Coupang: How a Harvard Dropout Built Korea's Most Valuable Startup | CNBC

This company’s been dubbedTo give someone or something a particular name or title. the Amazon of South Korea and was recently ranked as the country’s most valuable start-up.

We know the truck it’s gonna go into, the route it’s going to be out on, and then that tells us how it needs to be sortedTo arrange things in groups according to type here and when it needs

to leave.

That’s propelledTo drive or push something forward founder Bom Kim to billionaire status and made Coupang into a national icon.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that we are in every apartment complex and every apartment building at least once a day.

That’s not bad for a guy who dropped out of Harvard Business School after just six months.

I had a belief when I was in grad school that I had a very short windowA limited period of time during which something can be done. to really make something that had an impact.

During a recent visit to Seoul, I got to sit down with the 41-year-old e-commerce CEO at Coupang’s headquarters.

And while he may have reached the heights of success now, he says he didn’t exactly set out to become the next Jeff Bezos.

In fact, when the $9 billion e-commerce giantA very large and powerful company or organization. started here in Seoul back in 2010, it was as a different business entirely.

The shape of Coupang, the business model of Coupang, what Coupang looks like today, went through a lot of change.

When Kim dropped out of business school in the late-2000s, he initiallyAt the beginning started Coupang as a Groupon-style daily deals business.

But as he noticed the growing scope of technology, he quickly transitionedTo change from one state the company into a third-party online marketplace.

It was a success.

Within three years, Kim says the company crossed $1 billion in sales and was on the cuspThe point at which two different states or events meet. of an IPO.

But at the eleventh hour, he pulled the deal and radically changed the business model, convinced he could build something better.

There had been this naggingContinuing to cause annoyance or worry over a long period. feeling for months, where we had to be honest with ourselves and said, once you go public, it’s much harder to really change your direction.

And was the platform we had built, were the services and experiences that we were providing for our customers, creating a 5% difference or were we creating that kind of world where

the customers we love, their jaws would drop?

And the reality was no.

If we wanted to provide something that really mattered to customers, we had to go through an enormous amount of change.

We had to change our entire technology stackA collection of related computer programs or technologies used together., the way we did business, our business model.

That’s a bold move when you’re on the cruxThe decisive or most important point at issue. of an IPO.

It was very, very difficult.

And I think that was the most difficult, but the choice that I’m most proud of.

So Coupang was born again, this time as an end-to-end shopping platform designed to manage the full customer journey, from desktop to door.

South Korea’s e-commerce market has been growing rapidly over the past decade.

This year, online sales are projectedOfficially estimated or predicted based on current data. to expand by 18% to hit over $100 billion, ranking it in fifth place globally after China, the U.S., the U.K. and Japan.

By 2022, it is expected to jump to third place.