I remember my first conversation with Dongwook Jang in 2023. Longevity was one topic. Another was this: expensive developer salaries were the reason IT startups needed investment, but if AI replaced that cost, where would the money need to go instead?
Given the way the company is currently structured, the answer is obviously tokens. Until now, I had been using credits from frontier model companies, but after trying Fable5, I realized that this is where my seed funding would melt away. The good old days of celebrating the absence of payroll and fixed costs are over. Maybe all the effort I put into getting comfortable with AI was just a warm-up for what begins now.
Under the startup playbook of the previous era, I preferred bootstrapping without investment. I accepted an investment from Kakao Ventures because I believed that, to confront uncertainties such as the weaponization of tokens in the AI era, I first needed to work alongside people who could endure and navigate that uncertainty with me. Looking back, all of this was foreshadowed that day in 2023, and it feels as though our eventually joining forces in some form was inevitable.
Meeting people from Kakao Ventures activates my prefrontal cortex. I am grateful and reassured, and I will do everything I can to honor my principle of creating a win-win-win.