Startup of the Day - ONOFFMIX

The BizSpark startup of the day is ONOFFMIX, based in South Korea. You will find below an interview with JoonCheol Yang, CEO of ONOFFMIX. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!

Website: www.onoffmix.com.

Interview with JoonCheol Yang, CEO of ONOFFMIX

Tell us who you are and your role in the company:

I am CEO of ONOFFMIX in charge of management, operation, and strategy and my journey to work in IT industry was started at age 7. It was a time to learn computer with MSX-II for the first time. After interested in computer and enjoying myself, I put an effort to become better professional developer by becoming system engineer, web developer, and web planner. Without this meaningful career, I would not have been able to spur myself to found the business.

What did you do before creating your company?

Before establishing ONOFFMIX, I have had experiences to start small businesses. From 2001 to 2003, I founded a web agency ‘T2DN’ that provided web hosting and website development. After ending up the company, I decided to rebuild a new business called ‘SR Entertainment’ which performed R&D projects for 3D online shopping mall technology. Despite of vivid experiences to run the business, I realized the necessity of practical opportunity to learn the business step by step and decided to join local web services companies including local IT companies ‘Daum’ and ‘Neowiz’ from 2004 to 2009.

How do you feel being the most promising ‘Startup of the Day’ per Microsoft BizSpark?

To me, it is an honorable opportunity to promote the business. I am expecting to acquire the change to arrange the business relationship or partnership with global venture capital.

What is your company’s mission?

Our company focuses how to make the personal life and the society more happy and meaningful with IT as a company mission. Thus, it motivated to run ONOFFMIX in order to drive an opportunity for better business opportunity among developers, consumers, and distributors by letting them join a variety of social meetings and events.

In 140 characters or less, tell us what your company does:

ONOFFMIX, mainly operated by the head company 'Fun & Meaningful Life Lab.(FM2L)', is a services that arranges and promotes a variety of offline/online events from casual event to exclusive seminar and conference.

How did you get the idea for your company?

Personally interested in making friends and attending parties and events, I realized that organizing a social meeting or event had a number of requirements and arrangements to complete from RSVP to venue research and it might bring an inconvenience for organizer to come up with. Therefore, I decided to run ONOFFMIX to let people open the event with an ease through the internet.

Tell us about your funding history. Are you currently looking for funding? If so, how much?

We have been invested by several venture awards organized by local organizations or Microsoft BizSpark Program cooperatively promoted by the government. Or I joined some RIA, website projects suggested by other IT companies and received the salary as a part of the business fund. Currently, ONOFFMIX is expecting to receive investment approximately from USD 5 to 8 million on next year.

How many employees do you have? How many developers?

We have 6 staffs working with ONOFFMIX and 2 of them are developers.

Are you hiring? If yes, what are you hiring and where?

Yes, we are. We are looking forward to hiring more developers and planners.

Which platform are you building on? Why?

We operate the combination of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and ASP.NET. The reason we chose this form was to make opportunities – receiving supports from Microsoft partnership – though the Korean market does not show high proportion of Microsoft platform usage.

Where do you see opportunities today in the Software/internet area?

ONOFFMIX has a potential to become a service integrating both e-Commerce and Social Network Services(SNS) that connects to the mobile devices. Thus, we believe the business may create a new form of SNS which others has had never done before.

What do you think about the BizSpark Program?

BizSpark is a meaningful program to support startups, especially for those who adapt Windows Platform. In order to motivate businesses to run Microsoft products as their major IT system, there should be more opportunities bestowed by Microsoft BizSpark to help them how to use.

Do you have any advice for young Software entrepreneurs?

It is all up to your decision whether your business will drive better impact to your society or not. Motivate yourself to get advices from people to people to expand your horizon and clarify your decision.

Who’s your role model?

Bill Gates as CEO and Steve Jobs as entrepreneur. I understand it may be odd to be interested two persons with a different style and perspective. However, I would like to get lessons from them and make my new potential to become better global business leader.

What’s the ONE THING you would like readers to take away from this interview?

The world will lead you to be happy and succeed if your service leads the world happy. Join ONOFFMIX if you are a happiness seeker just like me! webmaster@onoffmix.com