SPEAKER
Co-founder - Startup Dating
Masaru is a producer developing a variety of web services, techpreneur, and journalist contributing for tech blogs and publications.
He started his carrier as a writer for IT publications at 12 years old. (For programming.) At his age of 20, it was the dawn of the Internet era, he started surveys on the IT industry in Asia and Silicon Valley, upon request by Kazuhiko Nishi, the co-founder of Japan's early IT-focused publishing company ASCII.
In many times, Masaru has visited those regions for covering new technologies and services by interviewing many key role players. As a system architect and an engineer, he has been involved in developing the environment of Internet service providers, served Nippon Broadcasting Co. as a system consultant for their live programs, and also been involved in a project developing a handset-embedded wallet system of Japan's largest cellphone operator.
With his wide range of knowledge about cutting-edge technologies and innovative services using the Internet, he provided due-diligence on IT start-ups for independent VC firms and has been teaching open source-based system integration processes to students from Asia in Japan's national aid program for developing countries.
Prior to the current position, Masaru co-founded consulting firms, system integrators, and an outsourcing agency specializing in system engineering, and served as CEO or managing director for each.
