Why the Twin Brothers Split Their Academic Efforts, Focused Liberal Arts and Sciences & Engineering

The twin brothers, who were famous for their excellent academic performance in their hometown during their high school years, chose absolutely different academic fields from each other at college.
Hongseok: “I spent most of my time in the club room, except for class times. The software club in my college ‘One and Zero’ was almost everything in my college life.”

Youngseok: “I lived in the library during my college years. I liked financial management and accounting courses, but those which didn’t deal so much with numbers, such as marketing, business strategy, and organizational management, were not easy for me. At the time I was busy memorizing by rote what I had learned in class, but now in the middle of my tasks as a CEO of Twinny, each single detail my professors shared in the classroom comes back to me vividly. It is amazing and I am grateful for that.”

Scholarships from the KU Alumni Association
Hongseok: “I had to work a lot of part-time jobs, and the alumni association scholarship was a great help. It’s still amazing that former KU students supported younger students they didn’t know like me simply because they were KU students. We also plan to provide scholarships, for sure.”

Youngseok: “I once wrote a handwritten letter to a former student who funded a scholarship for me through the KU alumni association. Later, I had a chance to visit him for business reasons, and when I said that I was the scholarship recipient who had sent him a letter, he was surprised and very proud.”

The Belief that Differences Between Similar People Would Become Our Strength

After graduation, Cheon Hong-seok entered graduate school at KAIST and studied autonomous robots in master’s and doctoral programs, while Cheon Young-seok started his career at the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency. Hongseok ultimately announced that he would start a business related to autonomous robots after completing his long graduate studies.
Youngseok: My brother is conducting research based on objective data in Daejeon, while I am executing communications and business strategy in Seoul, so we have very different ways of thinking and communicating. A company should have diverse characteristics and capabilities to be successful. In the belief that our different characteristics would create a good harmony between us, I decided to start a business with my brother.”

Twinny’s autonomous robots function based on 3D Lidar technology that uses lasers to recognize surrounding objects. The biggest difference between this and existing technology is the fact that these robots can function in large and complex factories or outdoors, without the installation of additional infrastructure. This dramatically reduces the time and cost involved in large-scale logistics centers or smart factories. Eight years after the brothers took on this bold challenge, Twinny has become a company that is attracting much attention in the global robot industry.

Our Strength, Autonomy

Twinny emphasizes autonomy as an important keyword throughout the company’s organizational culture. It pursues the development of autonomous robots with the world’s best technology that can function anywhere, and the maintenance of an autonomous organizational culture that allows creative talent to fully flourish. To this end, it provides a high level of employee welfare, including a flexible work schedule, full self-development support, and an in-house café and gym. Among the 150 or so employees, many of them are researchers with master’s or doctoral degrees from top universities. The two CEOs say that they created the best working environment possible in order for their small company to be able to hire outstanding employees.
Hongseok: “We know and admit that we ourselves are only good in some areas, and we need excellent people in multiple other areas, so to attain that, we need to create a good organizational culture.”

The Philosophy of the Parents Who Raised the Two Brothers
Hongseok: “I think our parents’ philosophy was also ‘autonomy.’ Autonomy and support. They let us do everything on our own and supported us unconditionally. When I was studying in the doctoral program for a long period, 12 years, and when my younger brother left a stable job and started a business, they just supported us. Their strong trust, support, and philosophy of granting autonomy are great assets for us, and I’m also trying to raise my children that way.”

CEO Cheon Hong-seok gave a congratulatory speech at the Korea University graduation ceremony last year. The message delivered in a cheerful atmosphere throughout was “Do what you want to do.” Twinny’s two twin CEOs put these words into practice, and are working hard to do what they believe is valuable, which is to create the world’s best autonomous robots. Let’s support and look forward to Twinny’s powerful drive toward the future on the wheels of autonomy.