- March 31, 2017
2017 ‘Forbes’ Top 10 Korean Startups
In 2014, I started a data-centric 📊 hardware startup “ZIKTO” as one of the founding partners, handling strategy and design side of business. Starting out small with a few like-minded people, ZIKTO develops healthcare wearables and an IoT device integration platform, raising over 160K funding 🏆 through Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. Over the years, we have managed to raise $4 million in total funding 🏆 from VCs and angels, along with 25-30 staff and a range of products we have launched globally. ZIKTO is now listed in ‘Forbes Top 10 Korean Startups’ as of 2017 for its overall excellence in healthcare.
📋 Overview
- Categories: Big Data / Healthcare / Internet of Things (IoT) / Consumer Electronics
- Headquarters Regions: Seoul, S.Korea / Signal Hill, CA, United States
- Operating Status: Active
- Funding Status: Early Stage Venture
- Last Funding Type: Series A ($4M) / ICO ($17M)
- Number of Employees: 20-30
- IPO Status: Private
- Website: walk.zikto.com / www.zikto.com
ZIKTO’s Business
Starting out as a healthcare wearable device company with a core team of 6 like-minded people, we have now become a team of 25 staff with a horizontal corporate culture. With successive product iterations: “ZIKTO Walk”, “ZIKTO Heart” and others, we have expanded the spectrum of our business to “The Challenge (The Balance)”, a multiple IoT device integration platform, extending the scope from hardware business. We’re now partnered with multiple insurance and financial conglomerates and are developing our own protocols to disrupt the insurance industry with blockchain. “Insureum”, a combination of Insurance and Ethereum, is the cryptocurrency used in the Protocols.
*Click the image to expand. 🔎
*Below is the overview of value chain that we have created along the way across the entire journey of our business development since 2014.
Media / Partnerships / Collaborations / Funding (Series A) / Distribution Channels / Exhibitions / Design Awards / International Patents and Intellectual Properties (Design and Technology)
Brand Story
“Balanced Body. Balanced Life. – Beyond quantified self, our vision is to improve quality side of your activities.”
‘ZIKTO’, in Korean, means being honest and transparent in communication. We have developed services that track and analyse activities in your daily life, which affect health and well-being. This analysis helps provide honest tips and advice to help you achieve balance. Our straightforward feedback, based on rich data, may even target issues you weren’t aware of.
Fairy Tale for Hardware Startups
“Raising 160K (seed capital) through Kickstarter”
- We raised 160K funding through Kickstarter at an early phase. It helped us validate, empower our initial thinking on product ideas and a business model.
At the early phase, creating a promotional video with some polished prototypes, running a massive marketing campaign for crowdfunding (Kickstarter), and reaching out externally for initial communication/pitches for investor relations (IR) were all it matters. Where we were wrong early on, however, was the picture we all had in mind at the beginning; the growth in a straight line and eventually becoming a multi-million dollar company without facing bumpy road.
- The reality wasn’t clearly all romantic. Apparently, the growth we faced at the early stage had a close resemblance to the S-curve, as opposed to a straight line.
It did reach a temporal peak as mass media hype begun with initial marketing campaigns, PR, and Kickstarter, but it plummeted after a few months as we move forward. Constant, unexpected issues have arisen with production lines, entry barriers with global distribution channels, and delays with FCC, CE, and UL certification have steadily created hurdles.
*Click the image to expand. 🔎
Reference: Gartner Hype Cycle (Emerging Tech / Wearables)
My Role 01 – Researcher & Designer Role
- User Research (Qual–Quant) & Product Design
My responsibilities have been vastly diverging over the years from operations to R&D, but above all, user research and product design have taken up by far the largest portion of my focus. Starting from scratch, I designed every single detail and facet of products at the multidisciplinary & cross-functional R&D unit, reviewing data from prototype tests, ethnographic studies, interviews, surveys, and making strategic decisions in design through cross-departmental communication.
- How we did it : Apart from finances and operations, our founding team consisted of a product manager, a designer, and an engineer with fairy broad, cross-functional responsibilities.
- How we do it now : As we are growing, we now have variety: product managers, data scientists, user researchers, industrial designers, user interface designers, hardware engineers, software developers, firmware engineers, and biomedical engineers.
My Role 02 – Founding Partner Role
“Raising $4 million capital in total funding (seed/series A round from VCs & angels) with award-winning products”
- Early Stage Operations
Through direct communication with other partners, I spearheaded overall design side of business throughout the entire product life cycle, handling early stage operations at all levels: PR (featured in Wall Street Journal, Forbes, VentureBeat, TechinAsia, Cnet, and others), global launch on major distribution channels, e.g. Amazon, SoftBank, BestBuy, HMV, etc, mass production, shipping, customer support, strategic collaborations, and fund raising.
- Strategy Development & Fundraising
Leading the Kickstarter campaign where we raised 160K 🏆, I formulated product strategies, whilst launching an IoT platform (O2O service) & healthcare wearables (H/W) that led to 50K units sold globally with award-winning design. My role also included project management, leading strategic collaborations with Samsung, Swarovski, and others from multiple industries, whilst spearheading trademark & design protection (US, Europe, China, and S.Korea) and global relationships for investor relations (IR) that has led to $4 million in total funding 🏆 (seed/series A funding from VCs & angels).
Products
Hardware X Data
- ZIKTO Walk
Most of us spend around 100 minutes everyday walking. But here’s a question nobody is asking. What if you are walking wrong? Walking with bad postures disrupts your body balance, causing such health concerns as back pain, joint problems, and even arthritis. ZIKTO Walk is a healthcare wearable device with a focus on your walking posture for a balanced body and lifestyle.
- ZIKTO Heart
Through constant, successive design iteration, we have re-engineered our first production model not only to enable brand succession, but also to enlarge the spectrum of value that it delivers as product. Our goal was to improve existing setbacks as well as define the product in the way it matches our intended use case. ZIKTO Heart is our most recent update on hardware with design refinement and additional features, e.g. heart rate (HR) monitoring, OLED display, etc.
- ZIKTO Pay (+ Service)
ZIKTO Pay is one of the major research & development (R&D) projects that aims to undercover new opportunities in wearable payment, and extend ZIKTO’s brand experience to O2O experience with NFC + EMV Standard to provide seamless ecosystem/platform benefits.
Consulting
Design & Venture Strategy
- Mokibo
ZIKTO has partnered with other venture firms to co-operate and help each other offset and improve weaknesses in business. With Innopresso, I have served as an external advisor & consultant with a responsibility for its final product design, crowdfunding, and manufacturing strategies. (Mokibo is Innopresso’s first hardware that provides a multi-functional human interface.)
Services
Platform & O2O
- The Balance/The Challenge
We then expanded our spectrum to O2O services/experience to promote our new business model, “Device to Benefit (D2B)”, starting from “The Challenge (The Balance)”, a multiple IoT device integration platform. Partnering up with institutions and organizations from multiple industries: fitness franchises, healthcare firms, medical institutions, retailers, insurance firms, etc, we were able to build a platform, also embracing non-ZIKTO devices to the ecosystem.
Payment
- ZIKTO Pay
ZIKTO Pay is one of the major research & development (R&D) projects that aims to undercover new opportunities in wearable payment, and extend ZIKTO’s brand experience to O2O experience with NFC + EMV Standard to provide seamless ecosystem/platform benefits.
*The project included white-labelled hardware and a new service proposition that help The Challenge/The Balance provide seamless experience.
Technology
“Measuring walking postures from your arms.”
It’s medically proven that when you walk, the swing of your arms reflects the movement of your foot, since it is an automatic movement to compensate the angular momentum generated by legs. So ZIKTO Walk detects such elements as size of arc, rhythm, angle, speed, and frequency with Machine Learning (ML) Technology.
- Walking Posture Adjustment
With Its patented technology that analyzes walking posture through sensors including 6-Axis Accelerometer/Gyroscope (connected to a smartphone application), ZIKTO Walk records user’s walking pattern so when you walk with bad posture/habits such as hunching/slouching your back, putting hands in a pocket, watching your smartphone, etc, It gives you gentle nudge (vibration) on your wrist to alert you.
- Body Balance Analysis
Normally you wear ZIKTO Walk on preferred side of your arm, and when you want to check your balance score based on its algorithm.(Categories: shoulder, waist, and pelvis), you switch sides so It analyzes both side of your body.
- Biometric Authentication
Since everyone has a unique walking pattern, your walking pattern can be used as password as a bigger picture; you can unlock your smartphones (Android) and laptops/Mac with ZIKTO Walk and even cars in the short-term future.