TOKYO -- A few years after Bom Suk Kim dropped out of Harvard Business School to launch what would eventually become Coupang, South Korea's largest e-commerce company, he was at a crossroads. He already had a fast-growing e-commerce site on his hands, and was considering taking it public.
Kim had big ambitions: to pivot the company to an Amazon-like model, which he could push even further by building an exclusive delivery network. The problem was that Coupang would need lots of money -- likely to the tune of billions of dollars. If the company were to list, investors in public markets might balk at the investment-heavy model.
