Third Business, Endless Challenges #002

Today, I want to record my thoughts about what I chose as my third business venture and why I started it.

I still have a long way to go, but I'll keep working hard :)

My Third Business

After rising from two previous failures, I began exploring what I could do to embark on another business journey.

Many people say through the internet and books that this era is the best time in history to start a business. However, I couldn't completely agree with that statement.

Why? Because I had already failed before, and everyone seemed to be pointing in the same, uniform direction.

Nevertheless, under this civilization that has consolidated humanity's collective wisdom through the internet, anyone can dive into entrepreneurship. Because information is available.

However, I felt that walking the same path as others is the most difficult way to succeed.

As I mentioned earlier, in those uniform directions, there are already pioneers who have paved the way, creating a structure where followers become second-movers trailing behind.

So I decided to head in the direction I wanted to go. Because if it's a field with many competitors, I could just flip the game board and create new rules myself.

One of the big reasons I'm taking this path is thanks to a book I happened to encounter at the library near my house.

When the chaotic situation of pondering entrepreneurship and career direction approached, what was positioned right before my eyes taught me this lesson:

"The best way to predict the future is to write the future yourself."

Then, I turned off the internet and began thinking anew.

What have I felt uncomfortable about in my daily life? And what am I best at?

The answer will be different for everyone, but the answer I gave myself was 'ideas.' Because I have a massive library notebook of ideas I've been collecting bit by bit since childhood.

It seems simple thinking back now, but it was the moment when what I had gradually practiced under my teacher's words finally saw the light: "If you have an idea, keep writing it down somewhere. In the distant future, it will become a great asset."

(Of course, being human, there were days when I couldn't think of anything and didn't write.)

Sometimes written obligatorily, mechanically, those thought papers became notebooks, notebooks became files, and files were converted to digital documents as their volume grew.

For the first time in a very long while, I opened the notebook that I had only been recording in and began "rediscovering" by looking back.

There I found an idea. Many people live with discomfort, but if improving it requires great effort, they don't do it. This meant that targeting this area would open a new path for me.

In other words, I discovered it through mixing and rediscovery.

That's how it was decided.

Among countless candidates, I decided to become a SaaS (Software as a Service) company.

SaaS might be unfamiliar to those not familiar with programming. This means creating software (i.e., programs) on top of other people's services to become a platform business operator or individual through them.

Actually, there's one more big reason for this decision.

I myself was tired of platforms and felt that better platforms were needed.

As of 2025, while not all companies are like this, most SaaS companies aim for [profit]. I don't find this incomprehensible. Because even with innovative ideas, companies are inherently groups that pursue profit.

But I wanted to change this a bit. Pursuing profit isn't bad, but I didn't want to see the worsening situation of making users dependent on existing platforms and then suddenly implementing drastic cost increases and monetization.

So, while pursuing profit, I designated and started a business where part of that could be freely invested in new products, with almost no startup costs.

Because SaaS companies can convert their revenue models to be extremely efficient, contrary to appearances. And because it's also a way for companies to do even more than what customers want, as I had hoped.

Why? Because unlike typical companies, it's possible to consist of just one person.

Companies that provide services through websites inherently need developers. And there are... extremely many patent documents.

But what if all of that could be replaced by one person?

It essentially means labor costs become zero.

If you add extremely efficient server maintenance costs and implement better logic, electricity costs go down and efficiency goes up.

In other words, I chose this path because I believe a situation where service maintenance becomes possible with just one to three customers is entirely feasible.

However, there are also disadvantages. It's essentially completely opposite to existing corporate management and revenue models. That's why I thought: instead of gathering more customers, what if I gave my maximum heart to existing customers? How could I provide more features at a lower cost?

The moment that became one of my new philosophies, I felt I had grown once again.

Starting Development

When I first started development, I encountered many unexpected challenges.

The first wall I encountered was programming itself (...)

Because while I had created many mockups and demo websites, I realized that actually using them for business was a completely different matter.

Small mistakes could become security incidents, and there were various problems that arose while implementing features.

But I just did it. Like my other alter ego, seeing the program grow made me happy. Working until dawn was physically exhausting, but seeing what I implemented work properly brought me happiness.

(Of course, I revised and revised again. I don't know what those in the field would think, but I did my best to search and learn)

The most memorable problem was the conflict between frameworks and CSS libraries (think of frameworks as a type of notebook and CSS libraries as pens - it's like the notebook and pen don't match, causing writing to fail).

Because that's where I failed and felt frustrated the most.

When things that seemed almost done wouldn't work (I wondered why 500 errors appeared so often), I just endured, engraving the words "99% of people come 99% of the way and give up with 1% remaining," and kept going until it worked.

Looking back now, I'd probably solve it quickly, but it was very difficult at the time.

The server would strangely produce errors in tests but work normally when directly requesting from the server - this strange situation repeated.

Later, I solved it in an absurdly simple way, but our cat Ruru played a significant role.

(To put it amusingly) Our Ruru accidentally rolled on the keyboard, accidentally pressing the del key and deleting the file I was working on. So I thought about giving up coding and playing with Ruru instead, but while petting her, a new thought came to me: 'Build Cache' might be the error.

That's how I fixed the error (lol..._) After that, I held Ruru in both hands, hugged her, and made a big fuss, but cats are indeed the truth.

This is why I do business. It's actually simple. Since I'm human too, I want to be loved by others. I want to stand in a shining place. I want to love customers just a little bit more than other companies. I also think that if a company truly loves its customers, that company won't fail.

But what does it matter? I'm just spreading my philosophy.

I've learned that true philosophy isn't about copying others' thoughts but creating your own thoughts - so maybe I can't give up.

I want to leave my mark on the world. That's why I'm trying everything. That's who I am.

Finally, people with me say I'm peculiar, but I think everyone is peculiar. We've all lived under different ideologies and ways of thinking, and no one has lived exactly the same life.

And one person's answer can never be another person's answer. Though it might be similar or approximate.

To use an analogy, I think the answer is like someone else's house key being exactly the same as our house key - made on the same day, at the same place, with the same metal and elements, identical down to the molecular level. Isn't that practically impossible?

I'm saying this to myself too:

"We are all very special. No one is the same as anyone else. I hope your true talents bloom."

I say this because I've been waiting for someone who could say these words to me since long ago, but it was extremely difficult to meet such a person.

So I hope I can play the role of the person I had hoped for to someone else.

Writer

Mirseo | Developer & Philosopher

Exploring the intersection of technology and philosophy to understand our world.

GitHub: @mirseo | Blog: https://blog.mirseo.dev

Writer Text

Originally written by JunHyeok-Seo(Mirseo) in Korean, translated and adapted

Korean version available at mirseo.dev/biz.mirseo.dev

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