By Osamu Yoshimuta,
While Japan is considered a global laggard in the incubation of innovative startups, one Japanese entrepreneur is out to change that perception through the launch of a cybersecurity company born from his time studying abroad.
In 2012, Mitsuo Okada, 44, founded Capy Inc. and now serves as the firm's chief executive officer. His experiences allow him to offer tips to other Japanese tech startups on how to succeed.
Born in Kyoto, Okada went to Canada to study in high school then moved on to Oregon State University in the United States where he got his first computer.
"I became motivated by the other students around me who were launching new tech businesses and changing the world," Okada recalled.
Okada took a particular interest in cybersecurity because Google and other U.S. information technology companies that were growing rapidly around 2000 "looked so cool," he said.
After graduating from OSU, Okada returned to Japan to advance his studies because of the comparably low cost of higher education. He received a Ph.D. in computer science from the Graduate School of Informatics at Kyoto University.
While engaging in cybersecurity-related research in cryptography as a graduate school student, Okada actively participated in various events and international conferences concerned with the promotion of startups in the United States. He was awarded various prizes in recognition of his skills and ingenious ideas, which led to the establishment of Capy.
The company offers an easy-to-use authentication tool to verify a human is attempting to log in to a website. To do this, users must fit small pieces of an image together like a jigsaw puzzle.
Most people are familiar with CAPTCHA authentication which asks users to identify a distorted series of letters and numbers or select a specified image from a photograph, but many find the images difficult to decipher and the process time-consuming.
Okada developed his idea because, unlike the others, the approach is intuitive. He said a puzzle "can be understood instantaneously" by anyone anywhere.
Capy's tool has been adopted by companies in Japan including a leading Japanese telecommunications service provider, and other companies around the world.
Okada aims to develop a full cybersecurity service, using artificial intelligence to learn from various cyberattacks. The AI will analyze vulnerabilities and present countermeasures for small and midsize enterprises that cannot afford to employ cybersecurity specialists. He added that the idea is to make the service available at "highly transparent prices."
If a founder of a startup wishes to expand in the United States, "it is important for him or her to achieve an extensive personal network through participation in local events and by other opportunities," said Okada, who now resides in New York.
As for the Japanese government's support for startups, he said, "It would be effective to subsidize the cost of studying abroad and provide education that enables students to speak English."
In a post to students on a forum for graduates of Kyoto University, Okada explains the benefits of his company's technology and its potential for worldwide application due to the ubiquity of the puzzle concept.
He encourages students to stake their claim for the future by creating innovations that are applicable to the real world.
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