Japanese-Style Entrepreneurship: An Interview with Softbank’S CEO, Masayoshi Son

by | Aug 14, 2020 | Uncategorized | 0 comments

All Premium Themes And WEBSITE Utilities Tools You Ever Need! Greatest 100% Free Bonuses With Any Purchase.

Greatest CYBER MONDAY SALES with Bonuses are offered to following date: Get Started For Free!
Purchase Any Product Today! Premium Bonuses More Than $10,997 Will Be Emailed To You To Keep Even Just For Trying It Out.
Click Here To See Greatest Bonuses

and Try Out Any Today!

Here’s the deal.. if you buy any product(s) Linked from this sitewww.Knowledge-Easy.com including Clickbank products, as long as not Google’s product ads, I am gonna Send ALL to you absolutely FREE!. That’s right, you WILL OWN ALL THE PRODUCTS, for Now, just follow these instructions:

1. Order the product(s) you want by click here and select the Top Product, Top Skill you like on this site ..

2. Automatically send you bonuses or simply send me your receipt to consultingadvantages@yahoo.com Or just Enter name and your email in the form at the Bonus Details.

3. I will validate your purchases. AND Send Themes, ALL 50 Greatests Plus The Ultimate Marketing Weapon & “WEBMASTER’S SURVIVAL KIT” to you include ALL Others are YOURS to keep even you return your purchase. No Questions Asked! High Classic Guaranteed for you! Download All Items At One Place.

That’s it !

*Also Unconditionally, NO RISK WHAT SO EVER with Any Product you buy this website,

60 Days Money Back Guarantee,

IF NOT HAPPY FOR ANY REASON, FUL REFUND, No Questions Asked!

Download Instantly in Hands Top Rated today!

Remember, you really have nothing to lose if the item you purchased is not right for you! Keep All The Bonuses.

Super Premium Bonuses Are Limited Time Only!

Day(s)

:

Hour(s)

:

Minute(s)

:

Second(s)

Get Paid To Use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
Online Social Media Jobs Pay $25 - $50/Hour.
No Experience Required. Work At Home, $316/day!
View 1000s of companies hiring writers now!

Order Now!

MOST POPULAR

*****
Customer Support Chat Job: $25/hr
Chat On Twitter Job - $25/hr
Get Paid to chat with customers on
a business’s Twitter account.

Try Free Now!

Get Paid To Review Apps On Phone
Want to get paid $810 per week online?
Get Paid To Review Perfect Apps Weekly.

Order Now
!
Look For REAL Online Job?
Get Paid To Write Articles $200/day
View 1000s of companies hiring writers now!

Try-Out Free Now!

How To Develop Your Skill For Great Success And Happiness Including Become CPA? | Additional special tips From Admin

Skill level Expansion is definitely the number 1 significant and main component of achieving authentic achieving success in every vocations as everyone noticed in a lot of our modern society along with in Around the world. Consequently privileged to talk over with you in the following relating to precisely what good Talent Expansion is; how or what means we function to reach ambitions and subsequently one could job with what someone enjoys to can just about every day just for a whole life. Is it so great if you are ready to establish effectively and obtain achievements in just what you thought, directed for, encouraged and performed really hard just about every single day time and definitely you turned into a CPA, Attorney, an manager of a massive manufacturer or perhaps even a medical professionsal who will really chip in superb guidance and principles to some, who many, any modern culture and network clearly admired and respected. I can's believe that I can allow others to be top notch specialized level just who will bring essential treatments and aid values to society and communities currently. How content are you if you become one similar to so with your very own name on the headline? I have landed at SUCCESS and overcome all of the the challenging areas which is passing the CPA tests to be CPA. What's more, we will also deal with what are the risks, or various other problems that will be on the method and how I have in person experienced them and can reveal you easy methods to beat them. | From Admin and Read More at Cont'.

Japanese-Style Entrepreneurship: An Interview with Softbank’S CEO, Masayoshi Son

The world of Japanese business, according to conventional Western thinking, consists of huge manufacturing corporations, tightly interwoven corporate families, and hordes of lifetime employees working as devoted company salarymen. Today there is another world emerging—one of high-tech startups begun by young entrepreneurs who contribute their fresh global outlook and new generational attitudes to the traditional world of Japanese business. Masayoshi Son, 34, founder, president, and CEO of Softbank Corporation of Tokyo exemplifies this new Japanese-style entrepreneurship.

Born in Japan of Korean heritage, Son attended high school in the United States—graduating in two weeks—then graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, where he started several businesses and, at the age of 20, used his technological skills to invent and patent a device he sold to Sharp Corporation for $1 million. He returned to Japan in 1981 and a year and one-half later, started Softbank. In addition to its operations in Japan, Softbank today has affiliates in the United States and Korea.

This interview was conducted in Mr. Son’s office at Softbank in Tokyo, Japan by HBR’s editorial director, Alan M. Webber.

HBR: Your company is now ten years old. What was it like in the beginning?

Masayoshi Son: When I first started the company, I only had two part-time workers and a small office. I got two apple boxes, and I stood up on them in the morning as if I was giving a speech. In a loud voice, I said to my two workers, “You guys have to listen to me because I am the president of this company.” I said, “In five years, I’m going to have $75 million in sales. In five years, I will be supplying 1,000 dealer outlets, and we’ll be number one in PC software distribution.” And I said it very loudly.

Those two guys opened their mouths. They stood up and opened wide their eyes and mouths, and they thought, this guy must be crazy. And they both quit.

That was in 1981. About a year and a half later, we were supplying 200 dealer outlets. Now we supply 15,000. In ten years, we’ve gone from two part-time employees doing software distribution and making about $12,000 to 570 employees doing software distribution, book and magazine publishing, telephone least cost routing, system integration, network computing, and CAD-CAM and making about $350 million.

Do you have a way of thinking about your company that ties all these different parts together?

People usually compare the computer to the head of the human being. I would say that hardware is the bone of the head, the skull. The semiconductor is the brain within the head. The software is the wisdom. And data is the knowledge.

If you look at these carefully, you don’t think the skull has the most value. The brain is more valuable than the skull. But everybody has a brain. Inside the brain are wisdom and knowledge. Wisdom and knowledge are the most valuable things in the body. I want to be number one in the business of supplying wisdom and knowledge all over Japan. But the knowledge industry is too big, too wide. So we specialize in the PC industry’s knowledge.

We supply that wisdom and knowledge through magazines, software, telephone systems, systems integration, all kinds of media. That’s why we carry 40,000 different pieces of software. That’s 40,000 different kinds of wisdom. If you look at Matsushita or Toshiba or Sony, they’re not one-product companies. They sell products that range from refrigerators to televisions to semiconductors. That’s what I’m doing in information for PCs. We have a variety of information products, practically every type imaginable, except the PC itself.

How did you actually start your company?

I started Softbank in 1981, a year and a half after I came back from the United States, after graduating from Berkeley. I wanted to start my own company when I came back to Japan. I thought of 40 different businesses I could start. It was like thinking of an invention. As a student, I had a hobby of inventing new ideas for products. For me, thinking of new businesses is like inventing new products.

For a year and a half, I did research and made business plans. While I prepared, I had no income. I spent money, I had a new baby. My wife was worried. All my friends, my father, my mother, everybody was worried. They asked me, what are you going to do? You spent years studying in the United States, and now you aren’t doing anything. I spent all my time just thinking and thinking, studying what to do. I went to the library and bookstores. I bought books, I read all kinds of materials to prepare for what I would do for the next 50 years.

I came up with 40 new business ideas—everything from creating software to setting up hospital chains, since my wife’s father is a doctor and has a hospital. Then I had about 25 success measures that I used to decide which idea to pursue. One success measure was that I should fall in love with a particular business for the next 50 years at least. Very often, people get excited for the first few years, and then, after they see the reality, they get tired of the business. I wanted to choose one that I would feel more and more excited about as the years passed.

Another factor was that the business should be unique. That was very important to me. I didn’t want anyone else doing exactly the same thing. A third was that within 10 years I wanted to be number one in that particular business, at least in Japan. And I wanted to pick a business where the business category itself would be growing for the next 30 to 50 years. I didn’t want to choose a sinking ship.

I had all those measurements, about 25 in all, and 40 new ideas. I took a big sheet of paper, and I drew a matrix and put down scores and comments for each. Then I picked the best one, which turned out to be the personal computer software business. That was the start of Softbank.

You picked an industry that was about to take off. Did you become a successful entrepreneur simply by picking the right industry?

If you go back to 1981, everything wasn’t so obvious. The PC was only a toy then. There was some hardware already made in Japan, but there was almost no software. Nobody even knew what kind of software was available in all of Japan. It was my judgment that personal computers would be a very important product for the entire society in 10 or 20 years. And that PCs would only become more important. But the PC industry was not established then. The big, grown-up businesses did not know about the PC industry. They weren’t even all that interested in it. Today in Japan, only 2 million PCs are sold each year, which is one-fourth the number sold in the United States. A few years ago, it was only one-tenth.

And the PC industry has lots of different dimensions. I thought about making software myself and starting a software business, like I had done while I was at Berkeley. But, I thought, if I make good software, who would sell it? Making software and selling software are entirely different businesses. Even if I make good software, if there’s no one to sell it, I’d have to close the business.

I looked around for someone who was selling software, and I couldn’t find anyone. So, I thought, if no one is going to do it, I should do it. I made a list of the software producers and went to see them to find out what kind of software was available. I found Hudson Software was making some computer games. And there was Personal Media and Milky Way. But it was mostly games and hobbies. There was some business software, but it was very low quality at the time.

Given the state of the PC and software industries at that time, how did you go about launching your company?

When Softbank was only two or three months old, I decided that I needed to show the end users and dealers what software was available in Japan. There was a consumer electronics show in Tokyo, and I made a reservation for the largest size booth, the same size as Sony, Matsushita, and Toshiba. I purchased the space, and I called all the software vendors I could find, maybe just a dozen at that time. I told them that I had bought the space, I was going to prepare the flyers, I was going to have decorations, displays, a model PC, and I was going to pay for everything. I told them, you guys can be in my booth for free. They all said, what? How can you do that? Why are you doing that? How can you make money doing that?

They had the software, but they didn’t have the money to show it to anybody else. I had a little money, but I didn’t have products to sell. And there were so many PC dealers who had hardware but no software. So, I thought, some matchmaking is needed. At the consumer electronics show, I had a booth the size of eight small booths. I had a huge sign that said, “Now the revolution has come for software distribution for PCs.” I had more people come to my booth than Sony did. My booth was always packed, jammed with people. And they all said how good it was.

My plan was that a bunch of people would sign up to establish outlets and another bunch of people would order software through Softbank. In fact, I got almost nothing. Nobody signed up for a dealership. Zero. And I sold very few software products. Actually, most of the software vendors who attended the booth would tell people, if you can’t make up your mind today, here’s my card. You can call me directly if you decide to buy my software. So I was cut out of the deal completely. I probably made back one-twentieth of the cost of the booth.

Masayoshi Son describes Softbank’s current businesses as follows:

“Softbank has six divisions in different businesses, five wholly owned subsidiaries, and five joint ventures. We started in the software distribution business. Today we distribute 50% of all the PC software sold in Japan. We supply software to 15,000 dealer outlets. We have 40,000 stock-keeping units, ranging from very complex, expensive network software to video games.

“We’re also in the book and magazine business. We publish 11 magazines, all on the PC industry, and we will be adding 3 more in the next 3 months. We distribute 1.5 million copies a month. There are 3 million PC users in Japan, so we reach 50% of the Japanese PC users each month. As publisher, I decide which magazines to start, which to stop, and I create the basic idea for each magazine. Each one is different. For example, one covers how to choose PC products, another what the news is in the PC industry, another what the key trends are for managers in the industry.

“Our third business is the telephone data business, which today consists of a telephone least cost routing device that I invented. It’s a small device, about the size of two cigarette packs, that attaches to ordinary telephones and automatically chooses the least cost route for long-distance calls from among the four different telephone companies. We have installed over 1.5 million of these units, and we get a royalty from the three new telephone common carriers.

“We’re also in the computer networking business. We have 26% ownership of a joint venture called Novell Japan, Ltd. In the last 12 months, we’ve invested about $20 million in this business. There are about 200 companies trained and supplied by Softbank that specialize in selling computer networks to corporate customers. They are our authorized dealers. We call them our Network Pro Shops, like golf pro shops. We train their engineers and their sales force and supply products to them.

“We also have SystemBank, a system integration business, a joint venture with Perot Systems. I sold 35% of SystemBank to Ross Perot, who already has Perot Systems in the United States. SystemBank will do the same kind of business in Japan that Perot Systems does in the United States—customization work for large corporations such as banks, insurance companies, newspapers, manufacturing companies. We have all kinds of experience in the PC area, but we don’t have any experience in mainframe and minicomputers. So to run SystemBank, I recruited the number two person from Unisys Japan and the number one person in computing from the Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank. Now, in our first year, we have about 100 engineers working for SystemBank.

“And we recently started another new division of Softbank that’s in the CAD-CAM business. Intergraph is the largest CAD-oriented company in the United States, and we’re now the master distributor of its product for PCs in Japan.”

What happened after the show?

After that, many people were laughing at me. They said, that guy’s really dumb. He’s a nice guy but dumb. I said, OK, I’m dumb. But I’m going to keep at it, and someday, somebody will find out what I can do and what real software distribution means.

Actually, one person did call me from Osaka a few weeks after the show. He said, we’re starting a big PC shop, and we need software. Please come and talk to me. I said, sorry but I’m too busy to make the trip right now. Actually, I wasn’t busy. There were no customers. But I didn’t have the money to go to Osaka.

He said, my company’s name is Joshin Denki. Have you heard of us? I said, no. I didn’t know the company. It turns out it’s the third largest home electronics dealer in Japan.

He said, please ask Sharp, ask Matsushita who we are. If you make up your mind to come to Osaka, we’d be happy to see you.

So I called up Sharp because of my previous relationship with them when I was at Berkeley. They said, Joshin Denki called you! You should go to Osaka right away!

That afternoon, the person from Joshin Denki called me again. He said, you were too busy to come to Osaka. It’s completely by chance but tomorrow our president is going to Tokyo. It’s really by chance because he has some other business to do there.

The next day the president arrived. He told me that he had come all the way to Tokyo just to see me. The company had started a big computer shop two weeks before, and it needed software. It already had some software and a direct channel with some vendors. But it wanted more.

I told him, if you have some business relationships with software vendors, that’s fine. But if you want to do business with me, you’ll have to discontinue all the relationships you’ve already formed. That’s probably against your business ethics, but if you want to succeed with PCs in Japan, you should do business my way.

He asked me many questions: How much capital do you have? How old are you? What kind of business experience do you have?

I told him, I have very little money, very little business experience. I have no product, nothing. What I do have is the greatest enthusiasm, the greatest desire to succeed. I said, you have already been purchasing some PC software. Today you probably have more knowledge and more experience at this than I do. You are older than I am and more talented. But in addition to purchasing PC software and hardware, you are also going to purchase home electronics products, refrigerators, televisions, VCRs. I will dedicate all my time and effort, all my energy, my entire spirit to PC software only. Several months from now, who do you think will be more knowledgeable, more of a specialist in this business? If you want to be the number one PC dealer in Japan, you have to find the number one guy in software distribution. That’s me. I have no evidence, but I strongly believe in myself.

He said, wow, you’re an interesting guy! And he gave me exclusive purchasing rights for all the PC software for Joshin Denki. Joshin Denki had the biggest store specializing in PCs in Japan.

What was your next move?

After I got Joshin Denki, I went to many other department stores and electronic shops. Have you seen Joshin Denki? They’re the largest PC dealer in Japan now. And do you know why they’re so successful? Because they have the software! And I have the exclusive on that software. So if you want to succeed, please talk to me. And they all opened accounts with me very quickly. In one month, I got most of the biggest dealers in Japan as my customers.

I also went to see the president and vice president of Hudson Software. They were the biggest software vendor at that time, although they only had 10 or 12 employees. I told them the same story I told the president of Joshin Denki: that I would dedicate my whole life and effort to selling software and that they should give me an exclusive. They already had business relationships with many dealers by themselves, but they cut all those off and sold through me exclusively. In just a couple of months, I doubled, then tripled their sales. They became very happy!

Before I got Joshin Denki, I had almost no sales. Then right after I got Joshin Denki, I got about $150,000 in sales to them. The next month, I started to do business with many other stores and that amount doubled. The next month, a 50% increase. And the next month. In one year, my monthly revenues went from about $10,000 to $2.3 million.

How did you make sales grow that quickly?

One of the first things I did was to expand the choice of software that Joshin Denki had. I told them, I’m going to get all the PC software that’s available in Japan. Everything. I said, you shouldn’t decide which software you’re going to buy for your store. I’m going to decide everything.

The president of Joshin Denki said, all right, but if the products don’t sell, we should be able to return them to you.

I told him, no. I said, in your other stores you have neon signs, you have showcases. Those are expensive. But in a PC shop, a neon sign doesn’t do any good. What matters is software. Software is part of the decoration. Even if it doesn’t sell, if you have every software package that’s available in Japan, that sends an important message to the end users. It tells them this is the biggest software lineup in Japan.

So I told him, I’m going to get you every software product. But I have no money. So if you want me to do that, you are the one who must pay. And, of course, some of the software will be a total loss. But having all the software products will give you a really good business. The loss will be made up by the software creating your store’s unique attraction and decoration. Actually, the idea really worked. Many people came to the store just because they heard that every software product was available there.

Softbank’s Ten Years of Growth

Raising money is always a challenge to an entrepreneur. How did you finance your company?

When I started the company, I used straight bank loans. And that was really difficult. I went to the Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank when the company was only three or four months old. At the time, I had revenues of about $10,000 and I asked for a loan of $750,000. I told them, I have no collateral, I have no business experience, and I am not going to ask my family or my friends to cosign my loan. I will sign myself, and I’ll take all the responsibility. But unless you give me the prime rate, I’m not going to take a loan from you.

The people at the Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank said, are you crazy? What are you talking about? What are you doing here?

I said, I came to get a loan, of course.

The people at the Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank just started laughing. We can’t give you a loan, they said. Do you have anything that can convince us?

I said, no, I don’t have anything. But if you really think about business in the future, what we’re doing might interest you.

Then they asked me, is there anyone you can use as a reference?

I told them to talk with Dr. Sasaki at Sharp because he was the person I had business experience with from selling Sharp my invention at Berkeley—my pocket language translator.

The bank branch manager was a really good guy. He didn’t want to give up on me just because I couldn’t give good reasons why his headquarters should give me a $750,000 loan. So he called Dr. Sasaki. Dr. Sasaki said, Mr. Son has good business potential, so please give him this loan. The branch manager also asked Joshin Denki, and they recommended me for the loan too.

Then it was up to the branch manager to fill in the formal scorecard of the bank using his judgment whether or not to make the loan. When he used the ordinary scoring, the total was—15 against making the loan. But the last column was “potential growth.” He gave us 15 points for potential growth. So the total came out zero. He sent the scorecard to headquarters and they said, since the total is zero, you make the judgment. The branch manager said, I’m going to give him the loan.

Today at Softbank, we have a special day where we honor the few individuals who made contributions to help start Softbank. One of the people we honor is that bank branch manager.

After you had gotten the software distribution business going, how long did you wait to begin your other divisions?

I started the publishing division six months after I started the company. My employees said, our president has gone crazy. Out of his mind. We’re already so busy with the software distribution business. We don’t have that much profit yet, and now he’s starting another business totally different from what we’ve been doing. A magazine business. And he has no experience in publishing. And he’s starting two magazines simultaneously.

My first magazines were Oh!PC and Oh!MZ. Everybody said to stop, but I did it anyway. And, of course, when I started those magazines, the outcome was terrible. I printed 50,000 copies, and 85% were returned. They didn’t sell. And there were very few advertisements. Every month, the two magazines lost a couple of hundred thousand dollars. They ate up all the profits from the software distribution business. So my people said to me, we told you not to do it.

But we couldn’t stop now because if we stopped the magazines, everyone would say that Softbank was in trouble. That Softbank was going to die. So we couldn’t stop. But every month we were losing so much money. So what could we do?

One day I decided that I would do everything possible to make Oh!PC successful in the next month, and if I couldn’t succeed then, I would quit with that issue. Quit immediately, rather than waiting several months, accumulating losses. I spent all the rest of the money I had on TV advertisements, nationwide. I made the magazine twice as thick, I kept the price the same, I changed the entire layout, and I printed 100,000 copies, twice as many. The new, larger magazine sold out in three days. All 100,000 copies were sold out. After that, the magazine just took off. Today circulation of the semimonthly Oh!PC is roughly 140,000 per issue.

What kind of entrepreneurial experiences prepared you to start Softbank?

When I was a student at Berkeley, I started my first business and even hired some of the professors to help me. Actually, while I was at Berkeley, I had 250 inventions that I wrote down in my “Invention Idea Notes.” Then I picked one to develop a prototype and apply for a patent. I made close to $1 million by selling the patent to Sharp.

I came up with the idea in 1977 or 1978. I was 19 years old and took some semesters off to work on my inventions. I looked through the faculty directory, and I called a number of faculty members. I wanted to know who was the best professor in the microcomputer field. I’d ask one person and I’d be referred to somebody else and then to somebody else until I finally found a couple of good people. I went to see them and said, I have some ideas. This is my sketch of my new invention. Will you help me? At first, they said no, but finally I found a few who were interested. I formed a project team with these professors. I told them, I don’t have any money now, but I will pay you, so please keep track of how many hours you work on this project. After I got the money from Sharp for the patent, I paid them all.

Right now the product is called the Sharp Wizard, but the idea, the prototype, was mine. It’s like a calculator, but it’s actually a computer. It can do translations in eight languages, like a dictionary, and there now exist all kinds of applications stored on integrated-circuit card software that can plug into it. It has telephone directories, calculations of scientific programs, business applications.

I also had computer game projects when I was at Berkeley. I remodeled the software on game machines that I had brought from Japan and installed them in restaurants, cocktail lounges, dormitories, and cafeterias. I made another $1 million from that.

I also made game software while I was a student. My company was called Unison World. When I came back to Japan, I sold it to my associate in that venture for close to $2 million. Later the name was changed to Kyocera Unison, and now I think it’s called Kyocera Electronics.

Of course, I didn’t get the money from those businesses all at one time. Some of what I got supported me when I first returned to Japan.

“I was born on August 11, 1957 in Saga prefecture on Kyushu Island, the most southern of the four main islands of Japan. The town was called Tosu, a very small town. And the house I was born in was on land owned by Japan National Railways. It was land where Koreans lived for free, in houses they had built there illegally. The railroad wanted them to leave, but they had built their houses and didn’t want to move. They had no place else to go. Once there was even a fire in the Korean houses, and the railroad officials finally thought that the people would have to leave. But by the next morning, after the fire, the small group of Koreans had already rebuilt their houses.

“My grandfather and grandmother came from Korea. My father and mother were both born in Japan. In the past in Japan, most Korean people were discriminated against very badly. For example, there are probably 600,000 Koreans living in Japan. And some 99% of them are still using Japanese names, not their real Korean names, because the Japanese government required them to use Japanese last names. As long as they use Japanese names, most Japanese people don’t know that they’re Korean. But once it’s found out, then they face all kinds of discrimination. I myself had problems fitting in. I was trying to hide the fact that I was a Korean. I even used a Japanese last name: Yasumoto. Today all of my family, all of my relatives, still use Yasumoto as their last name—except me.

“When I was growing up, my family was very poor. My father raised pigs and chickens and made sake, which was also illegal. But my father worked hard, even though we were poor. He worked so hard that he was able to get a car, the first in the town.

“When I was 13, my family moved to the biggest city on Kyushu Island, a town called Hakata. My relatives were all against us moving, but my father wanted me to go to a better school. That was the only reason he decided to move. I was a good student, but in those days I had a darkness in my mind all the time. It was because of my nationality. When I was with friends, I was very happy. When I came back home alone, I had the feeling that I was hiding something from my friends. I think most Koreans who live in Japan have the same feeling. They use their Japanese last names, and it’s like they’re hiding something.

“I went to the United States to go to high school when I was 16. That’s when I started using the name Son. I always used the name Son in the United States. On my passport my name was Son, but with my Japanese name, Yasumoto, in parentheses. I even met my wife in the United States, in the English language school that we both attended. She is also from Kyushu. She went with me to Holy Names College and to Berkeley. Now we have two daughters, nine and ten years old.

“I lived in the United States for six-and-one-half years. My way of thinking about life, about people, about business, everything was affected by my experiences in the United States. Before I went to the States, I had the feeling of hiding something. After living there, I felt that there really shouldn’t be any discrimination against people just because of where they were born. I got much more freedom in my thinking from my experiences in the United States.

“When I moved back to Japan, I first went back to Kyushu for a year and a half to research what to do for the rest of my life. Then when I decided to start Softbank, I moved to Tokyo.

“Last year, in November, I got my Japanese citizenship. It took me several years because at first the government said that I could not use my name Son if I became a Japanese citizen. They said that in the Japanese dictionary there’s no last name Son. They said that if I wanted to get Japanese citizenship, I must change my name to a Japanese name. But I said, no way, I’m not going to change my name.

“Instead, my wife, who is a Japanese citizen, went to Japanese court to change her name to Son. She had been using her maiden name as her official Japanese name but using Son on a daily basis. She went to court to change her official Japanese name to Son. They asked her why she wanted to change her name and she said, because that’s my husband’s name. They said, are you really sure you want to change your name to a Korean name? She said, yes. She was the first person who was a Japanese citizen who had ever changed her name to a Korean name. But the Japanese court accepted it.

“Then I went back to the government and said that I wanted to become a Japanese citizen and keep my name. I told them there must be a person who’s a Japanese citizen with the name Son. They checked and found one person—my wife. So I told them they should accept my application to become a Japanese citizen and allow me to keep my last name. They finally said OK. That’s the government.”

When did you go to the United States, and what was your experience there?

I went to the United States to study when I was 16 years old. I told my family I wanted to go, and everyone started crying, especially my mother. How come you’re leaving our family and going all the way to the United States? She said, it’s a bunch of barbarians who live in that country. My mother was really sad, but my father had no comment for a couple of weeks because he knows me. He realized that nobody could stop me, that if he tried I would just run away from the family and go anyway. He decided that rather than making me run away from the family and Japan without any money, he should send me to the States with some money and with support.

I flew to Oakland to study as part of a foreign student program. There was a college in Oakland called Holy Names College that had a special program for foreign students to learn English. So for my first several months there, I took English lessons because I had to wait until September for a high school to accept me.

Then in September, I went to school at Serramonte High School. I had spent three months in Japan as a freshman in high school, so I entered Serramonte High School as a sophomore. After one week, I was promoted to a junior. After three or four days as a junior, I was promoted to a senior. I was a senior for another three or four days, then I took an exam and graduated. The result was that I finished high school in the United States in two weeks. Then I went to Holy Names College for my freshman and sophomore years before transferring to Berkeley.

After you graduated from Berkeley, did you consider pursuing your entrepreneurial career in the United States?

I thought about it. In fact, a number of things argued in favor of staying in the United States. Many of my friends said I would be crazy to leave because I would have to start my business all over again in Japan. I already had a company established, and it would be much easier to keep doing that. And, of course, the entrepreneurial climate in the United States is much more responsive to someone who’s trying to start a business. There’s more capital. In the United States, there’s not the negative perception of the entrepreneur that there is in Japan. In general, it’s harder to be an entrepreneur in Japan than in the United States. Japanese banks will not loan money to you because they are more conservative. And because of the culture, it’s harder to attract the best employees. They like to work for the big companies or for the government because Japan is a lifetime employment country. All these things argued in favor of staying in the United States.

So why did you decide to go back to Japan?

The more I thought about it, the more reasons I found for starting my company in Japan. I had a very long-term vision. I didn’t have any evidence, but I believed in myself. I believed that someday I would have a very big company, a global business, and a very successful company. If I were able to do that, my headquarters should be in Japan. It’s more difficult to start a business in Japan, but once I started it, once I had the company, it would be easier to keep the loyalty of the employees if the headquarters were in Japan. Japanese workers work harder, they have a stronger loyalty to the company, and they tend to stay in the company for a very long time. They don’t often have bright creativity, but they work very hard to make continuous improvements. In America, the workers are more likely either to leave the company after awhile or not to care about the company very much.

“To understand my invention and our telephone data business—called the DATANET Division—first you have to understand something about the telephone system in Japan.

“In the past, there was only one telephone company, NTT—it was a monopoly. About five years ago, three new companies, new common carriers, started service. One is called DDI, formed by Kyocera. The second is Teleway Japan, which Toyota started. The third is Japan Telecom, which belongs to Japan Railways Group.

“Now, let’s say you want to call from Tokyo to Osaka, which actually does carry the greatest percentage of long-distance calls in Japan. If you want to call using NTT today, you only have to dial eight digits. If you call using any of the other three companies, you have to add four more digits as the prefix. And with the other three companies, you have to know each company’s different prefix. For example, for DDI, the prefix is 0077. For Teleway Japan, it’s 0070. For Japan Telecom, it’s 0088.

“For a user, it’s cumbersome to dial four digits. Business employees are usually in a hurry to make their calls. They don’t know the different four-digit prefixes. And they don’t know how much each phone call costs or which carrier might be less expensive. So they just dial the original number from NTT because that’s what they’ve gotten used to. Even after the three new companies started, most businesses were still ignoring them, still using NTT.

“What I designed is a least-cost routing device. It’s a small device, just the size of two cigarette packs. There are no buttons. You just attach it to an ordinary telephone, and it will automatically choose the least-cost route among the four different telephone companies. The user just dials the ordinary eight-digit number, the same as with NTT. Then the computer built into the box commands it to choose the common carrier that will provide the greatest savings for that telephone call, depending on the day of the week, the time of day, and the destination of the call.

“At most companies, the employees don’t even notice when the boxes have been installed or that they’re being used. But the accounting managers know because we’re saving them close to 25% of their phone bills. But the user doesn’t pay for the box. And the user gets to keep all of their savings. The way we make money is from the new common carriers. They pay us a royalty on their telephone billings. It has been very good for them too. Their original plans were to break even in the fifth year of service. Because of my box, they all made a profit in their first year.

“I invented this box four years ago and applied for 13 patents in Japan and the United States. We install the box for free, usually in businesses. We’ve already installed over 1.5 million of them. In fact, I have a partner, Mr. Ohkubo, who is also a young Japanese entrepreneur. We own 3% of his company, Shin-Nihon Kohan, which does the installation. And now I’ve designed a custom VLSI chip that is integrated into the ordinary telephone and the facsimile machine. My chip is already built into some of the newer telephone sets and fax machines. Another important feature of my invention is that whenever the rate data change, a host computer calls up the box and downloads the new data to update it automatically.”

It sounds as if the quality of the employees played an important role in shaping your thinking. But you also said that the best employees in Japan like to work for big companies or the government. What was your experience in attracting employees?

In the beginning, it was very hard for us to get the best employees. We had to advertise in the newspapers and magazines, and it was still very difficult. We had to hire ex-truck drivers and all kinds of people for jobs they had never done before. They might have been truck drivers, and now they would be selling products or taking orders.

But these employees were very devoted to the company. They said, I was driving a truck until last month. Now I can work in a high-tech company. My family is very happy. I don’t want to lose my job. So I will do my best. I had employees who worked so hard, they stayed overnight, sleeping on the floor of the office for three months at a time. They would go back home for only three or four days in three months. They worked like hell. That actually added to the spirit of the company.

Now that Softbank is established, what is your experience in attracting top-notch people?

Look at our board of directors. We have a person who used to be second in command at Sharp. He was the head of all engineering at Sharp and a representative director there. We have the man who was second in command at Unisys Japan; he’s now running SystemBank. We have the man who used to be a director of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. He was in charge of making the rules that control how companies go public and deciding which companies could go public.

The way I attract these men to Softbank is to explain what my dream is. It’s not money because they actually come to work and we never talk about payment. They come to work, then a week passes, or longer, then we finally get around to talking about money. I’ll ask them, by the way, how much do you want? And they say, whatever you want to give me. Then I ask them, how much were you making last year? Then I give them the same amount.

So they don’t come to Softbank for the money. It’s for the dream that everyone has together. The dream of making the company successful.

Now that you’ve been running Softbank for ten years, what is your assessment of the future of the PC and PC software?

The PC and PC software have gone through three stages of growth. The first stage was a game software business. PCs were used mostly for games and for hobbies. The second growth stage was business applications like word processing and spreadsheets. The third growth stage is here now—the networked company.

I’ve been putting all my efforts and making all my investments in computer networking. I want to be number one in computer networking because that’s an area that’s going to grow like hell. Our joint venture with Novell is the key for that. We started the company in April 1990 and began shipping products in July 1991. We have a very strong group of owners in the company. Novell owns 54%, NEC, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Canon, and Sony each own 4%, and we own 26%. We not only sell the network operating systems but also network-related products such as peripherals, cables, transceivers, boards, and more. We already have 1,500 network-related products.

One common criticism of Japanese business is that it lacks creativity and innovation. How important is innovation to Softbank’S operation?

The kind of business we’re in requires us to come up with innovations. We have to be innovative both in our products and in how we do business. For example, our telephone data business is a completely new concept, a new product, a new style of business. In computer networking, I came up with the completely new concept of forming this kind of joint venture. It’s the first time in the industry that five competing hardware vendors have joined in one company—NEC, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Canon, and Sony all invested. They worked together under the same roof, and they released the networking software product on exactly the same day. Since those companies control 80% of the PC market, when we released the product, we established the de facto standard. We dominated the market from the first day. In the magazine business, we were the first to bundle PC application demonstration diskettes in our magazines. All of these were my original ideas, my innovations.

Why do you think you became an entrepreneur rather than joining a successful Japanese corporation?

I think I became an entrepreneur because I have my way of doing business. Especially for high-tech ventures, there are no footprints left by anyone else. You have to think and act as you think. To do that, you have to have your own company. But if you have your own company, you’re an outsider in the Japanese business world. It’s difficult. But that’s life.

Alan M. Webber is an award-winning, nationally-recognized editor, author, and columnist.

Japanese-Style Entrepreneurship: An Interview with Softbank’S CEO, Masayoshi Son

Research & References of Japanese-Style Entrepreneurship: An Interview with Softbank’S CEO, Masayoshi Son|A&C Accounting And Tax Services
Source

From Admin and Read More here. A note for you if you pursue CPA licence, KEEP PRACTICE with the MANY WONDER HELPS I showed you. Make sure to check your works after solving simulations. If a Cashflow statement or your consolidation statement is balanced, you know you pass right after sitting for the exams. I hope my information are great and helpful. Implement them. They worked for me. Hey.... turn gray hair to black also guys. Do not forget HEALTH? Competency Advancement is actually the number 1 significant and significant aspect of reaching genuine financial success in all professionals as you witnessed in our population and even in Around the world. Therefore fortuitous to speak about with everyone in the right after in relation to just what exactly productive Competency Improvement is;. exactly how or what ways we operate to reach hopes and dreams and finally one will give good results with what whomever delights in to achieve every single working day designed for a whole everyday life. Is it so awesome if you are ready to grow resourcefully and acquire achievements in everything that you thought, planned for, disciplined and worked hard every single day and unquestionably you grow to be a CPA, Attorney, an master of a big manufacturer or perhaps even a general practitioner who might greatly make contributions very good guidance and principles to many others, who many, any world and community obviously esteemed and respected. I can's believe I can guidance others to be best skilled level who seem to will play a role substantial products and remedy valuations to society and communities at this time. How cheerful are you if you grown to be one just like so with your personally own name on the title? I have arrived on the scene at SUCCESS and conquer virtually all the very hard components which is passing the CPA exams to be CPA. Also, we will also handle what are the dangers, or various situations that is likely to be on your means and ways I have in person experienced them and might clearly show you the right way to overcome them.

Send your purchase information or ask a question here!

7 + 13 =

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

World Top Business Management Tips For You!

Business Best Sellers

 

Get Paid To Use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
Online Social Media Jobs Pay $25 - $50/Hour.
No Experience Required. Work At Home, $316/day!
View 1000s of companies hiring writers now!
Order Now!

 

MOST POPULAR

*****

Customer Support Chat Job: $25/hr
Chat On Twitter Job - $25/hr
Get Paid to chat with customers on
a business’s Twitter account.
Try Free Now!

 

Get Paid To Review Apps On Phone
Want to get paid $810 per week online?
Get Paid To Review Perfect Apps Weekly.
Order Now!

Look For REAL Online Job?
Get Paid To Write Articles $200/day
View 1000s of companies hiring writers now!
Try-Out Free Now!

 

 

Japanese-Style Entrepreneurship: An Interview with Softbank’S CEO, Masayoshi Son

error: Content is protected !!