Millennial sold his first 6-figure business at age 21. Here are his tips

When Kevin Kim dropped out of college at 21 to become an entrepreneur, it seemed like a huge gamble.

“My mom cried a little bit,” Kim, now 33, said with a laugh.

But his confidence was not without foundation. Kim had just sold his first company – which he started when he was just 18 – for “six figures”.

That was no small feat, considering her start-up capital was just $2,000, which Kim said she saved by doing part-time jobs.

His e-commerce business imported streetwear from South Korea and sold it across North America, he told CNBC Make It.

“After selling my first company, it was easy to decide,” said Kim, who emigrated to Canada from South Korea when she was 11.

“There was no vision or alignment…I was a civil engineering undergrad but wanted to create services and products for different audiences.”

Kim then spent nearly 10 years creating digital products for other startups and companies, before going all-in on 2020 with Stadium Live, a metaverse app for sports fans.

The app allows users to customize their own avatars, buy digital collectibles, hang out with other fans in virtual rooms, participate in interactive sports broadcasts, or play mini-games.

The startup has raised $13 million so far, including Series A funding led by NBA star Kevin Durant’s 35 Ventures, World Cup champion Blaise Matuidi’s Origins Fund and Dapper Labs Ventures.

CNBC Make It uncovers Kim’s three tips for running a successful business.

It’s common for entrepreneurs to attribute the success of their startups to finding a good product-market fit.

But for Kim, what he calls “founder market fit” is even more important. This means that a founder is truly passionate about what they build.

“Getting product-market fit is really hard, it takes years. You have to ask yourself, do I really love what I do? Do I really love this industry? that I can see myself building around this for 10 years?”

Kim said he knew he had always wanted to create products around the four areas that spoke to him: sports, games, music and fashion.

“I know founders who, for example, [launched] a SAS startup with accounting, but they weren’t even into accounting,” Kim said.

“They are able to get into it and make money, but they burn out faster than other founders who are suitable for the founder market.”

Nonetheless, product-market fit is still crucial to a company’s success, Kim said.

“Without a product-market fit, you couldn’t survive as a business because there’s no real demand or supply between your product and the audience.”

Responding to consumer needs has made his businesses successful. In fact, Kim started his first e-commerce business because he wanted to find clothes that matched his “style and size.”

“I could never do that with brands in the United States and Canada at the time,” he said.

“It really started as a personal hobby and need…I quickly saw that other people had the same need.”

This applied to Stadium Live as well – Kim noted that the sports industry was focused on creating products for a limited demographic of “millennial or older fans”.

“I could see they were all focusing on one-dimensional content and heading towards betting. It was an interesting opportunity for me to take a look at the next generation of fans and think ‘who’s building for these fans? ‘” he told CNBC Make It.

“They didn’t have the money yet, they were consuming sport in a completely different way, they wanted to interact with others within a community and they wanted something new.”

Kim’s idea appears to have paid off – Stadium Live has amassed more than 750,000 users who “spend over an hour a day on the platform”, the company said.

Stadium Live is also valued at around $32 million, Kim told CNBC Make It.

According to Kim, defining a strong vision and set of values ​​for your team is “absolutely essential.”

“Why should talented people join your company and grow with you? This question cannot be answered only by the product you build, but also by the company and culture you build,” he said. added.

The importance of corporate culture cannot be underestimated, Kim stressed, if one is to build an “iconic company for the long term.”