
Personal ideals, and ideals as a business owner, all about realizing a Venture Ecosystem
For this article, we interviewed our own President and CEO of D-POPS GROUP! Our company is aiming to realize a “Venture Ecosystem” that is indispensable to society. We are striving to create a platform where startup companies can grow.
We asked President Goto about his thoughts on realizing a Venture Ecosystem and contributing to society.
(This interview was conducted in July 2025.)
This is the latter part of this interview. You can check out the first part here.
Sugihara:
So, all of your preparations and activities are for the sake of your vision of “realizing a Venture Ecosystem”. You currently have 25 group companies and 35 portfolio companies. Could you share some examples of companies or situations that have had success or experienced benefits that are unique to the Ecosystem?
Goto:
There are so many ways to answer this question that I can’t tell you all of them, and of course, I can’t reveal specific company names. However, I can certainly share from my own experience about how to avoid a shortage of funds.
When it comes to raising funds, there are a tremendous number of ways to do it. If you pursue all of them simultaneously with a furious momentum before the deadline, in most cases, a large-scale fundraising will be realized. Similarly, when it comes to a V-shaped recovery, if you change everything at once—your business model, organization, sales methods, etc.—most companies that are in the red will become profitable.
I am the type of business owner who takes on big challenges and makes a huge gamble when the time is right. As a result, I have experienced countless dire situations in the past, but even then, I always work with a smile on my face so others don’t seem to notice, ha ha. Ultimately, my personal philosophy is that when business owners achieve exponential self-growth and can clearly articulate their strategy, their performance will grow significantly, and they will almost never fall into the red. I prioritize helping CEOs to grow, because when they achieve that kind of growth, their performance often improves dramatically afterward.
Sugihara:
You sometimes use the phrase taoguang yanghui (韜光養晦)* when talking about your “complexification strategy”, and this website was one example of that. Could you share a few more examples of how D-POPS GROUP has implemented the idea of taoguang yanghui?
*These Chinese characters loosely translate to “hide your strength, bide your time”.
Goto:
I’ve been talking about our complexification strategy for a long time. To put it simply, it’s a strategy for throwing competitors off our scent. It refers to a state of being so complex that a competitor couldn’t imitate you even if they tried.
I was taught the phrase taoguang yanghui by our company’s Advisor Fujisaki, Japan’s former Ambassador to the United States. He said that Deng Xiaoping, the supreme leader of China in the 1990s, used this phrase to represent China’s foreign policy and security strategy. Even within D-POPS GROUP, we opened the first ten mobile phone shops of our D-POPS chain under different names. And when Dr. Semmoto (the founder of Japanese’s well-known KDDI and eAccess) joined as the chairman of our board, we kept it a secret for the first three years.
In the same way, we also limited the information on our previous website to about 30% of what is now publicized, and even now, we still don’t list all of the names of our group companies, which together account for over 10 billion yen in sales.
Sugihara:
You often say that our Venture Ecosystem is only about 30% of the way to reaching the ideal form you have in mind. Could you reveal a bit of your vision of what 100% would look like, with some concrete numbers? Or is it still confidential, ha ha?
Goto:
The goal is to evolve our Venture Ecosystem to the point that when entrepreneurs in Japan look for investment or support, their first thought is “D-POPS GROUP”.
When we get there, one simple metric is that the combined sales of our group companies and portfolio companies will exceed one trillion yen, and if we narrow it down to our group companies (those included in our monthly consolidated balance sheets), we will have achieved 100 billion yen in sales. I also imagine that we will have several times the current number of top-class advisors and super-professional talent on board. I envision supporting, assisting, and staying in tune with around 500 companies in total.
Of course, it would be impossible for me to accomplish all of that alone, so I will need to create an unbelievably high-quality support system. Before I started my own business, I figured that as long as I had passion and strategy, I could recruit and partner with any number of excellent people.
In reality, the truth was much harsher: no one showed any interest in a company with virtually no sales, and I would even be able to pay them proper compensation. So, my vision is that as a Venture Ecosystem, we will possess all the necessary management resources—human resources, financial power, know-how, information, and network—on behalf of startup business owners, allowing us to provide the right kind of support at the right time.
I believe that whether or not they use these resources is up to each company’s owner. D-POPS GROUP’s support is not a top-down approach; it’s a form of backing that we provide as needed. I also believe that in the future, when our group companies or other companies we support reach unicorn-level size, we must have the financial strength to spare several billion to tens of billions of yen.
In addition, I see our current focus on investing in AI-related companies as a way to build a system that can support cutting-edge digital strategies by having a large number of talented engineers join our team. When I think about how to build this kind of system, the goalposts gradually move further and further away, so I guess we will never really stop chasing this ideal.
Sugihara:
It was recently announced that you will be holding the “Venture Ecosystem Summit 2025” this October. What kind of event are you aiming to create? What has the response been like from the people you invited: entrepreneurs, business owners, and some guests from large corporations?
Goto:
The response has been phenomenal. It was fully booked in less than a week, and even I myself wasn’t expecting the seats to go that fast! At the same time, I had been preparing for this for a full year with the clear intention that if I were to host such an event, I would plan and execute it at the maximum level of my production capabilities.
Every year, at D-POPS GROUP’s annual all-hands event, we have the privilege of listening to lectures from prominent figures like Chairman Semmoto and Advisor Fujisaki. However, at last year’s event, an inspiration suddenly came to me: “It would be a waste to society to keep this within our group alone.” So, on the spot, I declared that we would hold a Venture Ecosystem Summit for promising entrepreneurs and business owners.
I guess the business owners to whom we sent invitations really caught my passion, because we had originally expected to invite about 500 guests and only have about 250 of them sign up, but over 90% of them indicated they wanted to participate, so it instantly became fully booked. Currently, the expected number of attendees is about 250, but we are planning to negotiate with the venue and make adjustments so that a few dozen more people can participate (up to a maximum of 270).
There are still entrepreneurs and business owners I want to invite, so I guess some of you reading this article may be disappointed and wondering, “Why didn’t I get an invitation??”, ha ha. Please feel free to contact me, and I will work on getting you a seat.
Anyway, the event’s itinerary has become jam-packed with evocative learning opportunities, from lectures and panel discussions to live performances by calligraphers and musicians. I believe it will be an incomparable event, and hope this one day will become a turning point in the lives of all those who participate.
Sugihara:
It sounds like it's going to be a fantastic event.
Now, focusing on the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the Japanese government finally seems to be putting a lot of effort into supporting startups. In that sense, creating a Venture Ecosystem as a private company is a truly timely initiative. Do you feel a tailwind from this?
Goto:
I feel it very strongly. Lately, inquiries about CVC investments, capital and business alliances, and M&A offers are all flooding in. Even though I don’t feel like our Venture Ecosystem is complete yet, many people are asking to join it. I hope to continue providing solid support to entrepreneurs with high aspirations, great potential, and a strong desire to contribute to society.
Through trial and error, I want to further analyze how to create the Venture Ecosystem that Japan needs the most. I believe that I must, in the remainder of my life, complete an Ecosystem that only D-POPS GROUP can create.
Sugihara:
Once you have achieved a certain degree of success in creating a Venture Ecosystem in Japan, do your vision include the rest of the world?
Goto:
Of course. We are already investing in the US, India, and Israel, but the global Venture Ecosystem still has many gaps. We plan to increase the number of partners who can work with us on a global level as a matter of course and to work out a system for that.
Sugihara:
What is your ideal vision for yourself and D-POPS GROUP in five years?
Goto:
My personal ideals and my ideals as a business owner are both centered on realizing a Venture Ecosystem. I have a great ambition and a strong will to leave behind something that, at the moment of my death, I can confidently say made a great contribution to the world. I plan to accomplish this with absolute tenacity. In five years, I hope that when people are talking about support for startup companies, they will mention “D-POPS GROUP’s Venture Ecosystem” without even having to think. Of course, I have clear KPIs that I am consciously working toward, such as the number of group and portfolio companies, sales, and profits. But in the end, it’s all about realizing my vision of a Venture Ecosystem.
Sugihara:
Lastly, do you have a final message for the readers who are visiting this website?
Goto:
Life is a one-time thing for everyone, so I believe it’s important to live without regrets. The bigger the vision you have, the more you will need partners. If any of the people who have read this interview become our partners in the future, it would make me incredibly happy. And I would also be very happy if this interview provided some kind of business insight.
Interview conducted by D-POPS GROUP’s advisor Genta Sugihara.
D-POPS GROUP
Company President and CEO: Kazuhiro Goto
Address: 32F Shibuya Hikarie Bldg., 2-21-1 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Established: October 1, 2015 (Founded: February 4, 1998)
Website: https://d-pops-group.co.jp/en/