Dongjin Lee Technical Advisor
A 25-Year Engineer's View — I've Never Seen One Company Carry Every Layer Like This
A 25-Year Engineer's View — I've Never Seen One Company Carry Every Layer Like This
“In 25 years at large enterprises, I rarely saw a single company carry every layer the way Li.fizz does.”
Q. Could you introduce yourself?
I'm Dongjin Lee. I received the Technology Grand Prize at Samsung Electronics' Technology Research Institute, served as Director of the ODD Research Center, and went on to become CEO of Kinovention. Today, I teach at the Department of Convergence Electronics Engineering at Hanyang University. Over the years, I've received the IR52 Jang Young-sil Award and two Korea Multimedia Technology Grand Prizes, and I served as the faculty advisor for a CES 2024 Innovation Award–winning project.
I'm with Li.fizz as an external technical advisor — working on their in-house chipset design, hardware R&D direction, and overall technology roadmap.
Q. How did you and Li.fizz come together?
Jeongsu Song, our CEO, is a graduate of the Convergence Electronics Engineering program at Hanyang. He'd been one of my students since his university days — I'd known him through the projects he worked on, and watched him take on more projects through InBody, LuaLab, and Labino. One day, he came to me and said, "Professor, I'm starting a kitchen automation company." Honestly, my first reaction was puzzlement. "Why would an electronics engineer go into kitchens?"
But the picture Jeongsu laid out was real. He said: "If existing robots cost 80 million won, take 60 seconds per drink, and have a 0.2% adoption rate — we'll build a robot that costs 4.5 million won, takes 3 seconds, and achieves 100% adoption." And his answer for how to get there — cloud robotics — was crystal clear. Looking at that picture, I felt, "This will actually reshape the industry." That's why I agreed to come on as an advisor.
Q. What do you do as Li.fizz's technical advisor?
Three things.
First, advising on hardware R&D direction. Li.fizz isn't a company that just buys motors, mechanics, and circuits and assembles them. They're developing their own actuators — including a PCB stator motor. In these deep technical decisions, my 25 years of experience can help. We decide together which components to build in-house and which to source.
Second, advising on the in-house chipset (L1 Chip) design. Li.fizz has developed its own controller chipset optimized for beverage manufacturing. It's genuinely rare for a startup to build its own chipset. Since I worked deeply on chipset design back when I was leading ODD R&D, I help them work through the details.
Third, advising on next-generation R&D. Li.fizz is also developing humanoid robots for kitchen automation — robots that go beyond single-task machines and can flexibly handle multiple tasks, like a person. This could be a real game-changer in the physical AI industry, so we're shaping the R&D strategy for it together.
Q. As an advisor, is there something that feels distinctly different about Li.fizz compared to other companies?
The depth and breadth of their technical spectrum. A typical IT startup deals only with software. A typical hardware startup deals only with hardware. But Li.fizz covers web, app, firmware, backend, infrastructure, mechanical design, circuit design, and even chipsets and actuators — all in a single product. And they're building every layer themselves, from zero to one. That's real vertical integration.
In 25 years at large enterprises, I rarely saw a single company carry every layer like this. Usually you're specialized in one. Because Li.fizz takes on all of them, they create a differentiation that's hard for other companies to replicate.
Q. Is there a side of the Li.fizz team that has impressed you the most?
Speed. In academia, it takes one to two years for a piece of research to become a published paper. Large enterprises are similar. But at Li.fizz — once a decision is made, a prototype appears the next week. A month later, it's running in stores.
This speed is possible because the team is genuinely small and tight. It's a team where sincerity matters more than a flashy résumé. Everyone here came together with the same drive — "I want to solve this problem." That kind of energy is something I haven't seen in 25 years. Every time, it inspires me too.
Q. What kind of engineer do you think stands to gain the most from their time at Li.fizz?
People who pursue technical depth. Circuits, firmware, embedded systems, cloud, AI, web, mobile — environments where all of this comes together in a single product are rare. I'd especially recommend it to hardware engineers. Seeing the circuit you designed make it into a real product that ships and runs in 1,400 stores — that experience is hard to find anywhere else.
And people who learn fast. At Li.fizz, you end up touching multiple areas from a single seat. Someone who joins on firmware might be working on the cloud a year later, and on circuits the year after that. If that feels like an opportunity rather than a burden, you'll grow very quickly here.
Q. A final word.
I always tell my students, "Wherever you work, broaden your technical spectrum." But that's harder than it sounds. Most companies push you to specialize in one thing. Li.fizz is the opposite. It's an environment where you can't help but broaden. As a 25-year engineer, I can recommend this place with confidence.