The New Fandom Business SaaS to be released by former leaders from Weverse
‘bemyfriends is co-founded by Aaron Bae, CEO, and June Kay Kim, CTO, the former core leaders from Weverse which was the global fan community platform also known as the wildly successful“BTS fan platform.” They have extensive experience in creating the world’s largest fan platform and are now preparing to launch a SaaS to open the new era of fandom.
Let’s hear the story from the two leaders, self-proclaimed as, “the members who have a deep understanding of the know-hows of the fan community platform, developing full-stack, and an unmatched understanding of the fan culture all combined together to create something new and big.”
bemyfriends, Weverse backward?
bemyfriends started with defining a void in the market recognized by the two leaders. After experiencing the global response to Weverse beyond Korea, they realized many around the world were thirsty and looking for such an accessible, intuitive and attractive “global fan community platform” in various industries.
“Fan culture” which used to be referred to as disparaging expressions such as so-called ‘deokhu’and ‘pa,’ has now become an important and large part of our culture across the globe. This is not limited to K-Pop artists. If you have “content,” either an E-sport team, webtoons or individual influencers, you can communicate with fans in meaningful ways.
While Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter are available to connect with fans, these platforms do not provide a deep understanding of fan needs as a whole while dealing with segregated platforms. bemyfriends solves this problem by developing a “global fandom platform service”and adding functions to make profits on top of it.
If Weverse were the place for artists to gather in a large, open platform, bemyfriend provides a private yet customizable platform for each artist to own and operate smoothly without worrying about being exposure to others.
“bemyfriends is a B2B SaaS solution that integrates media, membership, commerce and communities. Our customers will own their own platform with their own domain and brand, and we will provide all technical foundations as service.”
The fan’s official playground, and a new BM!
Upon the official launch of the service, bemyfriends will help optimize T1’s commerce platform (known as League of Legends’s e-sports team). It is a widely famous team with Faker, the strongest player in LOL. Aaron said, “T1 recognized our previous works and understood the expertise well.”An e-sports club such as T1 is considered as a “brand” and the services from bemyfriends can be described as followed:
Contents distributed on YouTube or various SNS are accessible to mass people, but currently there is no Omni platform to attract and manage relationships with “core fans”or “loyal customers” who have deeper interests. bemyfriends brings together widely distributed contents with fans into one platform, like one funnel. By creating an official playground for fans, it provides easier access to what they love, allowing more customers to engage in fan activities. In addition, brands can easily and accurately accumulate and analyze data on customers and fans on the platform, which will allow them to understand their fans better and create new business models such as content activities, sales of goods, and paid content subscriptions, etc. Fans also no longer need to wander around looking for the contents or goods in different channels which makes for an easier, more seamless purchasing experience leading to more sales.
bemyfriends’ business model is designed for a global market. “Music, webtoons, sports, and beyond are, nowadays, ‘global.” Currently, domestic and overseas websites are running separately, which makes it harder for users to be active in the fan community. Based on our experience from both domestic and international fans from Weverse, we’ve built a global platform from the ground up so the platform can work transnationally.”
Aaron and June Kay showed quite confidence, “We have our own competitiveness and strength.” Their confidence comes from real world experience, a proven track record, and their know-hows about fandom at global scale. bemyfriends’ developershave extensive experience from the top tier global IT companies such as Kakao or Naver.
The two leaders’ vision is to make everybody happy from the fans to the companies who use the platform . Towards the end of the interview, Aaron and June Kay said they are actively recruiting new talent who wish to join the fandom business.
“We are actively hiring the most talented people in the industry - we are currently looking for a product manager, back-end developer, web front-end developer, and B2B account manager. Open positions are constantly updated on bemyfriends official website as well as recruiting platforms. If you are interested in working with us, feel free to send a resume to recruit@bemyfriends.com.” They continue, “bemyfriends will be a better workplace with the best colleagues”
You may find the original article in Korean here