seunga-lee-must

# S01E03 · Seunga Lee — Founder of MUST <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMvNO0_ELp0" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img class="uv-poster" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cMvNO0_ELp0/maxresdefault.jpg" alt="Seunga Lee on The Useful Podcast Episode 3" loading="lazy" /></a> Seunga Lee is the founder of MUST, an AI personal styling app for men. Personal color analysis is a real industry in Korea — it reads your skin, hair, and eye color and tells you which colors actually suit you, and people fly in from other countries for a session. Seunga worked as the English translator at one of these labs and sat through hundreds of consultations, which is where she found two things: the quality swings wildly depending on who is running it, and almost nobody serves men. So she built MUST — three photos, a report, standardized output — doing product, sales, and marketing by herself. The founder story here is the timeline. Seunga thought ChatGPT was a translation tool until last December, went to one meetup, started building in January, and is running a pilot now. In this conversation, Gokul and Seunga get into how eight hundred color consultations became a product spec, why she is blunt about the limits of AI ("the reviewer is the job"), and how she built an audience from scratch by posting one reel a day for three months while living in Abu Dhabi. ## Listen <ul class="uv-linkrow"> <li>Watch<a class="uv-ico uv-yt" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMvNO0_ELp0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></li> <li>Show<a class="uv-ico uv-sp" href="https://open.spotify.com/show/033DRed1adLXd1bg8honOl" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Useful Podcast on Spotify</a> · <a class="uv-ico uv-x" href="https://x.com/theusefulpod" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@theusefulpod on X</a></li> </ul> <a class="uv-btn" href="https://useful.ventures/podcast/seunga-lee-must/transcript">Read the full transcript</a> ## Key facts <ul class="uv-facts"> <li>EpisodeThe Useful Podcast, Season 1, Episode 3</li> <li>GuestSeunga Lee, Founder of MUST</li> <li>HostGokul Bala, co-founder of Useful Ventures</li> <li>CompanyMUST, an AI personal styling app for men based on personal color analysis</li> <li>TopicsPersonal color analysis, solo founding, vibe coding, building an audience from zero, the immigrant founder journey</li> <li>LengthAbout 52 minutes · Published August 2026</li> </ul> ## Guest <ul class="uv-linkrow"> <li>Seunga<a class="uv-ico uv-li" href="https://ca.linkedin.com/in/seungalee121718" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LinkedIn</a></li> <li>Host<a class="uv-ico uv-x" href="https://x.com/GokulsVision" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gokul Bala on X (@GokulsVision)</a> · <a class="uv-ico uv-ig" href="https://www.instagram.com/gokuls.vision/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram (@gokuls.vision)</a></li> </ul> ## Key insights **A translator sees what the customer never does.** Seunga spent about a year as the English interpreter at a Korean personal color analysis lab, sitting through roughly eight hundred consultations with clients flying in from Vietnam, the US, and Canada. What she saw was quality swinging wildly by consultant — same price, very different results — which became the reason MUST exists: standardize the process so the output is consistent no matter who, or what, is running it. **Nobody was building for men.** Fashion and beauty businesses skew almost entirely toward female customers, but the people asking Seunga for style advice her whole life were her older brother, her dad, her uncles, and her boyfriend. Men want the guidance too; they are just less likely to sit in a studio chair next to a stranger holding up color drapes to their face. **She thought ChatGPT was a translation tool until last December.** Her boyfriend pushed her to learn AI; she went to her first meetup — a Lovable event — that same month, started vibe coding in January, and had a working version of MUST by the end of February. Less than a year separates "AI is for translating" from running a live pilot. **The reviewer is the job.** Seunga has no technical background, so she cannot independently verify whether the model's output is accurate. Her rule: check everything, cross-check with people who know more, and expect the AI to be confidently wrong on a regular basis. Hallucination isn't a rare failure mode for her — it's a constant she designs her workflow around. **Distribution can be manufactured on purpose.** Before MUST, Seunga built a Spanish-language following from zero — introducing Korean culture and language to Spanish speakers, then teaching Korean through lip-synced songs — by posting one reel a day for about a hundred days while living in Abu Dhabi. It took two to three months to hit 10,000 followers. The habit that got her there — consistency, replying to every comment, dropping formats that don't work and doubling down on ones that do — is the same habit she now applies to marketing MUST. **She's doing product, sales, and marketing alone, and knows what she's missing.** MUST is a solo build with no CTO yet; Seunga has demoed live on stage, pitched investors, and been pulled up to pitch for a technical co-founder, all while still holding down the non-technical side of a fashion-tech company by herself. ## About MUST MUST is an AI personal styling app for men built on personal color analysis. A user submits three photos — one selfie and two full-body shots. From the selfie, the app reads skin, hair, and eye color to place the user into one of nine personal color types across dimensions like temperature, brightness, and contrast, then generates a best and second-best color palette. From the two full-body photos, it measures shoulder width, waist, and leg length to calculate proportions. The output is a personal styling report: recommended necklines, collar shapes, button styles, and accessory colors and patterns to look for — and what to avoid. MUST is built and run solo by founder Seunga Lee, who is currently running a pilot that started around Toronto Tech Week and is looking for a technical co-founder to join as CTO. ## FAQ <div class="uv-faq"> ### Who is Seunga Lee? Seunga Lee is the founder of MUST, an AI personal styling app for men. She is originally from Seoul, South Korea, where she studied Spanish language and literature, and later worked in production and client management for a fashion OEM company, including two years managing production in Nicaragua during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before building MUST, she worked as a certified colorist and English translator at a Korean personal color analysis lab. She now lives in Toronto. ### What is MUST? MUST is an app that gives men a personal color analysis and body-proportion styling report from three photos: one selfie and two full-body shots. It identifies a user's best and second-best color palette based on skin, hair, and eye color, and recommends necklines, collar shapes, and accessory colors based on body proportions. It was built and is run solo by founder Seunga Lee, who is not a software engineer by training. ### Why did Seunga Lee build a personal color analysis app specifically for men? Seunga noticed that fashion and beauty businesses, including the personal color analysis lab where she worked as a translator, focus almost entirely on female customers, even though the people who repeatedly asked her for style advice — her brother, her dad, her uncles, her boyfriend — were men. Many men are also less comfortable sitting through an in-person consultation next to a stranger. MUST gives them a private, standardized alternative. ### How did Seunga Lee learn to build MUST without a technical background? She started attending AI and tech meetups in Toronto in December 2025 after her boyfriend encouraged her to learn AI, began vibe coding in January 2026 using tools like Lovable, Claude, Cursor, and v0, and had an early working version of MUST by the end of February 2026. She has no formal engineering training and says the hardest part is that she has to personally review and verify everything the AI produces, since she can't independently confirm the model isn't hallucinating. ### How does MUST's personal color analysis actually work? A user submits a selfie and two full-body photos. The selfie is analyzed for skin, hair, and eye color to place the user into one of nine personal color types along dimensions like color temperature, brightness, and contrast, producing a best and second-best color palette. The two full-body photos are used to measure proportions like shoulder width, waist, and leg length. The result is a report of specific styling guidance — necklines, collar and button styles, accessory colors and patterns — tailored to that person. ### How did Seunga Lee grow an audience from scratch? Before MUST, while living in Abu Dhabi, Seunga started a Spanish-language content account introducing Korean culture and later teaching Korean through lip-synced songs, aimed at Spanish-speaking K-pop and K-content fans. She posted one reel a day for roughly a hundred days, replying to every comment, and reached 10,000 followers in two to three months. She now applies the same consistency-and-iteration approach — testing formats, sticking with what works, researching competitors — to marketing MUST. ### What is The Useful Podcast? The Useful Podcast is a series of founder-to-founder conversations from Useful Ventures, hosted by Gokul Bala. Each episode digs past the highlight reel into the actual work of building a company. This is Season 1, Episode 3. </div> ## Related * [[podcast]] is the full Useful Podcast index. * [[manifesto]] is how we see the world and how we work. * [[notes]] is where we write about the world we see coming. * [The Useful Podcast on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/033DRed1adLXd1bg8honOl) · [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@TheUsefulPodcast) · [@theusefulpod on X](https://x.com/theusefulpod) Back to [[podcast]].