My Op Ed for The Kyiv Independent

Olga Rudenko, Editor-in-Chief of Ukriane’s largest newspaper asked me to respond to Elon Musk (and other tech billionaires) who seem to be echoing Putin’s propaganda talking points.

What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About Ukraine.”

  • The opinions that I write are solely my own, and may change as time progresses and new data emerges.
  • I’m a grateful investor in SpaceX, teach Naval’s wisdom to my engineers, and was a happy customer of Yammer. I just don’t agree that appeasement is an answer, nor that Ukraine is a regional conflict.

10 Things You Do After Your StartUp is Acquired.

John Sung Kim Net Worth

Selling your baby company is somewhat bittersweet. The money and sense of accomplishment with your team is undeniable, but at the same time it’s odd to go from CEO to employee. Half of my former employees kept asking me, “You ok, JK?” and the other half would give me an occasional look like, “Don’t you dare tell me what to do – you ain’t the boss!”

I came into the office on a Thursday evening – first clue we were acquired – no one was in the office at 6:30pm. I gathered all of my belongings in a CostCo box, turned the lights out and left DoctorBase for the last time.


1. Said goodbye to competitor. Most of my career I’ve heard VCs say, “We like you, but ABC Co. has raised so much money…”

So one of the first things I did was gathered my core team and danced in front of the grave office of my closest competitor who had raised 30x more money (yeah, 30x)! At the time of our exit we had about 2.8x their ARR (Annual Recurring Revenues) with far less churn (percentage of cancelling customers).

It’s why as a hobby micro-angel investor, I never underestimate a roomful of creative people who are die hard about winning.  Having connections is great, but scrappy often wins the day in the long run.

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2. Visit Africa. The first trip I made was to go to Morocco to ride camels and haggle for things I didn’t want.

The pictures look great but believe me, the desert is cold, boring and filled with cats. Yes, cats.

John Sung Kim DoctorBase

Which in a way made sense to me because the Sahara looked like a large litter box. However, the people of Morocco were quite lovely and I highly recommend going shopping through the maze like streets of Marrakech – a bucketlist worthy experience.

I returned home to San Francisco after ten days in Africa and ate a super burrito every day for a week.  God is great, truly.

3. Buy a bunch of stuff you’ve always wanted (obviously).  In my case, motorcycles. I always wanted a different bike for each day of the week and a victorian garage in San Francisco big enough to house them all. Dream = fulfilled.

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And if you really like a particular model, why not buy two?

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4. Buy your (ex)employees things that make them happy. Because let’s face it, without them I’d be a monkey with a powerpoint presentation. No offense to monkeys as I love animals. 

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5. Throw fun parties. And this being San Francisco, most of my guests will be smarter than me and way more accomplished. Note the tall handsome dude in my kitchen is Coach Mike Brown (former head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, my Los Angeles Lakers and now with the Warriors).

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Some of my guests (after I explicitly asked them not to) asked him questions like, “Who was worse to coach – Lebron or Kobe? Tell the truth Coach!”

In Silicon Valley for some reason we lack social graces.  #Aspergers

Or have dinner with celebrities. Not because they like you but because you paid for a fundraiser dinner benefitting a charity you actually know very little about. 

“Yo Yao!” I said, but I don’t think he got my sense of humor. Man I love basketball.

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And have a real convo with your childhood idol. When I was a kid I loved Janes Addiction. Being able to talk about the music industry with lead singer Perry Farrell was a dream come true.

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6. Retire your parents. It’s an Asian thing I guess.

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Send family members on vaca. Also, Asian thing.

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My baby cousin and her husband are both so smart and good looking and young they make me want to puke.

7. Speak at your university and drink beer with students like you’re still an undergrad. And actually puke.

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Or people from far off countries will ask you to come speak about startup life, which was also great for me considering I would never had gone to Norway otherwise.

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And for some reason after you have an IPO or exit, people who own boats invite you onto them. I never knew some many people owned boats. And you know what? Everyone is in a great mood on a boat. You never hear of a fistfight breaking out on a boat. Am I right?

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8. Do “VIP” stuff like judge a foreign country’s Miss Universe pageant.

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JetBridge

I’m married to a wonderful lady (with two kids) now so I have to disclaimer: I had a terrible time at this event. 

Or get invited to the White House and chill with politicians.

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Charlie Rangel may have left his office with some controversy (after decades of public service) but he’s still one of the best sales professionals to ever pitch. I wish I could’ve gone drinking beers with him afterwards.

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Traveling the world for a year makes you very bereft of potential girlfriends dates (ok, so I didn’t have a lot of dates before then either) so my friend Kyra packed her dress, hopped on a flight to D.C. and came to my rescue as my +1 for the White House gala. Thanks pal – I’m lucky to have friends like you.

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9. Become an angel investor and support other amazing founders by hustling hard for them. Cliche but true, in this town you must add value to get into good deals when you’re writing checks as small as mine.

John Sung Kim investor

10. Start to miss your desk at work. When you had a job. And purpose.

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Also, even your friends at Facebook seem to be working on interesting projects, and so inevitably you get back to f**king work like a real grown up.

Still, my year off the grid was memorable and I’m glad I had it. Whenever people say crap like, “I wish I could have a year like that, JK,” I always tell them, “if you really want it, then –

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My new startup JetBridge is always hiring brilliant software engineers, especially in LATAM and Europe. Come change how international software developers are treated by joining our mission!

How We Beat Competitors Who Had 30x More Money.

DoctorBase Founders

In 2009 my buddy Mischa and I wanted to make a ding in the healthcare universe. We were both pretty fed up with the status quo for consumer health, and felt like we could build a communications app that made it much easier for doctors and their patients to communicate digitally.

We learned some really harsh lessons about the American healthcare system. Namely, some of the powers-at-be who want to maintain the status quo can make Russian mobsters look like pussies.

  • If you work for Russian organized crime business, please know that I have the highest respect for your craft – no insult intended.

DoctorBase was also a lesson in competing with better-funded competitors as a bootstrapped startup by sticking to your passion for building the best damn product with superior marketing tactics – and ignoring the VC hype machine.

Our closest competitor HealthXXXX had raised 30x more money than we did, but at the time of our acquisition we were a totally employee-controlled company and was doing over triple their revenues with nominal churn.

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VCs had passed on us because, well HealthXXXX had raised much more money and (according to their formulas of prediction) that meant they were going to win.

A very famous VC told us that “HealthXXXX is going to run away with the market.” I printed out his email and taped it to my desk so I could stare at it every Saturday when I showed up to the office.

We eventually raised $1 Million via Angelist only after we were profitable (as a cash cushion) and at a healthy valuation that kept us founders in total control of the company.

When other digital health founders ask me how we did it, the short answer is that we approached our startup differently than our competitors – we treated software development and product marketing as the same discipline.

Many folks assume my first startup Five9 was more important to me because it became a much larger company, but in truth my time at DoctorBase were the best five years of my life (even better than college!). I think it was because we all felt like we were on a mission, and the team was small enough to feel like family.

At the time we sold the company we had about 18,000 doctors communicating electronically with nearly 9 million American patients. We were small, but we were a badass gang. I mean, not as bad as Russian mobsters, but still.

Interview With Tampa Bay Times

I don’t have a PR team or reach out to anyone for press (my wife Liza and I are pretty private people and like to keep to ourselves) but when it comes to helping keep the Ukrainian war in the news, I had to say ‘Yes.’ And as I write this, I really miss our Ukrainian team and our old office.