Haebom

Recently, Vercel and Gamma have raised their prices by about $5 per month, representing a 25% increase from their previous cost. Similarly, Notion actually raises its prices, as does Adobe. This is partly due to added features and the lack of alternatives, but also because certain conditions are met. Raising prices naturally leads to a decline in customers. In the short term, this decline is almost unconditional. Nevertheless, SaaS services raise their prices. Without understanding this, you're doomed to repeat foolish pricing practices. Recently, while helping with various SaaS and product projects, I've been surprised by how many people don't understand why things are done the way they are. Even when I asked why, I've seen people respond with things like, "We're cheaper than our competitors because they're doing so much." This is so obvious that I wonder if it's really necessary to tell you, but how on earth do you calculate the price? Fixed margin type (aka Cost-Plus) The simplest approach is to increase prices based on cost (cloud/labor/third-party API) + target margin. This approach borrows from a common practice in manufacturing and distribution, but it's difficult to say it's a good approach in the digital market, where value is sold without a physical counterpart. The advantage is that it's easy to calculate, giving the finance and sales teams peace of mind. The disadvantage is that it's disconnected from customer value. Customers don't care about our costs; they open their wallets for the "value of solving a problem." Therefore, fixing margins is only a minimum defense and doesn't set a price ceiling. When to use: Very early (when cost uncertainty is high), reselling structure (external API unit price transfer), B2B with strong legacy quotation practices. Note: A decrease in cost doesn't automatically lead to a price reduction. Value is an independent variable. Competition-Indexed "Our competitor's price is $30, so we're $25." This is a very common but dangerous approach. If your competitor's strategy, cost, or segment differs from yours, you'll be tied to the wrong anchor. This makes it burdensome to change your pricing policy later, and because the standard itself is highly dependent, it's more like a handshake. If someone sets prices like this, you might suspect they're a spy. When to use: When there is a clear alternative and the category battle is about 'similar specs vs cheaper'. Note: If your differentiating points (data security, localization, support SLA, ecosystem) are clear, consider premium positioning instead of follower positioning. Value-Based Type This is a classic approach: anchoring your business on the economic and emotional value your customers receive. For example, if "10 hours saved per week × $30 per employee hour = $1,200 per month," then capture a portion of that (e.g., 10-25%) in your price. Most of the methods I mentioned earlier are structured like this. How to Execute: Define core use cases → Quantify value drivers (time savings, improved conversion rates, reduced errors, regulatory risk mitigation, etc.) → Conduct segment-specific Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) research (Van Westendorf, Gabor-Granger, Conjoint, etc.) → Differentiate pricing with Good-Better-Best packages. Note: “Value delivery” storytelling and supporting evidence (case studies, ROI calculators ) are essential. Bundling/Packaging Strategy Packaging, rather than price itself, determines ARPU and NRR. While it's similar to the concept of DLC in games, using it requires several additional, more stringent requirements. If you unpreparedly tamper with packaging or bundling, you'll run into issues with fairness and valuation compared to other features.

Hello, this is Haebom. To all of you who have been following my blog for a long time, I have some news to share first. Based on the thoughts and writings I've shared on my blog, I've finally published a book. This book is about giving up on thinking and leaving everything to the LLM after getting an LLM. If you're interested in philosophy, the humanities, or this topic, I recommend checking it out. 🙂 Kyobo Bookstore 👉 https://product.kyobobook.co.kr/detail/S000217476245 YES24 👉 https://www.yes24.com/product/goods/153156828 Aladdin 👉 https://www.aladin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?ItemId=371482787 Above all, this book was possible thanks to the readers who consistently read my writing. I sincerely thank you. I hope to continue to explore and share this with you in the future. Thank you again for your continued support, and we look forward to seeing you again with good news. Have a warm day. Haebom Dream

Yesterday , I filmed a video that was almost an excuse for PM . Actually, I recently had the opportunity to meet with junior planners through a series of coaching sessions. I was surprised by their work environment, their scope of work, and their concerns about upgrading their skills by taking classes in the adult education market for hundreds of thousands of won. So, I decided to film it. As I was writing, I got a little emotional... Well, I shared the video in a few group chats, and some people asked me: Why are planners' salaries in Korea lower than other occupations? If anyone knows the answer, please let me know. I really don't know. 📊 Korea vs. Abroad: What's the Difference? Comparing PM job descriptions from renowned international companies like Meta, Google, and OpenAI with PM job postings from Korean companies reveals some truly interesting differences. Hard Skill Comparison Common parts: Data analysis Establishing a roadmap Market research Characteristics of Korea: Many requirements seem to fall under the purview of CEOs or designers, such as KPI performance measurement and UX/UI design . This gives the impression that PMs are being overburdened with too many tasks. Overseas features: We focus on user-centric product development and experiences. Comparing soft skills Clear communication skills and leadership are common, but while Korea emphasizes a 'balance between business and customer value,' overseas countries tend to focus more on a 'user-centered mindset. ' Overseas, product managers focus on the product itself, while product owners take ownership of the business goals and the product as a whole. In Korea, on the other hand, product owners tend to be perceived as the leaders of project managers. In conclusion, it seems there's a "culture of looking down on planners" in Korea. Planners are often portrayed as having a hard time and taking on a ton of miscellaneous tasks outside of their regular duties. 💰 The Inconvenient Truth About the Pay Gap In San Francisco, the average annual salary for a product manager is at least $170,000 (approximately 230 million won) . Even considering that the cost of living in Seoul is 1.7 times higher, PM salaries in Korea tend to be significantly lower than those for developers or designers. I believe that people should be paid according to the amount of work they do, and I believe there's a lot of gaslighting going on among PMs. The culture of "PMs are inherently difficult" and "It's natural to have a lot of chores" really needs to change. 🎓 Million-dollar lectures? Do you really need them? Recently, I've been seeing a lot of paid PM-related courses, but they cost millions of won. I believe these courses are unnecessary. Coursera offers PM courses taught by experts from leading companies like Microsoft and Google, with subtitles, for free. It begs the question: why bother with expensive, paid courses? More importantly, theoretical learning alone cannot replace practical experience . Even Pinterest founder Ben Silverman met customers directly, gathered feedback, and improved his products.

The history of the web is a history of rules. From the dawn of the internet to the present, the web ecosystem has sought order amid conflicts both large and small. Recently, however, with the advent of the AI era, another major battle has begun over web crawling rules. This is the "stealth crawling" controversy between web infrastructure giant Cloudflare and AI search engine startup Perplexity . 🚨 Bombshell: Cloudflare Labels Perplexity a "Web Standards Violator" On August 4, 2025, Cloudflare made a shocking claim on its official blog: that its AI-powered search engine, Perplexity, was cleverly bypassing websites' crawling bans and stealing content without their permission . 🔍 Perplexity's Stealth Crawling Strategy Here's how Cloudflare bypasses Perplexity's crawling: Frontal Approach : Attempting to access content using an official agent ( PerplexityBot ). Detect when blocked : Detect when a website blocks you and change tactics immediately. Browser spoofing : Impersonating the Chrome browser and changing the User-Agent to re-access IP change evasion : Continuously bypasses by changing IP addresses and ASNs (Autonomous System Numbers). Cloudflare specifically disclosed that Perplexity served summaries of content from a new, private domain, despite explicitly blocking crawling with robots.txt and a firewall. Cloudflare strongly criticized this practice, calling it "illegal and no different from web hacking." 🤖 Perplexity Strikes Back: "We're Not Just Crawlers, We're User Agents" Perplexity immediately issued a statement refuting the claims. Their position was clear: "We are not a traditional web crawler that automatically crawls the web, but an AI assistant that processes users' real-time requests." 📌 The core logic of perplexity User proxy access : The claim that access is technically and ethically equivalent to the user directly using a web browser. Non-storageable : Emphasizes that web content is not stored in advance or used for model training, but is only used for real-time query answering. Cloudflare's analytics error : Attacking the reliability of Cloudflare's analytics by claiming that traffic from BrowserBase, a headless browser service, was mistaken for traffic from Perplexity. "Dual Web" concerns : If web access is monopolized by specific infrastructure companies like Cloudflare, a dual web structure could be created that prevents new services from innovating. ⚔️ Fierce conflict of opinion within the community The tech community is divided over this incident.

Andrew Ng and Yann LeCun on the AI Race Between the US and China Recently, two of the most influential figures in the AI field, Andrew Ng and Yann LeCun, exchanged intriguing views. Their conversation, held on Facebook, went beyond a simple exchange of personal opinions and offered crucial hints about the future direction of the AI technology race. The reason the conversation between the two men garnered so much attention is clear: it offered a concrete and candid analysis of the strategies the two giants, the United States and China, should pursue in the AI field . 🇨🇳 China aims to lead AI with open source Professor Andrew Ng recently made this claim in Deeplearning.ai's newsletter, The Batch: "There's a clear path for China to surpass the United States in AI. While the United States currently holds the lead, China is gaining tremendous momentum through its open-source ecosystem and aggressive semiconductor design and manufacturing strategy." Andrew Ng pointed out that the closed approach taken by major US AI companies in recent model development processes has resulted in slow knowledge circulation and high costs . Indeed, recent AI leaderboards like LMArena and Artificial Analysis show that the top closed models are still dominated by US companies like Google (Gemini 2.5 Pro), OpenAI (o4), and Antropic (Claude 4 Opus). However, the top open models are mostly Chinese-developed, such as the DeepSeek R1, Kimi K2, Qwen3 series, and Zhipu's GLM 4.5. In other words, while the United States is still ahead in terms of model performance itself, China is in hot pursuit with a strategy of rapidly circulating technology and knowledge. 🇺🇸 Yann LeCun agrees: "The speed of AI development = the speed of knowledge diffusion." Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta, added his thoughts via a Facebook share: "I completely agree with Andrew. As I emphasized in my Senate testimony, the pace of scientific and technological progress depends on the speed with which information circulates. The remarkable progress in AI over the past 15 years has been due to the open-source nature of papers and code. More recently, with the secrecy of Google, Antropic, and the increasingly closed OpenAI, despite its name, the pace of AI progress has already begun to slow." LeCun's remarks emphasize the importance of open knowledge sharing in the AI ecosystem, drawing on historical experience. In other words, he made it clear that a slowdown in the speed of information circulation will inevitably lead to a slowdown in the pace of technological innovation. ⚙️ Semiconductors and supply chains, another key frontier Professor Andrew Ng emphasized that China is catching up not only in AI models but also in the hardware competition. Huawei recently unveiled the CloudMatrix 384, a GPU capable of competing with NVIDIA's GB200. This architecture achieves performance by integrating significantly more low-performance chips (384 instead of 72) than the latest high-performance GPUs from the US. China has already rapidly overtaken Europe and the US in the traditional automotive industry by leveraging the emerging field of electric vehicles. Huawei's semiconductor strategy can also be described as embracing this "quantity overwhelms quality" approach. Meanwhile, the US still relies on Taiwan's TSMC for its semiconductor supply chain. Concerns have been raised that if China strengthens its own semiconductor production capacity and the US remains dependent on external sources, the entire US AI strategy could be threatened. A recent column in China's leading state-run media outlet, the People's Daily, reads as follows: Nvidia, how can I trust you? https://www.stcn.com/article/detail/2895954.html They strongly criticized the security issues surrounding Nvidia's H20 chip. They warned that if the chip contained a "backdoor," it could pose a serious threat to essential infrastructure such as automobiles, telemedicine, and payments. Nvidia denied the existence of any backdoors, but they pointed out that it would be difficult to restore market trust without specific security verification at the level required by the Chinese government. They emphasized that respect for the law and security compliance are prerequisites for foreign companies to remain in the Chinese market. They urged CEO Jensen Huang to demonstrate his commitment to "upholding the law" through action. It would be good to read it together. (Of course, I read it using a translator. I don't speak Chinese.) 🚨 Choosing a 'closed door' ultimately slows down innovation. The key points emphasized by the two experts are as follows: AI innovation happens most quickly when knowledge and technology are freely shared.

Personally, since the beginning of this year, I have been giving special lectures at an international school called SALT, and I have felt that this kind of education is absolutely necessary and has potential. On the contrary, I have also thought, why don't they do it elsewhere? When you are young, you have a lot of things you want to do the most, and at that time, there is nothing that has as much synergy as entrepreneurship education. In fact, they are being done in China/USA/Europe, and I think that our country's education should also change. Anyway, I think I will tell you about a really interesting school in Texas, USA. Imagine studying at school for only two hours a day, and the rest of the time following a special curriculum led by artificial intelligence (AI). When I first heard this news, I was honestly skeptical. But Alpha School, which started in Austin, Texas, is exactly that kind of school. The school started in Austin, Texas, a tech hub, and has since expanded to Miami and Brownsville, with plans to expand to several cities across the country this fall, including New York and Orlando. What on earth is it about this school that attracts people's attention? AI and Human Collaboration: ‘Guides’ Instead of ‘Teachers’ The most unique thing about Alpha School is that there is no concept of a teacher. Instead, an adult called a 'guide' supports students' learning and growth. The actual class content and personalized learning plan are provided by AI. AI analyzes each student's ability in real time and provides the best customized learning. Thanks to this, students in the same class learn completely different content depending on their level and interests. For example, 12-year-old Byron Attridge is currently in seventh grade, but is learning math at an eighth-grade level, reading at a ninth-grade level, and language arts at a tenth-grade level. He says: "I like that I can learn at my own level and pace, without being tied to what my friends or teachers teach." MacKenzie Price, co-founder of Alpha School and popular podcaster, puts the point home: "90% of good education is motivation. When AI teaches the subject, the guide can focus on the emotions and motivation of the students." You learned about entrepreneurship in school? At Alpha School, only two hours of the day is devoted to traditional subjects like math and language, while the rest of the time is filled with hands-on, collaborative projects where students can get involved. For example, last year, fifth and sixth graders built and operated a real food truck. In the process, students developed their collaboration and problem-solving skills by budgeting, creating business plans, and cooking. In addition, students create their own creative output through a special program called the 'Masterpiece Project'. In this project, students must find unique and new perspectives that only humans can create, and that AI cannot provide. In fact, the outputs that students created are as follows: A teddy bear that recognizes and reacts to emotions Chatbot that provides dating advice Creating Texas' Largest Mountain Bike Park Through this project, students naturally train creative thinking skills that differentiate them from AI. The success and limitations of this approach But not everyone is sold on Alpha School’s educational approach. Critics say that excessive reliance on AI could diminish children’s social and empathetic abilities, and that an overly personalized learning environment could undermine the fundamental role of schools in socialization. Additionally, it is controversial that it may be considered a high-end education accessible only to a certain class of students, as the annual tuition is approximately $40,000 (about 55 million won) . Still, Alpha School offers an interesting direction for future education. By leveraging AI to respect each individual’s pace of learning and empowering students to solve real-world problems through creative projects, it effectively complements what has been missing from traditional school systems.

Technological advancements mean expanding horizons . In fact, Cursor became the fastest-growing company in SaaS history, going from 1M to 100M ARR in just 12 months . This was not a coincidence, but an achievement made possible by PMs thinking in AI . In this way, AI is opening up new problem spaces and solution spaces for PMs at the same time. I wrote this about 10 months ago. PM's Core Responsibilities: The Three Remain the Same, But How They Are Done Has Changed The three core roles of a traditional PM are: Understand your customers' problems Prioritize and decide which problems to solve Organizing and delivering effective solutions AI doesn’t break this structure, but it does revolutionize how each step is executed . Understand: The problem itself changes ✅ Expanding the problem space Problems that were previously “given up due to technical limitations” are now within the realm of being solvable by AI. In fact, customers don’t directly express needs that they think are “impossible” until they experience it themselves. In the case of Canva, customers didn’t say, “I want to make designing easier with AI,” but once the feature was released, it became the solution they wanted . ✅ Evolution of data analysis methods Qualitative data that was previously scattered across customer interviews, support tickets, chatbot conversations, etc. can now be analyzed in real time and automatically using AI tools. Rather than simply gathering insights, we detect trends as they emerge, like news, and provide deep insights. Prioritize: It’s not a question of can, it’s a question of worth . AI shakes up all the traditional “feasibility, impact, risk, cost” metrics. Feasibility : Thanks to AI, functions that were previously impossible can now be implemented within weeks. Impact : Personalization becomes a strategy, like Duolingo's real-time lesson difficulty adjustment . Risk : Additional AI-specific risk factors, such as hallucinations, bias, and regulatory issues. Cost : It may seem cheap at first, but the cost can explode as usage increases . According to the survey results, AI assistant features were not chosen by 64% of users. If you force a feature that customers don't want, their trust in the product itself can be shaken. Execution: AI is more than just an assistant; it’s a key tool for designing experiences. Previously, AI was just an “add-on,” but now it’s a force for redesigning the entire production experience .

What is GTM? As the name suggests, after creating a good product/service, how do you launch it into the market, make a profit, reach customers, and have them use the product/service repeatedly? 1. What is the difference from existing marketing? What is the difference from existing sales? F1 opens. Marketing Team: Create atmosphere before the game, increase attendance Sales Team: F1 Driver (Running on the Front Line) GTM Team: Planning the flow/strategy of the entire race → When to change tires? How to change tires? How many laps to do? Japanese version Marketing and sales are tactics and GTM strategies. 2. Product Owner/Product Manager What is the difference? It should be iterative and closely linked to building product solutions and defining business models → Market/Sales/Users PO → Product UX/UI, development, planning, business, etc. No matter how great or innovative a product is, it is difficult to establish itself in the market without a GTM strategy. 3. What is the goal of GTM? Market Success: The successful introduction of a product or service into the market. Reaching your target audience: Effectively reaching your product to your defined target audience. Gaining a competitive edge: Gaining a competitive edge over your competitors in the market. Revenue Generation: Ultimately, it's about generating revenue for your business. 'If you make it, it'll sell' → Nonsense... Who would write that??? Side project 'I'll write if you make it' → Friends/family → Malicious indicators (noise) → Long tail indicators appear... What is it? GTM → The process of turning 'this will sell' into a concrete science

Will we ever speak like AI? ChatGPT has achieved the fastest technology adoption in history, reaching 100 million users in just two months since its launch in late 2022. Many people are already using AI to help them write, study, work, and create. But could it be that we are learning AI’s language habits without realizing it? Interesting question. In my recent personal research, I analyzed how AI is influencing the language habits of real people. The results were surprising, so I decided to blog about it. How did you conduct your research? This study consisted of two major stages. The first step was to identify ChatGPT’s signature vocabulary. We edited millions of pages of emails, essays, papers, and articles with ChatGPT, using common prompts like “clean up the text” and “clarify.” We defined the words that ChatGPT repeatedly added as “GPT words.” Examples include “delve,” “realm,” and “meticulous.” The second step was to analyze real language usage patterns. To do this, we analyzed over 360,000 YouTube videos and 770,000 podcast episodes. In particular, we compared them before and after the launch of ChatGPT to measure the degree of change. The surge of GPT words Our research found that since the introduction of ChatGPT, the use of GPT words like “delve,” “boast,” “swift,” “inquiry,” and “meticulous” has increased significantly. Surprisingly, this change occurred not only in structured scripts but also in ordinary, everyday conversations. Cultural feedback loop between humans and AI 1. Humans train AI with text 2. AI generates reconstructed text 3. Humans unconsciously imitate AI patterns 4. Go back to number 1… What’s more interesting is that this phenomenon forms a kind of cultural feedback loop. People train AI to generate text, and AI provides statistically reconstructed text based on this. Eventually, humans unconsciously imitate the language habits of this AI. The study described this as “the phenomenon of patterns stored in AI technology being backpropagated to the human mind.” This study shows that AI like ChatGPT is not just an efficient tool, but is fundamentally changing the language we use and the way we think. This unconscious feedback loop between AI and humans will continue to influence the linguistic culture of our society in the future. What is there in Korean? As I mentioned in my last post, it seems like there are some words that are obvious in Korean too. These are my personal feelings. In fact, these are expressions that are not often used in written or spoken language, but I feel like I am seeing them more and more these days. Is it just my feeling? Personally, when I see these expressions too often, I start to suspect that this person did an LLM assignment. Expression of change/development Develop Improve Improve Promote

There is a strange atmosphere flowing through college these days. 'Overly slick essays' are increasing on exam papers, and assignments that make you think, 'This student couldn't have written such sentences' are being submitted one after another. A new leisure culture has emerged on campus. It is a kind of detective game where you try to guess, "Isn't this written by AI?" But the problem is not simply one of ‘misconduct’. Rather, we are at a point where we need to ask a much more fundamental question: How is AI affecting human creativity and expression? And how will we respond to it? Essays, papers, and cover letters all look like they were written by AI In fact, I decided to test the AI’s capabilities myself. When I asked it to write a Montaigne essay, it mixed one real quote with two fake ones, and when I asked it to write a poem in the style of Elizabeth Bishop, the format was different, but the content was similar, but somehow awkward. The important thing was that it was able to imitate these literary areas. After that, I tried to see if it could be applied to emails, papers, etc. Of course, it was still awkward. This is in 2024. Another surprising thing was that AI was a great helper for 'annoying' tasks such as general assignments, emails, plans, editing notes, and scheduling . Recently, I have been getting dizzy and headaches frequently due to the medication I am taking, and AI formatted my documents for me, polished my speech, and sometimes even comforted me by saying, "I know how complicated and difficult your life is right now." AI replaces the 'unconfident me'. Too gently At this point, it is undeniable that AI is becoming a 'mental labor partner' for humans. AI is tireless, never complains, compliments you, offers another version at any time, and replicates your language. The problem is… the replication is too natural, too smooth. For example, I gave the AI a few of my blog posts and asked it to analyze their style, and it said this: “Your writing style is tense and intellectually precise, revealing a sense of restrained emotion and philosophical thought.” It was so accurate that it was scary. It was like holding up a mirror, but in that mirror I looked more complete. As I repeat this experience, this thought suddenly crosses my mind. After ChatGPT's memory function was added, I felt this way even more. Now, it seems like they know almost all of my secrets? The paradox of eliminating 'writing' from writing classes The same goes for students. At first, they start out by simply summarizing, but before long, they start to entrust AI with structuring, development, and drafting. They rationalize, “Isn’t this basically the same as writing it myself?” And at some point, in a “writing class,” students get an A without even “writing.” A recent study from the MIT Media Lab backs up these concerns with data. After having 54 participants write essays, their EEGs were measured, and the group that relied on AI showed lower memory, initiative, and brain connectivity for their own writing. The researchers called this “cognitive debt,” and feared long-term learning decline. Personally, I made sure to include this part in the book I am publishing this time. The problem is not technology, but the 'outsourcing of thinking' In fact, the technology itself is neutral. The question is 'how' to use it. ChatGPT can help you prepare for class. It can help you organize your schedule and set learning objectives. However, if we indiscriminately accept that help in the name of ‘convenience,’ the muscles of our thinking will gradually become weaker. Ultimately, we are at a crossroads. Will we embrace the temptation of speed and efficiency and hand over creative control to AI? Or will you endure the pain of thinking for yourself and forming sentences in the midst of discomfort and inefficiency ? Things we might really lose