John S. Kim

Sendbird / Valon Capital

Startup founder, investor, and community builder

I’m John S. Kim, Co-Founder/CEO of Sendbird, the first startup in history to originate in Korea, move to Silicon Valley, and become a unicorn.

I also operate Valon Capital/ASQ as a General Partner, investing in startups focused on AI/productivity, deep tech, healthcare, and fintech.

As an engineer, I am interested in the brain, artificial intelligence, deep tech (space, bio/longevity, energy, robotics), productivity, and complexity science.

Learn more

“Someone once told me the definition of Hell: The last day you have on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.” – Anonymous

Our mission is to
build and invest in organizations that drive the positive future of humanity.

Sendbird

Sendbird is the world’s most useful omnichannel AI agent platform for delightful customer service. Today, we power over 300 million monthly active users who engage in conversations on our platform. To date, we have raised over $220 million from leading investors, including ICONIQ Capital, Tiger Global Management, SoftBank Vision Fund, and Y Combinator.

Valon Capital/ASQ

The mission of the fund is to invest in the future of humanity by partnering with founders who are changing the trajectory of human civilization for the better. We primarily focus on investments in AI/productivity, deep tech, healthcare, and fintech.

COMMUNITY & VOLUNTEERING

I host events for entrepreneurs to build a community of like-minded individuals who are on a mission to drive a positive future for humanity. I have advised three Presidents of South Korea and have guest lectured at Stanford University, Wharton MBA, and Seoul National University.

Recent Notes

These might be a bit more
random than you expect

Discovering Personality – The Big Five Model

Over the first few days of the new year, I’ve took the course on the big five model of personality — “Discovering Personality.” It was a fascinating refresh of the big five model and had the opportunity to go deeper into the understanding of the two aspects for each of the five factors. It was…
The Four Layers of 2020 Goals Hierarchy

While I was setting up the goals for 2020, instead of grouping to traditional categories (areas of goals) like before, I’ve layered the goals based on the impact across the different layers of society. There’s a phrase “修身齊家治國平天下” from an ancient Chinese classic “大學”, which translates into four phases of ruling the world: Inspired from…
The Art of Setting Personal Annual Goals

People tend to be a bit skeptical about setting a personal annual goal. Plans often don’t align with your reality and we’ve all experienced the frustration of setting a goal and giving up a few months into the year, unintentionally hurting your self-esteem. But, if we don’t have a goal and a plan, we don’t…
Scaling Leadership through Two Management Frameworks

As an organization reaches certain scale, it is inevitable, at least due to the current limitation set by human interaction mechanisms (e.g. verbal communication, synchronous meetings, groups, hierarchies, physically independent) that there is a certain level of structure that needs to be put in place to manage the organization. There is a few frameworks that…
The Zone of Sustainable Commitment

I was first recommended the book “Leadership and Self-Deception” from Stewart Butterfield during Y Combinator Growth program late last year. I finally got the chance to open the book recently and the story resonated so much that I recommended this book to our entire company. A high-level summary might go like this: if you get…
Situational Leadership Matrix (Simplified version)

After managing different teams of various background and scale over the years, I’ve always thought the question “what is your leadership style?” is almost a trick question. An executive from another company once shared with me a framework he learned at one of the leadership classes he took at Harvard. It seems like the original…