Our first K-beauty partnerships

Context

IGotIn’s users were mostly incoming college freshmen. That happens to be one of the age groups Korean beauty, cosmetics and skincare brands most want to reach as they try to grow in the US.

The problem

The pivot gave students a reason to earn money through the app. That only works if someone is willing to pay. We needed partners with a real reason to spend on our users.

What I did

Leading with what I knew

I’m Korean, I grew up in Seoul, and I understood both what these brands were selling and why they cared about young American customers. I led the outreach to brands myself and ran the meetings.

A model where everyone gets paid

I designed a three-way model:

• Brands fund campaigns and promotion, and recruit student creators inside the app.
• Students earn money by making ads and videos for those brands.
• The platform takes a commission on each match.

It raised revenue and retention at the same time, because students now had a reason to keep coming back after the start of the semester.

Beyond the app

I also helped promote and run a Korean cosmetics brand’s pop-up in New York. And that track record led to a promotional partnership with KOOM Festival, a New York festival of Korean culture that combines a startup conference, a trade show and a music festival across tech, food, beauty and fashion.

What I learned

This was the first time my Korean background was the thing that made the work possible, rather than a detail on my résumé. I had lived in Korea, the UK and the US, and at Bondit that turned out to be an advantage: I could see what a Korean product needed in order to land with American customers.

I came away with a direction. I wanted work that used exactly that, Korean products finding their place in the US. Soon after, I joined a Korean food company to do exactly that.