The screen was the part Michael Chong decided to leave out. For a founder whose company had spent years making digital things appear over real ones, this was an interesting omission. Seerslab knew augmented reality. Its early calling card was a camera app that could decorate a moving face. Yet when Chong turned to glasses, he chose a first product without a display. The future, apparently, could wait for its close-up.
That decision gives his career a more useful shape than a procession of product launches. Chong, also known as Jin-wook Jeong, has repeatedly worked on the distance between a technical possibility and something a person will actually use. Sometimes the distance is an editing chore. Sometimes it is the cost of finding customers. Sometimes it is a component sitting precisely where a spectacle wearer would prefer less weight.
His company’s route runs through mobile video, licensed camera effects, virtual places and wearable AI. The names change. A persistent question survives: what has to become easier before the technology can leave the demonstration?
The corporate job had become too small for the question
Before starting Seerslab in 2014, Chong worked at Samsung Electronics and SK Telecom. His professional background spans technical marketing, product planning and business development, with Tellabs also on his résumé. He earned an MBA at the University of Texas at Austin. This was a founder arriving with experience of selling technology as well as understanding what it could do.
His own account of leaving corporate life was specific. He thought mobile communication was moving toward images and video while the large organizations around him remained absorbed in text messaging. A camera was becoming a means of expression. He wanted room to pursue that shift. Seerslab’s name, he explained, meant a laboratory for people who look into the future.
The opening was surprisingly ordinary. People could watch video on their phones, but producing something worth sharing still involved trouble: large files, awkward editing, an intimidating blank recording button. Chong saw an opportunity to shorten the trip from pointing a camera to having a little piece of entertainment.
Lollicam arrived in 2015. Its effects operated while a person recorded, rather than asking for an editing session afterward. Face tracking let stickers follow expressions. The software made an otherwise technical process feel like play. A complicated bit of engineering had acquired the social manners of a toy.
Lollicam launches: face tracking and effects move into the act of recording.
There was an audience for that manner. By February 2016, the app had passed three million downloads after eight months. K-pop performers including EXID’s Hani had used it. Disney character stickers followed through an agreement with Walt Disney Company Korea. The attraction was easy to see: the app gave people a small performance without requiring them to become video editors.
The second application had one thing the first lacked
The Silicon Valley chapter contains a pleasingly unpolished detail. Chong applied to Y Combinator and was rejected. Before the next summer intake, Sendbird founder John Kim encouraged him to try again. Chong’s second application was hurried; the earlier attempt had involved much more preparation. This time, however, Lollicam existed and had results to show.
Seerslab joined the summer 2016 batch. The lesson Chong drew from the reversal was about traction. A better-rehearsed explanation could only do so much. Actual use changed the conversation. For someone trained in product planning and business development, it was a pointed reminder that a plan becomes persuasive when other people have begun behaving as it predicts.
After Demo Day, he said, more than 60 prospective investors called. By then Lollicam had reached six million downloads. Seerslab moved to Palo Alto, seeking access to investment, mentoring and potential partners. Chong still described Korea, Japan, China and Southeast Asia as the app’s key markets. Moving the company did not require pretending that its customers had moved with it.
He was also unusually direct about a possible exit. A sale to a platform with an established audience appealed to him because building distribution consumed substantial resources. This was a practical ambition, expressed while the app was attracting attention. The question of who already had the users would soon become less theoretical.
A sticker found a different customer
The camera market grew crowded. Naver’s Snow expanded with marketing resources a smaller company could struggle to match. Chong publicly raised concerns about larger businesses competing with startups through similar products. Naver disputed the suggestion of copying, pointing to comparable features in other apps. The disagreement exposed a commercial difficulty that did not depend on settling the argument: a good feature could appear in many places.
For a founder, that is an unpleasant distinction. Inventing or refining an experience and controlling its distribution are separate jobs. A person enjoying a funny camera effect rarely conducts a historical inquiry before downloading the next app. The sticker has no obligation to reward the earliest business plan.
Then SM Entertainment wanted Seerslab’s AR stickers for its karaoke video app, Everysing. The request changed the identity of the buyer. Seerslab could supply a capability to someone else’s service. Chong’s team began selling technology and content through a software development kit, the package developers use to put another company’s functions into their own products.
ARGear gave that approach a product. A university project brief described a combination of SDK, content and intellectual property, and server infrastructure. Its examples included camera effects, virtual try-on and background replacement. These were pieces other teams could assemble into an experience. Seerslab’s name no longer had to be the name a consumer tapped.
A reading of the product journey, rather than a claim that one business replaced every earlier one.
In July 2019, the technology reached a particularly theatrical setting. At a Deutsche Telekom 5G event in Berlin, an executive danced beside an AR representation of singer Chungha. Seerslab supplied the demonstration. The same company that had helped people decorate their own faces was helping a telecom operator explain what its network might deliver.
The scene was extravagant; the transaction underneath was familiar. A partner had an audience and a reason to engage it. Chong’s company had something that partner could use. By 2021, he was talking about timing and whether consumers were ready for a new experience. Camera software had become a way into other people’s businesses.
The frame grew from a face to a street
Chong’s interest in the camera extended beyond the person holding it. In 2023, he and Seerslab colleague Donghwa “Jerry” Jang were listed to present MirrorCity at AWE in Santa Clara. The session described a virtual social space for gathering, communication and self-expression. The frame was expanding.
MirrorTown brought that spatial interest to recognizable places. In a November 2024 Metaverse Alliance meeting, Chong presented the platform as a way to connect physical and virtual environments. The examples included Gangnam Station, Jeonju Hanok Village and Jeju. Users could make content and explore potential services around digital versions of actual locations.
There is a continuity here with the camera app. Lollicam gave a familiar face an additional layer. A virtual version of a real street gives a familiar place another possible use. The commercial problem becomes more complicated as the frame widens: people need a reason to return, businesses need something to do there, and a recognizable setting alone cannot supply either.
Chong’s public work also moved beyond his company. His AWE biography listed him as a vice president of the Korea Metaverse Association. He was presenting inside an industry conversation about what these environments might become, while still carrying the responsibilities of finding customers for one particular business.
A pair of glasses must survive an ordinary day
By 2025, the question had moved onto the wearer’s face. In discussing AInoon, Chong described roughly two years of AR-glasses research with a large electronics company. A display made the device more expensive and demanding to power; useful content was another concern. Seerslab removed the display from its initial approach and worked with the smartphone instead.
Chong also sought eyewear partners. He acknowledged limitations in customer service and distribution, and wanted optical retailers involved. He discussed subscriptions and future telecom cooperation as plans, alongside the possibility of adding AR functions in later generations. Selling a frame meant thinking about the people who would fit, sell and support it.
In September 2025, Seerslab and Stage Five announced an agreement covering AI wearables and communications services, including plans for a dedicated glasses model. Cooperation was becoming a concrete part of the route to market, though an agreement remained a statement of intended work.
By March 2026, two AInoon models were being sold through Musinsa: G1 and the camera-free AInoonX. The distinction matters. Even within one product family, the camera could be optional. A business built around vision was offering a version that did without that component, too. Fashion retail had entered a story that began with mobile video effects.
“Before it’s a device, it’s glasses.”
Michael Chong, April 2026
That April, Chong described adoption in terms of people keeping the glasses on and fitting AI into existing habits. It is a more demanding ambition than producing a demonstration. A demonstration receives a few minutes of attention. Glasses ask for a place in someone’s daily routine, beside choices already made about convenience, appearance and price.
His early app offered a quick reason to smile at a phone. His later software gave partners something useful to build with. Now the test is whether assistance can arrive through an object people are already willing to wear. Across those changes, Chong keeps returning to the practical terms of acceptance. The missing screen is one answer. The person putting on the glasses gets to decide whether it is enough.