Not just a Kickstarter knockoff, Wadiz CEO sets out global vision

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Not just a Kickstarter knockoff, Wadiz CEO sets out global vision

Published: 10 Jun. 2025, 07:00

CHO YONG-JUN
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Wadiz CEO Shin Hye-sung during an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily in late May, at the Wadiz headquarters in Pangyo, Gyeonggi. [PARK SANG-MOON]

With the launch of its global service last month, Wadiz doesn't want to position itself as yet another Kickstarter knockoff. Wadiz, Korea's largest crowdfunding platform by user number and sales, instead, wants to be the crowdfunding platform offering what its overseas competitors cannot offer: access to the Korean market, Korean products, a generous 30-day refund policy and an AI-powered system that automatically translates the listings into English.

In fact, CEO Shin Hye-sung wants to make Wadiz an online hub for promoting projects conceived in Korea that will attract sellers from all around the world.

“Users from around 200 countries were already visiting Wadiz even before we launched the service globally, so we always knew that there was demand from overseas,” Shin said in an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily at Wadiz’s Pangyo office, in Gyeonggi, less than two weeks after the platform launched globally in mid-May.

Wadiz, with 147.5 billion won ($109 million) in accumulated investment so far, is also continuing to pursue its long-awaited plan of going public. Shin said the company first aims to remain profitable in 2025 and go for an IPO the following year.

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Shin, who previously worked for the Korea Development Bank, said the evolution of AI is what allowed Wadiz to expand globally, as the company's AI-based system allows sellers to automatically translate, including texts inside images and screens using Wadiz's guidelines.

In less than two weeks since the global launch, Wadiz has already had users from 188 nations accessing the site, purchases from Australia, the United States, Spain, Singapore, India and more.

Below are excerpts of the interview edited for length and clarity.

Q: Was the language barrier a big hurdle for Wadiz going global?

A: It was one of the largest barriers. Wadiz is a two-front business, meaning that we have to support both the makers who start their crowdfunding project and also the supporters who fund the project on the site. So we have to help makers translate their product story to the supporters into different languages and also verify that their content and claims. With crowdfunding campaigns, it is crucial to verify the story and check that claims and language don’t get into the territory of false advertisement.

The AI-based automation process that we introduced, which screens the creator’s content and listings, then become a crucial momentum for us, as it also means that we can use the same process to screen crowdfunding projects that foreign firms want to list on Wadiz.

Wadiz CEO Shin Hye-sung during an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily in late May, at the Wadiz headquarters in Pangyo, Gyeonggi. [PARK SANG-MOON]

Why did Wadiz opt for a “softer” global launch?

Well, minimizing cost should be the first reason for it. But realistically, more so than just saving money, launching a service requires good crowdfunding projects that shape the platform. So instead of waiting for a complete lineup of crowdfunding projects, we decided to launch the global service, more as a prototype, so we can improve as we go on and invite more projects slowly.

Wadiz’s global service is only opened to Korean sellers at the moment, so the second phase will open the platform up to non-Korean sellers, alongside a global version of the smartphone application. The third phase involves us fully localizing the platform for different regions, like creating a joint venture to open Wadiz Thailand, and so on.

What can Wadiz offer that Kickstarter or Indiegogo cannot?

Well, the products we offer are different — we offer Korean products sold by Korean sellers. Selling Korean products, that is related to the ongoing Hallyu (or the Korean Wave), is our first differentiating factor. For non-Korean sellers, say those that already listed their products on Kickstarter, they will choose Wadiz because they have access to the Korean market and its customers that Kickstarter or Indiegogo don’t have access to.

Competing directly with Kickstarter in English-speaking regions or with Makuake in Japan — that’s our homework that we still have to solve. We are still deciding whether we should focus on markets with no dominant crowdfunding platform in place or compete in saturated markets with existing players.

But statistically, we know that Wadiz has a higher customer engagement rate and revisit rate. Competing with Makuake specifically, we have about the same average pageview and higher transaction numbers, when Korea has a third of the population compared to Japan. So I think Wadiz has a relatively high chance of winning, at least in terms of the service quality.

Can you introduce some projects that Wadiz hosted over the years that might interest foreign customers?

We are really focusing on making Wadiz Edition — a special version of the already crowdfunded projects in which we work with the creator to try to improve upon their campaigns. For example, the Green tea yulmu pack is a skincare item that mixes green tea and adlay, which we think will be popular to customers looking for K-beauty products with Korean characteristics.

I think foreign K-pop fans recognize Wadiz as the platform that hosted the Parallel Universe Project for the project girl group IZ*ONE, which had the fans of the group crowdfunding to have the group promoted for longer. Fans of the girl group crowdfunded 3.2 billion won in under a day, which showed the power of its fandom. While we eventually couldn’t make it work, I think of it as an extremely successful campaign. Wadiz, as a company, worked hard to make it happen and I think it showed the potential of Wadiz as a crowdfunding platform.

What is Wadiz's ultimate goal? Is the goal of staying profitable for a full year still intact?

I want Wadiz to be a service that can be a global hub for online transactions.

The plan to be profitable for the entire year is still ongoing. It is also why we’ve gone for a quieter global launch, so we don't break the bank. Our plans to go public are still there. Internally, we are preparing for an IPO some time in the next year, but it involves us making a success with Wadiz Global.

Crowdfunding platforms are prone to false advertisements where the final product doesn’t deliver the promises made in the funding process and Wadiz is no exception, as there have been allegations of sellers rebranding Chinese wholesaler products. How do you wish to address this issue?

We had a lot of issues regarding it and we faced a lot of criticisms. We have improved and advanced our screening and monitoring system so we can make sure that we are the ones catching problems before people put their money down. On top of that, we introduced a refund policy that is as lenient as other conventional e-commerce platforms: consumers can ask for a refund even if there’s no product defect, and we take 100 percent responsibility for the items listed on our platform. This is the advantage we have compared to other crowdfunding platforms around the world.

Wadiz CEO Shin Hye-sung during an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily in late May, at the Wadiz headquarters in Pangyo, Gyeonggi. [PARK SANG-MOON]

BY CHO YONG-JUN [[email protected]]