Enjoy a 1-hour lunch at International Smoke with Jim Kim, Founding Member and General Partner of Builders VC in San Francisco.
Jim Kim is a founding member and GP of Builders VC. Prior to Builders, Jim founded Formation 8 and served as its Managing Partner. Jim enjoys investing in entrepreneurs working on transformative, contrarian companies. He currently serves on the boards of IT and Diversified Technology companies including: Context Relevant, EVA, Bolt Threads Taxon Biosciences (sold to DuPont), and GrabIt, and previously served on the boards of Wish and Lucid Design. Prior to Formation 8, Jim was a General Partner at Khosla Ventures, where he led investments and founded technology companies in a variety of industries including IT, hardware, energy, and consumer products. Prior to KV, Jim joined CMEA Capital as a Senior Partner in their E M practice.
Jim began his career with GE Capital’s Structured Finance group where he worked on a variety of IT Telecom financings before joining the Energy Finance team and working to grow their portfolio to $15B in assets. At GE, Jim also co-founded the GE Ventures initiative and led investments in China High Speed Transmission, ComScore, A123 Systems, Danger, and several later-stage companies across diverse technology sectors. Jim received undergraduate degrees in Computer Science Electrical Engineering and Political Science from MIT, where he also founded a venture-backed Internet infrastructure start-up with fellow Course 6 students.
He also holds a Masters Degree in Quantitative Data Analysis from Columbia University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. He enjoys kung-fu, tai chi, making wine (DJK Lei), and fishing, and he hopes to see the U.S. Soccer team win a World Cup in his lifetime.
Builders VC has a team of over 35 operators who’ve worked together for over a decade successfully scaling dozens of venture backed companies. Their track record of success includes leading companies such as Bower Wilkins, Bolt Threads, Skybox, Context Relevant, Climate Corp, Udemy, and Sprout Social. Their leadership team has a diverse background of founding, operating, and investing in companies at the earliest stages.