There are too many things to consider when you develop a service, starting from a building the homepage, application development, to UI/UX. As you try to multitask these, you encounter a situation where you can’t even do what you’re good at. What if someone else was taking care of these things for you? Blockmedia met with Tech Space’s CEO SangGeun Lee, who is currently developing an ‘easy back-end task management service’ so that you can just focus on what you’re best at.

Q: Please introduce yourself briefly

A: I’m the CEO of Tech Space and our office was just moved to Seoul Blockchain Support Center in April. We are developing a back-end server that doesn’t require any coding. We are aiming for Beta Service launch sometime in June.

Q: What kind of company is Tech Space?

“We started on January of 2018. Before we were doing the back-end server development, we were into B2C, application development industry. Especially we did some text-mining projects based on AI technology. With the know-how we got from a year in the business, we jumped into back-end market. We used to be called CLOPI until last year; this year we got selected as a youth startup project and we are working hard for it.”

Q: A lot of people aren’t familiar with back-end, front-end. Could you please explain it briefly?

“Front-end is what you see, things like the actual application, android, iPhone, and web screens. Whereas back-end is developing what happens behind the scene that you don’t see, things like database, and tracking-management.”

Q: Can you tell us more about the service?

“Whether it’s back-end or front-end, a lot of it is based on knowing how to code. These requires a high level of technical expertise. So what we do with CLOPI is to allow the users to manage their back-end servers easily without having to code. It all started so that people can do their back-end tasks easier.”

Q: We heard that you are also using blockchain technology.

“We are still doing some research on how to incorporate blockchain into our service. In many possible sectors, we are thinking of applying blockchain to IoT. For people in IoT industry, especially those who manage SmartFarm or SmartFactory for their businesses, the security is a key. One wrong tracking path can result in overall malfunction of the machine; so we are trying to apply blockchain to IoT in order to prevent such security-related malfunction by pausing the task and resetting it automatically when a majority of response rate doesn’t seem right.”

Q: The name of the service is CLOPI, what’s the behind story for this name?

“This is a little technical, but it combines CLOUD and API. Within the CLOPI logo is a shape of cloud. It was named so that it could have both merits of Cloud and API.”

Q: Why did you start the business and the service?

“When we were doing the text-mining using the AI technology, it was something that we already thought of doing. What we wanted to add to it was a curating system in which the AI would recommend similar contents to the users based on what they usually wrote. The idea was pretty good but we didn’t have a concrete business model, and we couldn’t apply BM because the actual users were different from the targeted market. As we were doing these services externally, we found the pattern from constant communication with the customers. So then we used that pattern to make a module to help us work more efficient and faster. Afterwards, we got more requests for this feature so we decided to officially start the CLOPI project. Based on the simulation we ran for the past year, it seems pretty promising and we are expecting to expand the business.”

Q: How are the current customers reacting to this service?

“The owners really like it. A lot of them are seeing a cost cut of almost half, or even down to 1/3 of what they used to spend. For IT companies, the cost of labor is a huge burden. This labor cost accumulates as the task time increases. So since our service allows the companies to build something that used to take half a year, but now within three months or even a month, of course the owners really like it.”

Q: When is the official launch?

“At the end of June, we plan to test it as CBT; and after about two months of testing, we expect to officially launch the service sometime during August. However, we plan to launch it overseas first before the domestic launch.”

Q: Who are the customers?

“People who are making SNS applications, English education solution company, and some SmartFarm companies that are using IoT. We are discussing expanding the service to SmartFactory in the near future.”

Q. Sounds like a variety of companies are using it. Do you need some previous knowledge in order to use it? 

“It would be better if you at least knew the basic structure of the servers. So we are working to solve this problem through a blog. We are trying to help the users so that they can make even more through CLOPI and learn it naturally.”

Q: What’s the main advantage of CLOPI?

“A cost and time reduction. What follows next is an improved efficiency compared to the original solution, which has been proven through previous references. Efficiency is also based on the reduction of cost and time.”

Q: We heard the employee benefit is good.

“Usually a coding-related companies have very tight schedule. Their start time is set but never the end time. As I got used to this type of schedule, I started thinking there’s no reason for people to start their day early and end it so late. I insist that it’s better for the company if an employee is able to focus on his or her task during a set amount of time, so we go to work at 10 and ends at 6:30. The work efficiency has increased, so we are trying to keep this rule as it is.”

Q: What’s the goal of 2020?

“To provide our service to the overseas market. There’s not much opportunity in Korea because not that many people know it and there’s limited technology. The situation isn’t that different overseas, but the goal is to try to develop by competing with advanced technologies because there are many different fields.”

Q: Anything to add?

“We are launching our CBT in June. Though it still needs a lot of work, we want anyone who’s interested, to test it. We ask you to take interest. Thank you.”