• By
  • Min-Jeong Lee
Mobidoo electronic stamp and sample software.

Samsung Electronics ’ huge interest in Silicon Valley’s startup power and software expertise might be having an unexpected side effect: the departure of employees inspired by the free, entrepreneurial spirit.

At least that is what happened with David Lee and Ryan Kwon. They are former employees of the company’s Media Solutions Center in Suwon, where staff members huddle together to roll out new services and software features for the company’s smartphones and TVs while looking into potential merger-and-acquisition targets.

“We got to know of a lot of Silicon Valley-based companies and, naturally, I was captivated by the venture culture there and the air of freedom. And thought, I wanted to try something like that too,” said Mr. Lee, who left Samsung last year to start his own company. He and Mr. Kwon formed a startup called Mobidoo, which makes software that allows retail shops to replace paper coupons with an electronic stamp.

Messrs. Lee and Kwon said many Samsung employees in the Media Solutions Center have left the company recently to look for other places–including smaller companies–that would be more welcoming to their concepts for new software features.

Samsung declined to comment.

One of the difficulties of pitching ideas at Samsung is the broad starting point that the employees have to embrace when initiating a service, they said.

“Because it’s a global company, doing software is a bit difficult. For example, if it’s an e-book service, you have to make it available to, like, 50 countries,” Mr. Lee said. “In that case, adding a new feature is extremely difficult and hard to do with speed … adding one new function would sometimes take as long as two months.”

He added that, while he was there, working-level employees also had to persuade a lot of executives in charge of various matters including marketing and design to get the ball rolling.

“When you’re starting something, you got to be able to try this and that but that’s not doable,” Mr. Kwon said. The company is very conscious of the services provided by rival companies, making the process even harder, he said. Mr. Lee chimed in, saying that for a service similar to one on a Samsung rival’s platform, the prevailing idea is that the service should at least match the other in terms of quantity.

Samsung has a program that encourages employees to take a break of several months to develop new features, but Messrs. Lee and Kwon said they both decided to jump ship so that they would be more motivated and driven to see their ideas turn into an actual product.

Now, Samsung represents something different for the two former employees: a potential business partner.

The two men, together with their new colleagues, have held talks with big companies including Samsung about possible partnerships, hoping to give Mobidoo’s business a stable start and a sufficient user base. Samsung has what is called a “Wallet,” a feature that allows users to store digital versions of their membership cards and paper coupons on smartphones. The men said they believe partnering with Samsung would help win their company retail clients for its electronic stamps and software.

But so far, there hasn’t been much progress on this front. “The feedback I got was that they [Samsung] couldn’t find big potentials for synergies with us,” Mr. Lee said. “They told us to come back with a fresh angle for cooperation.”

Mobidoo, which is currently surviving on money out of the founders’ pockets and government funding, is trying to seek partnerships with smaller companies and retail chains such as Etude, which is a popular cosmetics brand in Korea.

Samsung, despite its software troubles, is also marching on, unveiling a number of  products just two months into the year. After all, the company is an efficient and productive hardware manufacturer where top-down decisions are put into action, as Mr. Kwon puts it, “rocket-fast.”


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