"Double the Passion for What You Love" – RESPACE CEO Dong-in Yeo on the Value of Space

Gaining Triple the Joy with Double the Passion... RESPACE CEO Dong-in Yeo

The white business card I carefully received featured a caricature that looked exactly like him. On the back, one word caught my eye in a neat font, neither too stiff nor too soft: ‘RESPACE’.

Dong-in Yeo (Yonsei University, 26), CEO of the space-sharing platform ‘RESPACE’, was a charismatic leader who exuded happiness throughout our conversation simply by doing what he loves. The company he pours his passion into, RESPACE, is a platform that connects people in need of space with the locations they require. It also serves as a company that plans and hosts cultural content programs utilizing those spaces. CEO Yeo recalled that the beginning of RESPACE was far from easy.

"I once had to rent a space myself, and it was much harder than I expected," Yeo said. "Information about spaces was hard to come by, and prices were often inconsistent. Moreover, renting without formal procedures like a contract led to various issues, and I realized how difficult it was to resolve them."

Yeo took his first step with RESPACE by winning an award at the ‘2013 Startup Leading University Idea Presentation: Play & Talk’ held at Yonsei University. Thanks to this, he received initial investment capital, office space, and equipment from the university, along with access to information on relevant events.

Since then, RESPACE has grown in scale by experimenting with various cultural events. Starting this year, the company has officially launched its platform business (www.respace.co.kr). "In the short term, we plan to open the official platform site in December, and our ultimate goal is to make this platform accessible to a wide range of age groups," Yeo stated with bold ambition.

While talking to Yeo, one might momentarily feel like they are speaking with a seasoned entrepreneur, but at his core, he is an ordinary university student. Leading a business as a student must not have been easy. "There are pros and cons to being a student CEO. When collaborating with corporations, they sometimes offer more active support because I am a student. On the other hand, because I am much younger than the representatives of those companies, it can be difficult to gain trust, which leads to challenges in the business process."

He added, "While there are benefits and support available only to students, I sometimes wonder if I could run the company even better if I had experience working at a firm. To stand on equal footing with large corporations that have much more capital and experience, I have to put in twice the effort."

When asked about the most important attitude for starting a business, he emphasized: "Since the greatest advantage of entrepreneurship is doing what you want to do, the goal should be passion, not just money. While some earn significant profits, it is never easy. So, if you challenge yourself with a startup, I believe you must have an unwavering belief in whether it is something you truly love and can do well."

By Ki-won Moon, Student Reporter (Sungkyunkwan Univ.) Online Editor (jobnjoy@hankyung.com) Original Article: https://magazine.hankyung.com/job-joy/article/202102197733d