The full interview, translated from Korean. Read the original (Korean)
Hi everyone! Today we’d like to share the story of the in10s Lab team, who completed Outsome Founder Sprint (FS) Batch 3.
Among the teams in this batch, in10s Lab stood out for how sharp their sense of the problem was and how clearly they executed.
We asked them for an interview because we felt they could tell, more vividly than anyone, what questions they worked through during the program, what actions they took, and what actually changed as a result.
We hope this FS3 review, told by the in10s Lab team themselves, gives concrete reference points to anyone thinking about applying to Outsome.
Q. Can you introduce your company or product in one sentence?
Hi, I’m Jessy Yoon, CEO of in10s Lab. I was part of Outsome Founder Sprint Batch 3.
We’re a team that structurally matches Korean companies with the local networks they need (talent, partners, and operators) so they can build real traction in global markets.
In particular, we focus on major trade shows like CES and MWC, which serve as beachheads for going global. We design, in advance, the networks that can lead to real deals on the ground, and we support execution all the way through.
Q. How would you describe your situation before FS in one sentence?
“We dreamed of going global, but with no method or standard for executing, we were just circling inside the Korean market.”
My cofounder and I started in March 2023, and we incorporated in January 2024. We had recurring revenue, but our unit price was low (under ₩5M in monthly revenue), which made it hard to sustain a team of 5 to 6 people. We had already concluded that the Korean market alone couldn’t keep us going in the long run.
Q. What was your biggest concern before joining? / Why couldn’t you solve it? / How did you hear about Outsome?
Our biggest concern was that we had no feel or standard for how to make the global market understand our service, or in what order to approach it. There was plenty of information, but we had no workflow for “what to validate first, and who to meet and how.”
Around that time, while I was digging through every piece of information I could find about going global, I came across Peter’s posts on LinkedIn. They weren’t just insights. I came to trust that he was someone who knew the structures that actually work on the ground, and that’s what led us to join.
Q. Was there a “wrong assumption” you were holding at the time?
There were two. First, the assumption that repeating lots of small-ticket sales would lead to growth. Second, the assumption that with B2B SaaS you build the product first and sell afterward. Looking back now, both were risky premises. The second one especially meant putting development first while skipping customer problem definition and validation of willingness to pay.
Q. Before FS, how were you approaching US expansion and customer acquisition?
Since we had recurring revenue in Korea, I thought that the US, being a bigger market, would give us a similar revenue structure if we applied the same model. So we started by translating our service into English, and our hypothesis was that once we found customers with similar needs, a little pivoting and localization would be enough to sell there too.
But looking back, that premise itself was wrong. Our biggest mistake was thinking “the market is big, so we can repeat it” without validating the market structure, how buying decisions are made, or the competitive landscape. In particular, I think our structural limitation was that we were thinking about global expansion first, before we had properly defined the fundamental problem or validated the market.
Q. Was there a decisive reason you applied to Outsome?
Our internal decision-making rule was “apply first, and make the final call after we get in,” so we applied. But there are plenty of free programs and government support programs for going global, and there are even options where you receive grant money while participating.
Outsome, by comparison, was a paid program, so we asked ourselves a lot: “Is this worth the money we’d be investing?” In the end, we judged that the perspective and structure we could get from the program were worth more than simple information or networking, and we made the final decision to join once we were confident we could get back more than we put in.
Q. What results were you hoping for before joining?
Realistically, it was building “a pipeline that could create paying customers.” Before, even after doing 20 to 30 minute calls over and over, the price per converted customer was only around ₩500K to ₩700K, so the ROI wasn’t there, and we felt strongly that the team couldn’t survive on that structure.
Q. What was the team situation at the time?
We had a team of 5 to 6 people, we had raised a seed round in 2024, and we had been selected for TIPS. We had operating funds, but since the business wasn’t generating operating profit, our runway would end when the TIPS money ran out.
Monthly revenue was under ₩5M, and we had concluded internally that this structure couldn’t sustain the team. Like many Korean startups, we had survived on government support funding, but we were clear that this model wouldn’t let us grow in the long run.
Q. What action did you take the most during the 4 weeks?
The actions we took most were customer interviews and sales execution. We were already a team that did a lot of customer interviews, but the program pushed us to execute even more aggressively.
A particularly memorable moment was when we got the assignment: “Do as much sales as you possibly can in 3 days.” Right after the session, we ran direct interviews with 12 teams in just 3 days. Afterward, Peter looked at our packed customer interview calendar and our notes full of customer insights and said, “With this level of execution, you’re definitely going to do well.” That experience gave us confidence that we’re a team that can execute once the direction is set.
Q. What was the hardest assignment or mission?
It wasn’t that the assignments themselves were hard. It was that the amount of execution they required was overwhelming.
Because it was a paid program, our goal was clear: “Take away as much as we put in.” My cofounder and I broke down each assignment one by one and went over “how do we apply this to our business” again and again until late at night. That process was tough, but it was also the time that made our team’s bond and direction much stronger.
Q. How did you meet your cofounder?
We met through Antler, a founder-matching program. For 10 weeks we spent our days together in a founder space, repeating idea sprints, problem definition, and execution experiments, and through that process we validated each other’s capabilities and direction.
We were a team built from day one to start a company premised on global scale. So rather than a model that survives small in a small market, our goal was clearly to build a structure that could expand globally.
Q. If you had to pick one piece of Peter’s feedback that hit you hard, what would it be?
“Charge a premium. A big one.”
I started my company after more than 10 years of working at companies, including large ones like Kakao and Coinone, and I experienced firsthand the period when the startup boom was just beginning. Back then, if you had a good service, you could get investment. In a way, it was a time when the barrier to investment was really low.
So for me, the mindset that “a service should be used by as many people as possible, prices should be low, and the closer to free the better” had settled in as my default. In fact, we were a team that worried “Are we charging too much?” even when charging ₩500K.
But Peter said the complete opposite.
“Find people who are in real pain, with a niche problem, and solve it for a really high price.”
Q. Which piece of feedback changed your perspective the most, personally?
The idea that “the product doesn’t come first. Customers saying they need it comes first.” I had always thought you shouldn’t sell if the product wasn’t ready. I believed you could only sell with confidence once the product was finished. But Peter took a completely different approach.
“Never build a product nobody will buy.” “Only build products someone has said they’ll buy.”
That message changed my thinking a lot.
Q. Is there anything that stuck with you?
Peter’s execution in running the program. It was impressive that he was handling everything on his own: offline operations, online operations, mentoring, content creation, and the US Track schedule that followed right after.
Q. Is there a framework you still use today?
It’s less a specific, diagrammed framework and more a principle that got our team moving.
“We only build a product when a customer says yes and says they will actually pay.”
Q. Did your team structure change too?
We were originally a 6-person, product-focused team: frontend, backend, full-stack, a UX designer, and a CTO (with me in the PM role). It was an organization built entirely around making product. But after the program, we restructured.
Our Founder and Growth lead took on the BD role: meeting customers first, designing sales strategy, and approaching things account by account. The product team switched to an SI-style structure, quickly building the features needed based on the customer requirements BD brings in. In other words, our thinking shifted from a product-driven organization → a sales-driven organization.
Q. How did you take part with such a busy schedule?
In the end, it came down to priorities. Going global was our team’s top priority, so we adjusted our schedule to match.
We had a lot going on, including events, business trips, and talks, but we made Outsome a commitment we had to keep no matter what. September was an especially busy month, and the reason we could still handle it was that our team was serious about going global.
Q. Was LinkedIn helpful?
I already knew how important LinkedIn was, and the program made me even more convinced. Seeing real examples of how consistently publishing content builds trust and leads, I was able to share that approach not only for myself but across the team. I agree with the saying, “The more consistently you write, the more insight you gain.” I learned that content isn’t just promotion. It’s a process of organizing your thinking.
Q. How did the way customers understand you change from before to after Outsome?
Before, customers understood us simply as “a team that helps startups hire.” But after Outsome, as our core strength became clearer, the perception shifted: we became a team that structures information scattered across the internet to precisely find and match the talent and partners you need.
Now customers see us as a team that can connect not just hiring, but also global business trips, finding local partners, designing meetings, and follow-up. In other words, the biggest change is that our frame expanded from “a recruiting team” to “global network matching infrastructure.”
Q. What do you mean by “business trip service” here?
The business trip service we’re talking about isn’t simple itinerary or scheduling support. It’s supporting the whole process, “pre-trip prep, on-site, and post-trip follow-up,” in order to get results from the trip. What matters isn’t “going to the trade show” itself. It’s who you meet, what deals you create, and whether you come back with the next steps locked in. This process is very similar to the hiring process.
- In hiring: resume review → outreach → interview → acceptance/offer → next steps
- In business trips: partner research → outreach → on-site meeting (validation) → deal structure negotiation → contract/follow-up
In other words, our goal is not “a relationship where you say hello for the first time on-site,” but to “lock in, during the trip, a relationship where the conversation already started beforehand.” Especially at trade shows, there are so many booths and teams that being memorable, meaning a follow-up message within 24 hours of the meeting, often effectively decides success or failure. So we also support follow-up templates, message structure, and organizing the context.
Q. Where does revenue come from?
Teams about to go on a global business trip have already decided to invest a lot of money to get results on the ground.
We provide a concierge service that boosts those teams’ results or makes them a sure thing.
- Partner matching and research fee: we flexibly find “who you should contact” based on your team’s situation. Our team has the technology to find information scattered across the internet quickly and with more detailed, context-based precision.
- Fee that includes execution and follow-up: matching alone doesn’t lead to results, so we provide everything, including actually setting up meetings, designing the conversation flow, and the follow-up loop (feedback, revision, re-outreach). Teams on a trip especially have so many other things to take care of.
The concierge service varies with each team’s matching difficulty and the package they need, and where needed it also includes a success-fee-based commission model.
Q. Was there actually demand?
At CES this January, we executed with 4 teams. Even with a relatively high price proposal, teams actually said “we’re in,” which confirmed that the need around global business trips is real and that there’s a market willing to pay to solve this problem. That was a very strong signal for our team.
Q. What are the 2 biggest changes since FS?
- How we run the organization, product-driven → BD/sales-driven: the founder and marketing take the BD role, meeting customers first and running accounts, and we realigned the product team into an SI-style structure that quickly builds the needs we’ve secured.
- Pricing and package strategy, flat fee (₩500K to ₩700K) → custom packages based on needs: by approaching customers with “how will we provide this” instead of “we can’t,” our pricing and contract structure changed fundamentally.
Q. In numbers, what changed?
The clearest change is price. Before, it was ₩500K to ₩700K per customer. Now we’ve shifted to contracts of around ₩10M per customer.
Q. What’s the paid customer or POC story you’re proudest of?
One of our customers was a tech startup developing robot-based software. Their technology was excellent, and the market recognized it: they had won the CES Innovation Award twice.
But since the CEO was managing the entire business alone, they weren’t able to properly handle the partner opportunities coming in. Their technical understanding was very high, but they struggled with how to start global partnerships, how to manage the leads they met at trade shows, and how to design a structure that turns those leads into follow-on deals.
First, we matched them with a global operator who fit the team. That operator was doing a master’s degree in LA, had a strong understanding of AI, was fluent in two or more languages, and had experience meeting with partners met at trade shows. In other words, this was someone who could accurately understand and explain the technology and carry the conversation on-site on behalf of the CEO.
After the match, the CEO even said, “I really want to hire this person,” and lead management and follow-up with the people they’d met at the actual event started happening systematically. As a result, the trade show leads got organized, follow-up meetings happened, and a pipeline that could turn into deals was built.
I think this case goes beyond simple matching. It’s “a case where we designed the structure that creates results from a global business trip.”
Q. How do you collect your overseas talent and partner DB?
Our core technology is the ability to scrape and structure information scattered across the internet. People, and the partners (companies) that need matching, publish more information online than you’d think (LinkedIn, personal portfolio sites, Notion-based personal pages, startup websites, product materials).
Overseas talent in particular often run their own websites or portfolio pages. We collect this data, organize it according to our talent or partner data structures, and build it into our own database. It’s not just a list. We structure it around the information actually needed for matching, such as technical understanding, industry fit, language skills, trade show experience, and the regions they can distribute to.
As a result, we can quickly shortlist talent or partners that fit the conditions a customer wants.
Q. What was your fundraising status before FS?
We had already raised a seed round in 2024.
We also had our internal funding plan secured through government grants, a loan from the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund, and so on. So we weren’t in a situation where we urgently needed to raise. The biggest difference after FS is that the one-liner we use to explain ourselves to investors became much clearer.
Q. What became clearer?
Before, we described ourselves as “a team that solves hiring problems.” But after FS, the definition changed. We’re not just about hiring. We’re a team that builds the structure for precisely finding trustworthy people and partners in large markets.
Especially in a market like the US, with many immigrants and scattered information, the core capability is precise targeting that combines conditions like specific companies, tech stacks, experience, and networks. With this new definition, we can explain our core competitive edge much more clearly to investors and customers.
Q. After FS, how did the one sentence you use with investors change?
Before FS, we described ourselves as “a team that automates outreach-based recruiting.” But that sentence got buried among the many recruiting tools already on the market, and it didn’t clearly communicate what made us different, especially to investors in the US market, where outreach is already common.
After FS, our one sentence became:
“We’re the infrastructure that designs GTM and local network matching for teams going global.”
In other words, we redefined ourselves from a simple hiring solution to a team that structurally connects the local partners, operators, and BD networks needed in the process of going global. When we explained it this way, investors clearly reacted differently. Once they saw us as “global expansion infrastructure” rather than a “recruiting tool,” questions about market scale and scalability followed. In the end, what changed wasn’t the product. It was the definition of the category we belong to.
Q. Had you done other programs, consulting, or mentoring before?
Yes. Our team came together from the start with the goal of founding a company, so we took part in the Antler program, and while running government support projects we also experienced a variety of mentoring and consulting.
Q. What made Outsome different from other programs?
The biggest difference was that it wasn’t a lecture-style program. It was an execution-focused sprint.
Many global programs center on talks where people share past experiences. Outsome, instead, was set up so you get immediate feedback on your execution from mentors, VCs, and YC founders who are active in the market right now. It doesn’t end with just listening. The actions you need to execute are clearly set each month, you get concrete feedback on that execution again and again, and it even connects you with chances to meet VCs and local founders directly.
What helped our team the most was detailed feedback on how to design global sales messages. Feedback like “This message is too salesy,” “Go build the relationship first,” and “With this tone, you’ll get a reply” gave us standards we could use right away in the real world, and that was the biggest differentiator.
Q. What about Peter helped you the most?
Peter is great at sales and a really good writer. Most global touchpoints start online. Unlike Korea, where relationships are built offline no matter what, the tone and manner of your first message matter a lot. What helped most was how clearly he gave us a feel for what kind of sales works in the global market, which messages are too much, and where relationship building ends and sales begins.
Q. How did you find Outsome’s difficulty level?
I think you choose the difficulty yourself. If you just want to show up and get the experience, it won’t be hard.
But that’s not how we approached it. Since we’d joined a paid program, our premise was that we absolutely had to generate ROI, so we went in determined to do the assignments at 200%. I think what you take away depends completely on how much time and priority you give it.
Q. What should a company prepare before joining the program?
Practically speaking, having your IR materials organized in advance saves time. But honestly, they change a lot once you get mentor feedback. So the preparation I think really matters is being sincere about the question “Do we truly need to go global?” If that’s clear, there’s a lot you can get out of this program.
Q. What do you think you get out of Founder Sprint?
For people who felt lost about how to create global touchpoints, it can be a big turning point.
The Korean approach and the global approach are different. In Korea, people often ask to see the product first, but in the global market, the approach of “we’ll build it if you need it” works just fine. If you have an open mind and want to learn the rules of the global market, you’ll walk away with a clear perspective.
Q. If you could give advice to yourself before Outsome, what would it be?
Time spent deliberating is wasted. Just do it!!
Q. What’s the biggest confidence or conviction Outsome gave you?
The conviction that global isn’t a space only for people with certain backgrounds.
Even without a degree from an overseas school or overseas work experience, I became convinced it’s entirely possible if you understand global customers, build products that reflect their needs, and build a network that can connect them.
Q. What would you say to a founder considering Outsome?
Do you truly, desperately need to go global?
If you do, do it, no question. If you don’t, don’t.