Justin Kim is the co-founder and CEO of Hupo. They help organizations across Asia Pacific build their dream team of world-class leadership coaches by combining human experts and powerful software.

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They work with clients like Bank of Singapore, Oracle, Busy Bees, Kredivo, Tokio Marine, and Morgan Stanley to grow and retain their most valuable employees.

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👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

My job is to do whatever it takes to get our business to grow (and stay alive), keep our team focused and motivated, and make our product as simple as possible.

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🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

99% of my job is sales. Not just to customers or investors, but also to our team — including our coaches. Our business is powered by software but built around people — if they themselves aren't sold and motivated by the mission of the work and the value it creates, we'll never be successful.

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🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

Pivoting Hupo to 12x revenue in 10 months.

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It was insanely painful and difficult but it forced me to understand just how important strong leadership was. Leadership is one of those things that's hard to quantify so we sometimes don't believe it's make-or-break, but it is.

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Vision, product, execution — if you don't have great leadership, you don't have any of these three. People won't rally around a bad leader and your business will die.

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To be clear, I don't feel like I'm yet a great leader, but it's something I prioritize just as much as I do anything else with my time. If I can get to the level I want here — I'm confident our business and anything else I do with work will be highly successful.

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🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

PeopleTech. There is so much hype — some well-deserved, some not so much — around AI right now. One AI company recently raised $100m+ in funding just months after being founded without a real product.

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I've spoken to 10+ investors from the best VCs globally who believe that AI is surely here to stay — but that this also creates an opportunity for businesses that also understand the changing role and value of humans in the workplace.

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Social connection, management and leadership, personal development all fall into this area. The companies that understand how other companies want to invest and develop their people as AI creates unprecedented change are the ones that'll drive outsized impact.

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💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry?

1. Be a "knowledge sponge".

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I stole this from a letter the CEO of Coinbase wrote to a new PM (I'll link here) but the idea is that you surround yourself with people who you want to emulate — and you try to copy as much as you can of the qualities, behaviors, and values they exhibit before you build your own voice on top of that foundation.

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t's an amazing way to accelerate your learning curve and grow faster than your peers.

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2. Work in customer support.

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You'll be surprised how much your career will benefit from truly understanding customer pain points, thinking on your feet, and asking the right questions early on. Customer support forces you to do all three.

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There's a reason why Bloomberg (estimated to do $10B+ in annual revenue, highly profitable, still private) invests into building the highest paid customer support department in the world.

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🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours?

Our dog!

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🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show?

‍The West Wing. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world; it's the only thing that ever has."

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🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Anything with dark chocolate.

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FYI. We've edited this interview for clarity.

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