John Kim: The GTM Story of Sendbird ($1+ Billion Valuation)

Welcome to another episode of Unicorn Builders. In today's episode, we're speaking with John Kim, CEO & Co-founder of Sendbird, a customer communications platform that has raised $220 Million in funding.

Here are the most interesting points from our conversation:

• Founding Journey: John co-founded Sendbird after recognizing a need for a chat feature in his previous app for moms. The pivot was driven by organic growth and market needs.
• SEO Optimization: Sendbird's growth was significantly boosted by targeting specific keywords like "chat API" and "chat SDK," which improved their inbound leads and organic growth.
• Customer Evolution: The initial customer base included SMBs and startups, especially in gaming and social networking, but evolved to mid-market and enterprise clients over time.
• Product-Market Fit: The company realized product-market fit through unexpected inbound leads from significantly larger companies, indicating a real market demand for their product.
• Marketing Evolution: Sendbird’s marketing evolved from manual SEO efforts to a structured approach involving specialized functions like demand generation and product marketing.
• New Product Launch: The latest product, Sendbird Business Messaging, extends beyond user-to-user communications to include transactional and marketing messages, significantly cutting costs for clients using traditional SMS channels.

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