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Mountaineering and Leadership: Similarities Between Running a Startup Company and Climbing a Mountain

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2025.09.29

At D-POPS GROUP, we understand a “Venture Ecosystem” to be a dynamic platform that enhances the growth and sustainability of a community of enterprises. United by a shared identity and philosophy, these companies continuously innovate to address critical social challenges through groundbreaking business models. We are committed to making this ideal a reality through daily strategic efforts and unwavering dedication.

*Please check out this page for more details: Venture Ecosystem: A Platform for Growth and Sustainability

In this article, we’ll look at the parallels between managing a startup company and mountaineering. Specifically, the mindset required, the importance of accumulating steady steps, and how to deal with risk.

1. Similarities Between Mountaineering and Business Management

When you stand at the foot of a large mountain you’re about to climb, you instinctively hold their breath. The sheer height of the summit, the distance to it, and the ruggedness of the terrain stir the heart. It’s an indescribable feeling—a mix of anticipation, anxiety, excitement, and fear. The Japanese term musha-burui (a warrior’s trembling before the start of a battle) perfectly captures this sensation.

However, once you start walking, the summit quickly disappears from view. What you see instead are the rocks at your feet, wet tree roots, diverging paths, and steep slopes. You adjust your pace to avoid exhaustion, focus on your breathing, and accumulate one careful step after another. Simultaneously, you remain on the lookout for sudden weather changes or sounds from the bushes.

Mountaineering is a progressive series of unassuming, unspectacular endeavors, while also being accompanied by significant danger.

This is very similar to founding a company or working at a startup company. While pursuing a grand vision to solve a societal issue, the day-to-day work is often unglamorous, unpredictable, and complicated, and carries the weight of staking your whole life on a venture that may or may not survive.

These six examples illustrate the similarities between mountaineering and management.

(1) Mountaineering: Preparation → Management: Vision Setting

Mountaineering is not possible to do without preparation. You decide which mountain to ascend, study maps, determine the route, and procure the equipment and physical strength necessary for the climb. In management terms, this equates to setting a vision, collecting capital and information, and assembling the development team and sales structure for your product.

(2) Mountaineering: Party → Management: Team Formation

The presence of companions is also crucial in mountaineering. Ideally, you climb together with people who have similar stamina and share your mountaineering style and goals. This closely mirrors the team building essential in startups and new businesses, so they say deciding “who to put on the bus first” is critical.

(3) Mountaineering: Understanding the Surrounding Environment → Management: Responding to Market Changes

While climbing, you must constantly monitor your surroundings for sudden shifts in the weather, unstable rocky paths, or turns that are easy to miss. In business operations, these correspond to “environmental variables” such as market fluctuations, competitor movements, and easily overlooked product defects or customer feedback.

(4) Mountaineering: Knowing Your Current Position → Management: Tracking KPIs

During the execution phase, knowing your current position is also critical. You need to accurately determine your current location and altitude using a GPS, and check your heart rate, perspiration levels, and sometimes even your blood oxygen saturation. In management, this is equivalent to checking KPIs and financial data and monitoring the well-being of your team members.

(5) Mountaineering: Courageous Retreat → Management: Business Withdrawal or Pivot

If you determine that continuing to climb is no longer feasible due to changes in the external environment, limits to your physical stamina, or sustaining an injury, one option is to turn back down the mountain. In management, this looks like a business withdrawal, downsizing, or a pivot. When leaders choose one of these options, it can protect lives, shareholders, and team members, and even sometimes lead to greater success later on.

(6) Tenacious Spirit

Finally, the boldness to challenge oneself, an unyielding spirit, and perseverance are essential in both mountaineering and startup company management. Although this may seem contradictory to the “courageous retreat” or “business withdrawal” mentioned in the previous point, there are many situations where the failure or success of your business entirely depends on whether you think to yourself “I can’t go on” or “Just one more step”. This mindset is a vital component of operating a startup company.
 

Mountaineering Business Management
Vision-Setting and Preparation Phase
Decide which mountain to summit Set the company’s vision and goals
Train up the necessary physical fitness Acquire fundamental work skills
Prepare the necessary gear for the climb Prepare management resources and capital
Form a climbing party Gather partners with the same philosophies
Execution Phase
Accumulation of steps, one by one Accumulation of routine daily efforts
Pay attention to the weather and terrain Pay attention to environmental variables
Track your current location with a compass Track business KPIs
Judge when it’s time to turn back Judge when it’s time to pivot or withdraw
Overcome the difficult trail to reach the top Overcome difficulties to achieve your goals
Safely descend the mountain Properly reflect and review performance
Growth Phase
Aim for an even taller mountain Take on the next business challenge

2. The Big Difference Between Theory and Practice

Today, we are constantly being bombarded with information. Countless texts are being published, including autobiographies and “how-to” guides from business leaders, marketing books, and MBA-related textbooks. Learning about and discussing these intense experiences can sometimes create the illusion that we ourselves took part in them somehow. It’s certainly not useless to gain business operation knowledge from books. However, reading these concepts and stories is only the equivalent of reading information about a mountain or looking at a tall mountain from our mountaineering analogy.

So, what constitutes “the experience of climbing”?

It’s simply climbing—even a familiar mountain like Mount Takao—one step at a time with your own feet, breaking a sweat, losing your breath, and taking in the view from the summit with your own eyes until your very skin can feel it. It’s getting caught in the rain, getting lost, enduring pain in your feet, and still moving forward. It’s in these moments that you develop the strength to push yourself with just a little more effort and the guts to say, “This is as far as we go today” and turn back. These emotions and decision-making skills can never be gained just by reading a book.

This very experience is what we compare to starting with the small things on the job.

The accumulation of practical, small-scale tasks—like customer acquisition, sales channel development, new business launches, and hiring—is like continuing to go on small climbs, until eventually you build up the muscle and judgment needed to summit a major mountain.

The information in your head and the feelings you internalize through your body are completely different things. We can never become true business leaders with knowledge alone. However, by continually climbing small mountains in our daily work, we eventually gain the strength to tackle the mountain of a major business venture, and our unceasing efforts eventually lead us to success.

Even the most monumental achievement begins with a single, tiny step, and it is only through the accumulation of these steps that it is ever realized.

3. How to Train Your Mountaineering Feet and Business Skills

There is a saying among mountaineers: “Mountain feet can only be trained on the mountain.” The same is true in business operations. Professional ability can never be enhanced through desk-based learning alone.

(1) The Difference Between Gym Training and Mountain Training

You cannot get authentic mountaineering feet by walking flat roads for dozens of kilometers, running on a treadmill at the gym, or lifting weights.

A mountain trail isn’t just a flat path. You might slip on tree roots or fine gravel and injure your hand, sprain your ankle on a loose rock, or sometimes even fall and suffer a major injury. The act of continuously ascending a steep slope for hundreds of meters or scrambling up and down a rocky peak puts a unique strain on the body that you cannot get from repeating squats in a gym or climbing flights of stairs in a city building.

It is through the repeated experience of climbing various mountains under diverse conditions that your core strength and cardiovascular function gradually adapt and are trained for the mountain. Only then will you truly have the mountaineering feet that no amount of gym training can provide.

(2) Job Skills Can Only Be Enhanced on the Job

The same principle applies to business capability.

A consultant can draw a beautiful and perfect business strategy plan using management theory, SWOT analysis, and market research. If you attend business school, you might learn many theories and success stories, and perhaps even participate in negotiation role-playing exercises.

However, this is merely the gym training mentioned in our climbing analogy.

The despair when a client contract negotiation falls apart at the last minute, contrasted with the joy of successfully concluding a deal by having foreseen and avoided the exact cause of the previous failure. The anguish of being forced to decide on a withdrawal because a new startup failed to secure funding. The exhilaration of resolving a conflict of opinion with a team member through persistent dialogue.

These are all experiences that can never be fully captured in a textbook or a role-play—they can only be gained on the “practical mountain” of business.

Unlike a textbook, no real-life situation proceeds exactly as planned. Unlike role-playing, the people you deal with in business are sincere, flesh-and-blood individuals. The market environment is constantly changing. There is a time gap of several years or even decades between when the finished theories written in textbooks were developed and the present day.

It is all of you readers who are currently creating the case studies and business theories relevant to today’s social, technological, and competitive environment.

And as we repeatedly climb various work “mountains”, we acquire authentic business operation skills. We intuitively find the shortest path to success through repeated failures. We empathize with a customer to figure out their unspoken true needs. We sense potential obstacles to a project by reading a team member’s slight change in expression.

These abilities are the intuition and judgment that can never be learned in a classroom; they can only be forged through the act of working itself.

4. The Importance of Reserves

(1) Financial Reserves

In mountaineering, the weight of your pack is a constant concern. A lighter pack conserves energy and makes long days easier. However, if you don’t pack certain supplies in the pursuit of lightening your load, it could be fatal.

Sufficient water for the temperature and duration of your trip. Food according to your meal planning. Quick-energy snacks. Rain gear and a first-aid kit for emergencies. These are essential supplies for any climb. Having spare water, emergency food, and contingency gear drastically changes your actions and decisions when an emergency strikes. And above all, having such peace of mind makes a world of difference.

This is exactly the same in the business world. It’s important to run a company lean and efficiently, but cutting buffers too deeply leaves you unable to withstand a crisis when it hits.

What if, one day, a product defect is discovered and you have to issue a complete recall?

Or what if, like during the COVID-19 pandemic, socio-economic activity grinds to a halt for months at a time?

Having enough working capital on hand to survive for six months even if revenue drops to near zero—this is the “minimum baseline” cited by most management textbooks and business practitioners.

A cash buffer provides that peace of mind, allowing you to act calmly in a crisis. It reduces the chance of making poor decisions due to cash flow pressure. Furthermore, this cushion allows you to take an offensive step and launch a challenge when the overall social environment is unstable.

(2) Human Resource Reserves

Financial reserves aren’t the only buffer needed; human resources are just as critical. Organizations operating on razor-thin staffing have no room for people to take time off, leading to an accumulation of physical and mental fatigue.

As people approach their physical and mental limits, their judgment and creativity inevitably decline, and the risk of turnover increases. Once in this negative spiral, the entire organization becomes exhausted.

In contrast, teams with staff and time buffers operate differently. They can respond flexibly to sudden trouble or new challenges and have time for improvement activities and learning. That peace of mind for individual members leads to the overall stability of the organization.

(3) Buffers Are a Critical Investment

In mountaineering, you don’t decide, “I’ll skip the emergency water, food, and first-aid kit because they add extra weight.” These items aren’t unnecessary burdens, they are the minimum preparation required to survive and return home safely.

The cash reserves, spare personnel, and time buffers in business are the same. They may seem wasteful in peaceful times, but in an emergency, they become your only lifeline. Moreover, that very surplus is the driving force for taking the next strategic step and the energy for tackling new domains.

The true measure of capability in both mountaineering and management is how you balance a lower carry-weight with having more reserves. Maintaining a buffer enables the peace of mind to reach the goal and return safely. In business operations, investing in both your working capital and the mental wellbeing of your team members is a certain strategy for success.

5. Both Mountaineering and Leadership Are a Series of Decisions

Mountaineering constantly demands on-the-spot judgment. You must personally decide on your climbing pace, when to take a break, and when to replenish water or energy based on your physical condition and current location. Ultimately, making the call to call off the entire climb depending on the weather is also up to you.

The sport of triathlon is popular among business executives. However, a triathlon is a race competing for rank, conducted within set rules, and fought in a venue where safety is perfectly secured. The decision to cancel due to bad weather is made by the organizers. In a company context, you might say this decision is made by the board of directors. Contests that involve competing within established rules are arguably better suited for directors of large corporations or hired professional managers.

In contrast, mountaineering is a challenge where you attempt to defy nature, adapt to environmental changes, come face to face with danger at all times, and proceed based on your own judgment alone.

Entrepreneurs or business professionals working at newly established startups and venturing into completely uncharted territory have the same attitude and mindset. They encounter a continuous stream of difficult decisions daily, constantly confronting risk while pursuing relentless effort to tackle major societal issues.

In this way, mountaineering and managing a startup company truly go hand in hand.

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This analogy comparing the mindset of startup company leadership to mountaineering was written as a reference for the activities undertaken by D-POPS GROUP in promoting a Venture Ecosystem.

We hope you enjoy this article and look forward to working with you sometime in future.

D-POPS GROUP Advisor

Genta Sugihara

Appendix

Advisor Sugihara, who supports the members of our Venture Ecosystem, is undertaking the challenge of conquering the “100 Famous Japanese Mountains” while wearing our company’s signature unicorn T-shirt, to illustrate the spirit of a startup company.

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Startup Management Lessons Inspired by Japan’s 100 Famous Mountains, Part 1: Define Your Summit, then Prepare
At D-POPS GROUP, our corporate mission is to multiply the number of growth companies (so-called “unicorn companies”) that will revolutionize society, and our core value is to grow and learn together through sincerity, humility, and gratitude. Last summer, Genta Sugihara, who serves as an advisor to this company, climbed Mt. Tate. The experience inspired him to set a personal goal: “Conquer all of Japan’s 100 Famous Mountains while wearing our company’s iconic unicorn T-shirt.” Since then, he’s been steadily climbing mountains across the country in between his work commitments. In an effort to embody our value of growing and learning together, our goal for this series of articles is to reflect on the successes, failures, planning, preparation, judgment calls, and even crucial decisions to retreat that Advisor Sugihara experienced during his climbing journeys, and to draw parallels with startup management and organizational leadership. Both mountaineering and business management share a common thread: they require setting a target peak, creating a clear plan (strategy), preparing thoroughly, and moving forward step by step. We hope this series will be an inspiration for your own work and personal challenges. In this first installment, we will compare startup management to mountain climbing, focusing on the importance of having a vision and the preparation required to achieve it. 1. Define the Summit (Goal) to Climb: Challenges Without a Vision Won’t Last People often start walking to lose weight, or they might climb a small hill to get a view of the city while traveling. These are excellent forms of exercise for health or tourism. However, they aren’t quite what I would call a challenge. Once you complete a real challenge with a clearly defined peak or a specific set of mountains, you’ll have far greater joy, learn more lessons, and gain a deeper life experience in general. Startup management is very similar. 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Unless an up-sell presents specific benefits aligned with the customer’s budget, it becomes forced, which lowers customer satisfaction and negatively impacts business. When there are limits to up-selling high-performance or high-quality models, the cross-selling we explained in the previous article becomes the driving force for increasing sales. As a brief reminder, cross-selling is the technique of increasing sales by proposing additional related products or services to go with the customer's purchase, thereby increasing the number of items bought and the average transaction value. [Using the example from the previous section] Selling 100 PCs at ¥100,000 each results in ¥10 million in sales. At a 30% profit margin, the profit is ¥3 million. If you up-sell 60 of these to ¥200,000 PCs while selling the remaining 40 at ¥100,000, your total sales for 100 units become ¥16 million. At a 30% margin, your profit is ¥4.8 million. If you only use up-selling, the process ends here. However, if you also sell peripherals such as wireless routers, storage devices, mice, and security software (assuming a combined price of ¥30,000) to 50% of your customers (50 sets) at a 50% profit margin: 50 sets × ¥30,000 = ¥1.5 million in additional sales and ¥750,000 in additional profit. Adding this to the PC sales results in a total of ¥17.5 million in sales and ¥5.55 million in profit. Compared to simply selling 100 standard PCs at ¥100,000 each, you can achieve 1.75 times the sales and 1.85 times the profit with a combination of up-selling and cross-selling. (The above illustration compares the revenue and profit of selling 100 of the standard units (left), 60 of the up-sold units (middle), and 60 of the up-sold units plus 50 sets of cross-sold items (right).) As we discussed in the previous section, sales are composed of unit price and quantity. Up-selling is effective at increasing the unit price, while cross-selling is effective at increasing the quantity of sales. By understanding that sales result from the combination of these two elements, and by maximizing and optimizing them through up-selling and cross-selling in a reasonable manner, you can increase sales dramatically and more efficiently than by simply selling more products. Furthermore, because neither method relies on discounting to drive volume, you can reliably increase not just sales but also gross profit. I trust you now understand that up-selling and cross-selling are methods that yield immense results for both sales and gross profit without requiring extra expenses or time. Below is a summary of the differences between the two: [Up-selling] Objective: Increase sales by improving the average transaction value per customer. Sales method: Propose high-value products or services characterized by high performance, high quality, or large capacity. [Cross-selling] Objective: Increase sales by increasing the number of items purchased per customer. Sales method: Create value by proposing the additional purchase of highly relevant products or services. As summarized above, up-selling and cross-selling increase revenue by applying different methods to the two components of sales—unit price and quantity. Because these strategies do not involve discounting, they do not negatively impact the components of gross profit. Furthermore, since they do not increase expenses such as advertising, labor, or rent, the resulting revenue growth links directly to an increase in operating profit, making this one of the most effective means of raising profit. While both methods may seem modest, it is no exaggeration to say that their impact on corporate management is profound. 5. Summary In this installment, we have discussed the effects of up-selling and contrasted it with cross-selling. While both up-selling and cross-selling are seemingly modest techniques, they are methods that can yield immense effects in maximizing sales and profit. For this reason, it is crucial to educate a company’s employees on their importance, on how to present benefits for customers to avoid forced selling, and on how to utilize various technologies for those purposes, as well. Maximizing sales and profit through up-selling and cross-selling before taking actions that involve significant expenses (such as running advertisements, opening new stores, or increasing sales personnel) is key for business managers to facilitate efficient profit generation. I have intentionally addressed cross-selling following our previous discussions on “Inventory Turnover”, “Sales per Employee”, and “Sales per Tsubo”, which focused on cash flow and expenses related to inventory, labor, and rent. If you read these in order, starting with the first article on inventory turnover, the essential points of business management will become much clearer. For those who have not yet read them, I highly encourage you to do so. What we at D-POPS GROUP want to convey through this discussion on up-selling is the same message as before: business is built by people. The customers who purchase products are people, the sales staff who sell the products are people, and those who utilize technology are all people. While I think it is impossible to win in competition and survive in business without commanding technologies like AI, I also think that technology alone is not enough to survive. At D-POPS GROUP, we believe that business success does not happen simply because the technology is good or the management strategy is sound; rather, the intersection of People × Technology × Management Strategies is what truly matters. In accordance with this line of thinking, D-POPS GROUP’s vision is “realizing a Venture Ecosystem”. Our goal is to support startups through investment to help people shine and solve social issues, providing value that goes beyond mere numbers and efficiency. We hope that you enjoyed this article and look forward to working with you in the future. D-POPS GROUP Managing Executive Officer Tetsuya Watanabe
  • Media
2026.05.20
Lessons from Great Business Leaders: “Your Mindset Defines Your Life” (Tempu Nakamura)
To foster a thriving startup ecosystem, we must look back and learn with humility from the legendary leaders who built global enterprises from the ground up. In this series of “Lessons from Great Business Leaders”, we will share the words of the visionaries and thinkers who have influenced us most, reflecting on how their philosophies have shaped our own experiences in business and life. This third installment was written by our group’s advisor Sugihara. 1. “Your Mindset Defines Your Life” – Tempu Nakamura “Whether your mind is positive or negative creates two polar opposite perspectives on life. If your mind is positive, life becomes filled with cheer, adventure, energy, and vigor regardless of the circumstances. Conversely, if your mind is negative, everything in life loses its spirit. If the mind that contemplates life is negative, does not everything end in a pitiful, dark, and miserable state? Since you only have one chance at life, you must live it in the most perfect mental state possible, starting from this very moment.” (Excerpt from Tempu Nakamura: One Thought a Day, edited by the Tempu Society. Published in 2005 by PHP Institute.) 2. Reason for Selecting This Passage On a personal note, I have spent my career since 1990 working consistently within companies that were considered startups in their respective eras. Among these experiences, my time at Daini Denden (the predecessor to what is now KDDI) was particularly formative. It built the foundation of my professional life and forged the entrepreneurial spirit that has served as the emotional bedrock for my continued challenges over the years. I remain deeply grateful for that experience today. Daini Denden’s co-founder, Kazuo Inamori, is a world-renowned leader respected by executives not only in Japan but also in China and across the globe. One of the thinkers who most profoundly influenced Inamori was Tempu Nakamura. While I was there, my superiors and division heads encouraged me to read books on MBA studies or the then-popular “Lanchester Strategy”, but above all else, the very first thing they told me to read were Tempu’s works. While Tempu’s most famous longtime bestsellers are Sharpening Your Soul and Open Your Destiny, I have chosen the compilation Tempu Nakamura: One Thought a Day. It distills his essence into short, concise daily entries that are incredibly easy to read. I highly recommend it to anyone who has heard the name “Tempu Nakamura” but doesn’t have any of his works yet, or for those looking for the right book to revisit his teachings. By the way, it recently became a hot topic that the world-renowned baseball superstar and source of great Japanese pride, Shohei Ohtani, was a devoted reader of Tempu’s books before he moved to the Major Leagues. 3. My Own Experiences and Thoughts on This Philosophy Between the 1990s and 2000s, while I was in my 20s and still learning the fundamentals of being a professional, I was suddenly assigned to a new business division, the office preparing to launch DDI Pocket, which would later become their PHS* business. As a member of a launch team with just six people responsible for sales strategy, I worked with such intensity that there was no distinction between day, night, or weekends. Looking back now, I can say it was a workplace that reflected an era when terms like “power harassment” or “work-life balance” did not yet exist. Our supervisor’s orders were absolute, and unreasonable requests were common. *Note: PHS (Personal Handy-phone System) was a Japanese-developed precursor to modern cellphone technology that was popular in Japan in the 1990s, and expanded to various degrees in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Even though I was thrown into an environment where it would have been easy to harbor discontent or want to run away, I made a conscious effort to look at the bright side of things. I did not avoid difficulties, maintained a proactive stance, and continued to put in effort even when no one was watching. It is no exaggeration to say this was entirely because I treated Tempu’s books as my bible, so to speak. Tempu Nakamura frequently mentioned something in his writings that became representative of his philosophy: “Always keep a positive mindset”, and by making this my habit, I gained a strength that influenced not only that period of my life but my entire subsequent career. It gave me the power to overcome hardships, seize opportunities, and attain numerous priceless experiences. There are a number of recurring themes within the pages of One Thought a Day, and though they’re expressed differently in different places, they all preach the importance of maintaining positivity in one’s thinking and mental state. Here are a few passages that reflect those themes. One’s thoughts create one’s life “Humans’ health and destiny depend solely on where they put their minds.” The difference between a mind moving in a positive direction and one moving in a negative direction is as vast as that between heaven and earth. The power of determination Taken to the extreme, one could even say that having a happy or an unhappy life depends entirely on one’s control over one’s mind. Willpower—in other words, absolute control over one’s mind—could widely be called the driving force that allows one to become a better person. Noble, strong, righteous, and pure The first step in conducting oneself according to the laws of nature is to keep a positive mindset at all times, no matter what happens. A positive mindset means to live nobly, strongly, righteously, and purely. There is almost nothing more important to life and existence than this. Do not voice dissatisfaction or complaints Under no circumstances should you let yourself vocalize dissatisfaction or complaints. If those feelings exist within your heart, your words will never be truly positive. People who complain are constantly looking only upward and never downward. They think everyone else is happy and that they are the most miserable person in the world. (Excerpts from Tempu Nakamura: One Thought a Day.) Encouraged by these words, I was able to spur myself on and approach my work with a forward-looking attitude, which allowed me to deal with situations calmly and read the trends of the times. Subsequently, I was involved in the launch of the mobile internet services of PHS, the launch of broadband at AOL, the music distribution business at Napster, and the creation of mechanisms to improve search engine share at Google. I have walked alongside the history of the internet industry itself. Modern business professionals are tossed back and forth by a flood of information that changes daily. We must chase not only the knowledge required for our daily tasks but also the world’s latest technical information, such as Generative AI, AI agents, and AI robotics. Furthermore, we find ourselves in an environment where we cannot help but feel anxious that our own job might become another profession replaced by AI. It is important to fill oneself with knowledge and information and to possess technical skills. However, what humans possess that is fundamentally different from AI is not information or knowledge, but rather, the mind. Technology and knowledge change with the times and can be acquired later. However, I believe that a forward-facing mind and a proactive way of thinking form a foundation and become a personal wealth that accumulates within oneself, regardless of how the era changes. Right now, I have a small scrap of paper in my wallet that has been there for about 20 years, like a lucky charm. On it, I wrote down my own “Seven Principles for Living”. The first three of these are: 1. Always think about things positively. 2. Always stay hungry to improve and strive for diligence. 3. Do not complain about things out of your control. These have completely become my own words and convictions. Looking back now, I recall that these were simplified expressions I had quoted from Tempu’s books (and Carl Hilty’s Happiness). For sharing this method of proactive thinking with the world, I am grateful to the businessman and philosopher Tempu Nakamura. 4. A Message to Our Readers For this installment, I chose the writings of a figure from a somewhat older era. I also selected him from the perspective of being a thinker who influenced famous business leaders, rather than being a famous leader himself. At first, I wondered if this might be an unconventional choice for this series. However, when I heard that the world-famous Shohei Ohtani read his work, it made me happy to realize that this philosophy is universal, so I decided to introduce it because I felt his words could resonate with both athletes and business leaders alike. We live in an era where the future is increasingly difficult to predict (although this could have been said in every era of human history). I hope that by picking up Tempu Nakamura’s works, you can find the driving force to maintain a positive state of mind and approach new businesses or entrepreneurial ventures with vigor and enthusiasm. May your work, your business, and your life itself be bright and overflowing with happiness! At D-POPS GROUP, we hold the vision of “realizing a Venture Ecosystem”. We are working on building mechanisms that allow groups of companies within our Ecosystem to grow sustainably, as well as providing hands-on support through our team of advisors. ※For more details, please read: “Venture Ecosystem: A Platform for Growth and Sustainability” I hope this article will be of some help to startup founders and business managers. D-POPS GROUP Advisor Genta Sugihara
  • Media
2026.05.13
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