Coupang’s founding spirit, and Kim Bom-suk’s departure from it

The deeper problem may be that Kim and Coupang have strayed from their original venture ethos.

Suh Kyoung-ho

The author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo.

In 2013, Coupang founder Kim Bom-suk (Bom Kim), then 35 and serving as the company’s CEO, spoke at a Korean startup conference. He outlined four mistakes entrepreneurs tend to make. The first, he said, was “trying to do everything well.” A company should identify one core strength and focus on it. For Coupang, the priority was customer acquisition. The second mistake was paying more attention to competitors than to customers. Long-term success, he said, is ultimately determined by customers. That philosophy is why Coupang, when its annual sales were only 300 million won, hired 100 call-center employees. For him, “customers” included internal customers — employees — which led him to offer strong group health insurance from the start. The third mistake was accepting cultural fatalism: believing claims like “this won’t work in Korea.” Such thinking, he warned, kills innovation. The fourth mistake was fitting the business to existing staff rather than shaping the work force to meet the needs of the business.

Kim Bom-suk, CEO of Coupang, speaks about the company’s innovations in delivery — including a direct logistics system from sales to fulfillment and two-hour delivery service — at the Chosun Hotel in Sogong-dong on March 17, 2015, when Coupang was still operating at the scale of a venture company. [COUPANG]

Kim, a Harvard graduate, arrived in Korea in June 2010 with two suitcases and founded Coupang that August. Within two-and-a-half years the company had 18 million members, 850 employees and 800 billion won in annual transactions, becoming the country’s top mobile e-commerce platform and eventually Korea’s first unicorn. Kim drew inspiration from Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, whose theory of disruptive innovation Coupang brought to life in Korea. By purchasing inventory directly and delivering it within 24 hours using its own staff rather than outside contractors, Coupang created the Rocket Delivery model. What initially seemed reckless became the industry norm.

Many wondered how long Coupang could survive while absorbing massive losses to build logistics centers, but the company insisted these were “planned deficits.” Kim’s determination paid off: Coupang posted a profit in 2023 and is now Korea’s second-largest private employer after Samsung Electronics. Last year its revenue reached 41 trillion won (approx. $28.0 billion), surpassing the combined sales of major discount chains Emart, Lotte Mart and Homeplus. Coupang has become a dominant force.

Kim’s dream of creating a world where customers would ask “How did I ever live without Coupang?” has largely come true. Even after a breach involving 33.7 million personal data records, J.P. Morgan assessed that customer departures would be limited. The landscape that made life without Coupang hard to imagine was shaped in part by the Distribution Industry Development Act, which restricted late-night and early-morning operations of legacy retail chains, creating a vacuum Coupang quickly filled.

Public anger over personal information that feels as if it has become a public commodity is now enormous. Many users are quitting the platform, and class-action suits are underway. Coupang deserves criticism for failing to control internal access to customer information, and Kim deserves scrutiny for remaining silent while facing a crisis that demands accountability. Victims need compensation, and the company must outline safeguards to prevent a recurrence. Still, dismissing Coupang’s entire record of innovation would be excessive. It is not inherently wrong for a company that grew in Korea to list in the United States. When Coupang went public in 2021, the absence of dual-class shares in Korea briefly drew debate, but nothing has changed. The early capital that nurtured Coupang came from global investors, including SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son.

A Coupang logistics center in Seoul is seen on Aug. 6. The company posted 11.98 trillion won ($8.16 billion) in revenue in the second quarter, its highest quarterly figure to date. [YONHAP]

The deeper problem may be that Kim and Coupang have strayed from their original venture ethos. What happened to the startup that aimed not merely for customer satisfaction but for delight — to “wow the customer?" Are internal customers — employees — still treated as thoughtfully as they once were? And where is the founder who once slept on a cot inside logistics centers to understand the work firsthand? Korean consumers hope Kim will not dismiss their frustration, especially when he has yet to offer even a basic apology.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.