The full interview, translated from Korean. Read the original (Korean)
“I gained the conviction that you don’t move after you’re perfectly prepared. You can refine your direction as you move.”
Hello!
Today we’re sharing the story of Hyunji Park, CEO of NECTON, who completed Outsome Founder Sprint Batch 2.
NECTON is a team that structures company documents into datasets AI can use, and designs and supports AX (AI Transformation) tailored to each company and industry.
When NECTON joined Founder Sprint, it was still at an early stage. The team had the technology and the idea, but they were wrestling with a lot of questions: which problem to solve first in the US market, who to define as the customer, and how to explain the business to investors.
What changed most after the program wasn’t the product itself. It was the way they talk with the market.
By repeating customer interviews, they quickly broke their existing assumptions and revised their problem definition and business model. After that, real company meetings and pilot discussions started to happen, and as they worked out how to explain the business from an investor’s point of view, it carried all the way through to raising investment.
In this interview, we heard how NECTON changed the way it looks at customers and the market through Founder Sprint, and how it turned vague worries about US expansion and fundraising into concrete execution.
Q. Could you introduce your company and product in one sentence?
NECTON is a team that structures company documents into datasets AI can use, and designs and supports AX (AI Transformation) for each domain.
Q. If you had to describe your situation before Founder Sprint in one sentence?
“We were thinking about going overseas, but our approach to the market and our business direction weren’t clear.”
At the time, I felt Korean companies were fairly conservative about adopting AI, so naturally we were looking at overseas markets first. After taking part in VivaTech and looking at the European market, I decided the US market was a better fit, and along the way I found Outsome and joined.
Q. What was your biggest concern before joining?
There were two big questions.
“Is our positioning in the US market really valid?”
And “Is it right to try to expand overseas while we’re still at the early stage of building the team?”
We had the idea, but the market hadn’t been validated enough, so we had a lot of questions about what to validate first.
Q. Was there an assumption you had wrong back then?
Early on, we were focused on one feature: “email-based document data extraction.” As we repeated customer interviews and feedback in Founder Sprint, we realized that email as a channel wasn’t the customer’s core problem.
What customers really needed wasn’t email processing. It was structuring the document data scattered across the company so that AI could use it. It wasn’t so much a pivot to a completely different business as a shift that expanded the problem into something more fundamental.
Q. Before Founder Sprint, how were you preparing for the US market and for winning customers?
We were doing market research with a US intern and looking at different approaches, like exhibiting at trade shows.
But even with a lot of information, we had no clear standard for “What do we actually do first when we enter the US market?”
Through 1:1 feedback from Silicon Valley founders and mentors in Founder Sprint, I came to understand how to approach the US market in a more structured way, and I got a realistic sense of where to start.
Q. What was the deciding reason you applied to Outsome?
At the time, more than the Outsome brand itself, I wanted to work out our direction together with Peter, who had actually been through US expansion himself. Watching Peter’s content about the US market on LinkedIn, I felt he was sharing a perspective that came from real experience, not just information.
My biggest hope was to turn our vague worries about US expansion into a concrete direction for execution.
Q. What was the team situation at the time?
We were early, and there were internal changes too, like replacing a developer. Because of the team situation, we couldn’t join the US Track afterward, but we kept refining our BM and problem definition during Founder Sprint, and our fundraising happened around that same time. It helped a lot in organizing the market and our business model into a form we could explain to investors.
Q. What changed the most after Founder Sprint?
Three things changed the most.
The first was how we actually run customer interviews.
Before, I knew we should be doing interviews, but I tended to hesitate about actually reaching out to customers and meeting them. In the program, we ran interviews intensively over a short period and validated our hypotheses quickly.
Along the way, our decisions got much faster, going from “This seems right” → “No, it’s not” → “This is the part the customer wants.”
The second was structuring our sales approach.
We started designing sales messaging, LinkedIn setup, customer interviews, actual meetings, and follow-up connections as one flow.
The third was understanding how investors look at a company. I learned how the investment ecosystem is built, how funds are structured and run, and what criteria investors use to evaluate companies. That was a very practical help later, when we actually ran our investment round.
Q. What action did you take the most during the 4 weeks?
What we did most was customer interviews.
Because the program pushed hard on execution, we kept repeating the cycle of setting up real interviews, having the conversations, and applying the results back to the business.
Second was continually checking our business hypotheses and BM using the frameworks we learned in the sessions.
Last was continually revising our target and problem definition based on the interview results. Far more of our assumptions broke in the market than I expected, and the experience of fixing them quickly was itself what mattered.
Q. Was there anything Outsome forced you to execute?
The biggest one was, again, customer interviews. After getting feedback on our BM, we did several interviews almost every day over a short period. What I took away from that was very simple.
“Rather than thinking about it for a long time, it’s better to interview fast, be wrong fast, and change fast.” That was the way of executing I felt most strongly in Founder Sprint.
Q. Any tips for doing customer interviews well?
Honestly, I think getting an interview is harder than doing it well. Enterprise customers in particular often have no interest in the interview itself, so even getting something on the calendar isn’t easy.
But once the meeting happens, the conversation flows more naturally than you’d think. So rather than making a perfect list of questions, I think the drive to actually reach out to customers and create touchpoints matters more.
Q. What feedback from Peter stuck with you the most?
Surprisingly, what stuck with me most was “Keep the basics.” When you start a company and get absorbed in the work, the basics like exercise, mental health, and sleep are the first things you lose. At first it can sound like it has little to do with business strategy. But a startup is ultimately a long game, so I realized that building a body and a routine that can last is also an important strategy.
It hit home even more because I saw Peter actually keep up exercise and self-care consistently within his own schedule.
Q. Is there a framework you still use today?
Actually, what I use most consistently now is a way of managing routines. I track not just work but also exercise and my personal condition as a checklist.
I don’t keep it perfectly, but it became the moment I started seeing a startup as a long process, not a short sprint.
Q. Was there a sales-related perspective from the program that stuck with you?
The idea of selling at a premium, even charging more than feels comfortable, stuck with me.
It wasn’t simply about charging a high price no matter what. It meant that if you solve a problem the customer finds truly painful, you should rightfully charge for that much value.
After that, I started looking at sales and pricing based on how big a customer problem we solve.
Q. How has the way customers understand NECTON changed since Founder Sprint?
Before joining, even our own problem definition wasn’t sorted out enough, so the one-liner we used with customers was vague. During the program, as we repeated customer interviews, we listened to the language real customers use and kept revising our message based on those expressions.
At first, we described it as “a service that processes email-based document data.” Later, it evolved into things like “compliance document processing automation,” and now it’s settling into something more fundamental: “structuring company documents into data AI can use.” As the product develops, the one sentence keeps evolving too.
Q. What changed most clearly between before and after Founder Sprint?
Before joining, the product was basically at POC level, and we had almost no real customer touchpoints. After the program, customer meetings started happening, and the process of organizing our BM carried through to raising investment.
In other words, I think the biggest difference is that we went from a team thinking through an idea internally → a team talking with the actual market.
Q. What changed on the investment side?
Before Founder Sprint, we weren’t seriously running an investment round. We lacked conviction about our BM and the market.
But as we repeated customer interviews and hypothesis validation in the program, we started by clearly sorting out what it wasn’t.
In that process, we began to see which parts of our existing technology could be commercialized, and organizing our business model on that basis led to actually raising investment.
Q. Did the way you explain the company to investors change too?
It changed a lot.
At first, I explained things from a founder’s point of view, centered on the product and technology. But through the program, I came to understand that investors don’t just look at the technology. They look at a company from a completely different angle: market size, growth potential, the purpose of the fund, the possibility of an exit, and so on. After that, instead of saying “we built great technology,” I started talking mainly about why this market can grow and why we can grow in it.
Q. Compared to other programs, what was Outsome’s biggest difference?
The biggest difference was that it doesn’t just connect you to the US market and the Silicon Valley ecosystem. It helps you understand them. Even if you meet a great US investor or founder, it’s hard to have a good conversation if you don’t know the logic they use to look at business and investment.
At Outsome, beyond the network, I could first understand the language and mindset that ecosystem runs on. It was also different in that investment and US expansion didn’t end at information. They were tied to real touchpoints and execution.
Above all, what stays with me is that it’s not a relationship that ends after an investment. It’s a structure where they run alongside the founder and keep thinking through the direction together.
Q. Is there anything worth preparing before joining the program?
I think the most important thing is to be clear on “Why am I taking this program?” You might come to align on direction with your co-founder, you might come to prepare for entering the US market, or fundraising might be your biggest goal.
The clearer your purpose, the clearer it is what to focus on getting out of that one month. I think it’s a program where the results change the more actively you use it.
Q. What are the two biggest things you got from Founder Sprint?
The first is the investor’s perspective.
Understanding what investors care about and the structure they make decisions in widened the way I see the company itself.
The second is a way of validating the market through customer interviews.
Instead of thinking it through and finishing before I move, I internalized a way of quickly repeating
think → execute → feedback → revise.
Q. If you could say one thing to yourself before Founder Sprint?
“Meet customers first.”
Getting answers directly from the market is much faster than holding on to your worries and hypotheses for a long time.
Q. What’s the biggest conviction you gained thanks to Outsome?
The conviction that you don’t have to be perfectly prepared to move. You can refine your direction as you move. Once you start talking with the market, the business gets more and more concrete.