The man who made his dream come true
“I was infatuated with the idea of developing my own software and neglected my studies back then,” he said.
During his third year, in October 1993, Kim decided to do something about his life-long passion for computer software and games: He founded ESTsoft with four other friends.
The company had a rough start.
Even with the initial setbacks, ESTsoft went on to success with ALZip, the company’s compression and archive tool for Microsoft Windows, in 1999. The company continued its success in 2005 with the game Cabal Online.
As of July, ESTsoft’s total assets were 2.48 billion won ($2 million). Last year, the company’s sales were 2.5 million won.
Kim, once a young man who wanted nothing more than to develop his own software, is now looking to expand the company’s overseas business, which started in 2007 in Japan.
Q. How did you manage to raise the money to start the company when you were still a student?
A. My four friends and I collected all our savings from our part-time jobs. That came to around 30 million won. To register as a company back then, you needed a minimum of 50 million won. We had to borrow the rest from our parents.
What was ESTsoft’s first successful product to launch?
After failing to launch our word processor, we had to start from the bottom. In 1999, we launched ALZip and InternetDisk [an online web storage solution] and had success with both, especially ALZip. There were similar programs like ALZip out at the time and ALZip did not differ too greatly from them. The point of its success, however, was that it made the least errors in practice and was easy to use. When it comes to software quality, a product doesn’t necessarily need a lot of different functions - just a few core functions that work really well.
What were your finances like before and after ALZip?
By 2000, the company was in the black. After 2001, our sales slowly started to climb. Although we were seeing a profit, the remaining problem was speed. A company that size needed to grow steadily at that stage, but because the Korean software market is small, we faced a limit with only ALZip and InternetDisk.
Is that why you started online games?
Yes. We were thinking about expanding into a sector that was big enough and had the potential for continued growth. During [the early 2000s] Korea’s Internet-related companies, which were still growing, could be put into two categories - Internet services and online games.
We decided to pursue online games because we were, first of all, very interested in online games. Also, our thought was that it would be easier to go global with online games because Internet service alone has the “language” barrier but games do not because it is all about a fantasy world.
ESTsoft’s online game, Cabal Online, launched in 2005. What was the initial reception like?
In 2005, there weren’t many successful Korean games due to the massive popularity of online games from overseas, including World of Warcraft. The three big local game companies - Nexon, Webzen and HanbitSoft - each launched online games, but Cabal Online was overwhelmingly more popular.
However, we couldn’t continue our initial success for long because the main problem was that we lacked a sufficient amount of contents for the game. Because Koreans are so good at online games, they had finished all the contents of the game after about three months.
From the first half of 2006, we hired more employees for our game division and increased the amount of content. By the latter half of that year, sales had started to increase again.
Was the company affected by the global economic crisis?
The game industry is not too affected by economic situations as it is a leisure activity that doesn’t cost all that much. However, because we provide software for personal use for free, we make money on advertisements. With the global economic slowdown, advertisements go down as well.
What is your vision for ESTsoft?
To become a global software company. We opened a Japanese branch in 2007, and our software and games are being used in Europe, Asia and North and South America. During the first half of next year, we plan to introduce Spanish and Indonesian versions of our software, including ALTools, InternetDisk and Bizhard, as well as Cabal Online.
What is your business philosophy?
It is to take the just path. In the past, there were moments that might have enticed me to take short cuts. However, most of the times that I took the short cut I think I failed. Looking back, I think taking the “straight” path was the best choice.
By Cho Jae-eun [jainnie@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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