In the process of pivoting (business transition) the company, the members did not really understand the company's direction. That was the case even though I thought I had explained it hard. I thought a system was needed to align the company and employees 100%.
Reverse Mountain is a startup that operates the organizational performance management platform Orblit. Chief Executive Kim Kyung-min dreamed of founding a company since middle school. In 2020, when COVID-19 was in full swing, Kim went to the United States as an exchange student and, with the thought of "Let's try the most risky startup in this crisis," developed the hobby platform Hobby Picker. After two pivots, Orblit was introduced in 2023.
Orblit's strength is "real-time communication." Unlike existing performance management solutions that conducted evaluations on a half-yearly or yearly basis, Orblit links work data with key performance indicators (KPI) in real time to enable communication on short cycles. If KPIs and tasks do not match, an automatic alert is sent to each stakeholder. Kim said, "During customer interviews, we confirmed that long evaluation cycles caused inconvenience for members, which became the catalyst."
To that end, it provides the "Works" service. Users can create a daily schedule in Works and check it off like a to-do list to record daily performance. This makes individual performance highly visible and allows for more accurate feedback.
Recently, a "1on1" feature was added. In a one-on-one meeting, pressing the record button automatically summarizes the meeting, and artificial intelligence (AI) analyzes the conversation and even provides leadership coaching. Through this, members can build strengths and improve weaknesses.
Clients are broadly three groups: small and midsize companies and startups. While they had been managing performance by sharing documents via Excel or Word—or, in the case of small manufacturers, even exchanging handwritten documents—Orblit has improved work efficiency and convenience. Midsize companies that have completed management succession are using the 1on1 meeting feature to shift organizational culture more flexibly, and startups are adopting the leadership coaching feature in CEO or team meetings to support member growth.
Kim sees the people analytics market at $4 billion (about 5.4 trillion won) as of 2023. He views annual growth at 15%, reaching $8 billion (about 10.8 trillion won) by 2029.
The company aims to secure 300 clients and achieve annual revenue of 10 billion won by 2027. To that end, Reverse Mountain is currently pursuing a pre-A investment round of 1.5 billion won. Kim said, "We will expand development and sales staff."
As the U.S. market accounts for half of the total, the company recently began overseas expansion. Last year, Kim stayed in Arkansas, United States, seeking collaboration opportunities with local retail companies. It also signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the industrial-organizational psychology research team at George Mason University and is conducting research on feedback AI and leadership coaching AI. The research results will be presented in Apr. 2026 at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), one of the largest human resources (HR) conferences in the United States.