Positive Tenacity

About

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

John S. Kim (김동신) is the Co-Founder and CEO of Sendbird, the world’s leading omnipresent AI agents for customer service. (Y Combinator W16). We power over 300 million people’s conversations every month on our platform and have raised over $220M+ USD from ICONIQ Capital, Tiger Global Management, SoftBank Vision Fund, Meritech, Emergence, WiLab, Shasta, August, and Y Combinator.

I operate as the General Partner at ASQ & Valon Capital, investing in AI/productivity/B2B, deep tech, healthcare, and fintech startups. I have served on the boards of several organizations, and am also the member of the WSJ CEO Council and YPO here in San Francisco Bay Area.

Previously, I was the Founder and CEO of Paprika Lab, a social gaming company that was later acquired. I earned a degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Seoul National University and graduated Stanford GSB. Once upon a time, I was the #1 pro-gamer in Unreal Tournament in Korea.

Y Combinator at Davos
I organized a gathering with YC Alumni and Sam Altman for an evening together. It was an incredibly enjoyable night, filled with learnings about the future of civilization, discussing AI, energy, space, and even global politics.

World Economic Forum‘s Davos is certainly a great place to meet many leaders from around the worldβ€”whether for business purposes or to connect with other thought leaders shaping the future of our society.

Advising the Presidents of South Korea
I had the privilege of advising and presenting to three different Presidents of South Korea. In this photo, we are sharing Sendbird’s global startup journey and discussing regulatory challenges to help more startups expand internationally.

Guest Lectures at Stanford GSB & Seoul National University
This was a fun class where I shared Sendbird’s journey, a playbook for building global startups, the magic of Silicon Valley, and insights into the Big Five Factor personality assessment.

Sendbird CXO Forums & Leadership Events
We host CXO forums and leadership events worldwide, including San Francisco, New York City, and South Korea. We invited a group of entrepreneurs and customers to share our journey, lessons, and outlook for the future. It was wonderful to see so many friends who, over the years, have built unicorns, IPOs, and β€œsparkles” (baby unicorns), all gathered in one place. πŸ™‚

Sendbird on Times Square
We celebrated our milestone with the city of New York. Throughout our company’s history, we have connected over 6 billion people worldwide, enabling billions of conversations to help individuals connect with their doctors during the pandemic, send money to family members, find the love of their life, and build businesses. We are excited to support such a wide range of economic growth across the globe.

Forbes Cover Story
Thank you to Forbes for the opportunity to share our story. It’s been just over a decade since we started our journey, but it feels like Sendbird is experiencing a second renaissance, with AI agents at the center.

We’re building the AI workforce of tomorrow to help people unlock their full human potential. In the next 10 years, we believe everyone on the planet will run their own AI workforceβ€”not just to get through the day more efficiently and pleasantly, but to unlock their inner creativity like never before.

We’re deeply excited for what’s ahead and can’t wait for the next decade of global entrepreneurship. πŸ™

Building and Serving Communities
Our family’s philanthropic contributions focus on children’s education, healthcare, and environmental sustainability. We actively engage in charitable initiatives through financial contributions, volunteering, and serving the global community.

Our Family Mission & Core Values

Mission Statement

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

Core Values

Theme: Entrepreneurship
1. Positive Tenacity
2. Leadership
3. Learn & Adapt
4. Think Big & Long-Term

β†’ Learn more about our family’s core values in this post.

Personality Traits

  • The Big Five – slightly more in-depth results are here.
    • Extraversion: Very High
    • Neuroticism: Exceptionally Low
    • Conscientiousness: Very High
    • Agreeableness: Exceptionally Low
    • Openness to Experience: Moderately High
  • MBTI: ENTJ-A
  • Enneagram: Type 3
  • DISC: DC
  • Strengths Finder: Achiever, Competition, Activator, Futuristic, Focus

Social Channels

Korean Social

ABOUT Positive Tenacity

These are my notes from building and investing in startups. I’m John S. Kim, Co-Founder/CEO of Sendbird, and General Partner at Valon Capital/ASQ. Learn more here.

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FOLLOW MY JOURNEY

Announcing delight.ai ✨ to our APAC market :) Incredible work from our @sendbirdhq team. Great turn out! πŸ™Œ Happy holidays from team @sendbirdhq πŸ’œπŸ™Œ At Koom festival with @saeju_jeong :) gave a quick talk about AI, organizations, teams, self, and the path for humanity after superintelligence. On stage at AWS re:Invent 2025 with Delight.ai β€” a glimpse of what the future of AI-powered customer service looks and feels like! πŸ’₯ It was a genuine privilege to present our new AI brand: delight.ai to the world last week. I am inspired by our team’s incredible teamwork to put together such an event to delight our customers and the opportunity to connect with the leaders in AI here in San Francisco πŸŒ‰ We did it! First ever launch event in SF by our @sendbirdhq team. Amazing teamwork! Thanks for coming to our Delight.ai launch event! Great session on the future of enterprise AI, team and organization in the AI-default world. Home office setup Nov 2025 πŸ’» Mike Intrator, Co-Founder & CEO of CoreWeave. Super interesting framework on how he sees his business from financial assets and DCF(!) perspective. Learned a lot! Breaking Bad is my all time favorite TV show. Great meeting you @aaronpaul! Very cool to learn about his @thelightphone journey. What a fun night! Happy Halloween πŸŽƒ πŸ‘» from @sendbirdhq family! The first @koom_official festival comes to an end. I’m incredibly inspired by the people and the story of how it came to be. Congratulations to my dear friends @saejujeong and @kiha516 for pulling this off, and thank you for the opportunity to share our thoughts and experiences on AI to the audience as well. Magical evening at @atomixnyc hosted by our amazing friends made our NYC trip truly unforgettable. The masterful flavors crafted by @jparkato and exceptional hospitality by @eparkato made it an experience to cherish. We hosted our annual @sendbirdhq CXO Forum 2025. It was great to reconnect with likeminded leaders in the industry along with special guests @leejehoon_official and @dj_raiden_ We @sendbirdhq are on @netflix documentary about AI. SBS, one of the largest media companies in Korea filmed a bit about our AI agent business. Our portion starts around 19:30 :)