About Kyum Kim:
Kyum Kim is the co-founder of Blind, an anonymous social platform for verified professionals with over 8 million worldwide users. He started the company in 2014 in Seoul and launched it in the United States.
About Joe Merrill and Sputnik ATX VC:
Joe Merrill is a General Partner and Co-Founder at Sputnik ATX VC, a leading US venture capital fund that invests in start-up founders globally.
Sputnik ATX's mantra: growth is the only metric that matters. The firm invests $100K to $500K in early stage companies and teaches founders how to go-to-market, sell and scale. Their proven marketing and sales advisory has helped several of their portfolio companies go from zero to $100K+ monthly recurring revenue in just 4-10 weeks.
Sputnik ATX VC successfully invested in, and helped expand into the United States, companies with founders from Bangladesh, Korea, Vietnam, the UK, Nigeria, France, and many more. Their General Partners have multi-billion dollar, cross border investment and expansion experience and their GP, Joe Merrill, is a former US Diplomat in Korea.
To date the firm has invested just under $20M out of Fund I. A few examples of startups that are crushing it in their portfolio:
Nitex - crossed $130M GMV last year; major fashion brands like Inditex (the company that owns Zara) and Ralph Lauren are clients
Productable - hit $5M ARR last year; they help corporations and gov innovation arms operate more efficiently
Shmoody - about to cross 1 million users and launched their B2B university program this year with TX State
Sputnik ATX VC's portfolio companies have raised follow-on funding from some of the top VC funds in the world, including Sequoia, Shasta Ventures, Andresson-Horowitz, Draper and Associates, and many others.
