Harvard Dropout Rides Mega Coupang IPO Into Billionaire’s Club

Bloomberg2021-03-11

The New York listing gives billions to founder and investors The company faces criticism in Korea over workers’ treatment Bom Kim sold his first venture fresh out of college. Fast forward two decades...

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Fast forward two decades...</p>\n\n<a href=\"http://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-11/harvard-dropout-rides-mega-coupang-ipo-into-billionaire-s-club?srnd=premium-asia\">Source Link</a>\n\n</div>\n","source":"lsy1584095487587","html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Harvard Dropout Rides Mega Coupang IPO Into Billionaire’s Club</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nHarvard Dropout Rides Mega Coupang IPO Into Billionaire’s Club\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-11 20:25 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=http://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-11/harvard-dropout-rides-mega-coupang-ipo-into-billionaire-s-club?srnd=premium-asia><strong>Bloomberg</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>The New York listing gives billions to founder and investors\nThe company faces criticism in Korea over workers’ treatment\n\nBom Kim sold his first venture fresh out of college. Fast forward two decades...</p>\n\n<a href=\"http://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-11/harvard-dropout-rides-mega-coupang-ipo-into-billionaire-s-club?srnd=premium-asia\">Source Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","isBrief":false,"type":0,"news_type":1,"symbol":"CPNG","symbol_name":"Coupang, Inc.","start_time":0,"source_url":"http://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-11/harvard-dropout-rides-mega-coupang-ipo-into-billionaire-s-club?srnd=premium-asia","article_id":"1120338564","we_media_id":null,"thumbnails":[],"rights":null,"url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1120338564","pubTimestamp":1615465556,"sourceInfo":{"source_id":"lsy1584095487587","name":"Bloomberg"},"weMediaInfo":null,"summary":"The New York listing gives billions to founder and investors\nThe company faces criticism in Korea ov","collect":0,"end_time":0,"defaultTopTitle":"bloomberg.com","property":[],"viewcount":null,"language":"en","relate_stocks":{"CPNG":"Coupang, Inc."},"translate_title":"哈佛辍学生骑着巨资券首次公开募股跻身亿万富翁俱乐部","themeId":null,"isJumpTheme":false,"ttsUrl":null,"symbols_score_info":{"CPNG":0.9},"content_text":"The New York listing gives billions to founder and investors\nThe company faces criticism in Korea over workers’ treatment\n\nBom Kim sold his first venture fresh out of college. Fast forward two decades, and the serial entrepreneur is joining the ranks of the world’s richest with the upcoming listing of his Coupang Inc.\nThe South Korean e-commerce giant backed by SoftBank Group Corp. priced its share offering above a marketed range, valuing the company at about $60 billion. That means Kim will be worth about $6 billion when Coupang goes public in New York Thursday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.\nCoupang is the latest success story from the tech industry, and even the recent selloff in the sector is doing nothing to hamper the popularity of Korea’s largest listing ever -- and the biggest by an Asian company on a U.S. exchange since Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s. While it’s still loss-making, revenue at what is dubbed “Korea’s Amazon” almost doubled last year as the coronavirus pandemic boosted demand for online shopping.\n“Our slogan from the early days of the company was to create a world where customers ask this one question, which is ‘How do I ever live without Coupang?’” Kim said in a panel discussion organized by Milken Institute in 2019. He went on to say it was investors like SoftBank that helped Coupang embark on building a “long-term play” for customers.\nThe IPO is not just enriching Kim, 42 -- early backers are also winning big. SoftBank is the largest Coupang shareholder with a 35% stake worth $19.9 billion, representing an almost sevenfold increase on its initial investment and a record return. The Japanese conglomerate injected$1 billionin Coupang in 2015, and its Vision Fund put in another $2 billion three years later.\nOther early investors include BlackRock Inc., Neil Mehta’s Greenoaks Capital and Rose ParkAdvisors, a venture capital firm co-founded by late Harvard professor Clayton Christensen and his son, Matt. They led a $300 million financing round in 2014 and their combined stake is now worth almost $15 billion.\nA Coupang representative declined to comment for this story.\n\nBorn in Seoul, Kim moved to the U.S. when he was in middle school and later obtained U.S. nationality. While doing government studies at Harvard University, he started a student publication called Current Magazine discussing ideas from writers across colleges, which he sold to Newsweek in 2001. After trying out other ventures -- he sold another media company in 2009 -- and dropping out of a Harvard MBA, he went back to Korea. Inspired by Groupon Inc.’s business model, he set up Coupang in 2010, and the company grew to become the nation’s first unicorn in 2014.\nBacked by SoftBank’s billions of dollars in investment, the e-commerce company was able to come up with a one-day service called Rocket Delivery. Korea’s workaholic culture -- even Kim’s offspring often came home after 10 p.m. following cram school, he once said -- was what prompted Coupang to come up with a service that delivers products ordered from an app within hours.\n“The constraints that have forced us to build a solution are unique to Korea, but who wouldn’t want this service anywhere in the world?” Kim said during the 2019 panel discussion. “Customizing our solutions around the constraints in the market to fulfill universal needs is really unique, and that’s really behind our growth.”\nThe Covid-19 pandemic that hit the world last year gave the business another boost, and net revenue almost doubled to $12 billion in 2020. While Coupang’s $475 million loss was smaller than in 2019, the company warned in its prospectus it might not be able to achieve or maintain profitability in the future.\n“Coupang is definitely not a case of temporary growth,” said Lee Jiyoung, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities Co. in Seoul. “Its losses shouldn’t be too worrisome because they are spending for things such as expanding logistics centers or investing in IT. It’s for further growth.”\nDespite the company’s popularity, it has been facing growing scrutiny after several deaths among delivery and logistics employees who were allegedly overworked. According to local reports, the latest case is a delivery man in his late 40s who worked for a year from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. Coupang said in a statement his death this month wasn’t due to his workload.\nDuring a parliament hearing in February, Joseph Nortman, Coupang’s head of fulfillment services, reversed his company’s initial stance and apologized over last year’s death of a logistics worker after a government investigation found it was related to his job. Separately, the e-commerce firm said it would grant its warehouse staff and 15,000 full-time delivery workers as much as $90 million worth of restricted stock.\nThe recent backlash has done little to hamper appetite for the listing and derail Coupang’s expansion plans. The company has invested in multiple business areas, including food-delivery service Coupang Eats and newly launched streaming service Coupang Play.\n“What takes you to the next level is to not settle because customers will never settle,” Kim said in 2019. “Challenge yourself and say ‘how can you let the customer have it all?’ If the customer has it all, they can’t live without you.”","kind":null,"is_publish_news":true,"is_publish_highlight":true,"is_publish_live":false,"is_publish_wemedia":null,"editions":null,"column":"","sentiment":"0","news_tag":"","news_rank":0,"symbols":[],"gpt_button":1},"commentList":[],"isCommentEnd":true,"newsSizeData":{"likeSize":35,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false},"APP":{"userAgent":"Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)","isDev":false,"isTTM":true,"deviceId":"web-server-community-laohu8-v3","version":"4.28.3","shortVersion":"4.28.3","platform":"web","vendor":"web","appName":"ttm","isIOS":false,"isAndroid":false,"isTiger":false,"isTHS":false,"isWeiXin":false,"isWeiXinMini":false,"isWeiBo":false,"isQQ":false,"isBaiduSwan":false,"isBaiduBox":false,"isDingTalk":false,"isToutiao":false,"isOnePlus":false,"isHuaWei":false,"isXiaomi":false,"isXiaomiWebView":false,"isOppo":false,"isVivo":false,"isSamsung":false,"isMobile":false},"href":"/m/news/1120338564"}