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AI meeting minutes have become commonplace. ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude all transcribe meeting content. Consequently, dozens of startups entered the field, only for many to shut down. Yet there is a service that continues to grow steadily through word-of-mouth alone, without any significant marketing. It is Tiro (Tiro), an AI meeting minutes tool created by Deplayto.
Even though Tiro is a paid service, customers consistently seek it out. Lim Eun-seong, CEO of Deplayto, stated, "When we ask customers why they use it, the answer is always the same: 'Simply because the recording quality is excellent.'"
Beyond simple recording, grasping context: "An AI assistant, not just meeting minutes"
Lim (CEO) introduced Tiro as "an AI assistant for business leaders." The characteristic he associates with business leaders is that their lives consist of continuous meetings. When he first founded Navy Headquarters at age 20, Lim (CEO) endured constant pain from the daily necessity of remembering and recording countless meetings. Tiro was the result of his efforts to solve this problem.
To differentiate Tiro from other AI meeting minutes tools, it focused on 'recording quality' and 'context comprehension.' During recording, it concentrates on separating audio from voice, eliminating noise (static) and echo. This is designed for in-person meetings that occur in large conference rooms or noisy cafes. The recorded output is structured by paragraph and summarized. Even when conversations mix Korean with 14 other languages, Tiro comprehends them without requiring any separate settings.
In fact, while interviewing Lim (CEO), we observed the real-time meeting minutes process with Tiro running. First, it leaves a rough draft of the conversation within less than a second. At this stage, the text appears in faded colors. As subsequent dialogue is recorded, post-processing is applied to earlier parts: sentences are refined, and unclear technical terms are accurately corrected based on surrounding context before immediately generating a summary. When asked about 'security certification' status during the interview, Lim (CEO) explained with a notably inaccurate pronunciation, "Sok-tu-rang A-i-eo-seo i-man-chil-cheon-il-iyo," but Tiro accurately recorded it as "SOC 2, ISO 27001."
300,000 users and 300 corporate clients secured through word-of-mouth alone
As a small startup, Deplayto lacked the resources to conduct separate marketing for its flagship service, Tiro. Yet since launching the service in September 2024, it naturally attracted 300,000 users. Recently, it has been generating monthly revenue of 4 billion won.
The initial user base consisted of VC (venture capital) reviewers. Their profession requires them to continue discussions session-by-session during dozens of investment review meetings each month. By sharing experiences that Tiro reduced the effort spent on organizing meeting minutes, they acted as voluntary marketers, spreading the word both inside and outside the industry.
Corporate clients were acquired in a similar manner. The moment Lim (CEO) felt most proud was when a major subsidiary of a top 10 conglomerate adopted Tiro company-wide. He explained, "A team leader at that company discovered Tiro through an influencer's YouTube video and proposed a team-level adoption. Once the utility was confirmed, the entire headquarters adopted it. Subsequently, it was reported to the CEO, leading all 9,000 employees to use it, and recently, they completed a renewal of their annual contract."
Evolving into an assistant for 'AI agents'
Deplayto has only 12 employees. Nevertheless, it has already established offices in the United States and Japan and launched local sales operations. The structure of a team spread across three countries managing 300,000 customers is possible due to the extreme utilization of 'AI agents.' It is standard for all tasks at Deplayto to be handled first by AI agents. This operational model itself is also sold as AX (AI transformation) consulting.
Lim (CEO) stated that the utilization of 'Tiro' also aims in this direction. He observed, "In the past, humans wrote meeting minutes to read them again; now, it provides data for AI agents to execute tasks." Furthermore, he noted, "If we train AI agents with the context of organizations and individuals identified through Tiro, the ripple effects will be enormous. It can be utilized not only by those who have many meetings but also by 3 billion knowledge workers worldwide."
Lim (CEO) explained, "When founding Deplayto with the startup team members, there was a shared understanding to create a startup that would grow into a great export company in our generation, just like Hyundai's Chung Ju-yung and Samsung's Lee Byung-chul. That is why we established an office in Korea first, even when it was trendy for AI startups to set up headquarters in the United States."
He continued, "Although current annual revenue is between 4 billion and 5 billion won, we aim to reach 100 billion won in annual revenue by 2030 by maintaining our current growth trajectory. We want to become a company that generates revenue in the global market and pays taxes well in Korea."
[MoneyToday startup media platform 'Unicorn Factory']
in FUTURE
