Hyangro Win Challenge: Complete the Course with Hyangro

Hello, this is Hyangro.
I hope everyone is staying healthy and doing well.
I'm having a hectic week with this week's Black Friday event :)
(You all bought a lot of courses, right!? 😊😊)

If you ask what the hottest book in the IT startup industry is these days, I think most people would mention CEO Park So-ryeong's new book Passing Through Failure.

When I first saw this book, my thought was "the Korean version of Ben Horowitz's *The Hard Thing About Hard Things*."

It wasn't a glamorous success story, but rather contained the full weight of responsibility that a manager must bear and the moments of difficult decision-making.
At the time I was reading this book, I also had many complicated thoughts, so there were many parts throughout the book that reflected my current situation.

I don't think I'm the only one who felt this way.
Many content companies and YouTube channels hosted book talks with CEO Park So-ryeong, where we could hear her candid stories.
It was great to be able to dive much deeper through these book talks, as they conveyed CEO Park So-ryeong's deeper thoughts and experiences that couldn't be delivered in the book, but on the other hand, there was also some disappointment.
This was because most of the interviews and book talks so far have been focused on the personal narrative and emotional reflections of 'entrepreneur Park So-ryeong' as an individual.

While there were many stories about the most painful aspects of being an entrepreneur such as VC, investment, and layoffs, there weren't many stories about being a product maker, which makes up a large part of IT companies.

Rather than just how difficult it was as a founder or what kind of comfort was needed, I kept thinking that "the experience as a general leader who has launched and operated three IT products" - Publy (content membership) / Careerly (SNS) / WeHire (SaaS) - over 10 years is truly invaluable experience that should not be lost, not only for me who is currently building products at an IT startup, but for many others as well.

So this time, together with CEO Park So-ryeong, we will be hosting an "Online Live Book Talk" for leaders, developers, PMs, and designers who create IT products.
This is because we hoped that this valuable record would not be consumed merely as an emotional resonance.

A CEO's struggles over 10 years, managing three different IT products (content, SNS, SaaS) without being a developer or having a PO background, along with the decision-making processes and outcomes at each stage of the products.

In this session, I'm going to dig deep into the 'real problems' that product makers face in their actual work.

[Publly (Content Membership) / Careerly (SNS) / WeHire (SaaS) - Trial and Error Experiences from Building Three Different Services]

• "What metrics did you use to measure growth for early products that didn't have paid models?"

• "What was the earliest sign that made you realize 'we shouldn't have started this product' after investing time and resources?"

[The realistic sense of helplessness experienced as a non-IT founder & leader when leading a product organization without knowledge of technology and products]

• "When a CEO without product experience hires their first developer or CTO, how did you determine they were a 'good developer'?"

• "When three businesses operate within one company, there's inevitable conflict between revenue-generating and cost-incurring organizations. As CEO, how did you coordinate between them?"

• "When you emphasized 'talent density,' what qualities did you consider most important beyond technical skills when hiring senior developers?"

Rather than simply introducing the book, I share with the author of the Korean edition of "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" the decision-making processes, journeys, and outcomes of our product organization over the past 10 years.

We invite those who will gain practical insights beyond that.

📅 Schedule Information

• Application Page: https://inf.run/xZb4s

• Application Period: Until December 4th (Thu)

• Live Event: December 5th (Fri)

For those who have concerns as makers and leaders creating IT products, I believe the story of CEO Park So-ryeong over the past 10 years will be of great help.
(In addition to the questions I've prepared, if you have any questions for CEO Park So-ryeong, who has created three IT products over 10 years, please leave them in the comments.
I will ask them on your behalf at the event.)

Hello everyone! How are you doing?

It's already been 10 days since the Chuseok challenge was followed by the completion of the 'Hyangno' Win challenge.

Is everyone building their passion furnace, laying bricks one by one beneath the surface?

I recently watched videos by Romantic Runner Shim Jin-seok through a team member's introduction.

Mr. Sim Jin-seok is a runner who achieved '20 consecutive overall podium finishes' in marathon competitions in just about 5 months, from March 1, 2025, to August 23, 2025.
What's amazing is that he's not a professional athlete, but works as a scaffolder at construction sites on weekdays and only participates in marathons on weekends.

Even people who have worked on construction sites for a long time say that working as a scaffolder is so difficult that they stick their tongues out in exhaustion.
I was very curious about how you manage to place 1st or 2nd in marathon competitions every time while doing such physically demanding work every day.

You can see how Sim Jin-seok spends his days in videos that capture his daily life.
Since he has to go to work early in the morning for his scaffolding job, it's difficult to find separate time for training, so he uses his commute to and from work for training.

Every day, I wake up at 5 AM and run to work as training, wearing work clothes and work shoes.
Instead of a smartwatch, I wear an old Casio watch and run 8km to the subway station, matching my pace with road signs.
On rainy days, I wear a raincoat and run, they say.

Throughout watching this video, I found myself reflecting on myself a lot.

This morning I wasn't feeling well, so I went to the hospital and found out I had a cold.
It wasn't a severe cold, but the doctor suggested I should rest for a day, and I agreed, so while I was resting and watching this video, I found myself reflecting on how many excuses I had been making to myself.

Of course, as a professional, I think it's natural to improve equipment and surrounding environment for better performance and achievements.
However, after deciding to do something, when taking breaks for various reasons along the way, I did wonder whether those reasons were really worth taking a break for?

So I ended up writing this post in a hurry.
If you've had that thought, I was reminded once again that there's something romantic about taking action in whatever form you can in your current situation, rather than waiting until you have all the equipment or environment set up.

A while back, one of our team members suggested that I try doing a newsletter.
Creating a newsletter subscription page and promoting the newsletter itself feels like... it would make me hesitate to take on more work 😃
If there's content or thoughts that have inspired me, I'll start right away by sharing them as updates with those who have participated in the challenge.

Thank you all for your hard work today.
There are only 49 days left in this year.
If you have any goals you've been putting off during these remaining 49 days, let's start them right away.
Just like athlete Shim Jin-seok, who wears his work clothes and work shoes and uses his daily 8km commute time for marathon practice 😃
I'll also start working on the things I've been putting off.

I have recorded the final live sessions from the 2 challenges.
I plan to edit each of the final live sessions into 20-30 minute segments and make them available for others to watch 😃
I will share them again once the edited videos are ready.

Hello, this is Hyangro 🙂

Finally, Halloween is tomorrow!
This week passed by so quickly that I don't even know how it went by 🙂

Tomorrow, this 'Hyangro'ween completion challenge will take place.
For just tomorrow, let's spend our own time together as 'Hyangro'ween instead of Halloween!
So I created an open KakaoTalk room where we can chat together.

https://open.kakao.com/o/giPv2GZh
Let's have fun chatting together here tomorrow!

Tomorrow, there will be a special 7 AM live session.

I often turn on podcasts while getting ready for work in the morning - showering, getting dressed, and organizing trash to throw out on my way out.
Then, thanks to my wife, I happened to listen to Kim Young-chul's Power FM radio show.
Kim Young-chul's stories, receiving real-time listener messages and interacting with listeners, were so entertaining that my solo morning commute preparation didn't feel lonely at all! 😊😊

So this Hyangro-win Live will be conducted like preparing for the commute together, similar to a morning radio show for commuters 🙂

I'm also doing a 7 AM live for the first time, so I'm quite worried about it 😆😆
I'll prepare well and make it fun 🙂

Then I'll see you all in both the open chat room and the morning live!

Hello, this is Hyangro 🙂
Are you all still keeping the fire burning in your hearth even after the Chuseok holiday?

Days have been passing by so frantically that Halloween has already approached 😊😊
Although Halloween is just a one-day event, I thought it would be fun to study together during this period as well.
So this time, I found myself pondering what mindset would be good to have when participating in the challenge.

As many of you know, I first learned web development at a government-funded academy and got a job through that.

When I first learned Java and web development through the government-funded academy, I thought a lot about how I could absorb this knowledge quickly.
Simply listening to the teacher's explanations didn't help me understand at all, so I considered various approaches.

Among them, the method that worked best for me was "teaching my academy classmates."
I would organize what I learned during class hours (from 9 AM to 4 PM) every day and summarize it within 1-2 hours to teach my academy classmates.

I was learning about AOP in the Spring Framework when I heard an explanation about reflection, but I didn't understand it well.
What exactly is this needed for? How is it utilized? Are there things to be careful about when using it? And so on.
Anyway, since it was mentioned in class, I had to teach this to my classmates, so I read the explanations in the books I had several more times.
I understand it conceptually, but I was curious about what precautions should be taken when using it.

So while thinking "What are the things I need to be careful about when using this in actual work?", I was searching for related books and discovered Java Performance Tuning: Coding Habits and Stories That Determine Performance written by Lee Sang-min.

There was a table of contents about when to use reflection in practice and what points to be careful about.

This was it! As soon as I finished class, I rushed to Kyobo Bookstore in Gangnam and bought it right away to organize the content.
I gathered and organized all the content about reflection from various books including Java: The Complete Reference, Passionate Java Lectures, Toby's Spring, and Lee Sang-min's "Java Performance Tuning: Coding Habits and Stories That Determine Performance."

Based on the organized content, I summarized and shared that day's class materials with my classmates, and the content was apparently so good that after the study session ended, many people were curious about where I had learned it from.

Excitedly, I had just introduced Lee Sang-min's book that I had bought fresh and hot.
Contrary to my expectations, my classmates looked at me very strangely for spending 20,000 won just to read a dozen or so pages out of hundreds of pages.
(Back then, jajangmyeon was around 4,000 won)

The Reflection chapter is one of 24 chapters, so by simple calculation, it's an irrational choice to pay 100% to check only 4% (1/24) of the content.
Still, I didn't feel it was a waste at all.
Because I gained the one line of knowledge I needed.

Even after that, I often experienced "I bought this book, this lecture just to get this one sentence."

For example, I got this sentence from "How Should We Then Live?" which I've mentioned several times before.

"Most people who call themselves pitiful are actually great."
Recognizing oneself as pitiful is because one wants to become great.
A person who pities themselves also regards themselves as great.
It's like a king who has been stripped of his throne pitying himself.
If he weren't a king who lost his throne, who else would be sad about not sitting on the throne?
The reason we feel regret for our mistakes is because we know we could have acted correctly at that time.
If we didn't have the power to hear the voice of right reason and act according to what that voice tells us, we would never regret our mistakes or suffer because of them.

What has also stayed with me for a long time is Vlad Mihalcea's High-Performance Java Persistence book, specifically the 34. Batching the Update Operation with JPA and Hibernate chapter, where he provides a detailed comparative explanation of JPA's Merge and Hibernate's Update in batch environments.

"Ah, I bought this book to get this one sentence."
"I took this lecture for this one line."

The thrill of that moment when the fog in your mind clears and something just 'clicks' into place. That alone was worth the value of an entire book or a single lecture.

This challenge is about spending all day on Halloween listening to Inflearn lectures and each person gaining and sharing 'one single learning that helped me grow'.

The value of knowledge doesn't seem to be proportional to its quantity🙂
Sometimes a 10-hour lecture or a 500-page book exists for that 'single line' that makes you go 'Aha!'
How about spending this Halloween to find that one sentence, that one chapter?

Just as I learned the essence of reflection from Sangmin's book, I sincerely hope that through this challenge, you too will discover the key to problems you've been pondering for a long time, or find that 'decisive line' that brings new inspiration.

Let's all find our own 'one line' together 🙂

Hello, this is Hyangro.

This time, I'm meeting you with the Halloween completion challenge 🙂
I'm really looking forward to having another fun completion time that's different from the Chuseok completion challenge.

Before this challenge launched, there was a brief issue with the coupon function, so automatic coupon issuance upon payment wasn't working.
So those who made payments were probably wondering when the coupons would arrive.

I just added 40% discount coupons for all purchasers🙂
From after this news announcement, coupons are being automatically issued when you register for courses, so please feel free to use them.

Let's have a really fun challenge on Halloween day, October 31st 🙂
See you all on Halloween!!