Growing the Market
It was hard to find an animal hospital that didn’t take X-rays.
That meant if you looked at our business from a very broad perspective, you could say, “This can be applied to any hospital, so the market is enormous.”
But the problem was that analyzing X-rays with AI was still a new technology, which meant we were starting small.
“So for now, I’d like to focus on getting the word out in academia that this technology exists and that it’s good.”
I informed the team of how we planned to use our budget.
No one objected.
So I went straight to Professor Shin Dongjin to ask for his help.
“A seminar and a product briefing?”
“Yes. I’d really appreciate it.”
“Hmm~ Both of those are a pain. Tell me more.”
What I was asking Professor Shin Dongjin for was a seminar and a product briefing.
For the seminar, we planned to have Professor Shin, who had a strong reputation in the veterinary field, hold a lecture using our product.
For the product briefing, we wanted him to host an event where people from the association he belonged to could gather over a meal and hear about the product.
“But you’re not planning to do just a seminar and a product briefing, are you? Plenty of people do that sort of thing.”
“No, we’re planning to carry out other marketing activities as well.”
“Can you tell me what you’re preparing?”
“Yes, I’ll show you.”
This wasn’t just a request from a product user; it was a request from an investor in TA Medical.
With Seonghun’s help, I had prepared everything carefully, and I gave Professor Shin a brief explanation of our marketing plan.
Professor Shin nodded repeatedly, as if he agreed with it.
“It would’ve been better if something like this had been done long ago.”
“It would have. That’s why we’re starting now.”
“Right. Then I should help, even if it’s late. Let me see the budget draft one more time.”
Besides the seminar and product briefing, there were many other marketing activities Professor Shin needed.
And he promised to help with all of them.
“You’ll be busy. You should head out early today.”
“Yes, then I’ll send you a follow-up email summarizing everything we discussed today. Thank you.”
“Take care~”
Now that the most important part was settled, all that was left was to move quickly.
There are TV programs about animals, including dogs and cats.
Their main audience is “people who love animals,” regardless of age.
And a very high percentage of them love dogs.
So TA Medical contacted the producers of those programs.
“An animal shelter managing animals with AI?”
It was a pitch with a slightly different message.
“Writer Kim, did you see this?”
“Oh, yes. I was actually thinking of reaching out, too.”
“If it’s real, that’s pretty fresh. Right?”
“Yes, yes. I think it’ll get a lot of attention.”
Instead of putting its own product front and center, TA Medical focused on Your Paw, the partner it worked with.
Animal shelters that worked with Your Paw used AI to give health checkups to countless animals.
For TV programs, it was a chance to attract attention. For animal shelters, it was a chance to promote the fact that the animals there were being cared for properly. And for TA Medical, it was an opportunity to spread awareness of its new technology to the public.
“I heard this AI is also used in the Korea University Department of Veterinary Medicine. So it must be a fairly proven technology.”
“Still, if the product name gets mentioned, people may start arguing about it, so let’s just focus on the shelters.”
“Yes. I’ll only include one professor from the Korea University Department of Veterinary Medicine in the interview.”
“We should include that much. Yeah.”
Coincidentally, the most popular of the many animal-related TV programs was the first to take interest in the topic.
As a result, Your Paw and the shelters it partnered with started scrambling to decide which locations should appear on television.
“Even if only one or two places are shown on air, I think it’d be good to promote the fact that the system has already been adopted by shelters nationwide.”
“I hope it improves people’s perception of the animals in shelters, even just a little.”
“Exactly. It’d be wonderful if they could be seen as kids receiving the latest, most advanced care.”
Your Paw, having received calls from multiple broadcasters in succession, became busy coordinating filming dates for each program.
But everyone volunteered to work overtime with one hope in mind: that they might be able to change people’s perception of animal shelters, even a little.
“Could we film any moment when the AI discovers something?”
“Of course. Would it be better to introduce the animals currently under treatment, or to show them being newly diagnosed?”
Because the shelters saw so many animals coming and going, each TV program could feature a different case.
Programs that wanted to show a fresh format demanded the earliest possible air date, and Your Paw did its best to meet those conditions.
“Wasn’t the main focus something about patellar luxation?”
“No. We decided to feature pneumonia cases, plus the images of the puppies all rushing off together for their regular group checkups.”
“Oh, I see. There are young puppies here and their littermates over there, but which ones should we film?”
“Film all the ones here, and we’ll shoot the ones going to the hospital.”
As soon as the shelters were contacted, filming began right away.
The staff at Your Paw and the professors from the Korea University Department of Veterinary Medicine were busy coordinating schedules with each program’s production crew.
The only place that had contacted Kim Siwon was one, so TA Medical’s schedule wasn’t affected at all.
With remarkably little manpower and time, they had managed to achieve the goal of “promoting new technology.”
It’ll start airing in different places from three days from now. There’ll be gaps of more than a week between broadcasts. I’ll send you the compiled schedule by email as well.
“Thank you.”
Following the broadcast schedule Your Paw had organized, Kim Siwon only needed to check the episodes as they aired in real time.
— Wait! Oh my! Just by taking an X-ray, the machine can tell you what illness it is?!
The wording varied slightly from program to program, but the concept of AI-based diagnosis spread among animal lovers nationwide.
“Excuse me, does this animal hospital also show the disease automatically when you take an X-ray, like on TV?”
“Hello. Does this place also use AI to catch pneumonia and treat it?”
So pet owners began asking these questions at the animal hospitals they visited.
And naturally, a lot of animal hospitals were left flustered by it.
Still, they couldn’t exactly take it out on TA Medical, because the broadcasts had focused on the shelters, not on TA Medical itself.
“Hah, there’s no way something like that actually works.”
“Who’s scamming people now?”
In the end, the nationwide attention made people in animal hospitals curious about “AI diagnosis.”
Because of that, the seminars led by Professor Shin and TA Medical’s product briefings were able to gather a huge number of applicants.
“Good afternoon, I’m Shin Dongjin.”
They were teaching a technology no one had ever seen before at one of the best universities in the country.
Thanks to that, even the people who had immediately dismissed it as a scam began to doubt themselves. Maybe it wasn’t a scam after all?
“Can I apply for a demo too?”
“Yes. Please take a business card from the person near the exit and request a demo.”
“It’s free, right?”
“Yes, the demo is free.”
As demo requests increased, not only Park Jaeyun and Ha Juwon but also the developers, including Seo Jeongwon, were running around nonstop for field visits.
And fortunately, actual sales started coming in as well.
“If we pay before the demo period ends, do we get anything extra? We’d be bringing the revenue date forward, right?”
The sales weren’t happening without conditions.
But the mere fact that sales were happening was incredibly meaningful to TA Medical.
“Damn, I just came back from signing this contract.”
“Me too. I signed it the way Siwon told me to, but is this right?”
There were a lot of people who came back not with a demo install complete, but with signed contracts in hand.
Rather than feeling purely happy, they mostly just felt dazed.
“That’s good. You all gave Jaeyun your business cards too, right?”
“Yes. Wow. I have to go to Busan tomorrow.”
“We’re not going to keep doing field work like this forever, are we?”
“Unfortunately, this explosive interest will cool off soon enough. Let’s get as many demo requests locked in as possible before it does.”
The promotional materials Kim Siwon and Lee Seonghun had made kept getting reprinted.
When they first printed 300 copies, everyone had worried about when they’d ever use them. This time, they had to print 1,000 more.
“Is the newsletter design done yet?”
“The one for demo applicants? That should be finished today.”
They also sent customers newsletters about the product.
They didn’t have the people or the time to send newsletters on a regular basis, but the newsletters aimed at “veterinarians who first encountered TA Medical through seminars and the like” and “veterinarians who had installed demos” were being sent consistently.
Now they were making a newsletter to be sent “three days before a demo ended.”
“I thought demos were just a job where you install the product and that’s it.”
“You have to keep poking at them so they won’t forget about us. That’s what raises the odds they’ll actually buy.”
TA Medical was, quite literally, swamped.
They had to handle demo requests pouring in from all over the country, manage customers, carry out marketing activities, and respond to complaints all at once.
“Wow. We’re seriously so busy!”
Of course, groans of exhaustion were coming from everywhere.
And yet there was one reason everyone at TA Medical was able to keep going.
“Still, it’s a relief that being busy means something is actually happening.”
“That’s true. It’s strange—no, it’s amazing—to think our product is actually being sold and used.”
Reward.
Right now, the members of TA Medical were receiving steady rewards in proportion to their effort.
They were incredibly busy, but cases of actual purchase contracts kept appearing in between the chaos.
Seeing results like that, no one could afford to be lazy.
They were tasting the satisfaction of achievement properly.
“But I think hospitals want to show off the fact that they’re using our product. Let’s make signs or something that say ‘AI Screening Hospital.’”
“It would be nice to make something like that. It might spread by word of mouth among patients, too.”
“But are all those phrases legally okay to use?”
“I’ll plan it first, get approval, have the legal team review it, then make and distribute it.”
“Oh, and there was also a suggestion that it would be better if we added a feature that displayed disease names more intuitively within our product. Let’s add that option too.”
Voices from the field kept coming in from all directions, and our workload only grew.
Still, because demand had spiked so suddenly, we couldn’t just go out and hire new people.
“Wow. I’m so glad it’s not the middle of the semester right now.”
“R-righ—”
But after barely clearing away the backlog and finally catching our breath,
“Huh? Wait—our semester’s starting soon!”
The new term was just around the corner.