the head of radiology at Korea University Hospital?”
“If you could arrange that, I’d be extremely grateful.”
“Ah, right. You’re not taking personal investments anymore, are you?”
“No, I think we’ll be holding off on that for the time being.”
The affection the Veterinary Medicine professors showed Kim Siwon was more intense than I had expected.
Not only did they offer investment and try to broaden his network, but those with ties to JH Medical’s competitors even promoted TA Medical on our behalf.
Thanks to that, Kim Siwon was able to receive quite a few investment offers from companies.
Given that momentum, it was almost inevitable that more doctors would begin reaching out to him.
“Academic use, academic use, academic use. Siwon, are you sure your schedule is okay?”
“The semester’s over now, so I’m fine. You updated the list of who contacted us, right?”
“Yeah. But seriously, are you okay? Even those of us handling only the first round of communication and product installation are swamped.”
“You’ve got to strike while the iron’s hot.”
Requests for academic use came pouring in, literally in waves.
Most of them were just exploratory inquiries or simple curiosity, but there were also plenty of places where discussions became meaningful.
As Kim Siwon’s meetings and outside schedules increased, the division of R&R inside the club naturally became more concrete as well.
In the process, TA Medical naturally began to look toward hiring additional people.
“Shouldn’t we have at least one person handling email sorting and document organization?”
“Professor Shin Dongjin is already taking on the quality lead role, but I think we need at least one dedicated person for that too.”
“Exactly. The professor is handling way too many things on a case-by-case basis.”
“Oh, and don’t we need someone to deal with the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety? We don’t know nearly enough about that side.”
“I really thought we already had a lot of people, but we’re short on manpower after all.”
It made sense that everyone was groaning.
Right now, TA Medical was effectively operating without a business support team or an RA-QA team to handle approvals and quality control.
They also had no accounting team or legal team, of course.
The only person playing the role of a medical expert was Professor Shin Dongjin, the veterinarian.
Everyone was frantically searching up the fields they didn’t know and trying to get by somehow.
“Really? Is it that overwhelming?”
“Of course it is!!”
“JH Medical is supposedly thinking about investing in our product this time too, right? Let’s open hiring!”
Hiring.
At that single word, Kim Siwon’s expression darkened.