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

The Future of Life

I’ve been a strong advocate of the future of VR. Let’s assume we have a device that allows us to wear for a long period of time without motion sickness or sore-eyes, with full peripheral vision and good-enough input device to express ourselves virtually. It doesn’t have to provide full tactile feedback yet. If we can…
Accelerating Self-growth

Ericsson’s work on deliberate practice has a meaningful implication on self-development. Becoming great at something takes more than mere hours spent on the task itself. Based on the work by Dr. Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory, intrapersonal intelligence helps with structuring one’s own deliberate practice programs. Looking back at my pro-gaming days, I used to structure my practice into training different aspects of…
7 Earth-like Planets and the Non-linear Gap between the Civilizations

Last week, NASA announced that they found 7 Earth-like planets just 39 light years away, with 3 of them in the goldilocks zone. This could probably be the most exciting news of 2017 (non-work related). The chance of meeting another civilization in the universe that happens to be in the right timeframe between the beginning and the extinction…
The Founders Pledge

I’ve signed up for the founders pledge inspired through Y Combinator’s blog post. With Founders Pledge, founders can sign a pledge to donate some portion of their personal equity and then figure out the recipients for the donation later. Founders Pledge handles all the legwork. As a charity itself, pledges are eligible for tax relief at time…
Order and Chaos in a Company Culture

The society today upholds diversity as an absolute virtue. Diversity across educational backgrounds, race, ethnic group, gender, age is something we all pursue vigorously. It seems almost trivial to choose diversity over conformity or homogeneity in any discussion. However, to put things into perspective, nature having evolved through millions, if not billions of years, may provide a slightly different view to…
CO2 Level and Unit Carbonomics

This scared me. I’m open to changes, but I also think a few million years of evolution has gotten human beings to be pretty good at surviving around the nature’s balancing point we have today. We’ve been hearing about the rise of CO2 level for some time now, but I feel like we’ve actually gotten to…