Yuichiro Kuzuryu — Advisor to IoT and Hardware Startups

Yuichiro "Kuz" Kuzuryu is an advisor to IoT and hardware startups in Japan. He is CEO of Clay Tech, Inc., a board director of Switch Science, Inc., and a specially appointed professor (visiting) at Tohoku University. Since April 2026 he has also mentored deep-tech founders as an Accompany Runner in NEDO's startup program (NEP).

He offers free spot consultations to founders, especially before they meet investors: what it will really take, in time and money, to reach mass production and certification, and which deal terms matter. See Advisory.

Background

• Yamaha (2003–2011) — Started in circuit design and rose to supervisor of electrical engineering. Worked on the RX-V357 AV receiver, which sold over 1 million units, replacing its main processor and OS together with an Indian startup partner. As project leader, built Yamaha's AirWired low-latency wireless audio module with a Singapore startup partner and took it through radio certification for markets worldwide.
• Miselu, Bay Area (2011–2015) — Joined as the first employee. Built the neiro Android music keyboard, shown at Google I/O, and the C.24 Bluetooth MIDI keyboard for iPad, which raised over $100,000 (¥10 million) on Kickstarter and went into volume production.
• Yamaha Motor U.S.A. (2015–2016) — Entrepreneur in residence. Launched VasP, a vehicle-mounted environmental sensing system, and later spun it out as an independent startup named veeple.
• Founding CTO, Triple W Japan (now DFree Inc.) (2016–2018) — Wrote the core patent and took DFree, a wearable ultrasound device that predicts the timing of urination, from zero to production of thousands of units.
• Clay Tech, Inc. (2018–) — Founder and CEO.
• Yukai Engineering (2018–2025) — Hardware architect for communication robots including BOCCO emo.
• 144Lab, Inc. (2019–2022) / Switch Science, Inc. (2022–) — Board director. Switch Science is a Japanese distributor and e-commerce platform for maker hardware, development boards and electronics modules.
• Teaching — Tohoku University (2019–), Institute of Science Tokyo, formerly Tokyo Institute of Technology (2020–), Musashino Art University (2022–), Tokyo Metropolitan Shinjuku Yamabuki High School (2023–).
• Advisor — Technical advisor to hacomono (2022–).

Education: Master of Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Books

• 『幸せなIoTスタートアップの輪郭』 (Gentosha Media Consulting, 2022, in Japanese) — a book on building IoT and hardware startups. Amazon
• EXTRA TIME (2026, in Japanese) — a football novel. Amazon
• Bounding Fate (2012, in Japanese) — a mystery novel. Amazon

Elsewhere

• Japanese profile: clazytech.com/about/
• LinkedIn: yuichiro-kuzuryu-kuz
• Wikidata: Q141931833