Category
- Band stories
Written by
Son Yang (Director)
Date
Empty
On February 7, 2022, not long after I linked the inbound investment review to Slack, we received a review request from a company called 'LLHR Co., Ltd.' Pushing aside the odd corporate name, I read on to see a very young team—including three graduates of Minjok Leadership Academy—with the ambition to revolutionize the secondary luxury goods market, starting with luxury goods repair. That is how my first connection with the Pappys team began.
Despite the small scale of luxury repair, the team's near-zero experience, and sometimes clumsy communication, the CEO's big dream, audacity (or forearm muscle), and their constant growth during the review process made me think, 'I want to be with this team in five years.' After investment review, there was a bit of drama during closing, with the CEO considering funding from others besides Bass, but fortunately, believing us when we said 'We'll be the most helpful shareholders for Pappys' growth,' we've now been together for about a year and a half.
But things didn’t go as smoothly as expected. We focused on branding before the product was fully developed, and with no real experience in building a product, our pace of improvement was slow, some co-founders left, and growth stalled. Honestly, in cases like this, most VCs start lowering their expectations, because with limited resources, it’s more effective to focus on portfolio companies with greater potential, both in sourcing and managing after investment. And to be frank, even if you try to care and help, it easily turns into mere nagging.
That was Pappys. When I had my New Balance product repaired two weeks ago, I was genuinely delighted to see how much the product experience had improved since my initial investment. The team quickly crafted a revenue model in just a few weeks and hit break-even point, while countless competitors dropped out of the market. Little by little, the team’s sense of inferiority faded and was replaced by confidence, as they get ready to take on what lies beyond repairs.
So, what changed? When the growth of our investee team stalled, what set BASS apart was its roster: including Growth Partner Lee Tae-yang, HR Manager __T82985_____, leading growth advisors from unicorn startups, and management who have run startups firsthand—in other words, bassists. In this post by Papiss CEO Kim Jeongmin, we share how these 'bassists' have been playing in harmony for our VIP 'vocalists.'
Before we begin—The mysterious name 'LLHR Co., Ltd.' stands for 'Low Risk High Return.' I am sure the team will make it happen.
[The story of Pappys, who turned profitable after meeting a VC who matched words with action]
Everyone can talk big and sound flashy.
But at the end of the day, what matters is whether your words and actions truly match.
Being consistent between words and actions is even more crucial for startups and VCs.
Just as startups must gradually turn their vision into reality, I believe VCs, too, need to prove their investment beliefs and vision through real decisions and post-investment management.
Just as startups must gradually turn their vision into reality, I believe VCs, too, need to prove their investment beliefs and vision through real decisions and post-investment management.
"If startups are the vocalists, then we are the bassists.
We aim to be the partner who provides vocalists with the very best rhythm and groove."
They may not be in the spotlight, but like bassists essential to a song, these VCs believe they're indispensable for perfection. Today, I'd like to share how we grew with BASS Ventures and how BASS Ventures truly walks the talk.
Meeting Lee Tae-yang
I’ve met that person too.
In October 2022, exactly five months after we secured Pre-A investment from BASS Ventures, Team Leader Yang Hyung-joon introduced us to Growth Partner Lee Tae-yang for the first time.
At the time, we were sure investment would let us dominate the market, but five months later, all we’d done was burn through cash with little to show for it. After raising 1.1 billion KRW, the very first thing we did was triple our Meta ad spend and run two YouTube sponsorships—thinking that just spending more on marketing would quickly bring more users.
When the team leader asked what I was planning to achieve our target this year, I was overly excited as I answered: we'd spent 30 million KRW on YouTube sponsorships. Looking back, it must have been exasperating to hear.
Instead of nagging me that 'now's not the time for marketing, focus on product first,' Base introduced me to Partner Lee Tae-yang.
How people who've never really worked, work
Before diving into how Taeyang helped us, a short intro: we're Team LRHR, running the luxury goods repair platform Pappys. Three years ago, it was me as CEO and my co-founders Geunyoung and Wonjoon, all the same age. Now, twelve ambitious members have come together to reshape the secondary luxury goods market.
When we started the business, all three of us were just 22, and none of us had any work history—or even real experience in society. That means from the start until now, everything has been brand new for us.
We were lucky to meet investors who believed in our potential, so the company had money, but we didn't know how to use it right. As I said, after the investment we launched aggressive marketing, and metrics did bump up a bit, but as the investment winter hit, we realized we needed a more sustainable approach to growth.
As the concept of 'Carrying Capacity' was popular then, we decided to turn off all our ads—'Let's find Pappys' C.C. too!' To our shock, as soon as the ads stopped, our transaction volume was exactly the same as our very first month a year ago.
As much as we didn’t want to admit it, we had to face the fact that our product hadn’t improved at all over the past year. So, all eight of us on the team agreed to focus solely on product improvement for the time being.
First, everyone started working using sprints. At first, everything from planning, scheduling, to sharing results was a total mess. We just blindly adopted sprints since everyone was talking about it, but no one on the team had ever actually worked that way, so of course it was bumpy in the beginning.
Just like a doctor using a stethoscope first, Mr. Taeyang started by watching our sprint planning sessions. The result was disastrous. Unable to watch the confusion from start to finish any longer, Taeyang finally stood up and spent the next hour teaching us the purpose and method of planning, even drawing diagrams on the whiteboard.
To be honest, I didn’t fully understand what Mr. Taeyang was saying at that moment. But as we kept tweaking and checking what worked for us every sprint—making sure we weren’t just creating systems for the sake of it—there were times when I suddenly thought, "Ah, so that’s what he meant back then!"
Starting with sprints, learning how to write PRDs, do A/B testing—from today’s perspective, it took us about six months to actually learn these basic things. Once we turned off all ads and focused on the core product, transaction volume went up even with zero marketing. Since most luxury repair needs start with search, we developed features focused on SEO.
Price content SEO page
Actual Naver SEO top ranking results
To make communication between repairers and customers smoother, we introduced a chat system, and also launched a mobile app at the same time.
As a result, our metrics grew slowly, and in May 2023, we finally succeeded in monetizing—Pappys was becoming a ‘money-making service.’ Since we’d now learned how to play our chords, we decided it was time for regular growth sessions with Taeyang to learn how to really ‘play the song.’
Every other Tuesday, 10 AM—Tanning Day at Bamboo Tower
BASE Ventures is located on the 12th floor of Bamboo Tower near Seonjeongneung Station. The building is tall and the walls are all glass, so the sunlight is excellent. Since I tend to sweat easily, I always end up sweating buckets whenever I go to BASE's office. And when Taeyang started firing sharp questions, I’d sweat like it was pouring rain 😰
That’s why within the team, we started calling the day we’d meet Taeyang for advice ‘Tanning Day’. Tanning Day with Mr. Sun at Bamboo Tower... sounds kind of poetic, doesn’t it?
But honestly, it wasn’t all that romantic. Tanning Day was more like a time to shine a harsh light on our product’s shortcomings—a time that left me burning up inside.
Features built without hypotheses, lots of content languishing without any lesson runs, and even when we knew our weaknesses, a team culture so slow to change... Every Tanning Day, I’d get anxious and try all sorts of things with several people, but nothing really changed.
After some internal discussion, we concluded that our core issue was a lack of data and hypotheses. No matter how many improvements we made, without proper analysis of results, we couldn’t decide, so we just repeated gut-feeling fixes.
That's why we brought in an analytics tool called Hackle, and started using data and hypotheses to review lesson runs with Taeyang every other week and plan our next moves.
That's why we brought in an analytics tool called Hackle, and started using data and hypotheses to review lesson runs with Taeyang every other week and plan our next moves.
Ten times annual sales, quarterly turnaround, and the descent
Tanning Day began on June 13, running for five months and ending with its eleventh and final session on October 31.
After a year and a half with an overloaded, unanalyzed main page, we radically simplified it to focus just on conversion. The most important consumer journey—submitting a repair request, the ‘Wow moment’—was revamped to need minimal typing and just a few clicks. We expanded categories from just bags, shoes, and clothing to now include watches, laundry, and upcycling, growing the user pool.
Our old main page was endlessly long
Today's simple main page
Refined repair intake process
Looking back, I think the most important lesson Taeyang wanted to teach us was ‘customer satisfaction.’ To satisfy customers, the product needs to be as simple and intuitive as possible, and on the business side, you keep planning new, relevant services to grow the customer base. These may all sound obvious, but this was the period for us to learn and embody these basics in practice.
I always wondered how Taeyang knew both 'product' and 'business' so well, but in hindsight, he always approached everything with a “customer-centered” mindset. That’s why every Tanning Day, the lineup was different—PO, designer, marketer, operator—every department at Pappys wanted to learn more about our customers through conversations with Taeyang.
Transaction volume graph from September '22 to October '23
Just as aiming high for Seoul National University gets you into Yonsei or Korea University, asking ourselves 'What would Taeyang do?' before every decision helped Pappys grow so much. This year, our annual revenue grew tenfold versus last year, and thanks to monetization since May, we even posted a surprise profit in Q3.
Also, most competitors have shut down or run into trouble, leaving Pappys virtually the only luxury repair platform in the market. On top of that, with the help of Base's HR Manager __T82986_____, we've finished building a crew of 12 ambitious young teammates. Now, all that's left is for us to keep performing at our best.
I’m not sure if he thought we didn’t need more guidance, or if he gave up on us (probably the former... I hope...), but either way, these regular meetings with Taeyang gave us so much and finally came to an end.
People who have to try the worst to learn
It’s kind of gross, but this is how I describe our team:
No matter how much people explain things or talk at us from the sidelines, we’re the kind of people who just can’t be convinced until we experience it ourselves.
No matter how much people explain things or talk at us from the sidelines, we’re the kind of people who just can’t be convinced until we experience it ourselves.
Sometimes, this leads to unnecessary trial and error and inefficiency. But I’ve also found out firsthand that once everyone really gets the 'why' through actual experience, execution speed and impact skyrocket—so I plan to keep learning the hard way, if I must.
At 22, starting a business as a student, I found myself thinking about this at every turning point throughout the journey.
“Ah, what if there’s a secret to success out there that I just don’t know?”
So, I met with people with major startup backgrounds—like former Zigzag CMO __T82987_____, Watcha co-founder __T82988_____, Ridi COO Shin Eun-seon and CEO Kang Jun-yeol, and Rapolabs CEOs Hong Joo-young and Choi Hee-min, who are EIRs at Base—hoping to learn 'secrets' to business that I didn’t know but they did.
But the more I talked with these people, the more I realized there are no ‘secrets’ to business or success like I’d imagined. These successful people had similar worries, in similar situations, to mine—what set them apart was that while I would hesitate and worry, they’d act, finding some way to execute, even if it meant using their gums when there were no teeth. In the end, I learned, as cliché as it sounds, that what matters is moving quickly and learning from failure, instead of blaming your experience, age, or situation.
It might sound anticlimactic that, through Mr. Taeyang and the partners at Base, what I learned was simply how important it is to get hands-on experience. But had we not realized that simple truth, we might've wasted all our cash on surface-level fixes—like just hiring experienced staff or spending more on marketing—and disappeared without solving our problems at all.
No matter how good the bassist, if the vocalist doesn’t practice, the song will still be a mess. A year and a half after investment, having experienced firsthand the best rhythm and beats that BASS delivers, I now get it: these people provide startups with the very best beat they can, and are truly committed to helping teams grow.
And now, the rest is on us, the vocalists.
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