Kim Beomseok (Korean: 김범석; 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]
Early life and education
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.[7][9]
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]