Taking that different path

＊This article was originally written in Japanese by our CEO, Yoshihide Arai.

The other day, one of my colleagues said he was quite unsure about his business career because he made a decision on a career that was unusual in Japan.

I’ve had the same feeling for the past 45 years. In many cases, I decided to be different.

In 1997, right after I graduated from my university, I decided to join Intelligence. Inc, which was at the time a new and small HR Company.

Many people around me including my professor, my friends, and my parents opposed my decision fiercely because at the time very few people knew the company and they thought it was not worth joining the company with much risk and uncertainty.

After joining the company, I ignored countless nonsense routine jobs, which was mandatory for all the newcomers. I always focused on the jobs that I judged as important for the company.

After several years, I got much recognition and promoted in the company and I was even assigned as the president of an affiliated company.

But eventually I quit it and decided to start my own business in 2003.

What was funny was that people who said I should not join Intelligence.inc. now opposed my decision to quit the company, saying “you should not quit it because you have such good position.“ or “you are on the verge of promotion, so you should stay there.“ We cannot rely on what other people say.

After I started my business, at first I was focused on old-fashioned human resource business, which I had an advantage with at the time. However, after several years I decided to quit the business model and start the same HR business with a new business model that was focused on technology.

But at the time many of my colleagues said we should not stop the current business model that earned so much profit.

However, I believed that focusing on technology is going to be important and even prerequisite in the future, so I had to stick to my decision. Some people said there was no possibility that we can successfully shift our business model. Some of them pointed out pursuing the ideal is one of my shortcomings.

Now I believe this is not just an objection to my challenge. Rather, this is an objection to being different from others.

Japan in its history has been almost a perfect monoethnic. In the past we used to being the same in many aspects. That’s why maybe we tend to be sensitive to something different from others and sometimes try to be the same with them. I feel there is that kind of pressure in Japan.

When Japanese famous baseball players like Nomo and Ichiro tried to join MLB, many people thought negative about them rather than supported them. When Hidetoshi Nakata, who was a famous Japanese football player, joined Serie A there was the same reaction in Japan.

When I started this company I was under the same kind of pressure. But I went through it. That was totally thanks to the first penguins in business field such as Mr.Uno, who is the CEO of USEN, Inc., Mr.Fujita, the CEO of Cyber Agent, Inc, and Mrs.Nanba, who was the CEO of DeNA, Inc.

Atrae is pursuing a new type of business organization that is flat and inclusive. We are open to unique individuals and extraordinary talents. We embrace diversity and we make decisions among people who have the best knowledge and experiences in each field. We never make decisions by a majority. We mutually trust and promote friendly competition.

Atrae is an unique organization already. Many people say what we are trying to do is almost impossible. It has been so all the time.

However, we never stop to believe our vision and we will become the first penguin of the next generation of business organization. That is what our vision “Attract people in the world“ means.

We will never settle even when Atrae gets big. We will never accept business stereotype in the past and will always be a challenger.