There are only a few buildings from which you can look down upon the whole of Gangnam. Among them are GFC, Meritz Tower, GT Tower, Posco Tower, and Kyobo Tower.
Two days ago, in a dream, I found myself on the top floor of Kyobo Tower with three other men. Together, the four of us stood looking down at Gangnam, engaged in conversation. We were exchanging congratulations, noting that we had finally broken into South Korea's top 1,000 corporations. The other three executives seemed to desire different things from my company. And perhaps that is only natural. Even when people with the same general purpose gather, each individual inevitably harbors different thoughts and motivations.
Upon waking from the dream, I looked up what it actually means to enter the nation's top 1,000 corporations. Even by past standards, a company had to surpass 500 billion KRW in annual revenue. 500 billion KRW. That is an amount generated only when you bring in over 40 billion KRW in revenue every single month. Reflecting on this, I thought about the three men from my dream. Given the nature of that table, they would most likely be board members from premier consulting firms—people from institutions like McKinsey or Boston Consulting Group whose expertise would be vital. After all, I am a man obsessed with technology rather than corporate maneuvering.
After finishing my weekend lecture, I quietly pondered the ideas I had organized over the past few weeks. I began to spot flaws in the plan. As is always the case, reviewing any plan after some time has passed makes it easy to discover new issues. It is much like seasoning food while it is still boiling hot—you invariably end up adding too much salt. When your head is hot and your heart is pounding, everything seems flawless. In reality, however, a true plan is closer to a long journey that must pass through freezing cold water. To regain rationality and rigorously audit a plan, one must deliberately allow time for the thoughts to cool down. It is an intentional cooling of one's own passion.
I needed to focus on the transition. It is impossible to build a product that perfectly satisfies the mass public from the very beginning. You must start within a very small segment and gradually expand its usability. This aligns precisely with the concept of "exclusivity in beta" that Zuckerberg once highlighted. You must position the product as a beta experience for the clients, ensuring that only a select few can access it initially. When a product birthed in this manner grows and scales, it ultimately becomes a game-changer.
While I constantly try to capture the floating thoughts in my head, on the other hand, I actively strive to discard them to grasp entirely new ones. No matter how much you try to improve something insignificant, it will most likely remain insignificant. Because I have lived my life prepared to throw away everything I have built, I can live without dwelling on what has been discarded. Was it easy to abandon source code that I had poured nearly two years of my time into, for absolutely no return? It was quite painful, but by going through that process multiple times, I became numb to it.
Since predicting the era is becoming increasingly difficult, one must ultimately find the exact intersection where opportunity and capability align. Among the two, capability is a weapon I can forge and prepare myself, but opportunity is an undefined event that no one knows when it will occur. One must not show up to an undefined event wearing unprepared clothes. To seize the opportunity, I must invest my time into the work of building myself.
The process of building oneself does not seem particularly difficult. It is a very simple yet agonizing task of consciously making hard choices. Over the long run, however, you come to enjoy it. It is a fascinating phenomenon. People addicted to working out were not addicted from the start. They too had days when they contemplated quitting, but once they pushed past that threshold, they reached that next stage. Continuously training oneself is the subconscious, repetitive activity of those who have dug a single well for a long period. They have reached a state where self-improvement is achieved without great suffering.
Transformation in a person occurs the moment they cross the critical threshold. The moment you pass that tipping point, new traits unlock within you as if a seal has been broken. It is common for someone who has never exercised to completely alter both their personality and mindset once they start working out. When someone who has never experienced a victory through studying begins to win because of it, their perspective on studying and the way they approach it completely change.
People transform through victory, and until they grasp that victory, they must endure the pain. That very victory becomes the driving engine, rendering the once-arduous process no longer painful. Why? Because they know a greater reward lies right before them. Once a reward invisible to others begins to manifest before your eyes, you see the goal clearly, whether your eyes are open or closed. It is the same for me. A distinct, vivid success is shimmering right before my eyes.
There is a proverb that says, "A man's heart plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps." Therefore, while I do not cling desperately to the plan itself, I still map it out and continuously strive to fulfill it. This is because a vision invisible to others stands clearly before me. It torments me like an illusion, yet makes me love it as if it were a lover. What is it that I can do? To devote myself entirely to the task entrusted to me. To never lose sight of the objective from the very beginning to the absolute end. To remain faithful in the smallest matters. Is that not the true path of one who follows the Will?