[Young Domain] A Korean College Student’s Detour: What It Means to Start a Business

From Running a Food Truck to Attracting Venture Capital

Becoming a Unicorn Requires Reckless Courage

What kind of life should I live? Ever since I entered university after high school, where I had to study frantically just to get in, I've found myself living with this question in mind as I pondered the direction of my life. When I was young, I dreamed of becoming a great person like Admiral Yi Sun-sin, a hero in the pages of famous biographies, but as soon as I turned twenty, such dreams began to feel irrelevant. Even after graduating from high school and entering university, it felt like there was still a predetermined path ahead. The only real difference was that I was now legally allowed to drink alcohol.

"I can't die like this!" Like a line from a song, from that moment on I started searching for a dream I could dedicate my life to. Then, in my second year of university, my older sister happened to tell me about a team in Los Angeles who made and sold Bibimbap from a food truck. The very thought sounded incredibly romantic. I took a leave of absence from school and went straight to the U.S. That was my first real experience engaging in what people call "business."

Running a business is fast-paced. It's a job where you get a daily report card, so improvement happens quickly. Since it was a food truck, I could experiment with selling locations and sign placement—making it the perfect environment for testing. As an engineering student who was always in the university lab, this was my first experience of being thrown into the real-world laboratory. Looking back, it was a lucky time when I instinctively experienced what people call the "Build-Measure-Learn" loop of Lean Startup methodology. Through my business, I developed the fundamentals I needed—product, pricing, inventory management, cost control, and strategy.

Then, one day while running the business, I had a shocking conversation with a friend my age. When I asked what he did, he told me, "I'm a software developer and I'm going to change the world, so every day is exciting." It was a completely different tone from what my friends in Korea usually talked about. It felt like I was hearing about the dreams I'd lost as a child. While I could make money with Bibimbap, it suddenly seemed that with software, I might be able to change the world—just like Google did.

Most of us follow a fixed path in life. If you attend a top school, you get a good job, and the elite path is always respected—yet it's a life where the work you do is also set in stone. I always thought this was normal and never considered deviating from that path. But seeing someone my age build his own company, I felt a mix of admiration, jealousy, and curiosity. I made up my mind: I wanted to live like that too, to be someone who creates value and makes the world better. So, after returning to Korea and finishing my military service, I immediately started my own company.

Because I started with a great cause, I thought everyone would support me. Instead, most people simply thought this was "good experience" for me—including my own parents. As the years passed, my loved ones began to worry. They said I was missing out on a golden opportunity to get a good job and that I might not even graduate.

Then, in 2021—the very first year I started my company—I received a ministerial award at the national competition "Challenge K-Startup" hosted by the government. The following year, in 2022, I secured investment from a venture capital (VC) firm. Even with seemingly impressive achievements, the perception around me didn't change. In Korea, it is so unusual for a university student to start a business that people couldn't even understand the concept. I felt like a unicorn—one of a kind.

Startup 'Bacatio', led by CEO Ji Hyunjoon, participated in CES 2026, the world's largest electronics and IT exhibition held in Las Vegas, USA, last January. The photo shows CEO Ji and team members smiling at each other at the Bacatio booth on site. Photo by Ji Hyunjoon

However, many of the entrepreneurs who have recently changed the world were either university students or in their twenties, having just left school. That was true for Steve Jobs, Facebook, and Elon Musk. These successful young founders all share some common traits: a reckless courage to pull off what "shouldn't" work, perhaps even ignorance, and extraordinary persistence and time investment. They do it because that's all they have, but perhaps that's also the most important ingredient for success. That's why I thought that we shouldn't simply mimic adults, but start companies by making the most of our own strengths.

So, it has already been four years since I decided that if I was going to live a "unicorn's" life misunderstood by others, I might as well set out on a journey to become a real unicorn. Could the "detour" taken by a university student in Korea really become the very challenge that sparks change in the country? I genuinely believe that, if we create value for the world, we can truly transform Korea in a big way.

Ji Hyunjun, CEO of Bacatio

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This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.