Residence San Francisco | ||
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James Park is a Korean American tech entrepreneur. He co-founded and is CEO of Fitbit. He was named in 2015 among Fortune magazine's 40 Under 40, an annual ranking of the most influential young people in business. With a net worth of $660 million estimated by Forbes, he is ranked #29 in the magazine's America's Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40 in 2015.
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Early life
Park is of Korean descent. He attended high school at the prestigious all-boys University School in Cleveland, Ohio. He started undergraduate study at Harvard in computer science but dropped out.
Fitbit
He co-founded Fitbit with Eric Friedman in April 2007 after according to a Forbes profile "realizing the potential of sensors on the Wii remote such as accelerometers paired with smaller and smaller devices". The co-founders started with an initial investment of $400,000 contributed by themselves and others but realized one year after starting that more funds would be needed for a product launch. They were able to get additional funding from SoftTech and True Ventures. Park found the initial stages of developing the product to be tough especially in finding a hardware manufacturer. He recalled the search for the right supplier and organizing the production line in Asia left the company "pretty close to being dead".