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End-of-Year Greeting: Big Challenges Coming in 2026

  • Media
2025.12.26

In this busy, year-end season, only a few short days remain in 2025.

This year, as we pursued our vision of “realizing a Venture Ecosystem”, together with the partners in our group, we pushed ourselves to the utmost limit.

From our company’s founding in 1998 until achieving a value of 10 billion yen, we concentrated most management resources on our two original companies to expand our business. However, on our 20th anniversary, we transitioned to full-scale group company management. Since then, we have poured all our efforts into “realizing a Venture Ecosystem” (i.e., ecosystem management). Currently, we operate with 25 group companies and 35 investment companies. I believe that we have finally reached the starting line for our vision of realizing a Venture Ecosystem.

One year ago, we made a pivotal decision: to share our group’s initiatives and our Venture Ecosystem with the world. Our goal was to host a life-changing event where entrepreneurs and executives could find the inspiration to grow and change the future. After an extensive period of preparation, we held Venture Ecosystem Summit 2025 on October 2nd, at the Sheraton Miyako Hotel Tokyo. We were relieved and deeply gratified to welcome 270 participants, whose feedback (which came in overwhelming amounts) has been truly heartening. I look forward with great anticipation to seeing the future unicorn companies that will emerge from this group of attendees.

The management of a startup company is never straightforward; it is a complex and highly demanding endeavor. Only a handful of startups successfully go public and scale to become 10-billion-yen enterprises or 100-billion-yen unicorns. This is precisely why one of our Venture Ecosystem’s biggest missions is to provide a robust support system for and walk alongside entrepreneurs, offering the logistical backing they need to overcome significant hurdles.

Moving forward, we aim to welcome even more ambitious, high-potential entrepreneurs and startups that have established sophisticated business models in our focus fields. Our five-year goal is to expand our network to a sum of 100 companies (including group companies, investment firms, and capital/business alliance partners). By doing so, we will realize a startup support platform that is truly indispensable to the world, thereby contributing to society.

In the past year alone, we have welcomed nine new partners through branching off of our existing group companies, CVC initiatives, and strategic capital and business alliances. Half of these are AI companies or firms that fully utilize AI, while the other half have established innovative business models that respond to the rapidly changing needs of our era. Whether looking at the entrepreneurs themselves, their business models, or their management strategies, every one of these companies shows magnificent potential.

By further developing an environment and platform where the youth of future generations can easily take on challenges, we aim to spread a culture of doing so, and realize a society with the depth to embrace and encourage these efforts.

Furthermore, as in previous years, through our involvement in the Walking Together Hand-in-Hand with Children Foundation, we were able to donate to 27 children’s psychiatric treatment facilities across the country. We also supported seven other children’s homes and organizations, including Lights On Children, Bond Project, and the Frances and Sachio Semmoto Foundation. Every year, we receive significant donations from many supportive entrepreneurs and executives. Just at Venture Ecosystem Summit 2025, participants contributed a total of 2.56 million yen. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude for your generosity. Moving forward, we will continue to strengthen our support for the children who will lead Japan’s future.

At D-POPS GROUP, together with our partners in the Venture Ecosystem, we remain dedicated to our vision with unwavering focus and high aspirations. We ask for your continued support and cooperation.

I sincerely wish all of you a prosperous and happy new year in 2026.

D-POPS GROUP President and CEO Kazuhiro Goto

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What Can “Profit Lies in the Source” Teach Us About “Man-Hour Management”?
Cost Management to Protect Margins When Your Primary “Cost of Goods Sold” is Employees D-POPS GROUP is a collective of companies that integrates actual businesses and technology together, a concept that we denote as “Real Business x Technology x Group Synergy”, aiming to realize a Venture Ecosystem that will continue to be indispensable to society even 100 years from now. In this article, we will take a look at businesses where people serve as the primary cost of goods sold (COGS)—such as staffing, SES (System Engineering Services), and contract development. Using Konosuke Matsushita’s maxim, “Profit lies in the source,” we will break down the “man-hour management” that is indispensable for generating sustainable profit. 1. “Profit Lies in the Source” and Man-Hour Management The legendary Japanese business philosopher Konosuke Matsushita once said, “Profit lies in the source.” This phrase means that to generate long-term profit, masterful procurement and cost management are far more critical than merely driving up sales or raising retail prices. While people interpret this in various ways, we would like to apply this philosophy to businesses whose primary cost is human resources. In a business where people are the biggest expense, ensuring long-term profitability requires something far more fundamental than simply increasing headcount to boost sales or trying to raise the price of their services. Rather, maintaining a high level of operational efficiency (i.e., “utilization management”) fits Matsushita’s principle perfectly. Before we continue, we must offer a brief disclaimer. This discussion focuses on the reality where, from an accounting perspective, human resources are calculated as COGS. While phrasing it this way may sound insensitive, it is easier to understand, so we will proceed under the understanding that for our intents and purposes within this discussion, people equate to business costs. 2. There Are Different Types of Man-Hour Management The focus here is on businesses where people are the primary cost—specifically, staffing, SES, and contract development—which even includes some of the companies within our group. Even within these models, there are several different varieties of “man-hour management”. The first type applies to the core of SES and traditional staffing businesses, where an individual is dispatched full-time to a client or takes on full-time contracted work. The goal here is to clearly track when a contract starts and ends, managing the handover of assignments so there are no gaps between a dispatched employee’s assignments. Since the work is always booked as one FTE (full-time equivalent), it might be more accurate to call this utilization management or “contract management” rather than man-hour management. The second type is what we traditionally consider true man-hour management. In engineering, this applies to contract development and quasi-mandate (i.e., time-and-materials) contracts. In retail and sales, it applies to staff who only work weekends at promotional events. For instance, if Employee A is hired to work 160 hours a month, management must ensure that the tasks currently assigned to them actually equate to 160 hours (1 FTE) of billable work. 3. What Happens When Man-Hour Management Fails (The Staffing Business Case) Let’s look at what happens when this management is lacking, using the first example. If an employee is on an assignment until the end of August, but no plans or actions have been made for September onward, that individual becomes idle. The revenue earned from the individual drops to zero, but if they are a permanent employee, their salary must still be paid even while they aren’t being dispatched to a client. Let’s run a simple simulation using a full-time sales staffing model. In a standard sales dispatch business, the average employee might generate roughly 380,000 JPY in monthly sales, with salary and social insurance costs totaling around 300,000 JPY, leaving a gross profit of about 80,000 JPY. If there were 100 such employees, the total gross profit would be around 8,000,000 JPY. However, this varies depending on the number of employees who are not being actively dispatched. If 30% (30 employees) aren’t utilized, the business is already in the red at the gross profit stage. If 20% (20 people) aren’t utilized, gross profit falls to 2,000,000 JPY. The business will face an operating loss unless sales, general, and administrative (SG&A) expenses are kept under 5%. If 10% (10 people) aren’t utilized, gross profit is 5,000,000 JPY. The business will face an operating loss unless SG&A is under 13%. If 5% (5 people) aren’t utilized, gross profit is 6,500,000 JPY. The business will face an operating loss unless SG&A is under 17%. Given standard SG&A ratios, the reality is that if a staffing company fails to manage its man-hours properly and hits a 5% idle rate, it will almost certainly fail to turn a profit. 4. The Case for Engineering (Contract Development and Quasi-Mandate) For our second example, let’s look at the engineering sector. If an agency has 20 engineers working on contract development or quasi-mandate projects, and each works 160 hours a month, that yields 3,200 available work hours. If man-hour management is neglected and this capacity isn’t filled, the company will face the same fate as the staffing example: paying permanent engineer salaries with no incoming revenue. Unlike standard staffing, contract development and quasi-mandate projects can experience massive swings in revenue and profit margins per FTE, so sweeping generalizations are difficult. However, if the combined salaries of those 20 engineers total 8,000,000 JPY, the company must generate monthly sales of 8,500,000 JPY (at a 5% SG&A ratio), 8,900,000 JPY (at 10%), 9,500,000 JPY (at 15%), 10,000,000 JPY (at 20%), or over 11,500,000 JPY (at 30%) just to break even. A common scenario in engineering is that extreme volatility in profit margins means a few highly lucrative projects—or a handful of top talent—can temporarily carry the entire business. This creates a dangerous illusion where companies can survive without doing the tedious work of man-hour management. However, when a crisis hits—the lucrative project ends, the top earner quits to go freelance, or the project pipeline dries up—a lack of man-hour management means leadership has no idea who has spare capacity and who doesn’t. Work cannot be effectively reallocated. It is only when backed into a corner that leadership finally realizes who actually had spare capacity all along—in other words, who hasn’t been working. In the earlier scenario of 20 engineers with 3,200 available hours, leadership must actively manage man-hours to ensure at least a 95% utilization rate (around 3,000 hours) during normal operations to secure stable profits. Without this baseline management, a company won’t be able to pivot during a crisis, leading to massive deficits or even bankruptcy. By routinely tracking man-hours, management can foresee when the pipeline is thinning and people are about to become idle, allowing them to take proactive measures before disaster strikes. 5. “Unexplained Victories”: The Risks of Not Managing Man-Hours Recently, contract development and quasi-mandate businesses have become highly susceptible to the impact of AI. Even if a company is currently profitable, running this type of business successfully without strict man-hour management is merely what Seizan Matsura (famously quoted by former Yakult Swallows manager Katsuya Nomura) called an ‘unexplained victory’ in his adage, “There are unexplained victories, but no unexplained defeats.” Relying entirely on a specific project or a few key individuals is not, frankly, real business management. As tedious as it may be, managing the man-hours of employees who constitute your core COGS is mandatory. When the business cycle turns against you, an enterprise lacking man-hour management will collapse rapidly, and recovering from that state will be incredibly difficult. 6. Applications Beyond Staffing and SES: The Retail Example Does this logic apply to industries outside of staffing and SES? If we translate this to the retail industry, it is identical to a store manager blindly expanding their product lineup without realizing their business is only staying afloat because one or two items happen to be smash hits. Once the trend passes and those hit products stop selling, revenue crashes, leaving the store saddled with the massive mountain of dead inventory they unnecessarily expanded. They’ll be bankrupt in no time. In retail, this is called “SKU management” (tracking the sales of each individual item) rather than man-hour management. The scenario above describes a business purchasing inventory without grasping what is actually selling, generating massive dead stock, yet surviving by pure luck thanks to revenue from a single hit product. While this sounds like a classic cautionary tale, it relates perfectly to the situation we described earlier: “Running a business without man-hour management, relying entirely on specific individuals or projects for revenue, without understanding the organization’s true working capacity.” 7. Conclusion If you want to generate real profit in a business where people are the primary cost—whether that’s sales staffing, engineering SES, or contract development—your first priority shouldn’t be hiring more sales reps to chase new accounts, aggressively recruiting more staff to inflate top-line revenue, or cherry-picking high-paying jobs to raise unit prices. Instead, you must practice strict man-hour (utilization) management of your current employees. Achieving the optimal FTE output with the optimal headcount through smart cost management—i.e., practicing the concept of “Profit lies in the source”—is the most direct path to profitability. Through this discussion on man-hour management, the core message D-POPS GROUP wants to convey is that business is much like mixed martial arts, which requires a blend of striking, grappling, and groundwork. Sales, recruiting, and technological development do not exist in isolation. Flashy moves in sales, hiring, and tech can only be successfully executed when built upon a rock-solid foundation of highly unglamorous groundwork, such as man-hour management. D-POPS GROUP believes a business cannot survive on good sales or high-level tech alone; mastering the unglamorous fundamentals is what truly matters. Through D-POPS GROUP’s Venture Ecosystem, we will continue to share candid, practical insights to guide business and management, drawing from our extensive hands-on experience across a wide, diverse portfolio of industries rather than just a single sector. 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
2026.10.23
Startup Management Lessons Inspired by Japan’s 100 Famous Mountains, Part 6: Learn from Failures and Continue to Grow
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. Ever since setting his goal last summer to “conquer all of Japan’s 100 Famous Mountains while wearing our company’s iconic unicorn T-shirt”, Genta Sugihara, an advisor to our company, has continued climbing mountains across the country, reaching 62 summits as of writing this article. In this series, he reflects on the successes, failures, decisions, and lessons from his journey, drawing parallels to startup management and organizational leadership. Because he started with relatively easy mountains, only the most rugged peaks remain after the first 50 or so. Over the past year, by thinking back on every climb, learning from his mistakes, and repeatedly training, he has gradually raised the level of mountains he can climb. If he had attempted the mountains he is climbing now right from the start, he would have lacked the stamina and technique, and likely would have had to turn back or suffered a major injury. Basking in the afterglow of reaching a summit is wonderful, of course, but it is incredibly important to properly review after every single climb and apply those lessons to the next challenge. Just as merely accumulating mountain climbing experience doesn’t automatically improve your climbing skills, in business, simply racking up years of experience does not guarantee significant growth. In Part 6, we will explore how identifying failures, learning from them, and connecting them to your next steps is the true wellspring of growth. 16. Review After Every Single Climb: Learning from Failure is More Important Than Not Failing After every climb—including mountains outside the 100 Famous Mountains—I have kept records using a hiking app (in my case, an app called YAMAP). Initially, my goal was simply to check my GPS track or look back at the photos I took alongside my memories. However, as I continued my 100 Famous Mountains challenge, I have also begun using it as a way of looking back. Specifically, I will record the number of times I stumbled, slipped, twisted an ankle, or fell. I note what I ate for trail snacks and lunch, the shoes I wore, my foot fatigue, and the state of any blisters. I also log my overall physical condition for the day. On a mountain trail, especially on steep slopes or rocky terrain, falls can directly lead to fatal sliding accidents, so they must be avoided at all costs. And stumbling, slipping, or twisting an ankle are the triggers that lead to those falls—and consequently, sprains, bruises, or major injuries. I memorize how many times I lost my footing one day, or if I slipped on a tree root, fell on my backside, etc. Then, to avoid repeating the same mistakes, I search for the root causes. I think about what I need to pay attention to next time. I realized that doing this is the best preventative measure against accidents. During the first half of my challenge, I suffered from toe blisters, internal bleeding under my toenails, and thigh muscle cramps multiple times. I even sprained my shoulder when I reached out my hand to break a forward fall. By learning my patterns of stumbling and slipping, tracking my food and water intake to find the causes of my cramps, and devising countermeasures for each issue, I was able to gradually reduce these troubles. (Every journal entry always includes a review of the day’s climb.) Before starting the 100 Famous Mountains challenge, I was a complete amateur. But through these reviews, I identified countless failures and learned a great deal from them. I’ve learned things like: ・Ankle twists are common when descending rocky terrain, so pay extra attention・Bare tree roots are incredibly slippery when wet・On long hikes, replenish calories frequently before actually starting to feel hungry・Frequent hydration and sodium intake are highly effective in preventing cramps・Tape specific parts of feet and legs to prevent sprains, knee pain, and blisters・The quality of sleep the night before a climb drastically affects fatigue levels You might think those are all just standard mountaineering principles and common sense. However, the important thing is that I learned these lessons through hands-on experience in the field. The exact same thing can be said in the business world. When a project is completed, or after executing a business alliance or corporate acquisition, it is absolutely essential to conduct a proper review after the fact—either immediately afterward, or after a certain period when results can be evaluated. What went well? What didn’t? What were the root causes? What should you do differently when facing a similar situation in the future? You must verbalize these things. You can learn the theories of entrepreneurship, business development, and sales in MBA classes or business textbooks. However, knowing something and actually being able to do it are two different things. You will also quickly realize that in the real world, many theories do not work exactly as written. That is why the attitude of learning from when something fails in practice is indispensable for startup companies. Instead of choosing the safe path just to avoid failure, you must challenge yourself without fear of failing, and elevate your experience level through review. In both mountaineering and business, what matters is not avoiding failure, but what you learn from it and how you apply it next. In other words, the key is not letting an experience remain merely something you went through, but transforming it into actionable insight. Now, people do not necessarily grow just by experiencing things. Only when you think back on an experience, verbalize the causes of your failures, and change your subsequent actions does that experience transform into true learning. 17. Prepare Behind the Scenes in Order to Perform When it Matters My goal to “Summit Japan’s 100 Famous Mountains by around 60 years old” means that I’m starting the mission at age 58 and finishing all 100 peaks in three to four years. This presents a different kind of difficulty than a challenge undertaken by a tireless youth. This is because at my age, muscle strength naturally begins to decline, joints become stiffer, and it takes longer to recover from fatigue. As I continue pursuing my goal, in addition to the review I mentioned in Chapter 16, I’ve started to intentionally train my body when I’m not actively climbing. This includes thorough stretching routines I previously disliked, especially loosening up my lower body joints. It means doing a strength regimen that leverages my upper body strength for climbing. It also means cutting back on alcohol and prioritizing high-quality sleep. Furthermore, I now hold conversations with AI as a sounding board to analyze the type of trail and choose the optimal hiking boots for my next climb; determine the transportation method to the trailhead, departure times, and lodging locations according to my predicted level of fatigue; and I decide the amount of water, trail snacks, meal contents, and the number of rest stops. (Deciding on gear and equipment in advance based on different trail types) By continuously training and researching on a daily basis like this, I have been able to compensate for the handicaps of my age and continue with my goal, while gradually ramping up to highly difficult mountains. In the same way, it is vital for business managers to continually refine themselves behind the scenes. However, there is one difference from mountaineering. When climbing a mountain, being older can be a handicap in some ways. On the other hand, for entrepreneurs and business leaders, being young and inexperienced can be a handicap. Even with boundless passion, a lack of industry network, low credibility, and not having experience can often become a hurdle. That is exactly why it is so important to keep learning daily to compensate for those shortages. Even in the midst of a busy schedule, it is crucial to maintain an attitude of learning the wisdom of those who came before you, such as by asking veteran executives to be your mentors. You must also not neglect studying, whether that means researching case studies of successes and failures in your business domain, or deeply analyzing similar or competing companies based on public information. What is especially important is not waiting to learn until a problem occurs, but continuously learning behind the scenes. You cannot start building muscle after you encounter a difficult rock wall on the mountain. It is too late to study map reading after you get lost. Similarly, in business, if you start studying finance only after falling into a cash crunch, learning organizational HR theory only after your team starts falling apart, or researching competitive strategy only after a fierce rival appears, it might be too late. By gaining a broad range of knowledge on a daily basis, looking at the successes and failures of other companies, and thinking about what decisions you would make in their shoes, this steady accumulation of learning leads to rapid decision-making and a wealth of options when a crisis hits. Just as the stamina and technique for mountaineering cannot be acquired overnight, professional business judgment isn’t something you can obtain right in the moment you need it. How much you prepare during the rehearsal determines how well you can perform when it’s time to stand on the stage for the real show. That is precisely why the more you continue to challenge yourself, the more intentional you must be with the time when you are not actively challenging yourself. 18. Gain Field Experience: Expand Your Playbook to Increase Your Adaptability to the Unknown Along with the previous sections’ concepts of looking back and preparing behind the scenes, an even more important factor is increasing your experience by actually climbing mountains. “Mountain legs can only be trained in the mountains.” This is a common phrase meaning that the leg strength and stamina required for mountaineering cannot be forged through training only on flat ground or in gyms. They are built by actually walking on mountains. As this phrase suggests, you climb many mountains, reflect on your experiences, make necessary improvements, and climb the next one. Through this cycle, you develop strong legs capable of enduring rugged peaks. However, physical strength and technique are not the only things you acquire through repetition. Every mountain is different. Even on the same mountain, the situation changes depending on the weather, the season, and your physical condition. Yet, as you accumulate experience, you gradually become able to make judgment calls the very moment a situation develops. For example, “This rock looks slippery.” “That’s a loose rock.” “This pace is too fast and will hurt me later, let’s slow down.” “Let’s take a rest here to recover.” This happens because your various past experiences accumulate, allowing you to unconsciously pull from a mental playbook of similar experiences to make decisions, even when encountering a situation for the very first time. Gaining experience in the field is not simply about increasing the number of things you’ve done. It is about sharpening your ability to handle unknown situations and adding more tools to your toolkit. (I have yet to climb these peaks, which could be called the most difficult mountains in Japan. *Images taken from YAMAP site.) It is the same in business. Particularly for startup companies trying to bring innovation to society in new domains, there are no textbooks with the correct answers to begin with. No matter how much you research in advance or bounce ideas off others, in actual sales activities or negotiations, conversations rarely proceed exactly as you envisioned. You receive unexpected questions from customers. Conditions are suddenly changed in a critical meeting. A new hire doesn’t perform as expected. A major corporation suddenly enters your domain. The fundraising environment abruptly deteriorates. When faced with such situations, what ultimately makes the difference is not just textbook knowledge, but the sheer variety of situations you have experienced up to that point and what you have learned from them. Business leaders and executives with extensive field experience have sharpened their ability to detect changes in their external and internal environments (as described in Part 4), and possess a large collection of tools. Even when facing a problem for the first time, they can check it against past experiences and think: “This is similar to that time”, “This option has these risks”, or “In this phase, we need to verify this point first”. Of course, gaining experience does not mean you will stop failing. But if you review each experience, learn from it, and change your next action, you can lower the probability of repeating the same mistakes. And the options available to you when facing the unknown will continue to multiply. People do not grow just by experiencing things. But there are lessons you can only learn by experiencing them. Growth does not mean never failing again. It means expanding your playbook with every new experience, enabling you to make better decisions in your next struggle. This concludes Part 6 of “Startup Management Lessons Inspired by Japan’s 100 Famous Mountains”. Recently, while I was coming down a mountain, someone passing me on the other side of the trail called out, “That’s a cool T-shirt!” Also, in the 15th month since beginning this challenge, I hit the milestone of 60 mountains climbed. I know this is entirely thanks to the understanding and support of everyone around me, both at work and at home. Filled with this spirit of gratitude, I’ve acquired the habit of buying local souvenirs from the areas around the 100 Famous Mountains and distributing them at the office when I return. I will continue to do my best so that one day, this D-POPS GROUP unicorn T-shirt—which has climbed up so many of the 100 Famous Mountains with me—will be well-known in both the startup community and the mountaineering community. Next time, the topic will be “Sincerity, Humility, and Gratitude”. Facing the mountain with sincerity; challenging nature with humility; feeling gratitude toward the people you meet on the mountain, the people who maintain the trails, and the people around who support you: I believe these attitudes are profoundly important in startup management as well. In the next installment, we will explore the concepts of sincerity, humility, and gratitude reaffirmed through mountaineering. For those who have not yet read the previous articles in this series, please check them out here: Part 1: Define Your Summit, then PreparePart 2: Detailed Planning, Steady ExecutionPart 3: Strategy, Tactics, and ExecutionPart 4: Extend Your Antennae, Pay Attention to Your VitalsPart 5: Balancing Tenacity and Caution D-POPS GROUP Advisor Genta Sugihara September 2026: Mt. Jonen (#55), Mt. Yakedake (#56), Mt. Iwate (#57), Mt. Hayachine (#58), Mt. Hachimantai (#59); October 2026: Mt. Hiragatake (#60)
  • Media
2026.10.15
Lessons from Hosting an Intern from Eton College
In August, we welcomed an intern from the UK, who was a high school student from the King’s College of Our Lady of Eton beside Windsor (commonly known as Eton College). We would like to take this opportunity to once again thank our company’s chairman, Dr. Sachio Semmoto, for making this connection possible. In this column, we will share our thoughts and the most striking insights we gained over the course of this student’s internship. A Character that Embodies Sincerity, Humility, and Gratitude His family does business and spends time all across the world. When you hear of someone born and raised in such an environment, you might only imagine a highly privileged lifestyle. However, after spending those weeks together, what left the strongest impression on us was not the status of his upbringing, but the depth of his personal character. While he certainly showed the innocent and endearing traits typical of a 16-year-old, he also had a level of maturity uncommon for his age. Above all, he consistently demonstrated a posture of sincerity, humility, and gratitude. We were deeply impressed that at just 16, he already naturally embodied these same three values that our company so highly prizes in our own employees. Viewing Effort as a Given Despite being enrolled at one of the UK’s elite schools, he never rested on his laurels; instead, he was extremely studious and a hard worker. He showed a strong belief that making an effort and never ceasing to learn are obvious prerequisites for future success. A Strong Will to Follow Through Regarding his future, he did not hold vague wishes like “It would be nice if…”, but rather a clear will of “I will get it done.” I felt his strong conviction as he spoke of his goal to attend a famous overseas university and subsequently thrive as an entrepreneur. The Ability to View Society Objectively and Take Action It was also striking to hear how calmly he understands that his own environment is often seen by the general public as living in a bubble, and that it is precisely because of this awareness that he actively engages in volunteering and other activities that contribute to society. Broad Education and Conversational Skills He possessed a truly vast range of knowledge encompassing international politics, religion, philosophy, business, and even drinking culture (in the UK, 16-year-olds can legally drink alcohol if accompanied by an adult). It was particularly impressive that when we introduced him to an American entrepreneur and Stanford graduate, the intern was able to engage him in deep discussions, bringing up names like Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and Kant. An Astonishing Memory He remembered almost everything from our conversations and showed a conscious effort to commit things to memory. The word “talented” truly suits him. We felt that his future potential rivals, or even exceeds, that of the top students at Japan’s most elite prep schools. Consideration for Others His attentiveness and kindness were also very impressive, and every one of our members who interacted with him became a fan. We will never forget how he would naturally rush over to help whenever anyone was working on a task. Feedback from the Places We Visited We took him to visit a variety of places, from startups to large corporations. Everywhere we went, he never ran out of questions, and he continually demonstrated a capacity for critical thinking and the ability to perceive and discuss the heart of the matter. Our company advisor and former Japanese Ambassador to the United States, Ichiro Fujisaki, said the same thing as executives from leading Japanese corporations: “This high school student’s potential is so incredible, it’s scary.” President Goto’s Concluding Thoughts It was a time that made me realize just how amazing some young people in this world are. I am once again grateful for this encounter that transcended age and borders to provide so much inspiration and insight. It was a valuable experience that greatly expanded my expectations for the unseen encounters yet to come in my life. D-POPS GROUP aims to realize a society where young people can freely, vibrantly, and uninhibitedly take on challenges, and one that supports and recognizes youth who hold dreams and goals. This internship has further strengthened my desire to build a society where youths—not just in Japan, but around the world—can freely take on challenges. We will continue to build a society that supports young people by realizing a Venture Ecosystem. D-POPS GROUP President & CEO Kazuhiro Goto, together with all of the President’s Office members ※Reference Article regarding Eton College:“The Awe-Inspiring Classes at Eton College That Bring Up Royalty”, PRESIDENT Online https://president.jp/articles/-/26151
  • Media
2026.10.06
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