Lee Seung-gun—or “SG” for foreigners unfamiliar with Korean pronunciation—has a traditional startup founder story that mixes tenacity, repeated failure, final success…and dental care.
It began in 2011, when Lee left a Samsung-owned personal hospital to begin Viva Republica. “I began as a dentist, like all the opposite Asian youngsters whose mother and father need their children to be neurosurgeons or dentists,” he says with fun.
“After I was 29 or 30, I had no dream. I simply needed to be a well-known dentist,” he remembers. However he quickly grew stressed with simply serving to individuals on a person scale. “To create affect at scale, I shortly realized that I needed to concentrate on know-how.”
His push into entrepreneurship had a troublesome begin. He devoted 150 million received of financial savings—about $105,000—in direction of his new enterprise. “For the primary 5 years, I failed eight occasions,” he says. He reels off a few what he calls “garbage concepts”: Social media, a voting app.
A Bloomberg report from 2018 famous that, one level, Lee had simply 20,000 received ($14) within the financial institution, and was pleading with the households of staff to allow them to maintain working with out pay.
Then, he discovered an concept that labored: a cash switch service. “Toss was one other silly concept, however we had been loopy sufficient to do it, as a result of we had nothing to lose,” he says with a smile. “And right here we’re.”
Nearly 15 years after its founding in 2011, Toss is now half of a bigger fintech “tremendous app,” a single platform that mixes banking, insurance coverage, inventory buying and selling, and cash switch providers.
South Koreans have a mean of 5 financial institution accounts and 4 bank cards—which suggests a whole lot of completely different monetary accounts to juggle. Lee thinks that’s why Toss has proved so standard, as Koreans have “extra events to examine their funds.”
Viva Republica is now considered one of Korea’s most outstanding startups, price about $7 billion after a 2022 funding spherical. The corporate boasts backers like GIC, Paypal, and Qualcomm Ventures. Lee has additionally turn into considered one of South Korea’s latest billionaires, in keeping with a 2021 estimate from Forbes.
The Toss platform claims to have near 30 million registered customers, which might be equal to round 60% of South Korea’s complete inhabitants. Over half of the corporate’s 25 million month-to-month lively customers go to the app a minimum of 10 occasions a day.
“Our month-to-month lively userbase is definitely a bit shy of that of Instagram [in Korea],” he boasts.
Tremendous-app success
Asia is roofed in super-apps, the place platforms like Tencent’s WeChat embody providers like messaging, funds, meals supply, information, video games, and extra. Finance is a well-liked service for budding super-apps, even for non-finance corporations, with Singapore’s Seize and Sea, and Indonesia’s GoTo amongst Asian platforms with fintech divisions.
Tremendous apps maintain customers on a single platform, quite than sending them off to a different firm. That permits for cross-promotion, useful resource sharing, and different help between varied providers. It additionally makes it tougher to change to a different platform: If every thing you ever want is on one app, why would you strive one thing else?
But tremendous apps haven’t taken off within the West, even because the mannequin wins followers like X proprietor Elon Musk, who hopes to show his social media community right into a monetary providers platform.
Lee’s principle is that tremendous apps are a greater match for the Asian web, which initially lacked a lot of the digital infrastructure that underpins U.S. startups.
Within the U.S., a brand new startup can depend on a plethora of different corporations that present supporting providers. In Asia—even in rich international locations like South Korea—these corporations simply don’t exist. Meaning a platform like Toss, or its extra established Large Tech friends Naver and Kakao, needed to construct these providers itself.
“Once we launched our flagship cash switch service, it was cherished by so many customers, so we had been capable of develop very quick. We shortly realized that every one the opposite vertical sectors of finance weren’t coated by different gamers,” he explains. “There was an enormous void within the Korea market, so we had been capable of seize these alternatives.”
Startup milestones
Viva Republica hit a key milestone final 12 months, when it reported its first annual revenue since its founding over a decade in the past. The corporate reported a web revenue of 21.3 billion Korean received ($15 million) for 2024, in comparison with a 216.6 billion received ($152 million) loss the 12 months earlier than. Income additionally jumped 43% to hit 1.96 trillion received ($1.4 billion).
Lee says the first-ever revenue is because of a concentrate on rising income quite than constructing market share. “In contrast to different fintech gamers, person progress doesn’t actually correlate with income. Most of our income doesn’t come from customers, however as a substitute from our enterprise prospects,” drawn to Toss’s point-of-sale program, or its promoting alternatives.
“For the following three to 5 years, it’s going to largely be a narrative round buying extra enterprise prospects,” he says.
Viva Republica’s revenue additionally got here from robust progress in Toss Securities, the platform’s inventory buying and selling service. Lee notes its the one service that prices customers a price, and contributes about 20% of the platform’s whole income.
He added that Toss Securities, after its launch in 2021, grew shortly because of the Toss superapp.
“It took Robinhood two years to get two million securities accounts,” Lee says. “We achieved that in 5 days.”
Toss has larger penetration amongst youthful Koreans, with as many as 90% of these of their twenties utilizing the platform. Lee says that whereas there aren’t a whole lot of variations between Toss’s youthful and older customers, one main divergence is that newer generations are extra open to investing in international shares, primarily within the U.S.
Now that Viva Republica has discovered a worthwhile enterprise mannequin, is the corporate on a path to a public debut, the following large milestone for a startup?
Lee says that Viva Republica plans to go public “within the close to future,” however declined to provide particular particulars on timing and site.
In accordance with native media, Viva Republica is contemplating a U.S. IPO, abandoning plans to checklist in South Korea late final 12 months. The corporate reportedly believes that Korean fairness markets received’t correctly worth a fintech platform like Toss. (Lee declined to share particulars when pressed.)
Shares in competing fintech providers KakaoBank and KakaoPay have misplaced round 70% and 80% of their worth since their respective 2021 IPOs.
Market confidence
Korean equities typically undergo from low valuations—typically dubbed the “Korea Low cost”. Analysts blame the risk posed by close by North Korea and poor company governance among the many nation’s chaebols, the large conglomerates that dominate the financial system. The nation thought of passing market reforms that might unlock worth, just like what was efficiently pursued by its neighbor Japan.
But reforms have stalled on account of a extra urgent political disaster.
In December, then-President Yoon Suk Yeol tried to impose martial legislation. After widespread protests from the general public and the opposition, Yoon withdrew his declaration only a few hours later.
Lawmakers shortly suspended and impeached Yoon, spurring months of political instability. Issues at the moment are beginning to come to an in depth after the nation’s Constitutional Courtroom upheld Yoon’s impeachment, formally eradicating him from workplace—the second time a president has been eliminated in lower than a decade. Korea will maintain snap presidential elections in early June.
Nonetheless, Lee thinks the disaster exhibits South Korea’s strengths. “I’m gaining extra confidence available in the market,” he says. “All the things was executed by the structure, and the method was peaceable.”
“That is the tipping level the place we actually have to concentrate on financial progress, not solely from businessmen, however from politicians as nicely,” Lee continues.
South Korea is grappling with disillusionment amongst the younger, pissed off with excessive ranges of debt, unaffordable housing, and extra restricted social mobility. That’s partly why many have turned to retail buying and selling in shares, or much more speculative property like cryptocurrencies.
The East Asian nation, a serious exporter, can be frantically negotiating with the U.S. to alleviate tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, together with 25% auto tariffs and 26% “reciprocal tariffs.”
When requested whether or not uncertainty extra broadly is affecting confidence amongst particular person Koreans, Lee factors to progress in Toss’s adverts enterprise final 12 months as proof that the nation’s financial system continues to be robust.
And he stays bullish on South Korea as a horny marketplace for anybody that wishes to get into fintech.
“Regardless of its restricted inhabitants,” Lee says, “the Korean market is huge.”
The interview was performed in collaboration with Fortune Korea.
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
