# FY1 S3 Junwon Story # Story In past seasons, I felt a pressing need to gain a deeper understanding of the consumers and their desires. This season, I spent time traveling extensively, with the explicit intent to study how people live and what they desire. Understanding people will be a lifelong journey, not just to me but also to all of us, but I was able to muster enough understanding to plan our immediate next steps. Based on all the observations I made this season, I am directing us to focus on shopping search. # Dreams We dream to make a world where people can dream and make dreams a reality. By helping shoppers discover and assess great products, we will help people dream a better life and live a better reality. # Advances This season, we learned by encountering technical challenges, and further sharpened our focus from generic web search to specifically shopping search. **Internet Autopilot:** We were not able to develop the technology for “Apostrophe: Internet Autopilot”. We made observation that there exist enough challenges to the work of giving AI models the ability to explore the web that developing a web browser for AI models can be not just a material advantage in the industry but also a standalone business opportunity. **Focus on Shopping:** We originally planned Apostrophe to help people delegate searches that are complex, composite, or repetitive. However, in order to deliver a sufficiently differentiated experience to our customers, we needed to further sharpen our focus to a more specific scenario. After also considering Contacts and Contents, we chose to focus on Commerce, which is Shopping from the perspective of the consumers, because commercial utility is easily demonstrable. Because Generative AI is new, consumers are not able to easily assess whether a price for Generative AI is justified. Whereas the joy that a consumer can get from Contacts and Contents are priceless and therefore difficult to measure, benefits that the consumer can get from existing commercial products are labeled with prices and therefore easy for the consumer to observe. We decided to make a Generative AI product that helps consumers shop better, because customers will be able to easily assess whether the price of our product is justified by comparing the price of our product to the amount of money they get to spend better while shopping with our product. With such product, we aim to attract wise shoppers, then make sure they keep getting a surplus of benefits as our customers. # Plans We will now plan then develop a specific product that uses Generative AI for better shopping search. We also plan to relocate to California in order to be near top talents in our industry. We expect that the relocation process will negatively impact our productivity during the next season, then boost it ever after. # Responses **On new Generative AI products from existing search engine businesses** Recently, big search engine businesses, including Google which has the top position and a majority share in the market, launched new Generative AI products that demonstrate their willingness to explore new business opportunities that are based on collecting subscription fees from consumers and processing information from 3P content provider websites. These events are in contradiction with our past predictions that they will fail to take actions that harm their existing revenues or harm their existing relationships with stakeholders such as consumers and content providers. Whereas we observe that existing search engine businesses correctly understand that Generative AI poses an existential threat to them and that they are willing to develop new products at the risk of invalidating their old businesses, we expect that they will choose to develop one general web search product that delivers a coherent but merely ordinary experience across diverse search scenarios. In contrast, we plan to focus on developing a product that specializes specifically in shopping search. We expect that our differentiated focus will enable us to make a special product that outperforms the generic products from existing search engine businesses within the shopping search scenario. Although shopping search is just one among many search scenarios, we expect that the shopping search market will provide us with enough opportunities to grow within the market and to expand into other markets. **On the impact of helping shopping** There is a big gap between how well people are living today and how better people can be living by utilizing all the products that exist already today. If we can help consumers discover and assess products that elevate their fashion and comfort, then we will be able to help consumers immediately live better, and also help producers dream and make dreams a reality. We also expect that providing consumers with accurate and necessary information about products will help us decrease waste in the society. **On Face Computers** Alongside Generative AI, Face Computers are expected to soon start rising as a new impactful technology. We are optimistic about Face Computers, but we have no plans at this moment to explore any business opportunities related to Face Computers, in order to stay properly focused on Generative AI. # Character **Make people live better.** When we are making a product, we are essentially dreaming about how people can be living better, then packing that better way of living for delivery. To make successful products, we must understand this. **Win trust from people.** Money to the company is merely food to the person. No matter how important it is, a requisite input can never become the target output. We perform all other business processes, such as getting money and making products, only to win trust from people. The company that wins in a market is not necessarily the company with the most money, or even the company with the best product, but the company that is trusted by the people. Only the trusted company can get the power to invest back into winning even more trust in the future. So deserve then get trust. Think and act in the ways that will make people trust us, our name, our brand. The trust that we win and our ability to keep winning the trust will be our core competency. # Fortune This season was difficult to me. I felt stuck while I was searching for a new direction instead of advancing towards a set direction. But as I reflect on how we spent this season, I am glad we did not spend it on advancing towards a wrong direction but rather on finding the right direction. I am confident that we can change shopping and that we can benefit all of us greatly by changing shopping. We are advancing slowly but surely. So we will surely reach the destination.