The Streets Emptied

When we started Teracy before COVID, we anticipated remote work would take time to become mainstream. That assumption was completely upended when the pandemic transformed global work patterns overnight.

The world was engulfed in anxiety, creating a surreal atmosphere where work styles, lifestyles, and even people's values were forced to change faster than anyone could adapt.

Post-Launch Response and Product Crash

Given the COVID situation and our confidence in the product, we decided to launch. We released on March 31, 2020 - just one day before the state of emergency declaration on April 1st.

Below is our initial version. The product aimed to share status through room names, enable quick conversations, and foster a sense of working together. It also integrated scheduled meetings and recording features to build team knowledge assets.

Naturally, given the circumstances, users flooded in and X(Twitter) was filled with anticipatory voices. However, technical issues caused numerous bugs affecting many users.

Even now, remembering that period brings back painful memories. The world needed help at that exact moment - that's what we'd built this for - yet how immature and powerless I was. Since age 19, I'd been starting businesses and overcoming hard things, wanting to become strong enough to help people who needed it. Finally standing in that position, yet... I was furiously angry at my own weakness, unable to help people.

Could This Really Change the World?

The product crash prompted us to reassess everything. It was a crucial question: "Could this really change the world?"

As competitors emerged one after another, we realized our product, among others, lacked virality and merely rode a temporary surge in pandemic demand. It was missing true innovation at its core.

After hundreds, perhaps thousands of interviews and feedback sessions, we knew we hadn't achieved the superior experience people were seeking. Even with excess demand, the product wasn't designed well enough to achieve pure self-serve activation.

We might have succeeded as a business in that state. We could have gained customers, generated revenue, and grown steadily by continuing development based on feedback. From previous entrepreneurial experience, I was confident in generating revenue when you have a product and market.

Looking back, choosing not to take that path was the right decision. Once a product experience is built and an organization adapts to it, it's extremely difficult to change.

At the time, many advised us to "just sell more" or "why aren't you promoting the product more?" They suggested capitalizing on the surge in pandemic demand.

It seemed logical. However, I apologetically ignored all that advice. Because I intuitively understood that "this couldn't change the world." Creating a product requiring sales and implementation support posed an overwhelming risk when measured against our ultimate goal.

Again, "Once a product experience is built and an organization adapts to it, it's extremely difficult to change."

Unless we were certain about the potential to change the world, we were ready to rebuild from zero without hesitation. While competitors grew rapidly during the pandemic, we embarked on a journey to find the essential elements that could truly change the world.