Working together to build Taiwan’s brand
This April, the first international iteration of Dcard was launched in Japan under the name Dtto. This name is taken from the Italian detto and its English cognate ditto, representing the idea of finding people and things that resonate with one another. The key to the company’s expansion from a workforce of less than ten people at the beginning to over 200 employees in Taiwan and abroad, including a local team in Japan, has to do with a habit of Kytu Lin’s.
Whether in business or in life, he says, “What I want is not to achieve a goal, but to create a system. A ‘goal’ could be losing two kilos in a month, but a ‘system’ would cultivate the habit of exercising every day. When you approach things from a systemic perspective, they can be sustained over time and won’t be easily interrupted.”
Since its earliest days, Dcard has emphasized user privacy and the authenticity of its posts. In order to maintain these principles, any unauthorized commercial posts are handled by a dedicated team of moderators. The sharing of real-life experience by users has further enhanced the credibility of Dcard’s posts, so that people will often add “Dcard” to their searches online. As a result, even those who don’t use the site itself are likely to come across and consult Dcard posts in their searches for particular things. In Lin’s analysis, “this means that people believe these posts have value, which is why they’ll input this kind of search query. Over time, Google is trained to just suggest ‘Dcard’ automatically after you type such and such a term and a space into the search.”
Lin is an eager learner and often shares his reading experience on Facebook. From these posts, you can get an insight into the thinking behind Dcard’s success. In a Medium post of his on “pie-chart thinking” versus “line-chart thinking,” Lin mentions that the latter tends to limit company development because it relies on past experience and achievements to deduce future performance, whereas pie-chart thinking emphasizes “using the future to deduce the present,” which is to say thinking about future market opportunities rather than limiting oneself, and using that visionary insight to bolster areas of weakness in the present. As such, learning is key to growth. Dcard’s company culture is based on learning. Whenever employees propose a book they want to read or a seminar they want to attend in their group chat, Lin will get things sorted out within 48 hours because he believes that this is the most responsible way to treat his colleagues.
Like their eager-to-share CEO, Dcard’s employees are also committed to transparency, disclosing problems and solutions on the online publishing platform Medium as Dcard Lab. For example, one post discusses how the company used quantitative research to determine the reasons for the high rate of people leaving the registration page, and then improve the registration process, ultimately achieving a 500% increase in registration completion. Other posts offer experience from various teams and tips from interns. For Lin, his main concern is not commercial competition, but his users, so Dcard shares information openly in a demonstration of the philosophy of the brand.
During his college days, Lin was a youth ambassador for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and while on a visit to Canada he saw an advertisement that said, “If we can’t export the scenery, we’ll import the tourists.” This quote has stuck with him for the past decade. During this time he has started his own business and visited various countries to explore markets and meet other entrepreneurs, and throughout, a voice in his head has said, “Taiwan is a brand that needs to be opened up. When more world-class companies emerge from here, the world will get to know Taiwan better, and so what Dcard can do is look to the world and keep expanding its influence.”
On Dcard’s e-commerce platform, Good Choice, users can comment on or discuss products.
Dcard’s video team engages well-known Taiwanese YouTubers in discussions about hot topics from the site.
Dcard's video team visits college campuses around Taiwan to gauge students’ opinions on a variety of issues.
The atmosphere at Dcard is relaxed and open, with staff hard at work in their preferred locations around the office.
Dcard as a company is focused on the growth of its team members. Not only do the staff have access to educational resources, they are regularly engaged in discussions by CEO Kytu Lin, who gives them a chance to have their ideas heard.