John Kim – From the No. 1 Pro-Gamer to a Billion-Dollar Startup Entrepreneur

Photo by Sohn Jae-gwon

Today’s guest is John Kim, who is the co-founder and CEO of Sendbird, the number 1 in app chat API. Sendbird latest funding round priced the company at $1.05 billion and to date, John has raised over $220 million with Sendbird from ICONIQ, Tiger Global, SoftBank and many more.

Prior to founding Sendbird, John was the founder of Paprika Lab, a social gaming company that was acquired by Japanese gaming firm GREE in 2012 and John was South Korea’s all time no.1 pro gamer in Unreal Tournament.

In this episode, John talks about his career journey, how he went from no. 1 pro gamer to a serial tech entrepreneur. John also shares his leadership insights about core values, setting expectations, the biggest mistakes founders make in the hiring process, and much more. John packs quite a punch in this interview and you are going to get a ton of insight from him.