Joyce Kim and I met a long time ago. And then we didn’t meet for a long time. It took David Prager to come up with the brilliant idea that Joyce should be my co-host on The GigaOM Show that ran on Revision 3 network. And thus began a partnership that turned into a friendship.

When I fell sick, and when my mom and my sister left, Joyce made sure I didn’t fall sick again. Today the two of us are like family and of course, we fight like family too. We are both headstrong and both stubborn. We argue and we obsess. But in the end we keep each other honest. No surprise, I have the same relationship with my other sister, who has played a pivotal role in my life. I am blessed to have two sisters who are so incredible and tenacious and caring and giving. 

Joyce is a very accomplished, highly educated and more importantly she gave up a lucrative career in law to follow her heart and became an entrepreneur. She navigated her first start-up that focused on K-Pop (Korean pop, if you must ask) Soompie to a successful exit, took a few months off and went surfing. And then came back to team up with I Can Cheezburger founder Eric Nakagawa to start her next startup, Simple honey. Today she announced her company in a blog post.

I first met Eric in Tokyo (where Eric was living) on the inaugural Geeks on A Plane trip over two years ago. We quickly connected on our shared entrepreneurial history – both of us had co-founded passionate community sites that were not born from a business plan. They developed from a personal interest on a random topic that just exploded: lolcats for Eric and K-pop for me.

I am so damn proud of her. Next time anyone is looking for an amazing female founder role model, just ping Joyce and learn the meaning of perseverance. You just might learn what is refusal to fail. She may not have sold her company to AOL or she might not be the COO of the largest social network. But she knows what it takes to start and grow a business. And she does it without getting angry. She does it with a smile. 

I know in my gut they are going to be very successful. I know Joyce wouldn’t have it any other way. Good luck guys and god speed guys.