Meet Thomas Kwon Ph.D. | CEO

We had the good fortune of connecting with Thomas Kwon Ph.D. and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Thomas, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
My background is electrical engineering. I worked at a number of startups. One year, my friend’s startup was bought for ~$5million. At the same time Instagram was bought for $1billion. I looked at those numbers and though software is the future.

So I started brainstorming and learning apps and websites. I tried to do my own startup. An elearning SAAS. But it took longer than expected to learn how to code and build up the site. I ended up hiring some people to assist. When I was finally done I was so burned out I couldn’t really market the site. The competitors were churning out new features every week. So eventually I gave up. But I realized I had all this knowledge and experience. I decided to sell shovels and pickaxes to the gold miners instead of mining myself. That was how I started my agency.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
One of the things I like about my business is the fact that we’re helping people. True we get paid. But we’ve heard so many stories of non-technical people getting taken advantage of. How some company took their money, didn’t deliver anything and disappeared. Or the other company turned over a big mess.

I call those rescue projects. Last year we “rescued” five projects. In one case, an offshore company didn’t understand the client’s concept and had several different teams work on the project. We could see the differences in code and by the end they were taking a long time to add any features and the project was a mess. Another client paid a company (in the US) a huge sum of money and they build a mess of an app but didn’t provide a backend. So the app was virtually useless. In all cases we come in, asses the situation, rewrite code and stabilize the project. All without any documentation or assistance from previous developers. Finally we’re able to get it working, do the features the client wants and deploy it. So yes we’re paid for that but it’s very rewarding to rescue someone’s project and help them move forward.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
The variety of food in Los Angeles is a big win for everyone. Korean bbq is always a fun experience and the top of any trip. Then there’s Ethiopian food, top restaurants in Santa Monica and numerous boba places. Mexican food is another local favorite that might not be as common to visitors. I like King Taco in LA and Jalapenos in Orange County. Taco Mesa deserves a shoutout in Costa Mesa. But there’s so many good places its hard to pick.

For fun places to go I’d recommend all the beaches in different areas. Santa Monica is one, Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach. All have their own vibes. I like to take people to Griffith Observatory as a fun educational place. Besides that there’s exploring all the art galleries in Laguna Beach. A lot of people don’t realize how big LA is and if you include Orange County there’s even more area to cover so its impossible to get all of it in even a week.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Amber Trevaskis Bloomer, executive coach

When I got started she was also starting her career as a coach. We had weekly accountability sessions where we exchanged plans, advice and notes. Now we’re both have active businesses so we don’t do those anymore but early on those were instrumental in helping me move forward.

Website: https://ideamaker.agency

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ideamakeragency/

Linkedin: https://ideamaker.agency/in/thomas-kwon

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theideamakeragency/

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