Clay Tech

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translated from clazytech.com

I Am a Jack-of-All-Trades Engineer

original Startups

I’m Kuzuryu.

My self-introduction has gotten complicated lately, so I’ve decided to put it all together here.

This is a fairly abbreviated self-introduction for people meeting me for the first time. If you want more depth, refer to the other posts on this blog as appropriate. Here is a self-introduction someone else put together for me on a certain occasion.

A hardware engineer with experience on both sides — inside a major Japanese corporation and inside an early-stage Silicon Valley startup. Born in Tokyo in 1978. Graduated from the Tokyo Institute of Technology graduate school in 2003 and joined Yamaha Corporation. After working on numerous product development projects and new business development, he left Yamaha in 2011 and moved to Silicon Valley, taking on the challenge of Miselu, a US startup developing Android-based musical instruments. As the company’s first employee and as a hardware engineer, he played a central role among a team of about 20 engineers. When Triple W, Inc., which he co-founded in 2014, raised funding from a government-affiliated institution in February 2016 and then roughly $4.7 million in a Series A round in July, he joined the company as CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and worked on commercializing DFree, a device that alerts users to the timing of urination and defecation. Founded Clay Tech, Inc. in 2018. Also serves as a director, advisor, or consultant for several other companies. Visiting professor at Tohoku University, adjunct lecturer at Tokyo Institute of Technology.

So who am I now, exactly? Given my current situation, “development and strategy consultant” is probably the safest answer. (Boring way to put it, but there it is.) Concretely, for a number of companies I do things like:

and so on. Besides my own company, I currently serve as a director at several other companies, where my work covers not just development but HR and management strategy as well. More recently, I’ve also taken on a visiting professorship at Tohoku University. In that sense, in the end, I’m a jack-of-all-trades.

I have a graduate degree in electrical and electronic engineering, and my career began in development work at a large corporation, where I was fortunate enough to learn the whole cycle — planning, development, manufacturing, sales, team management, and external negotiations. I left that job in my early thirties, left Japan, joined and then founded startups in what’s known as Silicon Valley, and then returned to Japan to start a company with a friend from my time in the US. About two years ago I stepped down as a director of that company and started the kind of work I do now.

The details of all of the above, including the hardships, are for another occasion.

My academic and career history is more or less summarized on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuichiro-kuzuryu-kuz-27b92838/

Getting more specific about what falls within my scope is genuinely hard to put into words. Instead, let me list, to the extent I can share, what projects I’m currently involved in:

and so on — honestly, there’s no fixed category. I think I can be useful across the board. That said, if someone asked me “what’s your technical specialty,” I suppose I should answer “electrical design related to wireless.”

Let me give a few examples of the kinds of situations where I’ve come to realize, in my own way, it’s a good idea to rely on me.

Everything from “we don’t know what to do” to “leadership wants this but the people on the ground want that” to “the team is falling apart.”

When the counterparty is fairly large or is a tough negotiator, it’s common that no suitable person can be assigned internally (only young, inexperienced people are available). In such cases, I can assist or step in as a stand-in.

<Projects lacking a PM/PdM/PL> Just building what the client asks for. Having an idea and just building a prototype for now. In projects like that, there’s not much need for me. Even without a PM, depending on the scale, things can run smoothly enough. But in reality, most projects in the world don’t work that way. The client’s requirements aren’t clear. The contract hasn’t been nailed down. Flexibly securing resources is difficult. The spec keeps failing to get finalized. The technology to use, the partners, the schedule — none of it is clearly validated. There’s no end to the list, but often a project stalls because of some tangle of multiple factors. In situations like that, I can go in and untangle the knot that’s causing the trouble.

Broad technical knowledge and industry understanding has become one of my strengths. I can offer valid proposals and support in pretty much any category.

From technical due diligence to individual hiring decisions, I’m confident that my “eye” for technology and engineers has been naturally sharpened over the years.

There’s a lot more detail I could get into, but the cases where people tend to rely on me broadly fall into the above categories and their variations.

<Bonus: articles, etc.> AI chips, robots, donkey cars, how the future changes starting from playful IoT https://project.nikkeibp.co.jp/event/ghelia191121/program3.html I spoke at an event hosted by GHELIA. Here’s the Nikkei BP writeup. https://special.nikkeibp.co.jp/atclh/ONB/20/ghelia0108/?n_cid=nbpad_fbbn

What does a future permeated by IoT look like https://bae.dentsutec.co.jp/articles/144lab/ An article from when I gave a talk at Dentsu.

Clay Tech, Inc. Representative Director Yuichiro Kuzuryu Lecture: “How to Build a Paradise Where You Turn What You Love and What Interests You Into a Business” https://www.crieto.hosp.tohoku.ac.jp/release/activity/6674.html An article about a lecture I gave at Tohoku University, where I serve as a visiting professor.

Introducing our new executive [Switch Science Channel] https://mag.switch-science.com/2019/03/15/%E6%96%B0%E4%BB%BB%E5%BD%B9%E5%93%A1%E3%81%AE%E7%B4%B9%E4%BB%8B%E3%80%90%E3%82%B9%E3%82%A4%E3%83%83%E3%83%81%E3%82%B5%E3%82%A4%E3%82%A8%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%83%81%E3%83%A3%E3%83%B3%E3%83%8D%E3%83%AB/ A video announcing my appointment, on Switch Science, the e-commerce site operated by 144Lab, where I serve as a director.

http://www.eys-style.com/interview-5/ http://www.site.eys-style.com/special.html A profile piece on the owned media site of EYS-STYLE, where I serve as a director.

https://jp.techcrunch.com/2017/11/21/cto-of-the-year-2017/ Back in my TripleW days, I also appeared on stage for Tech Crunch’s “CTO of the Year.” Brings back memories.

“There’s no value in trying something you can already see the outcome of” — Moving from Yamaha to a Silicon Valley startup http://techpeople.jp/2015/02/miselu1/ An article from about five years ago, from when I was with a startup in San Francisco.

What is Miselu neiro, an Android-based musical instrument device? https://www.dtmstation.com/archives/51782514.html This is an introductory article about neiro, a device I worked on developing before C.24.

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2020/01/406/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.