“Enriching People through IT” – Aiming to be a group of engineers who can also attract customers​

Our core business is currently system development, with a focus on web development. However, we also work on non-web system development. We develop Windows applications, among others, and we also do smartphone app development.

Originally, I was employed at a subsidiary of Fujitsu, where I had the experience of directly implementing a core system for convenience stores. So, we listen to customers who say, “I want to create and systematize something like this!” We look for things that can be automated within their requests, and then design systems and make proposals based on that.

Our company listens to the clients’ requirements and what they want to do, then we put that into a design document format. We do actual system production in-house, but depending on the case, we may ask vendors who are good at app development, or for web-related projects, we ask vendors who are good at web development, so we are flexible in that way.

We mainly do web system development. At our company, we mainly work on the upper processes and direction tasks.

We often interact directly with clients, rather than being a subcontractor. The most important part is to listen to what the “client wants to do” first. While our main focus is on listening to the client’s requirements and defining the design, sometimes we get involved from a higher business phase.

For example, we have created services that match companies that want manga drawn with manga artists who want to draw. When this request first came in, the person had not thought of such a thing and just wanted to somehow help manga artists.

The reality is that there are many manga artists in Japan, but many of them are not selling well. We started with the desire to create opportunities for such people to work and earn money.

For those manga artists, the conversation started with, “I understand you want to create a site where you can post your manga, but how do you make money from it?” We discussed various things from there.

It’s not just about creating a system; we’re very concerned with including the surrounding aspects, that is, how to create a business from it. System development is the core of our business, but we’re actively involved in the web part as well. This is simply because the market size for web-related work is larger .

At first, we often worked as subcontractors, but that meant the prime contractor would do the planning and design, and our company would end up doing the subcontracting work of creating the system, which honestly was tough…

When a business starts, you inevitably spend a lot of time on planning and design, but that doesn’t mean the deadline is extended, so the final pressure comes down to our development work. It was tough work.

Personally, I am willing to do tough jobs, but as more employees come on board, that’s not feasible. Everyone becomes burdened… We decided that was not good and aimed to get out of subcontracting. Thanks to that, we are now able to take on direct contracting jobs. But with that, we ended up having to take responsibility for areas like design, which we didn’t have to do before. We don’t have designers in-house, so we ask our partner companies to do that.

By doing this, the range of jobs we can take on has expanded, and ultimately we’ve become a company that can do “system development” + “website creation”. However, we’ve made websites, but there was no access or inquiries, meaning no increase in sales. So, we started working on “marketing” as well.

Yes, we have an online business selling decaf and flavored coffee. We handle not just building the online shop, but also branding, marketing, purchasing, inventory management, distribution, and customer management, all by ourselves.

As part of our marketing efforts, we tried crowdfunding in October. It didn’t go as expected, but still, we managed to reach our final goal successfully.

The impetus for starting the business was my strong desire to have many people use what I created. However, my previous job was providing systems to specific customers, which didn’t completely satisfy my desire.

The first thing I did when I started the business was a service that provided voice recordings of lines spoken by voice actors—essentially narration, which you often hear around town. However, this service didn’t go well. We had the system in place, but customer acquisition was a challenge, and advertising did not yield good results. While we were trying to figure this out, our funds started to run low, so we took on contracted development to survive. Fortunately, this allowed us to make ends meet.

I was working alone at first. I became independent in 2006 and worked solo for about five years. The business was doing well enough to incorporate, and at that time, I invited other members to join me apart from myself.

After we incorporated and got the contract development work going, we were able to start creating our own services, which was what we originally wanted to do. Among the jobs we were working on at the time was one that involved regularly checking each carrier’s IP addresses. If we missed a check, it could lead to issues like websites not displaying correctly. Checking frequently was quite a hassle, so we automated the process. That’s the “Web Checker” service.

What we really want to do is to please customers with services we have created ourselves. To be honest, contract development is not what we want to do. It’s necessary as a stable foundation for survival. In fact, contract development makes up a large part of our total sales. Going forward, we want to expand our own services and reach a point where contract development and our services each make up about half of our sales!

There are many things that don’t go well in what we do now, but I don’t hate it. In my case, I consider these not so much hardships but challenges. I am now focusing on how to solve each of these challenges.

Speaking of past hardships, it goes back to when I started my business. I launched a self-service, but the user base didn’t grow, and we made no sales. It took six months to build the service, and then we operated it for about half a year. Naturally, during the construction period, I depleted the savings I had from my previous job at Fujitsu.

I tried to recover, but it didn’t work. My funds were nearing zero. And around that time, I was discussing marriage with my now-wife. That means you spend more money than you think. My wife is not at fault, but she spent money thinking it was for my benefit, which only added to my stress. As a result, I developed shingles and hearing loss from the MAX stress. I had never experienced such stress before.

Even when I was a company employee and did over 200 hours of overtime, I wasn’t told to take a break, and since it was about making things, I didn’t mind it. It was physically tough, though…

At that time, I was not only creating systems but also operating them. Convenience store systems run 24/7, 365 days a year, and I’d get calls even in the middle of the night. There are three deliveries a day for convenience stores. Any delays can lead to damages, so we had alerts set up for any delays. It was okay during the day, but at night, I would get calls at home. As the number of stores increased, so did the data volume in the system, which meant daily phone calls. I didn’t like that either, but it didn’t feel like stress. As a company employee, I was still getting paid, so I could live.

On the other hand, when you’re independent, it’s different. I experienced running out of money for the first time. It felt like dying. It was more fear than hardship.

I want to make everyone rich and happy. Originally, I was someone who tried to do everything by myself. Even when I thought of going independent during my time at Fujitsu, it was with the notion of creating a web service that would make money automatically so I could just enjoy life . I didn’t really want to interact with people. Honestly, that was there. But I created web services aiming to achieve that kind of automatic vending machine model.

For the sake of living, I worked hard to make money and managed to get by. But doing everything by myself became tough, so I thought about hiring a couple of employees. That meant I needed to earn more. When I was working alone, I managed to make sales of about 12 million yen, but I felt that was the limit.

Fortunately, there were reliable people among the cooperation partners at the time. There were various troubles, and it was a good time to join. From there, we started working with two people. However, I was full of complaints at the time. I wondered, “Why can’t they do things exactly as I think?” Even when I thought about increasing from two to three people, it was tough because people would quit after just three or four months.

I used to blame others every time. But one day, I realized, “This is all my fault.” Thinking “I’d better do everything myself” comes from not trusting the other person. That’s why I get angry if things aren’t done properly, and I can’t trust them. Besides, no one can be a carbon copy of me, and everyone has their own strengths! It’s been much easier since I started thinking this way.

Yes. At the time, I was aiming to move away from subcontracting and doing sales activities. As part of that, I tried attending a networking event. I really didn’t like it. When I talked about my troubles to someone I met there, they suggested a good training course, so I decided to give it a try. I learned a lot in that training.

Exactly. The things I thought were correct could be seen differently from another perspective, and people operate based on their own values and ways of thinking. It took time, but I’m grateful now for having learned that.

Back then, I did everything by hand, but now I don’t. I can trust my employees with confidence. Thanks to that, I can now focus on ‘sales’ and ‘how to build the company’s business.’

If I have to say what I value the most, it would be “people.” It seems obvious when you think about it normally, but it’s something I’ve only come to realize recently .

I think I actually don’t hate interacting with people. But maybe I started to dislike people because of betrayals or unpleasant experiences. I’ve always liked creating things, but when I was focused and someone interrupted me, I felt “disturbed” and “robbed of my time to create my own things.” That’s why I spent a lot of time alone.

If you can’t delegate to others, you end up having to do everything yourself. But it’s impossible to do everything. That’s why I’ve come to understand how important it is to “value people.” It took some time and reflection to get to this point.

I started to value “making others happy.” When I do that, I enjoy myself, and I believe the employees are happy too.

We help each other with what we want to do, and I want to create an environment where everyone feels happy and satisfied with their work.