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I started a business focused on 'sound' in Jeju Island, but previously I mainly created teacher's guides at an environmental conservation association. The first page of our materials always contained the phrase that 'ecological sensitivity' is the core of environmental education. Looking at those words, I felt a disconnect between creating educational content from information found online while trapped in a Seoul office and delivering environmental education to children based on that content. Soon after, I submitted my resignation. I wanted to provide environmental education that allowed people to naturally feel nature themselves. I thought I needed to change my own region first. I left Seoul, a gray concrete jungle of buildings, and relocated to my favorite place, Jeju Island. A 'portable recorder' was with me from that point on. When you explain nature through words and text, it remains as 'understanding,' but when you hear nature through sound, it connects through 'emotion.' So I began recording natural sounds indiscriminately with my recorder. While it wasn't easy finding proper sounds, I was fortunate to get an opportunity to work with the Jeju Olle exploration team for a year. I traversed Jeju more extensively than anyone on foot and recorded places with good soundscapes while working. What seemed like a hobby-level activity transformed into a business when I was accepted into Jeju Bigger Tomorrow Center, a startup incubation facility. I began earnest entrepreneurship through three months of basic training and startup coaching from Underdogs. Sleeping Lion was born, carrying the mission of 'creating daily life that resonates with the sounds of nature.' Jeju Island is a 'volcanic island' full of rare ecological and geological value, possessing a biosphere reserve, world natural heritage site, world geopark, and one of the world's seven natural wonders. For us, whose core content is 'soundscape,' this volcanic island is like a 'small Earth,' containing mountains, volcanic cones, grasslands, caves, coasts, wetlands, and subsidiary islands. When these sounds of Jeju accumulated, my first child was born after eight years. During the newborn period, I played recordings of wave sounds and rain sounds I had made to my baby in the room. It was effective for sleep, and I appreciated being able to deliver nature experiences audibly during a period of rapid physical and emotional growth. 'BebeSleep,' born this way, was selected for Google Featured twice in a row since its October 2020 launch. Currently, it delivers the sounds of Jeju every night to over 30,000 children in 177 countries worldwide. While BebeSleep delivered Jeju's sounds to each household, since 2022, we've been developing and operating 'Sound Walking,' an experiential program for visitors to Jeju to concentrate on natural sounds. Using the minimal set of equipment that Sleeping Lion uses when capturing nature sounds, participants can directly listen to and record natural sounds themselves. By the end of 2022, through a brand called Sound Tour, we plan to move away from visual tourism and lead a new field of acoustic tourism. Sleeping Lion doesn't draw the J-curve that startups dream of. Like climbing Hallasan, we grow gradually with gentle slopes. From the beginning, we didn't dream of becoming a unicorn, and we worked while looking at changes we could make with our region. I think companies called unicorns might be able to rapidly change people's lives, but it's difficult for them to specialize or develop a single region. I see the role of local entrepreneurs as making regions distinctly regional and driving necessary change. Sleeping Lion will continue to record the natural sounds of Jeju and deliver Jeju through new experiences. I simply hope that people will commune with Jeju's nature and take deeper interest in disappearing natural life. I want to become a company that flourishes for over 30 years in beautiful Jeju Island while together creating positive change in the region. Written by Lee Yong-won, CEO of Sleeping Lion Co., Ltd., based in Jeju Hello. I'm Lee Yong-won, CEO of Sleeping Lion, recording soundscapes in Jeju Island. I received basic startup training from Underdogs in January 2020, incorporated in March that year, and now I'm in my third year of operation. Recently, I also obtained qualifications to work as an Underdogs coach. While I still have much to learn, I wanted to share our perspective on how local creator companies in Jeju sustain their business. Local Game Changer Local Game Changer is a local correspondent unit jointly conducted by StartupRecipe and Underdogs. It presents diverse voices from regional startup ecosystems across the country. We started entrepreneurship education in 2015 with the intention of 'discovering good entrepreneurial colleagues' and transformed the one-directional lecture-centered entrepreneurship education landscape into practice-based coaching education. As a result, as of 2022, we have produced over 10,000 startup trainees, 'Underdogs Alumni.' We believe that developing the world into a better place is 'innovation,' and that innovation is born through 'entrepreneurs.'