Hikaru Tomura started a business in Silicon Valley in December 2014, at the age of 20. In Silicon Valley, known for “many births and many deaths,” the company is now in its third term and the business is growing steadily. At 23, Tomura is a young venture entrepreneur leading 20 employees of many nationalities.
Raised by parents who ran a manufacturing business in Sakai City, Osaka, Tomura had seen from an early age the tough reality of Japanese companies overwhelmed by the cost competitiveness of China and Southeast Asia. When Tomura began to think globally, believing “Japan will have to earn foreign currency from now on,” Tomura met a professor visiting Japan from Stanford University at Osaka Innovation Hub. Hearing inspiring stories about Silicon Valley and thinking, “This is it!”, Tomura went to the United States right after graduating from high school.
That drive led to a big opportunity: meeting President Yamamoto of Chatwork. While honing on-the-ground experience in a research role, Tomura learned how to do business right beside President Yamamoto. To realize a long-held wish, “I want to be an entrepreneur who is useful to society,” Tomura released Shiribareship, a matching site connecting international students looking for internships with host companies, in October 2012. Two months later, Tomura launched HACK JPN, a media business providing in-depth information to large companies in Silicon Valley. The keywords for growing in the global market are “education” and “information”: believing this, Tomura specialized in them.
The company does almost no sales work. Customers keep increasing every month through word of mouth alone. It is expanding its support by thinking thoroughly about what talent companies want and what information companies want, and putting that out.
Continuing to win customers’ support and provide services that sell may seem obvious, but it is actually not easy. Especially in fast-changing Silicon Valley, turning something qualitative like “information” into a product requires high added value and irreplaceability. To achieve that, the company keeps honing its information processing and editing capabilities as an organization. That a business system hard to imitate is important is one of the assets Tomura learned from President Yamamoto of Chatwork.
The future this 23-year-old venture entrepreneur envisions is “to return to Japan someday and start a business that benefits Japan.” We look forward to the day the challenges in Silicon Valley give back to Japan.
Interview year: 2017