A listed Japanese company
Manager, Corporate Strategy, International Business Division · 2009–2014
Mobile content and licensing · US, India, Vietnam
My first job building something abroad from nothing. The company was expanding through partnerships, acquisitions and corporate-venture investment, and had no international organisation capable of executing any of it. I built and led a thirty-person organisation across three overseas subsidiaries — the United States, India and Vietnam — reporting directly to the CEO, and ran full-cycle M&A and corporate-venture deals alongside it. The licensing revenue came through carrier and distribution partnerships with US technology and games companies. Most of what I know about operating across time zones I learned badly and expensively here.
Name withheld
VNPAY
Advisor to the Chairman · 2015–2018
Vietnamese digital payments at national scale
I advised the Chairman on new payment and e-commerce services in the years before SoftBank Vision Fund and GIC backed the group. Payment distribution in Vietnam runs through the banks, and the work sat inside that: white-label e-commerce for the country's top four banks, reaching millions of users, and a merchant marketplace of thousands of sellers where I owned placement, promotions and GMV growth. It is the clearest example in my career of building commercial product on top of an incumbent financial system rather than around it.
Pre-SoftBank Vision Fund / GIC
TradingView
Japan Regional Manager / Country Manager · 2016–2018
Global markets and charting platform
First employee in the region, hired between the Series A and the Series B. I owned both sides of the business — B2B partnerships with Japanese securities firms, and consumer growth — and quadrupled regional monthly active users while consistently over-achieving quota. I also built an advertising sales channel from zero in the first year and owned the affiliate programme and customer success. Insight Partners led the Series B during my final months; the platform went on to a $3B valuation in 2021.
First in region · Series A through Series B
Standard Cognition
General Manager / Country Manager, Japan · 2018–2022
Computer-vision autonomous checkout · retail operators
I was the first person on the ground in Japan, hired four months before the Series A closed, and built the market from nothing — entity, team, partner ecosystem and P&L. Over the next four years the company raised a Series B and then a Series C led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 that took it to unicorn status, and I ran Japan through all of it, reporting to the COO and CFO. The work was senior-stakeholder by necessity: a Japanese retail group does not change the physical shape of its stores on the strength of a demo. I closed and delivered a full proof-of-concept with a top-five Japanese drugstore chain, which meant getting loss prevention, store-labour economics and IT integration to a yes at the same time.
Joined pre-Series A · stayed through the Series C that made it a unicorn
Mashgin
Head of Business Development, Japan · 2022–2024
Computer-vision automated checkout · retail, stadiums, airports
I joined seven months after the NEA-led Series B valued the company at unicorn status, with that capital explicitly earmarked for international expansion. Japan was the entry I owned, and I drove it from zero — closing the company's first commercial deal in the country and a nationwide reseller agreement with Japan's largest beverage distributor, which opened the stadium and venue channel. Alongside that I built the partner and integration layer a payments-adjacent hardware product needs before it is sellable here at all, negotiating alliances with Japan's major payment processors, card networks and printing conglomerates.
Joined post-unicorn, as international expansion began
A Japanese satellite-data and AI company
Executive Officer / VP of Business Development · 2024–present
Satellite data and AI · utilities, energy, public sector
Japanese deep tech with a strong domestic reference base and no overseas revenue. The buyers abroad are utilities, energy companies and public agencies, which means long procurement cycles, budget calendars set a year ahead, and decisions made by committees rather than champions. I run business development across four countries with KPI and P&L accountability. The work so far has included the company's first overseas software distribution agreements in Southeast and South Asia, partnerships with several major energy companies, and a European commercial launch. The piece I find most interesting is the public-funding side: a multi-year government-backed innovation programme, reached by recognising that the commercial development work genuinely qualified as research and describing it in the language the programme is written in.
Name withheld · current role