Kim Beom-Su’s journey is an achievement in a country where the greatest wealth is held by a handful of family conglomerates.

He grew up in poverty. His parents raised their 6 children in a single room in a popular district of Seoul. They were chaining small jobs forced to leave their children to fend for themselves.
Mr. Kim will say later that this autonomy instilled in him a sense of responsibility. 1st of his siblings to join the university, he finished his studies in industrial engineering by offering private lessons and sometimes even skipping certain meals. Despite a very laid-back appearance, the entrepreneur admitted in an interview that these difficulties helped him to build up.

He began his career at Samsung at the same time as Lee Hae-Jin, founder of Naver, the Korean Google.

His job was to develop an online communication service for the IT department. He left the company five years later and created Hangame, the leading Korean online gaming portal. His counterpart Lee Hae-Jin created Naver simultaneously. The two companies merge in 2000 and become NHN Corporation. At that time, the entrepreneur worked day and night as a businessman and programmer. He said in an interview that he sometimes cracked in a mixture of opposite emotions, an immense pride offset by the fear of not being able to pay his employees.
After five years of existence, NHN moved to Silicon Valley to develop its activities in the United States. The mission turned out to be more difficult than planned, nevertheless Mr. Kim saw opportunities. Hypnotized by the iPhone, he imagined developing applications for this device which seems revolutionary to him. No longer finding his place at NHN, he left the company in 2007.

After several unsuccessful attempts, he created KakaoTalk, a mobile messaging application.

The platform has immediate success with more than 1M users in a month. In a few years, KakaoTalk has become essential on the Korean market, 90% of the country’s smartphones are equipped with the application.
The entrepreneur did not stop and acquired Daum Communications Corporation, the country’s second largest search engine behind Naver.

In line with the American and Chinese tech giants, he has built a real ecosystem ranging from the investment company, e-commerce platform and even the application of content for children.

More recently, in 2017, it further diversified its activities with Kakao Mobility, a transport platform bringing together taxi services, private drivers and parking. The same year, Kim Beom-Su launched KakaoBank, an online bank, which was a real revolution for a very state and regulated country.
In three weeks, KakaoBank became 1st in distribution of consumer credits, ahead of the country’s 19 banks, including Kbank, the online bank launched a few months earlier. The figures are impressive: 300,000 accounts opened in 24 hours, 1.5 million customers in a week. After two years of existence, it remains the most used banking application in the country, thanks to its user experience and its ease of use like the other interfaces of the group. Korea Investment, Ebay or Tencent are invested in the capital.
Kim Beom-Su wishes to dismantle the culture of hierarchy and calls himself Bryan by her employees. He recently appointed Jimmy Rim, one of the country’s youngest leaders, to head Kakao’s operations. The emergence of entrepreneurs such as Kim Beom-Su has created a climate conducive to innovation with a softening of the environment and a political will to support Korean companies.
Kim Beom-Su lives in Seoul with his wife and two children. The family shares their passion for online games. The entrepreneur likes to joke that he could have «gone wrong» if there had been online games in his day. He owns 26% of Kakao Corp.