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 a topic that feels close and start with its lead essay. Each one comes with a companion piece.

If you are building something

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 • 2 min

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.

If you run a team

These essays are about authority, structure, and how teams learn to make good decisions together.

Lead essay

Engineering Leadership • Jul 14, 2025 • 9 min

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.

If you are wondering what AI actually changes

These two pieces cover most of my view: what AI changes about day-to-day work, and what it does not.

Lead essay

AI • Feb 2, 2026 • 13 min

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

Five themes that keep showing up

Before you pick an essay, here is what I write about most.

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.

How AI actually helps in day-to-day work.

Dec 1, 2025

Where are knowledge workers going?

Data

How to read the numbers and use them in decisions.

May 18, 2026

Personal Decision Intelligence Works

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 early thoughts before they turn into longer essays.

Startup · AI

Jul 16, 2026

What Solo AI Founders Need Beyond AI

AI can make solo entrepreneurship extraordinarily powerful, but experience, judgment, discipline, and resilience determine whether a founder can direct that power well.

Jul 15, 2026

Send Me the Mental Model, Not the AI Email

When AI writes the message, the sender's underlying mental model matters more than polished output. Share the intent that should become the prompt, system, and result.

Health

Jul 10, 2026

What Comes After the End of Drinking Culture?

Ideas I have shared over the past three years about changing attitudes toward alcohol, health, and longevity were featured in JoongAng Ilbo. The article traces the path from wearables and wellness software to personal digital twins and AI-assisted decision-making.

Jul 9, 2026

Real-Time Interpretation for Everyone

AI is making real-time interpretation available to everyone, but the deeper value of studying languages was never just linguistic skill. Curiosity, courage, and openness to difference remain powerful lenses for navigating an AI-shaped world.

Reading

Recent reading

Interesting articles and videos, summarized by AI.

Startup

Jul 16, 2026

Writing changes your brain and your future! 📝✨

This article provides deep insight into how writing can change the way we think, our ability to learn, and our future.

Startup

Jul 14, 2026

Silicon Valley's Science Fiction Problem: A Dangerous Mis…

This essay takes a critical look at how Silicon Valley giants selectively interpret science fiction and use it to justify their business models and political agendas.

Jul 14, 2026

Why Companies Are Done Renting Their AI

In this video, Clem DeLong, CEO of Hugging Face, talks about the growth and importance of open source AI.

AI · Data & Decision-Making

Jul 14, 2026

The journey of AI tokens in the data center 🚀

This article details the 15 physical and logical steps that one AI token experiences as it passes through the data center as of 2026.

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 quickest way to see where I am coming from.

Why I keep this here

I hope this is useful.

Start with a featured essay. If you like it, new writing goes out on Substack and LinkedIn.

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LinkedIn Substack

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