Why We Went to America Reflections from MAKi’s First Business Trip
Breaking Chains: 11 Days in the US Forging Our Path for MAKi
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Intro
For 11 intense days, our team embarked on a journey across three iconic American cities: New York, Boston, and San Francisco. Our mission was to pitch, network, and, most importantly, listen.
We wanted to test our go-to-market strategy for MAKi, gather unfiltered feedback, and witness live, real-world reactions to what we’ve been building in Seoul.
The response was electric. The feature that consistently wowed people was the ability to instantly create a task directly from a chat conversation. We even had people taking photos of the screen at that exact moment.
We also received a ton of praise for our branding. The narrative of our classic, engraving-style art a technique that once required painstaking human effort, now rendered instantly by MAKi's AI truly resonated.
People loved the story behind our logo: an image of a person at the dawn of writing, using a pen to record their thoughts and tasks, symbolizing the very essence of our mission.
However, locals also gave us our most critical and clarifying challenge, asking the essential question: “Why should I delete Slack or Discord to switch to you?”
This question forced us to sharpen our answer, which became the foundation of our entire trip:
- The familiar chat interface is just an entry point, designed to minimize the learning curve. The real magic is the Agentic AI flow, where a conversation becomes a task, and that task becomes a prompt that makes AI work for you. This is a fundamentally different and fresh experience.
- The "Hubs" in MAKi will eventually integrate with Slack, Discord, Gmail, Notion, and WhatsApp, becoming a true unified inbox. It will automatically index conversations, extract tasks, and deploy AI agents, expanding into the realm of a true OS.
- Ultimately, the data accumulated through these workflows will power predictive models, helping teams make smarter decisions and anticipate their next move.
This trip was a chance to pressure-test these ideas, gather practical feedback, and build a concrete action plan. We left Korea with a plan; we returned from the US with conviction.
We learned our direction was right, the American market was even more open to our solution than we imagined, and that 10 days on the ground can provide more clarity and confidence than months of development in isolation.
Activity Log: Hitting the Ground Running
"Click on the names below each photo to visit their LinkedIn profiles."
New York (09/29 - 10/03)
It's me, Yoon Shin
My wife, Min Kyoung, came along as my self-appointed assistant.
She took care of countless details from scheduling to supporting live demos making this trip so much smoother.
- Event: Start Valley - Pitching & Networking
- Takeaway: The NYC scene was bustling with early-stage startups and agencies. We met the CEO of a dev agency managing 20 simultaneous client projects who expressed strong interest in a PoC.
Boston (10/03 - 10/05)
with Sagar Kaistha, Charul Yadav
with Chen Yu (Erioe) Liu, Oliver Kim
- Event: Boston AI Week
- Takeaway: The crowd consisted mainly of students and consultants. It was a great place to practice our pitch and connect with brilliant people, though it felt less startup-focused than SF. A someone was particularly excited and wants to use MARKHUB at his university we have a demo scheduled with him.
San Francisco (10/05 - 10/10)
Event: SF Tech Week by a16z and a dozen other satellite events.
- Takeaway: This was the main event. We focused on a 1-on-1 demo strategy instead of pitching, which led to deep, meaningful conversations.
- The People: I connected with over 100 people. and I want to pay tribute to the friends who took the time to talk with me at San Francisco Tech Week and patiently endured my clumsy English. Thank you again. I’m also grateful for their valuable feedback and encouragement. Now, I want to create even better communication tools that truly help them in their daily work. I have no doubt that this will happen.
I haven’t been accepted to YC yet, but I came here to feel the energy.
The security guard stopped me at first, but when I told him I had flown 14 hours just to visit, he kindly let me in. I really appreciated that.
I knew it, honestly, handing out business cards felt pretty old-school. Everyone else was using QR codes, of course.
Still, I was an outsider, coming all the way from Korea, and I wanted to do things our way.
So before leaving on this trip, I made up my mind to give away every last card I had, to show MAKi to anyone who accepted it, and to get their feedback in person.
And that’s exactly what happened.
Let me tell you what unfolded next.
#1 Founder who scale startup Pitch Chellenge by Amplitude and TECH Equitable future
with Touré Owen
We met Bella (@itsbella.ai), who won a pitch competition. The top founder of the day showed interest after seeing our demo and said he’d like to try it sometime. It was probably just a polite remark, but I couldn’t help feeling grateful.
with Akshay Gera
When I met Akshay at the airport, something funny happened. It was such a small thing, but somehow it became one of those memories I’ll never forget.
with Himanshu Shankar
with Adam S
#2 Get YC Ready by HEIZEN
with Lincoln Liu
with Nathan Denier
with Vincent Tan, Davel Radindra, Daeren Loi
with Maulik Shah
#3 SE ASIA SF SALON
A local influencer, Jordie (@jordiemaa), who has videos with up to 4M views, showed deep interest.
The phrase "MAKi Haseyo" in this video is Korean for "Let's do MAKi. or Let's have MAKi" They happily agreed to my request, and I'm so thankful. I'll be sure to return the favor and help them however I can if they ever need it.
with Min Kaung Myat, Thin Yati Su, Eddie C
with Diana Safina, Olga V. Ivanova
with Nanthipat (Aon) Komsaengpetch
These rice noodles are made and sold directly by Nanthipat. They were absolutely delicious.
with Winnie Yeoh
with Montana Showalter
with Alicia Freiin von Richthofen
with Richard (Yunqi) Gu, Hazim Mohamad, Warren V.
with Elisha Johnson, Joseph Mamondol
#4 Asian Founders + VC Showcase Night by BCV + svb + websummit
with Jai Ashar, Matin Ghaffari
I met YC batch (W25) guy who saw similarities to another app but recognized our unique path.
One even remarked that with our progress (seed funding, government grant, $160k deal), we "might not even need YC."
with Catherine (Cathy) Di
with Kevin Wang
He told us he was really impressed to see tasks get registered instantly from our chat, and how the calendar and list view synced immediately without any complex or difficult setup. (Normally, doing something like this would require third-party integrations with tools like Asana, Jira, or Notion.)
with khaileeng
#5Future of Work : Managing the Enterprise with Humans and Machines by Workday
with Amadea Agapie, Ph.D.
with Sujoy Chaudhary
#6 The Future of Business in SF by gusto
with Ankit Shah
with A M Kristine U.
with Ola Reid, Alexander Kramer
The Viral Moment: The most surreal experience was at our last event. After hearing we flew from Korea, an attendee named Ola Reid was so impressed that she started pulling her friends over and giving them a demo of MAKi herself. We witnessed pure, organic word-of-mouth happening right in front of us.
- The Feedback: We consistently heard that the name "Hub" was perfect for a future vision where MAKi acts as a central inbox for Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, etc., automatically indexing and summarizing everything.
- I handed out my business cards and gave demos to over a hundred people, gathering valuable feedback along the way.
More than ten PoCs were initiated, and many of them asked for ongoing updates afterward.
Review: A Shift in Perspective
In one sentence, this trip was about breaking the chains of our own assumptions.
- Before the US: We had a product we believed in, backed by data.
- After the US: We have a movement, backed by conviction from the market we want to win.
1. We Aren’t Wrong. The reaction on the ground confirmed our direction is correct. The need for a tool like MAKi is real, tangible, and deeply felt by startups and agencies in the US. But this validation came with a critical condition: the path we chose must have zero compromise on quality. Excellence isn’t optional; it’s the baseline. For a messenger, there can be no bugs and no excuses.
2. It’s Time to Let the World Know. We need to go viral, but to do that, we must create use cases with a “Wow Point” worth talking about. We plan to collaborate with creators in their 20s on TikTok and Instagram to show everyday moments where relatable problems are solved dramatically.
- At work: A screen flooded with endless notifications—until you tap a single MAKi button that organizes everything into clear, actionable tasks.
- At school: Teammates arguing in a chaotic group chat—yet MAKi captures every valid point and automatically structures it into an organized plan.
- On your desk: Instead of complex setups, a non-technical user connects a powerful AI agent with a single touch inside MAKi’s simple chat interface.
3. To Win the U.S., We Need a Local Presence. There is no substitute for being on the ground. A single face-to-face meeting in SF moved things forward faster than a hundred cold emails from Seoul. A US-based team is no longer a goal; it's a requirement.
4. It’s Time to Take Bolder, Bigger Steps. The biggest takeaway was a feeling of permission. Permission to think bigger, act faster, and be more audacious. The market is ready. Now, it's on us to execute.
Closing
This trip was never just about business. It was about "Inyeon" (인연).
There’s a beautiful Korean word that teaches us our encounters are not random, but are threads of destiny woven across lifetimes. Before this trip, the "North American market" was just an abstract concept, a pin on a map.
Now, it is the faces of the 100 people I met, the energy of their feedback, and the vibrant passion I could feel in person.
I believe our meetings were not by chance. Each conversation that turned my abstract idea into a tangible reality, each piece of advice that showed me "the way," felt like a thread of that destiny pulling me forward.
I came to the US as a visitor, but I leave as a member of a global community I now feel bound to serve. This is our Inyeon. And my "karma" my responsibility is to build something truly worthy of the connections we've just begun.
Thank you for being the first step in my journey.
Written by Yoon Shin · Founder & CEO, MARKHUB Inc.