A Plan That Vanished in Four Days On July 28, FIFA announced plans for a new company called "FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE)." Commercial rights and tournament…

For a while now, I'd been watching one stock's order book every day. It was SpaceX (SPCX), which listed on June 12. The IPO price was $135, and net proceeds…

I have long been in the same industry, and I hold a reasonably established position in it. And yet, I know almost nothing about "so-and-so, from such-and-such…

Founding myths follow a fixed template Tech company founding stories tend to follow the same template. A shy, awkward young person who just loved technology.…

I wrote about tactics last time, so this time it's about markets. Watching the World Cup, I felt that individual Japanese players are already on par with the…

Last time, I wrote a piece called Ancelotti's Homework. In Japan's World Cup match against Brazil, what could Japan have done in response to Ancelotti's…

Everyone was making such a fuss in April. The blue ticket system for bicycles was introduced on April 1st. Every day, TV showed footage of the crackdowns.…

I sometimes get asked, "Do you have RoHS certification?" Every time, I answer, "There's no such thing as RoHS certification." Most of the time, the air fills…

Football has a rule even children know. If you get sent off, you can't play in the next match. The card means something, and that meaning is what makes it a…

―― The nine trump cards the protagonist kept hidden --- This is the final installment of the series. Vol.1 covered when tactics were born. Vol.2 covered what…

――The ghost of 1966, and a faith disguised as data --- At the end of the last piece (vol.1, "A Chronology of Modern Tactical Inventions"), I wrote this: the…

―― A man with 2020s tactical knowledge is reincarnated into London in 1980 --- The protagonist of my novel EXTRA TIME is thrown into London in May 1980,…

This long-running series has reached its final installment. Up to this point I've written about "where AI works and where it doesn't," following the process of…

After watching the Japan-Brazil World Cup match, I sat stunned for a while. Part of that was the disappointment of the loss itself, and the shock of conceding…

When I heard the tournament would expand to 48 teams, my first thought was: this is obviously just watering it down. From 32 to 48 is a jump of 1.5x. The bar…

Up to last time, I kept writing about the process of making the book and about the cover. This time, I want to talk about the story itself. "It seemed like…

The final matches of the World Cup group stage for the Americas are about to begin. Something about this tournament has probably been bothering everyone…

Pricing a company turns out to be a surprisingly satisfying exercise once you try it. After all, "one multiplication gives you the share price." Take EBITDA…

The other day, a development partner asked me, "Just do these three things." npm, pip, bundler. It was a setting to switch each package retrieval to go through…

Last time I covered the release work on KDP. There I mentioned in passing that "AI helped with the cover," but this cover wasn't something I could leave at…

Last time I ended on a harsh note: "editing in Japanese was, in the end, just a bit easier." This time, the pendulum swings properly back. In the practical…

This is an honest installment. Up until last time I wrote confidently about "turning AI into a team to produce a full-length work," but once I entered the…

Starlink's adjusted EBITDA runs at roughly $7.2 billion a year. The IPO's assumed valuation is $1.77 trillion. Divide one by the other and you get roughly…

For a while now, I'd had a nagging sense that explanations of LLMs just don't land with students. Lining up terms like "large language model," "Transformer,"…

In the first post of this series I wrote about the concept and the outline. This time, I want to talk about how this novel actually got made — a process in…

I recently published the novel "EXTRA TIME" on Kindle. Since I went to the trouble of writing it, I thought I'd record the story behind how this work came…

A friend recently shared a piece of news with me. "A simulation of AI running society. Claude was the only one with zero crime. Grok went extinct in 4 days."…

The other day, I had dinner with members of a startup in Shenzhen, China. They're roughly in their third year since founding, and their headcount jumped to…

I've been investing continuously since my student days. It's not my main profession, just a hobby at pocket-money scale, but it's been going on for a fair…

"So in the end, isn't this just converting labor costs into revenue?" If you run a contract development business, you've probably felt this unease at least…

The other day, I came across a comment from the executive of a listed company. He said something like, "Among the X thousand listed companies, someone with a…

The trigger was my second son's team My second son is in the fourth grade and plays on a local soccer team. It's technically a youth affiliate of the JFL, but…

Recently, something has been nagging at me. An acquaintance of mine was an early member of a startup. He was a complete rookie, only about two years into his…

Starting this April, I've taken on the role of Accompany Runner (AR) at NEDO's NEP (NEDO Entrepreneurs Program). This position provides hands-on support for…

There was once a time, I think, when people could innocently say white-collar workers were the winners. Get an education, wear a suit, type on a keyboard in an…

<https://radiotalk.jp/talk/1030064 A transcript of something I posted on Radiotalk. It's semi-automatically transcribed using voice recognition, so please…

My desk — belonging to a self-proclaimed voracious reader who rarely lets books pile up unread — has ended up looking like this. There are two reasons. One was…

In the final group-stage match of the Qatar World Cup, Japan came back to beat Spain 2-1. Excitement, surprise, relief. It's a complicated mix of feelings, but…

Japan won its opening match of the 2022 Qatar World Cup against Germany. Things like this don't happen very often, so let me write down my honest thoughts. I…

【Objection ①】 You should start a company with members who fill in the gaps you lack. If you are the engineer, find someone who can sell it. If you are good at…

I envy that. lol Actually, I have a very distant relative—my wife's cousin's husband's sister's husband (basically a stranger at this point, lol)—let's call…

That is true, but I think it is a "speed" choice reached after everyone worked backward, and backward again, and backward again, from several surrounding…

There seem to be as many answers to this question as there are people asked. ① When you step down as CEO ② When your shareholding ratio drops below the veto…

This story may not be familiar to those who have never been involved in a product release, but it comes up often in the industry. Products differ so much in…

Yes, go ahead and start a company. The people around you will say all kinds of things. Even so, please start a company. Someone with deep knowledge and…

In the early stage of a startup, almost everything is missing. So think about how to make maximum use of the few things you do have. The simplest approach here…

It doesn't necessarily always work out that way, but I hope it does. Here I want to explain why. First, there has never been a moment in human history when…

There is an organizational risk I watch very closely when I work with a company as an advisor or consultant. It's whether people use phrases like "the XX…

To organize the situation a bit, the people who bring this kind of question are usually founder CEOs or executives at rapidly growing companies. What started…

In America, small talk sometimes happens at the supermarket checkout. This isn't just a scene from a TV drama. It's a fairly common everyday occurrence. When I…

Most people who come to me with this kind of consultation follow the same pattern: "I want to quit management and go back to being an engineer." There are…

As you can tell, this isn't a question. It's a message from me. Please, readers, don't aim to be a "smart-looking person." Become an idiot instead. One wall…

This topic is for people who have built up some career experience but aren't confident their current job is leading to growth, or who, if anything, have…

Technical skill, a name known in the field, business acumen, charisma, and the ability to draw people in... isn't that basically a superman!? Actually, I hold…

Actually, this isn't something that can be answered easily, and several angles need to be considered. As a starting point, let me lay out the common objections…

It's worth considering this by looking at how you would answer the "common questions thrown at startups." 【Question 1】Why do you think you (or your team) can…

If you were hoping for the answer "There's no such thing as a right age," I'm sorry to disappoint. There is one. It's "late thirties and beyond." This is only…

On this question, I think there are two separate discussions: what "should" be the case, and what actually happens in practice. First, the "should" discussion.…

One of the rankings published in various places is the "Ranking of Unicorn Companies by City." In 2020, Beijing was apparently 1, San Francisco 2, and Shanghai…

Amine-based solvents are widely used in current practical-level CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) plants, and personally I had accepted this without any…

I feel like I've mostly been writing about my own thoughts lately, so it's been a while since I've written about something someone asked me. Why do investors,…

My own story is fairly one-sided, so I want to start with the overall picture as I see it. Needless to say, everyone has different motivations for starting a…

It's a common story: the business owner or management team fills in for operations. Especially in organizations with limited funds and staff, like small and…

These days, using the word "sustainability" sometimes gives me an uncomfortable sense of jumping on a bandwagon. The streets are full of office workers wearing…

Europe—though in this case only Milan and Berlin—and I think I was fairly lucky to be able to travel there during this period (Japan's border control measures…

Product planning can broadly be organized into two approaches: the "market analysis type" and the "needs-first type." <Market Analysis Type This method…

Do whatever you like. There are two perspectives here. First, nobody knows whether a market everyone currently thinks is big enough will still be big ten years…

I'm often struck by how odd my ideas are, and how readily I act on them. First, in August, I started a new company with a friend. With that company, I applied…

Most people build a persona as a foundation for planning. Persona is the Latin root of the English word personal. (Most Western languages trace back to Latin.)…

I'd like to focus on just this one contrast between the two. First, let me say this up front: "technology-driven approaches rarely turn out well." This isn't…

Being global isn't necessarily important, but securing the possibility of horizontal expansion is very important. Growing a business properly on a single,…

Let me introduce the episode with J, the Canadian entrepreneur I mentioned earlier. One day, after J set up an office in the Bay Area, I stopped by to catch…

I once quietly remarked, watching the behavior of a certain CEO in Silicon Valley, that it felt like "playing Power Pros." At the time his company had just…

"Referral hiring" means hiring someone through the introduction of an existing member of the organization. In most cases, this means bringing in a former…

Over lunch with a fellow entrepreneur, T-kun, at the Gakushi Kaikan in Hibiya, he told me, "You know, what I wanted to build was a startup with the atmosphere…

As mentioned in another section, gathering people with aligned context works very effectively when speed is the priority. Here I want to talk about character…

When people whose own work history is entirely full-time employment come to me for advice, they very often talk about "it's hard to secure talent" and "it's…

This is a common situation, not limited to startups but seen in many small and medium-sized companies. The executive handles nearly all the work, while staff…

I watched Amazon Original's All or Nothing: Arsenal all in one sitting on a flight to Europe. All or Nothing: Arsenal The 2021/22 season was a season of change…

I recently watched AC Milan vs Inter, the so-called Milan Derby, in Milan, Italy. The venue was AC Milan's home ground, San Siro. For my generation, this place…

I get this kind of consultation a lot, in various shapes. If the question is something like "technically, is A better or B better," you can just thoroughly…

My old friend S has a father who's a university professor, and apparently, while telling S how brutal power struggles inside a university can get, he also…

This is a question I get asked often. Bluntly, there is no way. (I could stop there, but let me continue.) Let me explain why you cannot retain a superstar.…

This is a consultation I often receive from member-level staff rather than from executives or leaders. I also often hear leaders grumbling, vaguely sensing…

I don't need to describe requirement specification templates myself, since various organizations and volunteers already provide all kinds of them. Using…

【Objection ①】 You should write a proper spec as early as possible. If you don't clearly define what you're building and why, right from the start, decisions…

This is a question I occasionally get, and the people who ask it are almost always people who don't build prototypes themselves. That's because the people who…

Actually, this is a strange question. PoC (Proof of Concept) is sometimes described as "proving a hypothesis," but I think it's a term most often used to…

Let's start by considering why development reviews don't get adopted. 1. They're a hassle, including schedule coordination 2. There's no suitable person to act…

Project managers (PMs) often draw Gantt charts. This is a chart where each task and its owner are listed in a row, and a bar extending horizontally shows where…

If I had to narrow it down to just one thing, it would be crisis management ability. The ability to detect potential crises, properly assess their probability…

A case like this. When you actually run into it yourself, your first reaction is "why me, are you kidding me!" But objectively speaking, this is one of the…

I have worked at both companies with in-house fabs and fabless companies. In most cases startups drift toward fabless. That's because owning a factory carries…

Instinct, gut feeling, and boldness. That's what I'd like to say, but let me put down a somewhat more logical account as well. There is generally no technical…

It's rare for someone to ask that so directly to your face, though it does happen, but I sense strongly that this question is sitting in the back of many…

There are various opinions, at various levels, about the mechanics behind the cheapness of Chinese manufacturing, so what I present below is only the extent of…

It's true. Molds are the single biggest risk factor in manufacturing, squeezing both schedules and wallets. For example, making even a simple box, something as…

This is a very common question in consultations, and there really doesn't seem to be much good material out there that systematically explains the overall…

When releasing a product, one thing you always have to decide is the price. There's a rough rule of thumb often repeated: "You'll be fine if you set the price…

Contrary to what the name suggests, an instruction manual doesn't just need to explain how to use the product. I'll explain that point here. <The manual is…

Legal matters carry extremely high risk when things go wrong. So you absolutely need expert advice. That said, startups that have just launched mostly don't…

Continuing from the previous post Understanding Carbon Capture and Storage ① I'm summarizing, in several installments, what I learned from the online class…

One thing that changed my values significantly after moving to Silicon Valley is a vague sense of openness: "there's no one I can't meet." You could even call…

It was around 2015, while I was working on launching my own venture, that I started asking questions like this. What seemed at first like a far-fetched…

Startups contain a surprisingly diverse range of people. Some are young, ambitious, full of energy, and look exactly like what you'd picture when you imagine…

The title makes you wonder "what is this guy talking about?" but it's something very important. This is a phrase that came up the other day in a conversation…

What first drew me to America was the market for the products I was working on at the time. Yamaha mainly develops, manufactures, and sells musical instruments…

I once wrote a blog post on the topic "Which is more advantageous, software or hardware?" I'll skip the details of the argument, but here's the conclusion:…

I read Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto quite a while ago, the book that was both a bestseller and the thing that suddenly thrust Mr. Saito into the public…

I read "Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto" a while back — this book was both a bestseller and the thing that suddenly turned Kohei Saito into a public figure —…

Since it's a common theme, I'm sometimes asked for my personal opinion, and this is no exception. 【Affirmative counterargument ①】 Most jobs will be automated.…

There are various definitions of angel investors, but here I'll try to define a true angel investor by looking at it from the angle of "don't team up with…

In startups, the phrase "exploitation of passion" comes up often. Even when a business offers plenty of fulfillment, a cash-strapped startup often can't pay…

Something a friend of mine, an MBA-holding executive in Silicon Valley, once said made me stop and think. "Taking investment is the worst-case scenario."…

"It was $3 million for a single sheet of acrylic," entrepreneur I laughs, joking. When he took the stage at TechCrunch, he used a small sheet of acrylic to…

Development never goes smoothly. Specs change mid-development, deadlines close in with no resolution in sight, tooling has to be remade, patent licensing…

Kuzuryu here. I serve as a director at several companies, and I also work with many other companies as an advisor, and occasionally as a hands-on consultant.…

I took the online class "CCSx: Climate Change: Carbon Capture and Storage" offered by Edinburgh University on edX.…

The move away from plastic is fundamentally a story about alternative materials. Polymers aren't my specialty, so honestly it's a domain I don't fully…

DACC (Direct Air Carbon Capture) is an area getting huge attention, and the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report states explicitly that it is "not an option —…

When you hit your 40s — or maybe it starts creeping in during your late 30s — there's one thing you feel for certain. You have no idea what young people are…

Actually, I've been writing a book My book comes out on May 18, 2022. (Amazon has it scheduled for 5/20. Bookstores will follow shortly after.) So I'm going to…

The Psychology of "Air" Masks and "air" (this is not about breathability) The other day I had this exchange with someone. "Why does everyone wear a mask…

The sample copies arrived today. Sales start at bookstores nationwide and on Amazon from 5/18. This book compiles answers to the typical questions and sticking…

Here's the edited version: I read the following book by Akira Ikegami, my colleague at Tokyo Institute of Technology (just kidding — needless to say, our…

The 1982 children's picture book "Barbapapa's Christmas Present" has extraordinarily deep content. Or rather, maybe we've just been shallowly pacing back and…

DRAWDOWN: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming I organized the contents of Drawdown into notes across several posts. [Related…

Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming Drawdown is a project-style book led by an American writer, with contributions…

DRAWDOWN — 100 Ways to Reverse Global Warming "Drawdown" is a project-style book led by an American writer, with contributions from researchers around the…

Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming "Drawdown" is a project-style book led by an American writer, with contributions…

DRAWDOWN — 100 Ways to Reverse Global Warming "Drawdown" is a project-style book led by an American writer with contributions from researchers around the…

DRAWDOWN — 100 Ways to Reverse Global Warming "Drawdown" is a project-style book led by an American writer, with contributions from researchers around the…

DRAWDOWN: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming "Drawdown" is a project-style book led by an American writer, with contributions…

When companies form alliances with each other, or business firms link up with academia, the line between joint development and contracted development sometimes…

This is, in a way, a discussion of technique. Here I'll write down some things to keep in mind when making presentation materials. <Polished materials only…

Time does not exist Carlo Rovelli I want to try to explain the bestselling book by the Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli, "The Order of Time." Honestly, this is…

I once talked with someone from an advertising agency about an app and got the comment: "iOS-only is unthinkable, right off the bat. No way." For developers,…

That's true. But depending on the situation, an "equal team" can clearly be undesirable. An early-stage startup is a good example. To sum up the image of an…

In practice, this is a case-by-case matter. Let's consider a few typical examples. ＜The case of Company A＞ Company A is a startup that has just launched, and…

Common Pitfalls in Risky Development Honestly, situations like this are a common pitfall in development. Everyone runs into it, and everyone feels the pain of…

I think this is really true, from experience. That said, the distribution has a distinctive shape worth noting. Suppose, for example, that the variation in…

Whether you call it "winning" or "losing" depends on definition, but becoming like China again is, I think, simply no longer possible. The reason is the…

Let's proceed here assuming a presentation in the early stages of product planning. This is a setting where you explain to senior decision-makers and get their…

There is more than one way to approach planning. Here I'll just write about my own personal stance. First, accumulating knowledge is essential for anything.…

This is a worry common to everyone who works. I get asked this kind of question, or consulted about it, because I hate meetings. (I say this openly.) First of…

This is a simple question I sometimes get from people who work at fairly large companies and are scheming to launch a new business inside their organization,…

I have almost no regrets about my career. That doesn't mean I've never failed. It means both my failures and my successes have become nourishment. Life demands…

This is a commonly cited challenge. There's one thing I tell my children over and over, especially my eldest son, who's in elementary school. Lately he's…

I have never had a career that placed me inside a government institution, but through my work I have found myself deeply involved with government bodies, or in…

This is also a consultation I get often. First, this kind of consultation only ever comes from large companies. That's because in most cases startups know…

I'll confess something here: I've been told by team members that I'm "too top-down." Not just once. Several times. Not every time, but close. When you become a…

This is a slightly different kind of topic, but I've been asked about it a lot lately, so I'm writing it down. A portfolio worker, by the way, is someone who…

I already hate meetings, so there's no way I'd sit through an unproductive one. lol So what exactly is an "unproductive meeting"? There are several patterns,…

1. Zero yen 2. A few hundred thousand yen 3. At least $9,100 The answer is 2, a few hundred thousand yen. People often say "you can now start a stock company…

It's more of a beginning, really. Let me just say it, at least for the benefit of anyone thinking "if I quit the big company..." I'm sure plenty of people at…

People in their 20s tell me, with the best of intentions, "This really is the decade for it, isn't it!" So let me push back here too: "No, no, that's not…

I'm writing an answer to a question I often get asked at the end of talks. Readers who follow my blog already know how many difficulties await when you build…

I pulled the note account I'd been using for about a year and moved back to my own company blog. Here are the reasons why. Did traffic increase? The only real…

In the 200xs, we faced the wave of the "smartphone" and were filled with joy. "Finally, the device we'd been waiting for was born!" Demand for a mobile form…

Individualism and statism can coexist in fact, they depend on each other This might sound strange on its face, but it's undeniably true. The reason: a state is…

I read Bad Blood. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup This is the book by the Wall Street Journal reporter who exposed the fact that…

I had the opportunity to serve as a judge at the Monozukuri Hardware Cup (held online) on 2/25. <https://hardwarecup.monozukuri-startup.jp/ It's positioned as…

My first half-year as an "adjunct university lecturer" came to an end the other day. It wasn't the kind of class you might imagine, where you lecture from a…

I get asked about this often, so I'm putting together a summary. First, as a premise: there's no problem at all if the company runs fine without personnel…

We have four children, and not one of them has ever been put to sleep by us. Our eldest son is 8, our eldest daughter is 5, our second son is 3, and our second…

This started because someone passed me the "Book Cover Challenge" that went viral during the lockdown period. Digging a bit deeper than "books I like," I ended…

The other day I couldn't give my 8-year-old son a clean explanation, so I looked into it and put together what I found here. Here's how the exchange went, by…

Product planning, business planning, promotional strategy — whatever the case, one thing holds true across all of them: method should be figured out later.…

As a trend of recent years, phrases like "the failure of capitalism" and "the collapse of democracy" seem to come up everywhere. I wanted to get a proper…

As a trend of the past few years, I've noticed the phrase "the failure of capitalism" or "the collapse of democracy" cropping up in more and more places. I…

I've noticed a trend in recent years toward phrases like "the failure of capitalism" and "the collapse of democracy" appearing in many places. I wanted to get…

The following text was written for a certain occasion, but since it contains content of high public value, I decided to pull it out and publish it separately.…

I recently read a book with quite a provocative title. Global Warming: The "CO2 is the culprit" theory is the biggest lie of the century The book compiles…

The Information Processing Society of Japan ran a feature on this topic in their bulletin recently, and around the same time I had some back-and-forth with a…

Zoom, which everyone here uses. I keep hearing "isn't there a bunch of security problems being said about it!?" and getting asked about it too. So I'm writing…

Getting a patent is a kind of "given" For people building business strategy and people launching startups, one of the things most of them worry about is…

Let me write about something almost nobody talks about, but that everyone in the industry already knows. Bad rumors about startups spread fast. "So-and-so is…

A while back, someone told me, "I have low self-esteem." That person went to an arts high school and was surrounded by people so exceptionally talented that…

<https://note.com/claytech Please see this link for the latest post. --- Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2020/02/278/. Translated…

I hold a somewhat negative attitude toward the sharing economy. What follows is a long piece. If the title already irritated you, you probably shouldn't read…

Have you heard the phrase "the Mississippi Company"? It refers to one of the largest bubbles in history, which occurred in 18th-century France. I'll leave the…

Some time ago a "vague worry" came up in conversation, and I gave my own comment in response. Looking back later, I felt the content applied more generally, so…

I recently made my print debut in "Nikkei Business" and "Nikkei Computer." Hooray. It's an article reporting on a conference I spoke at last year, and I'm…

The other day my wife read an article claiming "AI that reads people's emotions and gives recommendations is going to develop further, and so on" and called it…

Here's the pasted list of every book I read in the second half of last year, in no particular order. I really am an omnivorous reader. Note that I've left out…

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…

The Roman Senator Googurekas and the poet Terawaros were childhood friends. (See Wikipedia.) I found myself recalling the dawn of the internet, now more than…

To be, or not to be, that is the question Live as a working adult long enough and you have to deal with all kinds of external things — other people, foreign…

Some people treat risk assessment and risk management as if they were the same thing, but of course they mean different things. Let me start with the textbook…

As a textbook convention for business plans, you often see the sequence "improve operational efficiency" → "efficiency gains and headcount cost reduction" →…

As a common pattern among early-stage companies built around a technology seed, "it's often unclear from conversations who actually owns the project or…

You have an idea. You're torn on whether to launch a startup. You want to try some prototyping and experiments. If that's your situation, incorporate for now…

I once wrote a post Aisei Kobayashi said "most music is a rip-off," and that's true in a certain sense, <https://www.clazytech.com/2013/12/95/ but I sometimes…

Equity ratios matter enormously to the management of every stock corporation, not just startups. Even an elementary school student knows that much, but the…

On the category "Things worth knowing if you're even considering starting a company." The trigger for writing this has been building quietly for a while now.…

I implemented UART communication between M5Stack and M5Stack. That works with really simple codes. This is sending something over UART. Gist This is receiving…

Show this code just posting something to Slack channel by pushing the button on M5Stack In loop() section, I'm using some magic numbers in order to clean up…

"ClayTech" is a tech company located in Japan. Founded by skillful engineer Yuichiro Kuzuryu(Kuz) in 2018. Has plenty of experience especially – hardware…

I sometimes listen to MIT lectures on edX, and one lecture on algorithms told an interesting story, so I want to put it together here. Declarative knowledge,…

「意識高い系」(roughly, "the consciously image-conscious type") The phrase usually describes someone who fusses over every detail, who picks branded or fashionable…

When you start a startup, fundraising is probably the thing that torments you most in the early stage. "So-and-so raised ¥XXX million through a third-party…

Irrationality and inconsistency are both generally disliked, but they're worlds apart when it comes to whether someone can be trusted. Here's how a person with…

It's been a while since I wrote in this series, but the other day I felt like I saw the "fruit of years of accumulation," so I'm writing this. By way of…

Why Does the US Have So Much Remote Work? The other day someone asked me, "Why does the US have so much remote work?" I didn't have time to give a good answer…

This post is a back number of a previous entry It was a while ago now, but the topic in the headline gave me the answer I'd been looking for. Thank you,…

There was an interesting episode when he talked about the project to generate wind power by flying kites. Ordinary wind power requires too much equipment and…

This is a slide deck I made a while back — a friend told me to reread it, and it turned out to say some surprisingly good things, so I'm copying it over here.…

A junior from my university asked me about this, so I figured it was a good opportunity to organize my thoughts. First, some background on me: I joined a large…

This is a reprint of a past post = backNumber An acquaintance of mine here posted something along these lines the other day: "A situation where multiple,…

Let me pick out the parts from an email to a friend that seem worth sharing. I should say upfront that I'm just an engineer, not a politician or policy wonk,…

A while back I had dinner with a Swiss man named OT. He was in his early sixties, notably witty and quick in conversation. He went to Stanford and worked his…

My network of Japanese contacts here keeps expanding in various ways. Based on what I've observed through that network, let me organize the various "ways of…

Paolo Maldini He was a central figure in AC Milan's golden era of the 90s, and as a member of the Italian national team he experienced one World Cup win and…

"I've come up with a groundbreaking idea!!!" I often feel like dancing with joy about this in the shower. But that "groundbreaking idea," more often than not,…

This article is a reprint of an earlier post. I don't know whether this is a culture unique to Silicon Valley, or whether I just happen to keep running into…

This is a past post = backNumber Spice and Wolf (1) (Dengeki Comics) I recently read Spice and Wolf and thought being a merchant looked like fun. (A shallow…

This article is a reprint = back number of a previous post First of all, personal connections matter a great deal in American society. I felt that somewhat…

It's been about a year and a half since I started working at an American company. My colleagues include Japanese, German, Turkish people and others, but the…

By the way, I'm a hardware guy. The hardware perspective, the software perspective Among colleagues and friends, this sometimes turns into something like a…

I found an interesting bit of trivia, so let's take a look at "number bases." Things like "binary" or "decimal" or "hexadecimal." First, let me explain simply…

Living in America, I sometimes feel a sense of alienation. Well, that can't be helped. I'm an outsider here, after all. According to the people who've been…

Let's talk about a signature move in business. Today happens to be the day a world-famous figure passed away. Someone once said this. "What Jobs does has never…