Some people heard that a 5-person company six months old had signed an annual SM (system maintenance) contract with the conglomerate SK AX and asked, "How?" — so I wanted to write it down. There's no special secret. Coincidence, preparation, and candor happened to line up.
1. Coincidence Came First
In September 2025, the person running the kiosks for the Walkerhill casino resigned, and SK AX was looking for short-term staff. As it happened, a PM our CEO had connected with on another SK project reached out to ask, “Is this kind of work something you could do?”
We couldn’t be sure whether 5 people could handle all of it, but we answered that having even one person go in first to assess the situation was possible.
2. What We Did at the First Meeting
At the meeting at SK AX headquarters, we did two things.
- We received the operations manual and incident-response documents left by the previous operations team, and within 24 hours we sent back our own analysis.
- “We are 5 people. We run 24/7 response with outsourced monitoring and our own on-call.” — we stated our limits and operating model honestly.
The most dangerous thing when a small team works with a conglomerate is “pretending you can do it.” It’s better to say clearly what you can’t do, and to prove what you can with time and results.
3. Early Operation and Trust
Rather than rushing into a contract, we chose to run the early operation together and build trust. We responded first to incoming inquiries and issues, and shared progress through regular reports. The experience of operating our own SaaS (D-SKET) carried over directly into this work.
A steady weekly report in the same format proved more effective than any polished proposal.
4. The Contract
Before long, SK AX was the first to propose converting the engagement into an annual SM contract, and we accepted.
Now
The SK AX contract didn’t just give us stable cash flow. Dealing daily with a conglomerate’s operations, security, and documentation standards also prepared our own product (D-SKET) for enterprise adoption. A big customer’s demands come back as a small team’s maturity.
Our next goal is to work with two more conglomerates besides SK AX. Adding one each year so that in five years we’re working with five — that’s our hope.