Mirai Inc

Taking a wee short break from the TAF2007 for an announcement.
Been waiting many years to announce this. I used to have a sole proprietorship but have finally took the step to incorporate my own company. My sole proprietorship was called "Mirai" meaning "future" because it was the beginning of what I saw to be my future. I decided to keep that name for my company which is known as MIRAI Inc or MIRAI Kabushikigaisha (株式会社).

The company mission is to deliver CGM/SEO platforms and solutions. For those who dont know, CGM stands for "Consumer Generated Media" - more commonly known outside of Japan as UGC or "User Generated Content". The SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. I leave Microsoft next week and become full time Representative Director (less fancy word for CEO) for my company. Above: An unexpected sketch from Azamiyuko sensei congratulating me on incorporating my company ^^. I'm going to have her color this in. Cute eyes (both pairs).

I have always been the one to keep my options open and actively speak to recruiters and reach out to others who work in the same industry as me - the internet and media.
I also attend many of the networking events held throughout Tokyo every month. Through these types of activities I have been able to meet an incredible amount of talented entrepreneurs who I share ideas with and have also met many clients.

For me, keeping options open not only meant broadening the amount of opportunity to be gained but also meant to secure other channels of income. More than one channel of income is always a good thing especially when you have expensive figure and gundam hobbies ^^;
Seriously though, relying on one channel of income can be a bad thing. A scenario that I see all the time for example is a talented programmer in an organization gets laid off with his team because of a re-org. That person has a mortgage and a family to feed and now needs to do the milk rounds to secure himself a new job. One channel of income can only go so far if you want more from life and unfortunately this world revolves around money no matter which way you slice or dice it. Money many not be everything but its a sad fact of life.
Job satisfaction does ultimately come before money but for people who dont have any money, having a satisfying job that does not pay is not an option. Money only starts to become irrelevant when one has lots of it.

I mentioned that I have been able to meet a lot of clients over the years. While keeping a full time job at Amazon and Microsoft, I have always done stuff on the side - of course ensuring that it does not interfere or conflict with my full time job ^^;
I used to personally code platforms for my clients but got to a point where I could not manage a full time job at the same time. I sought to hire programmers overseas and have been able to hire teams of talented programmers in Romania, India and China. Hiring locally in Japan didnt make sense due to development costs and the fact that I was only a sole proprietorship at the time.

Apart from my clients, I have always experimented with affiliate systems and got really serious when I helped with development of Amazon Web Services in Japan. I built the first platform to utilize the service which was used at the official launch press conference.
For those who dont know, affiliate systems are those which enable you to make a commission by introducing products or services of a company to people who visit your website - Amazon associates is a good example. When I first started, I thought to myself that it would be cool if I could earn about 6,000 yen to pay for the phone bill ( I was being optimistic at the time ). But after researching SEO and Apache, before I knew it I was earning more than I made at my full time job...
The extra channel of income through the stuff I do on the web outside of my full time job has not only enabled me to pay for a house and land in Tokyo, but has also enabled me to save enough capital to start my own company. A foreigner in Japan has to have a certain amount of capital in order to get the Business Investor visa.

The extra income is good because I dont need to rely on venture capital or angel investment. One of the reasons why I am leaving a full time job is because I want to be my own boss - taking VC or AI just means that I would have a boss who sits elsewhere - worse still - s/he would own a certain percentage of the company and be breathing down my neck making sure that I make good use of their money and not buy figures ^^; I hear a lot from entrepreneurs who have taken VC and they advise that if you dont need it, dont take it. While many VC startups do well, many go sour because of the involvement of the VC. One ends up trying to produce results at the VCs request instead of being able to focus on what the company originally set out to do.
Another reason why I started a company is because I want to see how far I can go using affiliate income as capital and building the company up from my current client base. Not really interested in somebody owning half of my company.

Now or never. I want to die with peace in mind that I lived a life that I wanted to live. For me that has always meant to run my own business doing what I feel most passionate about.
I set a goal many years ago to start my own company by the age of 35 (35 this Nov) - this goal together with the affiliate/client income meant that it was probably the right time to make the step.

So apart from building platforms for my clients, I will also be concentrating in monetizing from my current web properties. Some people think that monetizing from blogs is evil which is just a different way to think about it (which is fine).
This site used to be labeled "a broadband experiment" and has been a place for me to experiment with new technologies and at the same time let my friends know that I was alive by posting something every 6 months ^^;
The thought of monetizing from this site seemed totally odd to me. It was a personal blog and not a monetization engine. I implemented some Amazon Web Services code and placed products in the side bar just to have content which refreshed itself. To my surprise, the products started to sell like hot Haruhi's figures off the conveyor belt. I then started to monetize over time with Google Adsense and sponsor placement.This was all before I became a full time otaku and started to write content.

If my site content was crap, I would hesitate about sticking ads all over the place but I do get the impression that you like the content given the amount of daily unique users (currently an average of 12000).

I do try to keep the ads in their place and would never use programs like Text Link Ads on this site which mess with the main text by automatically sticking in ad links everywhere. For those who cant stand the ads, use RSS feeds instead!

My main line of work is the internet and has been for the past 8 years. My company will not only concentrate on CGM/SEO but also monetization through internet technologies - my main role at Microsoft was CGM and monetization.

"A/B test" is a term given to experimenting with different layouts and features before rolling out the full product/feature to thousands of users. For example, I want to roll out a feature but am not sure how it will affect the current traffic or user behavior. In this case, I will show 30% of user sessions the new feature while the remaining 70% will see the site as it was. I can then compare user behavior to measure the effectiveness which could end up positive or negative.

The team that handled these tests at Amazon was the Weblab team and I worked very closely with them before rolling stuff out on my site (at the time being amazon.co.jp ). Google, Yahoo and Ebay also execute A/B tests which is why you will see things differently when logged in at different times/from different computers.
This is another reason why you will see things changing and disappearing on this site too as I have built my own weblab systems. If I had a feature on this site and remove it - its because it didnt convert well.

I want this site to be more than a blog and transition it into an Otaku/Japan portal. I know that there are many out there who prefer personal websites which is fine but among those folks, there are many who constantly send me mail still complaining about the content/layout (I got one this morning lol). Always welcome constructive criticism but *telling* me what content I should/should not write is another thing.
If you do like whats going on around here then I would love you to stick with me - and thank you so much for doing so up until now ^^. In a previous post, I wrote that one does things best when they are passionate about something - which is why landing oneself in a job which revolves around something one is passionate about is a good thing. Being passionate about something means that you will do well. Being passionate means that you will always find a way and excel at what you do - and being paid at the same time is like an additional plus ^^;
I enjoy being a full time otaku and will continue to bring you coverage of anime, figure, gundam (Gundam Expo April 20th ^^;) game, and idol events. Expect me to continue to write the figure and gundam reviews as well as tips on living in Japan and other Japan topics. Its not the money that motivates me to write - its because I am passionate about these otaku subjects - making money from my interests is a welcome addition. I hope this is OK with you^^;

I never got around to the money making series that I promised you ages ago and will write a post about blog monetization sometime.

So whats the value proposition of Mirai Inc? I mean there are already many web development companies out there doing this sort of stuff already right?
I worked with many teams as a management team member at Amazon - Search, Personalizaton, Supply Chain, Platform Dev, Userbility etc and have gained a deep understanding of building scalable-commerce platforms. I have also done much research into SEO and lead optimization projects on all of Amazons sites resulting in incremental revenue in the millions (USD). The SEO knowledge however has mostly been gained researching into what I needed to do to my personal sites to make money.
I have also been working on building community platforms (CGM) for my clients over the years - many of which have tens of thousands of community members.
I have been having a steady flow of clients over the years - many of whom have been recommended by previous/current satisfied clients.

Many web development companies in Japan screw their clients by charging them for the smallest text change. The platforms I build all have proprietary content management systems which give my clients the flexibility to run the site the way they want without being charged for trivial changes.

Another thing about many Japanese web development companies is that they still build sites the Web1.0 way using tables instead of CSS for layout. To make matters worse, they built sites which only work in IE and dont seem to know much about web standards. All the applications my company builds are cross platform and adhere to web standards.
The combination of my given knowledge in e-commerce, development together with CGM and SEO is the value proposition that I am offering as a business and judging from the amount of clients I have so far, things look good ^^.
So what was all that bragging about? Well many people would see that as bragging and I do get hate mail about it from time to time. But there is a clear difference between bragging and letting people know of your abilities. Lets say I go to a networking event where many people from the internet industry are gathered - they are not going to guess my abilities and will only know if I speak up. A networking event is for people to get together, let each other know of their abilities and explore possibilities of working together.
Through letting people know what my abilities are, I have made many comrades and clients in the industry and recommend that people who are interested in broadening their options do the same. I have also received many contacts and clients from people who have read my profile but have also received a ton of hate mail too @.@. Letting people know of your abilities on your site will open doors to new opportunity but at the same time bring in people who who would rather spend time slagging you off rather than concentrate on fixing their own lives (ouch!)

So I've covered what my company does, why I'm doing it, how I became to decide on the company mission and a few things which helped me get there. Expect to hear more about my start up.

BTW, been so busy with paperwork that I have not had the time to build a site for my new company ^^; Plan to move into offices in the Ebisu/Meguro area in Tokyo before the end of year.