Definer Inc. start up story (1) ~ Independence from a Global company salaryman~

Introduction

My name is Kentaro Sakamoto and I am the president of Definer Inc.
Wantedly seems to be proposing the concept of "empathetic hiring," and I felt that I would like to express my values, so I created this article.
In this issue, I would like to ask the question, "Why?" I would like to talk about why I founded Definer Inc.

Why I quit my job as a global company salaryman

To fight my way through life, I dared to abandon the career path.

　I joined Accenture, a foreign IT consulting firm, as a new graduate and left on October 31, 2020. I was promoted at the top rating and experienced many important projects within the company, from infrastructure (on-pre and cloud), back-end, front-end, and all the way from upstream to downstream. I am happy to say that I was blessed with very talented and attractive executives, MDs (Managing Directors), and senior staff, who loved me very much.
　Even on the day after I resigned, I was furthermore, set to be promoted. Still, I felt I wanted to go to sea in a mud boat. I abandoned the so-called "common career path.
　First of all, as is typical with foreign companies in the U.S., Accenture Japan is strongly positioned as a subsidiary of the U.S. headquarters, and in fact, I felt that even if I rose through the ranks in Japan, I could not see much of a future by global standards. I gradually lost the sense that I was giving my all in life.

I make a different choice from my father's life, who rose through the ranks at a global company

　My father was a man who had risen far and high in the field of global companies. Because I knew his life from inside the family, I also felt that from a personal perspective, I might not be very happy, even if I continued to rise through the ranks.

Deciding to approach an attractive entrepreneur

　I think my decision was also influenced by the fact that I had a lot of contact with entrepreneurs and business owners. I found entrepreneurs who provide quality services at appropriate and reasonable prices very, very attractive. As background, foreign IT consulting is incredibly expensive. So expensive, in fact, that we are not sure if it is worth it. In that case, they would offer more and more proposals to large, profitable companies, and I wondered if that alone would improve Japan. At the time, I did not understand.
　However, at the time, I did not have the connections to start a startup, and I did not have a market and service that I was sure I could win, or a business that I wanted to do or devote my life to.

First, make good money as a freelance engineer

　Therefore, as a freelance engineer, my first priority is to complete the solution from upstream to downstream as a full-stack engineer and product manager of an AI venture company with 200-250 employees. Then, I started as a CXO advisor for a 30-50 person AI startup company.
　As a sole proprietor, I was very fortunate to have a job that allowed me to earn a solid 1.5-2.5 million yen per month.
　As I did various jobs, I wondered if it would take me 2-3 years to start a startup, and after a year, I decided to move on to an IT startup. The catalyst for this was my meeting with Suguru Namura, who was the CTO of Mercari at the time.

Next up.

　I will describe where I lived when I started my own business, how I lived, and how I met Taku Namura, who was the CTO of Mercari at the time.