Underduck: Vibe coding? We've been doing this since before GPT.

A new challenge for Always Mafia, which has been operating like a "one-man unicorn" since the pre-AI era.

"Vibe Coding" has been a hot topic in Silicon Valley and the tech scene for quite some time now. This concept, coined by Andrej Karpathy, describes a new trend where individuals can command AI using natural language and independently manage everything from planning to development and design. The era of the "super-individual" has truly arrived.

But long before others were amazed by AI tools, there were people who proved this method with their bare hands, without any tools . They were early members of Revit's Problem Solver, achieving explosive growth in early 2022, before GPT even emerged. Today, we'll be introducing Underduck, the band behind BASS Ventures.

1. Problem Solver: A "one-man army" that blurs the lines between planning, design, and development.

Their roots lie in Revit (Always)'s core role, the "Problem Solver (PS)." PS stands for "end-to-end problem solver," a person who breaks down the boundaries between development, planning, and design, and directly performs all necessary tasks to solve a problem.

Overwhelming speed and efficiency

In a typical functionally segmented organization, communication costs increase dramatically as the number of employees increases. This is because planners must persuade developers, and designers must review the results. In contrast, Always's PS organization handled all these processes independently, dramatically reducing the time spent on persuasion and meetings. This efficiency became a powerful driving force for early-stage startups to focus solely on core issues and break into the market.

Past limitations and the scarcity of talent

However, in 2021-2022, when generative AI did not exist, there were clear limitations.

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Physical barriers to coding: Even with the lower barrier to learning software, writing and modifying code directly still required significant time. Low coding proficiency created bottlenecks in work, inevitably leading to frequent bugs and technical debt.

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Talent scarcity: Above all, talent with planning and execution skills, as well as the ability to persevere through the challenges of coding, are extremely rare in the market.

The people who created 'Allfarm', the driving force behind Always's growth.

Underduck's co-founders, Lee Yu-seong and Han Ji-seong, have proven their unparalleled success within Revit. After countless attempts, they created "All Farm," the killer feature that drove Always's growth in 2022-2023.

Benchmarking Pinduoduo's Orchard game, Allfarm has masterfully combined commerce and gamification to create a daily user experience that compels users to log into the app. This has become a key driver of growth, maintaining retention, rapidly acquiring new users, increasing dwell time, and driving conversions, even amidst competition from major platforms.

And Underduck's co-founders not only planned and developed every feature themselves, but also relentlessly focused on key growth indicators and continuously improved them, demonstrating their ability to deliver end-to-end results. The success of Allfarm at the time was so phenomenal that similar games were launched in various IT industries, including e-commerce.

AI meets Original PS

Team Underduck entered the AI era with this rare DNA. With the coding implementation bottleneck removed from those responsible for the entire cycle, execution speeds increased explosively.

Even in the age of AI, "teams" remain crucial. No matter how advanced the tools become, the work is ultimately done by people. Based on the deep trust built on long-term collaboration, they quickly make decisions and deploy solutions without unnecessary arguments. The reason they never tired, even during the first six months of building and discarding over 20 products, is because of their mutual trust and the clear principle of learning from failure.

2. Toki: An AI travel planner that intelligently reflects my tastes.

Just share your shorts and reels on Toki Automatically extract and organize location information

Create content-based itineraries

After several relentless pivots, Team Underduck is currently focusing on the AI travel planner, Toki.

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Problem: These days, MZ generation searches for travel information through shorts and reels. However, even when they discover great places, they simply "save" them, failing to fully utilize them. And AI travel planner services only offer vague and predictable suggestions, failing to create a personalized itinerary.

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Solution: Toki is a service where you simply share a short-form link you like. The AI extracts locations and information, then creates a personalized travel itinerary. Ultimately, it aims to be an all-in-one travel agent, allowing you to view all travel information at a glance and book various travel products.

What's remarkable is that this service took just 20 days from ideation to release on the App Store . This is possible because both individuals are planners, designers, and developers. While specialized organizations waste time on communication costs, these individuals focus on the essentials and produce a product.

Ultra-fast experiments toward becoming the world's No. 1

Their vision extends beyond Korea. Their ultimate goal is to create a "globally leading consumer AI service." Their strategy is to refine the service's core value in the Korean market and then immediately launch global experiments.

In fact, they recently decided to enter the Japanese market as their first global target. Just six days after deciding to enter the market, they deployed their service and began gathering feedback from local users. This clearly demonstrates their unique and unwavering execution style, where they go from conducting market research to actually validating the product in the same timeframe as a typical team.

3. Why did you invest?

BASS Ventures invested not only because of the service called 'Toki' (of course, Toki is great and growing fast!), but also because of the team's overwhelming execution speed , obsession with 10x impact, and uncompromising pursuit of talent density that will ensure that even if the service fails, they will create a viable business .

The essence of 'Team Underduck' that we have noticed is as follows:

Overwhelming execution speed (persistence): For them, planning and execution are synonymous. From deciding to enter the Japanese market to launching, it took just six days. As evidenced by their six-month journey of building and destroying 20 products, they are "execution itself," devoting time instead of thinking to writing code, deploying it, and listening to the market's response.

Obsession (Ambition) with 10x Impact: They aren't interested in incremental 10% or 20% improvements. As they have since the Always days, they are solely focused on opportunities for "10x growth" that can turn the game around. For massive impact, they boldly ignore the so-called "nonessential" tasks and pour all their energy into solving essential problems.

Uncompromising Talent Density (Leadership): Even within Revit, renowned for its strict talent standards, these individuals were more dedicated than anyone else to maintaining talent density. It's exciting to see how this stubborn standard of never hiring anyone but the best will translate into action in the era of AI.

4. In conclusion: What matters is not AI, but the people who achieve results with AI.

In an era where AI does the coding and designing, where does startup competitiveness come from? As technological barriers lower, paradoxically, I believe the tenacity and ambition of those wielding the tools will determine success. While some people are captivated by the act of doing something or the methodology itself, others are already iterating at breakneck speed, refining their product quality and demonstrating it through their own success.

To make Underduck's crazy dream great, BASS Ventures will be with you from the closest distance.

5. ❤️‍🔥 IMPORTANT NOTICE: We're looking for Underduck's first team member ‼️

The team, which has been in stealth mode for a while, is finally looking for its first teammate. They say they're looking for someone who's a perfect fit for the team, so please share this information with anyone who might be interested!

Go to Announcement: Careers Page

#VibeCoding #RevIt #Always #EarlyMember #SeedInvestment #AINative #Solopreneur #ProductEngineer #Startup #BASS Ventures

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