John is a Managing Partner of HighBar Partners, which was originally founded 15 years ago as a personal investment vehicle of Bill Joy (co-founder of Sun Microsystems & Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), Andreas Bechtolsheim (co-founder of Sun Microsystems) and Roy Thiele-Sardiña (former Sun Microsystems executive). Before joining HighBAR Partners in 2009, John Kim was with W Capital Partners, a private equity fund with over $1 billion under management that acquires and makes direct investments in growth equity technology companies. Mr. Kim joined as the firm's first employee in 2003. During his time at W Capital, Mr. Kim acquired direct investments in the secondary market from corporations, financial institutions and general partnerships while also focusing on structured and special situations investing.

Prior to W Capital, Mr. Kim worked in operations as Director of Corporate Development at Zeborg (acquired by Emptoris), a venture-backed enterprise software company spun off from The Mitchell Madison Group, where he focused on financial operations and corporate strategy. He was also Director of Investments at ISL Management, a venture capital firm funded by JP Morgan dedicated to early stage financial services and software investing. Mr. Kim also worked as an investment banker with JPMorgan Chase (and its predecessors) and Robertson Stephens, where he worked on complex leveraged finance and merger and acquisition transactions across sectors including technology, financial and healthcare services and industrials. Mr. Kim holds a BS degree in Economics from The University of Chicago and an MBA with Honors from Columbia Business School.