Entrepreneur / Engineer

Taeho Kim

I write about how AI changes the way people decide, execute, and work together.

These essays come from building products, leading teams, and learning what actually helps people move faster and what just creates noise.

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Startup → exit•Kakao Ventures EIR•Product & engineering

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The Era of the Solo Unicorn Has Arrived

Startup • Jan 19, 2026

Start here

The Era of the Solo Unicorn Has Arrived

Start here

Recommended starting paths

If this is your first visit, pick the problem space that feels closest and follow just one lead essay and one companion piece.

For builders thinking about startups and product

Start here if you care about small teams doing bigger work, shifting bottlenecks, and how founders need to relearn what matters.

Lead essay

Startup • Mar 13, 2026

The Rule of Three

I used to talk about a “rule of three” in startup consulting. The fastest, easiest, and eventually cheapest path is usually the third attempt, whether it is hiring, product building, or working with coding agents.

For people thinking about teams and leadership

This path is for readers interested in authority, structure, leadership, and how teams develop better judgment together.

Lead essay

Engineering Leadership • Jul 14, 2025

For early startups, start with ‘essence’ rather than shiny methodology.

Author: Taeho | Published: 2025-07-14T08:00:29+09:00 When you start a startup with a few like-minded co-founders and work blindly, you start to see little by little results, but at the same time, you start to feel inadequate about yourself and your team.

For people watching how AI changes work

If you want a practical view of AI as a change in workflow rather than a novelty, these two pieces are the fastest introduction.

Lead essay

AI • Feb 2, 2026

A Mental Model for Building All-Purpose SaaS for Early-Stage Startups

The core loop behind a surprising amount of back-office SaaS is simple: input, processing, approval, and storage. Once AI agents can run that loop on top of your existing repo and workflows, the question shifts from which SaaS to buy to how you want to trigger, review, and accumulate the knowledge.

Themes

The five themes I keep coming back to

Before the archive, start with the themes that keep showing up across the essays.

Startup

What makes startups move, wobble, and eventually grow.

Sep 29, 2025

Entrepreneurs are athletes and startups are the Olympics.

Leadership

How teams see the same problem, make decisions together, and keep shipping.

Jul 14, 2025

For early startups, start with ‘essence’ rather than shiny methodology.

Where AI makes a real difference in day-to-day work.

Dec 1, 2025

Where are knowledge workers going?

Data

Where metrics, judgment, and clarity come together.

Nov 3, 2025

Use calibrated social media

Health

How health, habits, and recovery change the quality of work.

Dec 15, 2025

A better life through the data provided by my body

Notes

Short notes

Observations and judgments before they turn into longer essays.

AI · Health

Apr 14, 2026

Your New Fortune Teller Is Your Health Stack

Wearables, calendar data, and nutrition logs are starting to function like a personal operating system for life decisions. With AI agents layered on top, expert advice becomes something you can actively use rather than passively wait for.

Apr 9, 2026

AI-Native Is a Phase, Agentic Business Is the Goal

I think the phrase 'AI-native company' is too broad to be the destination. It becomes clearer when we frame the destination as an agentic business and derive strategy from that future state.

Health

Apr 1, 2026

My heart officially says I'm back

A brief personal reflection on returning.

Health

Mar 31, 2026

My beloved Taco Bell... one soul food gone

Mourning the closure of a favorite spot, and reflecting on foods that carry comfort.

Reading

Recent reading

Interesting articles and videos, summarized by AI.

Health

Apr 14, 2026

Can One Dose of Creatine Offset Sleep Loss?

This summary covers a study on whether a single 0.2 g/kg dose of creatine can reduce the cognitive costs of sleep deprivation. The main takeaway is that creatine appears safe and modestly helpful, with especially notable effects in some logic, processing-speed, and reaction-time tasks.

Health

Apr 14, 2026

A Neuroscientist's Diet for More Autophagy

This piece summarizes Dom D'Agostino's argument that you can drive autophagy without a full fast by using a short, tightly designed calorie-restricted ketogenic protocol. The focus is on practicality: strong metabolic benefits, lower psychological friction, and better repeatability than a conventional fast.

Health

Apr 14, 2026

MIT's Noninvasive Blood Glucose Breakthrough

This summary explains MIT's latest progress toward needle-free blood glucose monitoring using Raman spectroscopy. The core advance is a simpler, smaller sensing approach that focuses on just three wavelength bands while maintaining commercially meaningful accuracy.

Engineering Leadership

Apr 14, 2026

Marc Brooker on Incidents and AI Engineering

This summary captures Marc Brooker's lessons from thousands of postmortems and his view of how AI is changing software engineering. The main idea is that engineering judgment still compounds through writing, systems thinking, and careful problem selection.

Background

Where these essays come from

These essays come out of building products, leading teams, and working inside real companies.

LinkedIn • Jan 7, 2025

The Intro Post I Shared When I Started Working with Kakao Ventures

I like building things, but I only consider them truly alive when people actually use them. My path has taken me from founding a startup in the U.S. to seeing companies across Korea and the U.S. at many different stages, and that accumulated experience is what I hope to bring into this EIR role.

Read the Kakao Ventures introduction note

This Kakao Ventures introduction note is the shortest way to understand the background behind these essays.

Why I keep this here

I hope this is useful.

Start with a representative essay, then keep up more regularly on Substack or LinkedIn if the work resonates.

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LinkedIn Substack

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