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. If your only motivation is a vague desire to “become a CEO” or “get rich”, it will be difficult to bring up a major business that creates value for society.
To establish a business, you must paint a clear vision and outline concrete goals.
This applies not only to business owners but to all professionals and workers. Having a clear target, such as a specific career path or becoming an expert in a certain field, is what drives people to actively seek out the learning and experience necessary to achieve it.
To share a personal story: until a year ago, I was just a casual hiker. I climbed low mountains like Mt. Takao or Mt. Oyama simply to burn some calories. However, last summer, I visited Toyama Prefecture for the first time and, without fully realizing how steep it would be, climbed the highest peak of Mt. Tate. That day changed my life.
Exhausted and lightheaded from the thin oxygen, I finally reached the summit. Looking out at the 360-degree panoramic view of the surrounding peaks, a sudden wave of emotion hit me: “I want to challenge myself with even tougher mountains.”
Then, one day, I came across a book titled Japan’s 100 Famous Mountains. I read it in one sitting, and when I finished, the entrepreneurial spirit inside me had been totally reignited. I established a clear goal for myself:
“Summit all of Japan’s 100 Famous Mountains by around 60 years old.”
Note: Advisor Sugihara is 58 years old at the time of publishing.
(Pictured: the panoramic view from the summit of Oyama Peak on Mt. Tate, and the cover of Japan’s 100 Famous Mountains that inspired my new goal)
Since that day last August, I have been climbing steadily. As of writing this article, I have successfully reached 41 summits. When I started, I was a complete amateur and would end up exhausted even on low hills. Over time, however, my physical stamina built up, allowing me to take on higher and steeper peaks.
While I still face plenty of challenges regarding my physical fitness and climbing technique, my passion only grows with every summit I reach. If I hadn’t set that specific goal of the 100 Famous Mountains, I am certain I wouldn’t have made it this far.
Managing a startup company follows the exact same principle. The clearer the founding vision, the stronger the driving force becomes to make the necessary preparations and find the strength to face hardships.
Furthermore, simply holding up your vision is not enough. To start moving people and organizations into action, you must apply that vision down into concrete, challenging, yet realistic targets, such as reaching a specific revenue target by year 20XX or securing a certain number of users by year 20YY.
2. Equipping Yourself with the Stamina and Skills Needed for Your Target Mountain: Capital and Key Differentiators
If inexperienced beginners suddenly try to tackle the difficult peaks like Mt. Oku-Hotaka or Mt. Tsurugi, or a multi-day trek like Mt. Poroshiri, they will not only fail to reach the summit, but they will also put their lives in danger and ultimately place a massive burden on those around them.
To stand on top of your target summit, you must build the appropriate physical stamina. You also need proper climbing techniques, such as knowing how to navigate rocky terrain or climb using chains. Attempting a climb without these preparations isn’t praised as courageous or bold; rather, it’s a display of immaturity and recklessness.
Business professionals also require physical and mental stamina. However, in this context, I’d like to make a comparison from an entrepreneurial perspective. For a business, especially a newly-launched startup, one could consider its working capital to be equivalent to “stamina”.
You might be able to start a small business through your personal savings alone. However, creating a large-scale business or a platform that solves social issues requires raising significant working capital. Even if you have outstanding skills or services, your business cannot survive if the funds run dry.
Just as you need physical strength to challenge a high mountain, you need substantial funding to take on a major business venture. Planning your capital strategy and securing the necessary funds at exactly the right time is an extremely important job for any founder in the early stages of a startup.
(Pictured on the left, rocky terrain on Mt. Aso; in the middle, rocky terrain on Mt. Hōken, near Mt. Kisokoma; on the right, chain-climbing sections of Mt. Ishizuchi, the highest peak in western Japan.)
On the other hand, climbing skills correspond to “management ability” for an individual leader, and “key differentiators” for the company as a whole.
Even if there is market demand, you cannot survive with products or services that other companies can easily imitate. Furthermore, if you are launching a service that offers entirely new value (i.e., climbing a steep mountain), you must possess something special and unprecedented that competitors cannot easily replicate.
“That special something” differs depending on the business domain, product category, and individual company. However, the equivalent of acquiring the skills necessary to climb a high mountain for an early-stage startup is to discern, refine, and protect your unique strengths.
3. Carrying Only the Necessary Gear for Your Target Mountain: Assembling the Exact Resources Your Management Needs
In mountaineering, it is crucial to prepare your equipment according to the specific mountain you are aiming for. A winter climb requires winter gear, and a rocky climb requires specialized rock gear. On top of that, there are many items you must pack just in case of emergencies: first-aid kits, personal medications, cold-weather apparel, rain gear, trail snacks, emergency rations, and more. Water is also an incredibly precious commodity on a mountain.
However, having more gear is not always better.
If you pack everything imaginable and your backpack ends up weighing dozens of kilograms, your body will not be able to carry the weight. There is simply no need to bring more gear than what is required for the level of the mountain you are climbing.
(Gear prepared for climbing three consecutive peaks.)
When leading a startup company, securing management resources is one of the most critical challenges. A large portion of these resources consists of personnel. For a manufacturing business, this would also include factories and machinery. Beyond just people and equipment, internal systems and operational frameworks are also vital resources that support the business.
R&D, sales, finance, legal, customer success, security: as a business grows, the number of things it needs to handle also increases. If you are in the manufacturing sector, capital investment becomes a necessity, and there will be times when you want to enlist the help of external experts to design your organizational systems.
However, if you continue to hire, purchase, or outsource just because you want to, your working capital will quickly dry up. This is very much like draining your physical stamina during a climb by carrying a backpack that is far too heavy.
A sense of balance is essential to securing resources that are “necessary and sufficient” for both the scale of the business you are operating and the goals you are aiming for.
What early-stage startups need is not to have everything. Rather, what they need is to gather trusted individuals to sail in the same boat, building a lean, highly skilled team where everyone brings their own unique strengths to the table.
This concludes Part 1 of “Startup Management Lessons Inspired by Japan’s 100 Famous Mountains”.
I myself am still only halfway toward my goal of conquering all of Japan’s 100 Famous Mountains.
That is exactly why, rather than sharing a polished success story, I want to use this series to be as candid as possible about the hesitation, mistakes, decisions, and lessons I encounter along the way.
By using this challenging goal as a framework, I hope to reflect on the mindsets and decision-making processes that apply directly to startup company management and organizational leadership.
The next installment’s topic will be “Detailed Planning, Steady Execution”, in which we will explore the necessity of strategies and plans for achieving goals, balanced against the vital importance of steady, day-to-day work.
D-POPS GROUP Advisor Genta Sugihara
Note: Previously, we published an article titled “Mountaineering and Leadership”, but that was more summarized; this new series will dive into much greater detail along with my progress in climbing Japan’s 100 Famous Mountains. I will also be sharing photos as we go, so please enjoy.
June 2025: Mt. Tate;
August 2025: Mt. Ibuki, Mt. Mizugaki, Mt. Amagi, Mt. Tsukuba, Mt. Kinpu, Mt. Daibosatsu
September 2025: Mt. Kisokoma, Mt. Kobushi, Mt. Daisetsu, Mt. Tokachi, Mt. Arashima, Mt. Kaikoma, Mt. Akagi
