Overview

Gender

male

Investor Type

Investment Partner

Jim Kim is the Founder and General Partner of Builders VC and Founder and General Partner of Formation 8.

Jim Kim began his career with GE Structured Finance and subsequently moved to GE’s Energy Financial Services Division where he worked on project financing for renewable energy projects. As a founding partner of the Energy Technology Ventures group, Jim invested in A123Systems, China High Speed Transmission, Ocean Power Delivery, and several later-stage companies across diverse cleantech sectors. Jim then joined CMEA Capital as a senior partner in the Energy & Materials practice. There he collaborated with entrepreneurs from A123Systems, Foro Energy, and a number of university spinouts. Most recently, Jim Kim was a partner at Khosla Ventures, where he led seed investments in companies like Varentec, Arcanum, and Avogy, and later-stage investments in companies like Ciris Energy.

Jim received undergraduate degrees in computer science, electrical engineering and political science from MIT, where he also founded an Internet infrastructure start-up at the height of the technology bubble. He holds an MBA and a master’s in quantitative methods from Columbia University.

When he’s not spending his free time making wine or practicing hung gar kung fu, Jim teaches green energy and entrepreneurship as an adjunct professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management, and conducts research with a professor at the Columbia Earth Institute. Jim hopes to see the U.S. National Soccer team win the World Cup in his lifetime.