| Bom Kim | |||||||||||
| Native Name Lang: | ko | ||||||||||
| Birth Date: | 7 October 1978[1] | ||||||||||
| Birth Place: | Seoul, South Korea | ||||||||||
| Nationality: | American | ||||||||||
| Founder & CEO of Coupang | |||||||||||
| Alma Mater: | Harvard University (BA) | ||||||||||
| Module: |
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Kim Beomseok (; born October 7, 1978), known professionally in the West as Bom Kim, is a Korean-American businessman and entrepreneur who is the founder and chief executive officer of Coupang, the largest e-commerce company in South Korea.[2] [3] In 2018, when SoftBank Vision Fund invested US$2 billion in Coupang, valuating the company at US$9 billion, Kim became the newest and second-youngest billionaire in South Korea at the age of 40. As of March 2023, Kim has a net worth of US$2.7 billion.[4]
Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea on October 7, 1978. At his age of 7, he and his family moved to the United States.[5] He went to Deerfield Academy, a boarding school in Massachusetts, where he was on the varsity wrestling and track teams.[6] He graduated from Harvard College with a Bachelor of Arts degree,[7] and attended Harvard Business School, dropping out in his second semester.[8]
Kim interned at The New Republic, started a student magazine, Current, and worked briefly at Boston Consulting Group prior to founding the magazine 02138, named for Harvard's ZIP Code. He raised $4 million to fund 02138 and started Coupang after it folded.[9]
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.[10] [11]
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.[12]
The company currently employs over 40,000 people with offices in Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Los Angeles, Seattle and Silicon Valley.[13]