The post below is the introduction I shared when I began working with Kakao Ventures.
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I love making things as a software engineer. But I also know that things only become truly alive and valuable when people actually use them.
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I founded a startup in the United States. It was a difficult journey, but I was fortunate enough to have a small exit. More than ten years ago, we built and sold a product and content recommendation engine at a time when that idea still felt unfamiliar. It was the first commercial engine that could explain, using NLP, why a particular item was being recommended. It is striking to watch the world turn, LLMs arrive, and ideas that once felt almost imaginary start becoming real.
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I have worked across a wide range of stages in Korean and American tech companies, from very early startups to organizations with 50, 100, 300, and 1,000 people, all the way to large corporations. Watching each stage go through its own version of growing pains led me to care deeply about the kinds of organizations and leadership practices that can reduce that pain. That perspective has become one of my biggest assets.
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Coupang, which acquired the company I founded, and Lyft, where I later worked, both went public. The financial outcome was not life-changing, but it did feel like a long period of uncertainty and effort had finally been rewarded. Looking back, though, the process itself was the reward. I have come to realize that my own journey can sometimes be genuinely helpful to people pursuing uncertain adventures of their own, and that is why I want to do this EIR role at Kakao Ventures with real seriousness.
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Every morning, I wake up, take a double shot of espresso, and jump straight into an intense indoor cycling race. Cycling, for me, is exercise, meditation, recovery, dopamine, and a source of inspiration all at once. It influenced the name of the company I run as well: Routine Ventures. It is my way of declaring that I want to keep living a life that is both routine and venturous.
