What was your childhood like? Where did you grow up?

Jeong Kim: I guess I will start when I immigrated here. I was 14 when we arrived in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. We lived in subsidized housing at first.

Korean immigrant history is relatively short, and most of us came at a time which was 1975, looking for better economic opportunities. They had almost no money when they came. Most of us, most of our parents, actually had to walk to work, which is kind of impossible in today's environment because everything is so far. You know, a couple hours walk just to get to work. Most of us had to get our clothing from thrift shops, 50 cent kind of things because they didn't have any money. I guess there is a language barrier, obviously, because I never spoke English until I came to the States. And, I was actually a shy kind of person, so it was even more difficult. In some ways, that was probably one of the most stressful times in my life, not necessarily because life was harder, but because you are a teenager, you couldn't take it as well, and I used to have a nose bleeding all the time coming home, just simply from stress.

Some people adapt much quicker, and I'm one of those guys who really didn't. But I did eventually. I have one older brother and two younger sisters, and out of the four of us I'm the only one who speaks with an accent. I think that tells you that everybody's different, even among your siblings. I have no excuse that I speak English with such an accent after 23 years. My older brother, three years older than I, didn't get to go to college but speaks without an accent. We all turned out okay.

Were you all born in Korea?

Jeong Kim: We were all born in Korea. Like I said, my older brother is about three years older than I, and I have two younger sisters.

Were you close to your siblings growing up?

Jeong Kim: Not as close as I wish we were. Our life was very difficult. We came from a broken home, and I think my brother let out a lot of his stress through me, so we had a lot of difficulties growing up together.

Did he fight with you?

Jeong Kim: Yes, he used to pick on me all the time and I used to get really upset. Now I can understand why, because he didn't have anywhere to vent his stress, so he would pick on his little brother. Now, I have children of my own I see that's probably a very normal thing. But in my case it did affect me personally. I said to myself, "I'm going to do better than him."

Were you at all close to the two younger sisters?

Jeong Kim: Not as close as I really want to be. My next sister is four years younger. That's enough age difference that we aren't really friends. But yes, I looked after my little sisters.

You said it was a broken home. Your parents were separated?

Jeong Kim: Right. They were divorced when I was very little and we have a stepmother.

Did you stay with your mother or your father?

Jeong Kim: My father, which is typical in Korea. It's the first time I'm telling anybody about this. At a lot of interviews I don't feel very comfortable talking about the past because it's not very pretty. It's not something that I want to remember. Here, when people get separated, normally the mother gets custody of the children. In Korea it's normally the father, and divorce was so unusual back then. It was something you didn't want to let anybody find out.

Did you feel chastised because of that?

Jeong Kim: I don't feel that I was chastised by people outside the family, but I would imagine this is not as good as if you had your own parents looking after you. I felt that my parents neglected me. As a matter of fact, when I left home you could say I was kicked out of home. My father disowned me when I was 16. I'm not quite sure why. I wasn't a bad kid. I was never into any drugs or did anything bad. Actually, I was a good student, but for some reason there was a lack of interest. And, maybe it's the way this first generation immigrant -- there's just so many problems, so many things to worry about, and I'm just one of the kids. And, I guess because my parents were divorced and I never really lived with either parent for a very long time, so we probably never established that bond.

Did your biological mother stay in Korea?

Jeong Kim: Yes.

And you didn't have contact with her after the divorce?

Jeong Kim: Right. I was five years old.

Are the two younger sisters from the second marriage?

Jeong Kim: One of them is, and the other one is the same bloodline.

What effect do you think that difficult childhood had on your drive or your subsequent life?

Jeong Kim: There was a moment in my life that I said I was at the rock bottom. I just couldn't think of anybody who was more miserable than I was, and I tried to think of somebody who might be more miserable. But, physically I was hungry. I didn't have food for a couple of days and there were times that were that ugly. And I said to myself, you know, life, that I really have two choices: "Either commit suicide or I try to make something with my life." And I said, "In life, I'm at the rock bottom. It's going to have to get better than this."

From then on, everything was extra. It's not how much you have at any given moment, but whether you are improving or not improving. I decided that I'm going to make something out of my life and be happy.

Was this after your father kicked you out?

Jeong Kim: No, it was way before that. There were a lot of problems leading to that. I think we are focusing on the wrong thing.

We'll get to the positive things, but it's so important for young people to realize that you can start with great adversity and still do great things. I know it's painful.

Jeong Kim: This is a subject I've avoided all my life and I'm telling you this. This is the first time I ever said this to anybody other than my wife.

I do not want to make my parents look bad. I'm sure they did what they had to do. Life was tough for them. And, I don't understand it all, but I understand a little bit more now than when I was a little kid. So, the most important thing for me, believe it or not, is not to make money or anything else, but to make sure my children grow up happy and that's all I care about.

Do you have any contact with your father and stepmother?

Jeong Kim: Yes, but not close contact. I've tried to make peace with my Dad, but not successfully. We didn't make a complete truce, and it's kind of disappointing. When a relationship goes bad, I feel that both parties had to do something that caused it to go bad. I thought I did my part in apologizing. I thought that was appropriate because obviously he would never kick me out for no reason. He must have felt that I was making his life miserable, and I apologized for that. But, he didn't really apologize for his part, which makes it very difficult for me to accept fully.

Have you had any sense of pride from him in what you have accomplished?

Jeong Kim: No. He knows that I've done all these things, but he hasn't contacted me.

You were 16 years old. You were on your own. Now what? How did you make your life?

Jeong Kim: I had a math teacher who I liked a lot because he played chess, and he liked me. I couldn't think of a place to go, so I told him about my situation and he lent me his basement room. I paid for the room, but he and his wife were kind enough to take me under their wing.

Were you good in math?

Jeong Kim: I was okay. I was a good student.

Was chess important to you?

Jeong Kim: No. It was a part of learning different things. Kids said, "Let's try this," and I said, "Okay." I'm good at those kinds of games, so I became pretty good real fast.

How did you earn money to pay him rent?

Jeong Kim: I worked a graveyard shift at 7-11. That's 11 in the evening until seven in the morning. I went to school during the day, and then on weekends I'd mow the lawn, deliver newspapers and work in restaurants as busboy and that kind of thing, which is what a lot of people do. But, working the night shift was hard because you know, you still do need sleep.

When did you sleep?

Jeong Kim: I slept after school. I had to wait until the teacher finished because I didn't have transportation, and then slept from six to nine or ten, about three or four hours a day.

Do you still get by on so little sleep?

Jeong Kim: Not anymore.

I had a problem because I didn't sleep as much for so long, that for a long time I would have an interview like this and I would just fall asleep, I mean for no reason and it comes very sudden. It used to scare me a lot. I mean, there were times that I was driving on the Beltway going home and I fell asleep on my wheel and hit a police car, and that wasn't very pleasant.

That lasted for a long time. I try to sleep now, so I don't have that kind of symptom anymore.

How much sleep do you require to feel okay these days?

Jeong Kim: About six or seven hours.

How did you first develop an idea of what you wanted to do with your life? How did you become interested in science and engineering?

Jeong Kim: When you have difficulty with English, which was natural, you have to concentrate on the things where you are not as handicapped, which was math and science. I'm not sure I was talented in the field, but those were the areas I studied more.

Because my English was so poor, my high school administrator actually got me to take an IQ test. After administering the IQ test, the psychologist -- I cannot quite remember whether it was him or the administrator -- told me generally how it came out, and he thought that I was much better at analyzing things, and my comprehension ability was very, very high, but not necessarily as good on things like memory and those sort of nature. You know, I kind of wonder whether the memory had anything to do with lack of sleep, but I didn't score as high there so I said, "Okay, I shouldn't become a doctor. A physician requires a lot of memorization. I can't be a lawyer; I can't talk. So, what can I become? I can become either a physicist or engineer." So I basically decided that that's what I want to do.
This was in 1978, when the same math teacher introduced me to computers, and...

I saw what Steve Wozniak was doing at that time, the development of Apple Computers, and I was really fascinated by it. As a matter of fact, I thought that will change the world, and I wanted to build my own computer. I wasn't sure that I could, but I was really fascinated and dreamed of doing something like that. But you know, I didn't have time to do anything, I just dreamed. But when I went to college, you know, for those things you've got a lot more time, because I got a scholarship. So, I didn't have immediate worry as far as feeding myself.

Where did you go to college?

Jeong Kim: Johns Hopkins University.

I spent all my time building my own computer, designing and building. And then, in the process, I learned through my faculty advisor that there was this new start-up company called Digitus. It was started by a guy who just created it from Johns Hopkins, and a professor, and a couple of other people. And, I joined that company and became a part owner right away and became a partner because at that point in time the computer was all new, and the fact that I was young didn't really matter. I'm a reasonably quick learner, and I had enough patience to become an engineer and contribute positively. So, I worked as a design engineer. That company did extremely well.

I joined the Navy in 1982, while I was in school, and then became an officer when I graduated from college. A lot of people ask me, "Why did you do that?" I mean, I was making so much money there I would be a millionaire, and there was no doubt in my mind that we would have done well. Well, maybe not. I mean, in the sense of -- at the time, it seemed like there was nothing that was going to stop us from becoming incredibly successful, and we thought we could do it better than Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. But, I felt that this country already has given me so much, and I needed to pay back. I did not want to wait until I was 80 years old, or 60 years old to pay back, and that it was better going into the Navy, and gave part of my time -- my prime time of my life -- serving this country. So, I spent seven years in the nuclear submarine service.

After I left, IBM came out with their PC, and there was a major consolidation. All the other computer companies went bankrupt. We plugged all the money we had into the company. Personally, I plugged in all the money that I had earned as a Navy officer in the submarine service. All my paycheck went into the company just to keep it running. That was a mistake. We made a lot of mistakes in that company. Maybe it was a good thing, because I learned a few lessons about cash flow and so on.

So I said to myself, "When I get out of the Navy, I'm going to do it again, but I'm going to do it right." In the Navy, you alternate sea duty, shore duty, sea duty. So when I was doing my shore duty in Washington, D.C., I decided to get a degree in management, because that was something I lacked. I got a masters degree in technical management from Johns Hopkins, but I didn't learn anything there. That program was designed for people to become middle level managers in a big company; it was not really designed for entrepreneurs. But I did manage to get a degree. Then, when I got out of the Navy in '89, I still felt I was not well equipped to start a company. So instead of starting the company right away, I decided to go work for Allied Signal. I worked at the naval research lab doing satellite systems development. One thing nice about working there is that satellites use state-of-the-art communications and computer devices, so I was able to catch up on the computer and communications technologies. At the same time, I also decided to finish my education, not necessarily to get the degree, but to get the education. It's such an efficient way of absorbing information because somebody prepares it for you, and you just sit there and listen. So I got my Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1991 and I felt I was all ready.

What degree was it?

Jeong Kim: It was a Ph.D. in reliability engineering. In satellite systems, we are quite concerned about the reliability and longevity of a payload, and I was responsible making sure the design was as reliable as it could be. I was interested in electronic reliability and network reliability, that's the field I studied. It was something I had to learn anyway, even if I didn't get the degree.

You've said you weren't the smartest, but you worked hard.

Jeong Kim: That's true. I wasn't number one in my class. I've taken a theoretical math course and there were times I really struggled to understand it. The kid next to me understood it so easily, I saw the limitation of my brainpower in that particular field. So I know there are a lot of people smarter than me, but I have my other strengths, so I'm not threatened by it. There's always somebody who's smarter than you. When you are dealing with very difficult problems, there are people who can solve the problems better than I can, and that's been true throughout my entire life. So I try to work a little harder. The important thing is to get results, get the object accomplished. There are many ways to do it: one's pure force, one's being smart, one's being lucky.

I never felt I was lucky. I never felt that I was the smartest, but working hard is something that I could do. And I think one thing that I am capable of is -- somehow -- my body has pretty good endurance. I can just work day and night and maintain the concentration. And, I've never met anybody who can work as long and reach the same level of concentration without getting burned out. So, that's an ability I guess, that I have.

Are you familiar with the Aesop fable of the tortoise and the hare? Just keep going and going, and you can win the race.

Jeong Kim: I'm not even trying to win the race. I'm just trying to add some positive value to myself, to my family, and to society. That's what I care about. I don't think in terms of end games and I don't think in terms of specific goals. I just try to accomplish certain things, and when it's done, I try to take the next step, one step at a time.

When you got out of the Navy, did you have an idea of what you wanted to produce? Did you know where you thought you could find your niche?

Jeong Kim: It became very obvious to me that the communications revolution was going to be even bigger than the computer revolution. People use this device to compute and make your life a little easier, but then still people need to talk and people need to work together, and that's where the communications comes. And, with the computer and the telephony merging together, there's got to be some smarter way of doing that.

There was a standard that was being established and accepted by international bodies. It's called ATM, Asynchronous Transfer Mode. It's the first and only standard that's truly international. Once you have a standard, you can build equipment for that standard. The world will have to go global in terms of communicating and connecting. I realized that was a very significant event, so I tried to team up with a couple of people to raise money and start a business in this field again. I couldn't do it. I was unsuccessful because, through the eyes of venture capitalists, I was a guy who came out of the military, with no track record of running a business. They don't care what you did in college. That was a long time ago. I didn't have any money. Most of my savings had gone into my old business.

After about a year of trying to do this, it didn't work out. So I thought about the situation. "What I have is I have an ability to come up with new product ideas. What I don't have is a track record. I don't have money, and I do not have ongoing business or structure." I thought about the movie Field of Dreams. You know, "Build it and they will come." So I approached it differently. "I'm going to build a shell company and I'm going to do whatever I can to generate the business and build up a track record, so next time when I try to raise some money it will be easier." Also, I wouldn't have to give away the entire company to do that.

So that's what I did, I set up a company. The only thing I could do as a one-person company was consulting. I did consulting for the military for three years because I had some background there. Even that was really hard because the government was downsizing at the time, and it's hard to get any kind of contract as a one person company. Most government contracts have to be competed.

There is a program through the Small Business Administration called minority set-aside. They have something called an 8A Company, where you can get a government contract without having to compete. A lot of people urged me to join that program, but I decided not to. People have done well through the program and been successful, but didn't think that was appropriate for me, because I didn't feel that I had a handicap.

You need a certain amount of self-esteem to not depend on things. If somebody gives you handicap points, you can become dependent on it, and some people aren't strong enough for that. I wasn't sure I was strong enough. You can get used to those comforts. I don't want to criticize the program. I think the program has done a lot of good things for a lot of people.

But more importantly, when I first created the company, I had to set the course. I was going to go from a consulting-based or labor-based company to a product- based company. As a labor-based company, you can only grow so fast, and there are only so many things you can do. I was interested in developing technology. That was one objective. The other one was to go from a military focus to a commercial focus. Those two objectives basically were the guiding principle for all the decisions I made. If you're going to be commercially focused, why join a government program? It doesn't make sense.

But this was a risk too, because you had to do it all yourself. You're a big risk taker.

Jeong Kim: A major, major risk taker. What is it I said earlier?

Once you have some food and clothes to wear, everything's extra. So you're not going to worry. This is the United States we're talking about! If you're healthy, you need to work. Then you're not going to go hungry. So, why not push yourself to the limit and live up to your potential? That's the way I see it.

I made the difficult decisions in all the stages of the company based on those two objectives as guiding principles. We made a successful transition from a labor-based or consulting-based company to a product-based on. I put all the money I earned on consulting work into technology development. We made a transition from a security focus to a commercial focus. We went from 96 percent sales to a government market in 1996, to something like 80 percent sales to commercial markets in 1997. So we met our two objectives.

How do you account for the incredible response that you got to this technology?

Jeong Kim: People felt the need to connect themselves through the Internet, and need to communicate more to do collaborative work. People have thought about basically throwing away everything that we have now, to build a new architecture, based on a high-speed, high-capacity network. People talk about a communications revolution and most companies thought about developing high-speed, high-capacity devices that will allow you to do things instantaneously.

But that kind of high speed transmission is really done through fiber optic networks, and the reality is that fiber optic cable is difficult to lay. It takes time. The current infrastructure is not just fiber, but there are copper phone lines, there are coaxial cables, there are satellite and wireless networks. In my opinion, those will all co-exist for a very long time.

In order to go from where we are today, where we need to go - to the future networks, there has to be some sort of technological migration path. Most companies basically want to leapfrog, and I thought that was the wrong thing. That was a historian's view. "Revolution" itself is a historian's view, because it's going to take that much longer. From a businessman's perspective, we need a communication "evolution." So, somebody needs to show the migration path.

An evolution rather than a revolution?

Jeong Kim: Right. It will be a revolution from the historian's perspective because it is going to happen in a very short time, but a lot of businesses can rise and fall within that time. It's much easier to build something new from scratch than to try to make today's technology work with future technology. So we concentrate on how we can actually go from today's technology to tomorrow's. There are some major technical issues, and we were able to overcome that. We spent a couple of years researching it, until we could productize it. We developed technologies to solve major technical difficulties. Once we'd productized it, we couldn't make it fast enough.

Who uses it?

Jeong Kim: It has been used by major telephone companies like AT&T and Sprint. It is just in the infancy stage, as a matter of fact. That's why I was willing to pay lots of money for it, and I believe it will take off in a major fashion.

What else does it make possible? I read about transmitting data from a battlefield. How does that work?

Jeong Kim: ATM technology was originally designed for high speed fiber optic networks. In the battlefield, you don't have fiber optic cables to your tank or your F16 airplane or any of that. They have UHF radios and so forth. ATM itself was not designed to be transferred over wireless links, so we had to develop specific technologies to do that.

Information gets stuck where the fiber optic network ends. You have a last-mile problem of getting the information to the people who really need it. That's what we solved, to make ATM work through a noisier, slower link. There are other obstacles that ATM is not supposed to work with, but we are able to make those things work.

Can you define for a lay person how it works?

Jeong Kim: I wish I had more talent for articulating this kind of thing. We tried to make it so that you don't necessarily have to understand how it works. The technological difficulties are many, and the solutions to overcome each of these difficulties are also many. It's like an onion. You have to peel one layer at a time to get to the core. We developed a whole suite of technologies that work in conjunction, to overcome different difficulties. Noise problems, for instance. Fiber optics are very clear, but in your cellular phone wireless network there's a lot of noise. Phone lines are very slow, compared to high-speed networks, so there are congestion problems. All those problems require specific solutions, and each itself is a major class of problems. We had to overcome that. That's why we were able to distinguish ourselves among other companies.

Just think about this. Lucent Technologies had a lapse. This is Bell Labs, the company that invented transistors, the premier lab in the communications field. They have 130,000 people, and they get three patents per day. In our entire company we only have 250 people, and we only have three patents for the whole thing. Lucent Technologies, with 130,000 people, had to admit that they couldn't do what we did with only 250 people. They're going to pay $1.1 billion in cash for that.

Who's buying the product itself? What are they using it for?

Jeong Kim: Right now, there's a voice network which uses telephony, and there is a data network which connects computers. ATM will allow you to migrate into one network, which will save you so much money. It is in its infancy, but once large companies deploy it in a massive fashion, the dollar figures will be astronomical. You have to be very careful about predicting the future. I don't want to say a number and get sued by some potential shareholders. But, Lucent feels very comfortable with our company. They are not buying the future, they are buying the present, the current value.

Were you looking to be bought out?

Jeong Kim: No.

You cannot build a business thinking about somebody's going to buy it. You have to think in terms of creating value. Again, like I said, you've got to take one step at a time, especially if you are a small company. You know, you can think too far long-term and you can starve to death. So, you have to think about one step at a time and creating the value. And, if the value gets created that is worthwhile for somebody else, they will make an offer and therefore your options are open.

We weren't looking for it. They approached us first.

Is it true that you're going to personally see $510 million from this sale?

Jeong Kim: I don't know the exact numbers, but it is something substantial, yes.

Could you have even dreamed of such a figure when you were working at 7-11?

Jeong Kim: No. It's astronomical. That was kind of difficult to imagine, but I had my dreams.

I wanted to be a major player, even when I was thinking about computers and Steve Jobs and what he was doing, and Bill Gates wasn't really moving at that time. Steve Jobs was really making headway. I thought, "If he could do it, why can't I do it?" So, in some ways, I feel that if you can put together a good group of people -- it's not just one person -- and work together, you can create a world class organization, and I thought I could do that.

You said that people who are successful are often those who feel they have something to prove.

Jeong Kim: That's certainly true for me.

I always had this complex that I felt that I was not as good as the guy next to me, and therefore I work extra hard. And, I've met several people who are highly successful and when I talk to them, they say a similar thing. So, I don't think it's just me. People who are the smartest or the most talented, sometimes they don't realize their full potential because things get too easy. It's too easy for them and things just come so easily for them, so they don't really push themselves as hard.

Most of our honorees talk about very supportive families. They were encouraged. You didn't have those things to rely on. In your case, it sounds like this drive really came from within.

Jeong Kim: I didn't have much choice. But let me tell you, there are many people like me who are not asking for a whole lot, just the opportunity to prove ourselves. I like to be in the position to give them the chance. That's what people did for me. They gave me a chance to prove myself. People helped me, but I never asked anybody to hold my hand and do things for me. The only thing I asked was to let me try to prove myself. I think a lot of kids just want that. They don't need anything else.

What now? You're at a point financially where you could retire comfortably. Why don't you do that?

Jeong Kim: No.

I could have retired a long time ago, financially. What's really important to me is that I add value to society. And, I think I still have a lot of creative energy in me. I mean, I'm a really practical person. I don't think I can be as creative when I am 50 or 60 years old, and my effort and my energy can be better spent on maybe doing -- I don't know -- social work or going and teaching at the universities. I don't know what that will be, but right now I can best contribute by working on the technologies.

I see so many opportunities. In selling our company to Lucent Technologies, one of the biggest objections was the job they offered me. They offered me a job as President of Carrier Networks. Typically, when a big company acquires a small one, the top guy at the small company gets to run that part of the organization or leave. Lucent gave me two other major divisions. I'm responsible for the entire product line for the carrier networks, so I can be much more effective, I can add a lot more value. I can't tell you for how long, but until my creative juice runs out. That's where I think I can make the most contribution. A good friend of mine said I don't need to prove anything now, so I can just lead my life and set an example. I like to set examples for other people, whatever that means.

Do you think things were possible for you in this country that weren't possible elsewhere?

Jeong Kim: Absolutely. I've been interviewed by Germans and British and people from Asian countries, Koreans as well. They ask the same question. I guess nothing's impossible, but I don't think it's practical or probable that it could have happened in other countries.

One of the biggest reasons is people's attitude here. This company, Yurie Systems, was not my first start-up. I consider Digitus my first and this was my second try. But when I went out and talked to people about taking the company public, people viewed my first failure as a great experience. They felt more comfortable because I'd been through those hard times.

In other countries, when you try and fail, you really fail. People basically look at you as a failure. Here people look at that as an excellent experience. And even if you fail, most people will walk away saying that, "Well, at least I tried. Most people don't even try." We have an attitude, I think in the United States. Only in the United States, people take that kind of attitude that we all need to take a risk. If it doesn't work out, at least I was brave enough that I did try it.

Why did you call your company Yurie Systems?

Jeong Kim: It's the name of my daughter. She was one year old when I founded the company, and I didn't get to spend a lot of time with her. It was my way of trying to ease my guilty feeling that I didn't spend enough time with my daughter.

Can you spend a little more time with your family now?

Jeong Kim: I do.

Was there a moment when you realized, "Oh, my God, this is going to work," or "I can make this happen." Was there a moment of discovery?

Jeong Kim: There were a couple of moments. The technical solutions really came from other people who were working with me. I contributed, but I don't want to take credit that is not really mine. But when I saw that there were solutions, the rest of it was just execution. The execution part is easy. That's something that I have learned from my previous failure. I know how to execute. But with very difficult technical problems, you are not sure until it's done. The outcome might be that it's not possible. But once we solved the problem, we knew we were on to something.

What was that like, when you and your team realized you had it?

Jeong Kim: The funny thing was, only a few people really understood what it meant --basically the guys who developed it. There wasn't anybody to share it with. We tried to explain it to other people and they said, "So what?" About a week later, they came back and said, "Oh, my gosh, now I understand."

Were you together when you realized that this was going to work?

Jeong Kim: Most of the time we were on the phone. There was one time that we were together.

You and your top researchers, basically? How many of you?

Jeong Kim: Less than five. These are my friends from college and high school.

How soon after you started did you realize that you were going to have a product that you were on to something?

Jeong Kim: I incorporated the company in February of 1992. I didn't get my first consulting contract until May of 1993, so I went for a year and three months without my first contract. The summer of 1994 is when we were able to develop most of the technologies, and began actually testing it. By October, we were comfortable that we had the solutions, so we productized it and started shipping the product. We developed the product in five months, in February of 1995 we started shipping the product.

You were already married when you started the company. Your wife must have really believed in you to put up with a year and a half of no consulting when you started your own company.

Jeong Kim: I think she always had faith in me. I'm forever in her debt and I'd do anything she asks. It's very difficult for anybody to understand what I'm trying to do and how spectacular it could be. I knew it was doable. I knew it could be a billion dollar company. As a matter of fact, that was my goal but, it's very difficult for a layman to understand that. To some degree my wife still doesn't understand it, but she had faith that things would work out.

Was it tough making ends meet during that period?

Jeong Kim: I hung onto my job while I was still getting my first contract. It was like working at night. We had a little bit of savings, too.

Does your wife work?

Jeong Kim: She worked at the time.

How many children do you have?

Jeong Kim: We have two now, two little girls. I don't talk about my children much. I have a security concern. I'm a big target. Think about it. I'm an immigrant, there are a lot of people who are very jealous. They shouldn't be, but that's the nature of human beings.

Have you felt that recently?

Jeong Kim: Yes, just crazy letters, but that's not unusual. If you talk to any successful people you know it happens. I stand out even more because there aren't that many people who have created wealth as quickly as I have, and I speak funny. The positive side is that people like me remind all of us that we are a nation of immigrants and the American dream is still possible. You don't have to be the smartest to make that happen. I think that's a good thing for all of us.

Thank you for a really inspiring interview. We appreciate it.