In conversation with Sei Moon
“Wriggle on. Straight lines are boring.”
-Sei Moon
Image: Sei Moon
Sei (pronounced “say”) is the founder and principal consultant at Moonstory, a product and strategy consultancy that helps start-ups and established companies overcome their digital challenges. A typical project may involve helping a start-up build and launch a new version of a product, helping an established business plan for and recruit a new product/digital team or carrying out a digital audit on a business to identify ways in which they can better serve their customers. Past clients include AllBright, the members’ club for smart-minded women, and Studytracks, a Founders Factory start-up challenging the way students learn.
Sei was born in Seoul, South Korea and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. She spent her teenage years in London and identifies as a third culture individual with no fixed cultural home. After a brief stint back in South Korea, she has settled back in London…for now! East London is where she currently lives with her fiancé and little dog Bowie.
She believes in the power of happy and empowered teams. Sei also has lived experience of the potential that can be unlocked by greater diversity and is passionate about tackling underrepresentation in tech.
What was the inspiration for developing Moonstory?
I began working as a contract Head of Product in 2019 on a self-employed basis and started getting to know a bunch of different start-ups and their challenges. One of the common themes was a need to help my clients hire people with product, design or development skills, whether on a permanent or contract basis.
As I went from project to project and reached out to my network to help fill these talent gaps, I was made starkly aware of, and was disheartened by, the lack of diversity in my wider network. I decided then to put my name out there, create a brand around what I’m doing and make a more pronounced effort to elevate other underrepresented talent.
With Moonstory, I hope to show greater representation as an Asian woman in the tech consultancy space, actively work on diversifying my own network and in turn, help my clients also do better. This is a work in progress – I’m just getting started!
How did you get to where you are now?
My journey has been squiggly and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I’m lucky that my parents, though South Korean, are relatively open-minded and didn’t push me into a career in accounting, medicine or law, as I’m not sure how well I would have coped. I love being creative and my school friends expected me to pursue a career in art. However, I’m also very logical and enjoy tackling complex data structure problems. This all makes for a somewhat restless personality and I like to change things up often.
My career started in retail management where I learned how to talk to customers and sell (a very useful skill). Then, I moved to South Korea and sold employee training programmes to businesses; I helped to them implement the programmes which enabled employees to achieve the promised skills.
I returned to the UK after five years in South Korea, completed an MBA and got a job in a private equity house which involved helping to turn around struggling businesses by making strategic and operational changes.
Fast forward to 2021, I’m back to selling businesses new and better ways of doing things, and then helping them implement changes to generate business gains.
I think that understanding how your transferrable skills can be applied in new ways and being able to talk about that helps the people around you to understand your story. The arena has changed but my core skills have been somewhat consistent throughout my squiggly career. Wriggle on. Straight lines are boring.
Image: Bowie the dog
What does an average working day look like?
There’s nothing average about the ‘average covid-pandemic day’ but I’ll try to give an answer that somewhat reflects life before covid struck!
I try to wake up with the sun (which means winter lie-ins!) and immediately take Bowie for a walk. We don’t have a garden and wouldn’t want any accidents in the flat. Then, after a strong coffee and some toast, my workday starts.
I’m most productive in the mornings, so I avoid morning meetings wherever possible. I’ll respond to any urgent emails and then try to focus on completing one important thing in the first few hours of the day; this could be anything from defining the first draft solution to a technical problem or conducting a piece of research. I make a point of ‘finishing’ whatever I’m working on, even if it’s a very rough first draft. Then, it’s time for another dog walk and some food.
After lunch, I deal with any other small tasks and then go into a sort of ‘tick things off my list’ mode. More coffee helps keep the motivation going. I might have a meeting or two in the afternoon. I always spend time preparing in advance for meetings and follow up afterwards so that meetings aren’t wasted with actions that are forgotten. Late afternoons are reserved for creative free-flowing work that doesn’t require extreme levels of concentration.
I make an effort to work some yoga or exercise into my day though this isn’t always easy. I used to be quite active but motivation comes in waves and I’ve been experiencing a bit of a covid-lull.
I shut my laptop by 7 at the latest and have a proper sit-down dinner to de-compress. Then, if I can, I’ll squeeze in a few episodes of any Korean drama on Netflix (they’re all so addictive) before heading to bed.
What has been the most exciting project you have worked on?
There may be some recency bias here but I am currently working on quite an exciting project that may not have seemed so from the outset. I like big, messy problems that I can get stuck into and where I can have a big impact. This is one of them.
The project is with a non-profit specialist medical society who are on the bleeding edge of research and clinical developments in their field. The society has a very engaged and supportive global member base, who enjoy the society’s in-person congresses and meetings. Unfortunately, their focus to date has not been on building their digital services. Therefore, the online experience is a little tired.
With the world becoming increasingly digital, and the unexpected impact of covid, the society brought us on board to lead a digital transformation. Here are a few reasons I am excited about how this project is going:
The research and education content offered by the society is already recognised as industry-leading.
The global community is already established, engaged and willing to help the digital transformation by sharing ideas, participating in discussions and giving feedback.
Since this is the first time such a project is happening, there are a number of simple ideas (low-hanging fruit) that can be implemented to have impact fast.
The society is open to change and willing to try out new ideas.
In a way, I’m working with a product (the society, its content and its members) that is already proven to be valuable and helping the society to make the most of their digital potential in order to amplify their reach. The feedback loop between the digital changes and the community’s response is rapid and the potential for getting things right is huge. Also, thanks to the client’s willingness to try out new ideas, we are making use of a newer breed of SaaS products that are often more innovative and focused on the user experience which is exciting.
What’s the most important piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Unfortunately, I can think of more examples of advice that hasn’t worked out for me than advice that has. That’s not to say that the advice was bad, only that it didn’t work for me. Whenever something doesn’t quite work out as hoped, and I had taken someone else’s advice on board, it reaffirms my belief in my own judgment.
Through the years, I have come to trust my own advice of ‘just be yourself – that’s your best self and that’s enough’. As cheesy as it sounds, being authentic for me is my most confident and comfortable state and I’m really bad at acting (I can’t imagine being Beyonce for example). I’m happy with where I am now so I guess this approach is working.
One piece of advice that I do often rely on is ‘any advice is only as good as its source’. When I listen to advice, I focus as much on who it is coming from as the advice itself.
What do you love about the work you do?
I love the mental challenge of solving problems and helping clients use technology to achieve more, whether it is launching a new product or finding new ways to do things. It’s always satisfying when I’m able to take something that a client has been struggling with and simplify and structure it in new ways, using data, technology and other tools and insights, to help the client progress their business goals.
A large part of my work is effective communication because I need to first understand the client’s problem fully, and then I need to be able to explain my thought process and recommendations clearly. I enjoy the ‘aha’ moment when the client and I arrive at a shared understanding of the problem and solution. From this point, it’s all about maintaining focus and pace on executing the plan and seeing ideas come to life.
From an entrepreneurial point of view, I enjoy being my own boss. It suits me well as I enjoy making bold decisions and am happy being the creator of my own destiny.
How is the work-life balance?
This is a difficult question! I’m prone to tackling a challenge like a dog with a bone; however, I also know that my usefulness as a problem-solver diminishes rapidly if my mind is not getting the rest it needs. You can’t stare a problem into submission; it is not an endurance test.
So, I make a big effort to try and manage my stress levels, although I still have much more room for improvement here. Weekends are sacred. Working for yourself, on your own terms, helps to manage things day-to-day but I have yet to take a proper holiday since starting my own business.
In short, the work-life balance isn’t bad. It could be better, but I suspect it’s a fine line between being ‘balanced’ and being bored.
What are your views on diversity in the finance and tech industry?
In my limited experience, both the finance and tech industries have come a long way in terms of DE&I initiatives, in the many areas including (but not limited to) gender, ethnicity and world-view. However, there is still much more work to be done. It’s good that this is now a topic of regular discussion but we need to move past all the talk and see sustained action.
There are groups such as the Tech Talent Charter who are working tirelessly to address inequality in the UK tech sector and I get involved where I can to move the conversations and actions along. As previously mentioned, it is a core value in building Moonstory to also make sure that any teams I bring together to work on client projects are as diverse as possible.
What advice would you give to women aspiring to pursue a career in tech?
I think a lot about the phrase “software is eating the world”, coined by Marc Andreessen, Co-founder and General Partner of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Much like a giant Pac-Man gobbling up the world one nugget at a time, the phrase refers to the way in which technology is relentlessly disrupting the world, piece by piece.
More and more industries are being built on and disrupted by software – and the trend is showing no signs of slowing. My advice to anyone aspiring to pursue a career in tech is to let go of any reservations and start upskilling.
Start picking up new skills and learning by experiencing and doing. There are loads of free tutorials and resources out there. Most software services offer free trial versions. Also, know that there are many routes into tech and not all of them require you to code. Roles such as product managers or analysts make use of peoples’ ability to understand how technology interacts with the world and solve problems. So, start educating yourself and keep your learning activities bitesize and practical for where you are today.
As you do this, you will not only pick up the practical skills but also become more comfortable tackling a new concept, figuring out how a new software service works and forming your own opinions on whether the experience is good or not. Then, you’ll be more comfortable defining and discussing what you want to get out of a career in tech and why you are a qualified candidate.
Even if you don’t then go straight into a career in tech, digital skills and technical literacy will serve as strong competitive assets no matter what industry you go into or trajectory your career takes in the future. At the end of the day, with the way things are going, we’ll probably all be ‘working in tech’ to some extent within the next decade whether intentionally or not.
And finally, what does International Women’s Day mean to you?
It’s a time to remember and celebrate yourself as a woman and all the other women around you including your mum, your nan, etc. Women are great, powerful and solid. We are resilient problem solvers and we are going through a time of great and necessary change.
I remember once (about a decade ago) on International Women’s Day I was given a rose, along with all the other women, by a male colleague. I didn’t think much of it at the time. On reflection if something like that happened today, I would ask him ‘why?’. It wouldn’t feel appropriate, and I would challenge the gesture. I would not be hostile but inquisitive. I would #ChooseToChallenge. I’ve clearly changed a lot in the last ten years and I’m looking forward to how things evolve over the next ten.
Website: moonstory.co.uk
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/moonstory
