Bom Kim

Bom Kim is a billionaire Korean businessman who founded Korea's largest e-commerce company [3], Coupang according to Forbes.[2] Softbank Vision Fund invested $2 billion to a valuation of $9 billion in the fall of 2018, making Kim South Korea’s newest and second-youngest billionaire at the age of 40.

Bom Kim
김범석
Born (1978-10-07) October 7, 1978[1]
NationalitySouth Korean
Alma materHarvard University
OccupationFounder and CEO of Coupang
Net worth$1 billion (Nov 2018)[2]

Education and career

He was born in Seoul but left Korea at the age of 7. At age 13, he went to boarding school in Massachusetts at Deerfield Academy,[4] where he lettered in varsity wrestling and track and later attended Harvard University;[5] He later attended Harvard Business School but dropped out after only six months.[6]

After interning at The New Republic and starting a student magazine called Current, Kim briefly worked at Boston Consulting Group before raising $4 million to start a magazine called 02138, which folded in 2009. He started Coupang the next year.[5][7]

Coupang
Coupang delivery truck in Seoul, 2017.

Kim founded Coupang in 2010 and since then has gone on to raise more than $3.8 billion in venture capital from investors such as Sequoia Capital, Softbank, BlackRock, and others.[8][9]

It began as a Groupon-like website and now operates as an online retailer and operates a 24-hour logistics service called Rocket Delivery. It was reported in 2018 that Coupang would gross 2.7 trillion won in annual sales and lost 1.7 trillion won between 2015 and 2017 and maintains over 3.5 million daily active users as of 2019.[10]

The company currently employs over 10,000 people with offices in Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Los Angeles, Seattle and Silicon Valley.[11]

References
  1. "김범석". www.businesspost.co.kr. Retrieved 14 December 2019.
  2. Chung, Grace. "Coupang, Korea's Answer to Amazon, Raises $2 Billion, Mints New Billionaire". Forbes.
  3. Palmer, Annie (2020-06-16). "Coupang, a SoftBank-backed start-up, is crushing Amazon to become South Korea's biggest online retailer". CNBC. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  4. "South Korea #6: An Exciting Visit with Bom Kim '96, CEO of Coupang". Deerfield Academy.
  5. Mac, Ryan. "Coupang: The $5 Billion Startup Filling Amazon's Void In South Korea". Forbes.
  6. "Bom Kim". Forbes.
  7. Green, Dennis. "The CEO of 'the Amazon of South Korea' explains how canceling an IPO at the last minute and pivoting the company twice led it to become the country's top online retailer". Business Insider.
  8. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-22/harvard-dropout-s-startup-loses-billions-in-fight-with-chaebol
  9. Merced, Michael J. de la (November 20, 2018). "Coupang, South Korean E-Commerce Start-up, Raises $2 Billion From SoftBank" – via NYTimes.com.
  10. "Subscribe to read | Financial Times". www.ft.com.
  11. Herald, The Korea (November 19, 2017). "Coupang highlights creativity, openness in its new office". www.koreaherald.com.
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