Sendbird aims to fly even higher, above 300 million

Founded in 2013, Sendbird, a customizable in-app communications platform used by more than 300 million active users monthly, is still hungry for more, the app operator’s chief executive said.

“We still have a long way to go,” Sendbird’s CEO and co-founder Kim Dong-shin said in an interview with The Korea Economic Daily on Tuesday in his office at the company’s headquarters in San Mateo, California.

As of the end of 2023, Sendbird’s monthly active users surpassed 310 million but considering that the world's population is nearly 8 billion and the number of global mobile users is about 5 billion, there is room to grow according to Kim, who also goes by John.

“I have a dream to bring a significant change that could be indispensable in modern human civilization like electricity, tap water or Wi-Fi,” said Kim.

Sendbird’s chat platform for mobile apps and websites can be modified by its customers, mainly companies, as it is offered with application programming interfaces (APIs), software development kits (SDKs), and user interface (UI) kits.

The platform, which is also available in other forms of communication such as video and voice streaming, is currently used by more than 4,000 companies across the world, including leading brands such as Yahoo! Sports, Reddit, DoorDash, Paytm and LG.

Its monthly messages already topped 7 billion, according to the company.

DETERMINATION AND PERSEVERANCE MATTER

In 2021, Sendbird became a unicorn, a startup with a value of over $1 billion, during a Series C funding round.

It has so far raised more than $200 million in funding, and its investors include ICONIQ Growth, STEADFAST Capital Ventures, Tiger Global Management, Meritech Capital, Emergence Capital, Shasta Ventures, August Capital, Funders Club, World Innovation Lab and Y Combinator, according to the company.

In the early stages of the service launch, Sendbird struggled to attract investors like other early stage startups, said Kim.

Its funding proposal for a Series A round in 2017 was rejected by 30 venture capitalists, but Kim remained determined, taking solace in the knowledge that billion-dollar international coffee powerhouse Starbucks endured rejections by 170 investors in its early stages, the CEO said.   

Sendbird was originally an in-app chat service of Smile Family, a childcare community app also introduced by CEO Kim in 2013. But it was later separated from the childcare app and relaunched as an independent in-app chat service, Sendbird, for companies.

Kim, himself, is also a venture capitalist. He set up VARLON Capital in 2021 and has invested in 40 startups so far with the VC’s first fund managing 30 billion won ($23 million) in assets.

“Setting up a company is like learning how to ride a bicycle,” said Kim. “You learn from falling.”

He said his motto is “to stay positively tenacious.”

“The secret to innovation is perseverance. It means that when you see an opportunity, you go for it despite obstacles,” said Kim.

The US-based Sendbird now runs regional offices in other parts of the world, including Seoul, Singapore and London.

Write to Jin-seok Choi at iskra@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.