Michael Kim

Michael Kim is the founder of Cendana Capital, an investment management firm based in San Francisco. With over $2 billion under management, Cendana Capital focuses on investing in very early-stage venture capital funds globally. Prior to founding Cendana, Mr. Kim was one of the original partners of Rustic Canyon, a VC firm with approximately $1 billion under management through 3 funds. In March 2004, the Mayor of San Francisco appointed Mr. Kim to a 5-year term as a Trustee of SFERS, a $15 billion pension fund (during that time period). Mr. Kim served as Chairman on several board committees, including the Investment Committee, the Personnel Committee and the Finance Committee. Mr. Kim served as Vice President and later President of the board in fiscal year 2007 and 2008, respectively. While on the SFERS board, Mr. Kim led several successful initiatives including the succession of the Executive Director, increasing the human resources and organizational configuration for the investment staff and the implementation of a risk assessment program. Prior to joining Rustic Canyon, Mr. Kim worked in the Technology Mergers and Acquisitions Group of Morgan Stanley in Menlo Park, CA, where he was directly involved with 27 announced transactions worth over $77 billion. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Mr. Kim was an associate at The Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, NY, where he completed the credit training program, and also worked at IBM Corporation in Armonk, NY. Mr. Kim received his AB with honors from the College of Arts & Sciences at Cornell University, where he formerly served on the Cornell Council. He has an MS from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University (1992), where he serves on the Advisory Board for the MSFS program, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania (1997). Mr. Kim is currently on the Board of Directors for the Wikimedia Endowment, which is a charitable organization to support the activities of Wikipedia. He is a former Trustee of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, where he served on the Investment Committee, and the former Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Symphonix League of the San Francisco Symphony. Mr. Kim formerly served on the boards of Lead21, an organization that enables entrepreneurs to advocate free market public policy, and the Pacific Research Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank that champions freedom, opportunity and personal responsibility for all individuals by advancing free market policy solutions.