Why did I start a company?
At nineteen, wondering what to do with my life, I was transfixed by a documentary that happened to be on TV. The sight of an African child with a belly swollen from malnutrition shocked me with the world’s injustice — and at the same time, I felt this was something worth my whole life.
Wanting to see the field, I visited an NGO, where a staff member told me: “If you truly want to change poverty, learn to control money yourself. Our work depends on donations and subsidies, and that constrains what we can do.” Hearing that, I decided to be the one doing business and supporting their work. At twenty I took leave to study business at the University of Washington. Back home, the VCs of the day — who saw social good as something for “after you’re profitable” — didn’t share my vision, so I joined a company to save capital instead. Two years of working like mad produced the savings that became Borderless Japan.
What brings me joy in this work?
Borderless Japan began with the resolve to solve global poverty. Today it has like-minded companions across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, running dozens of social businesses. My greatest joy is walking alongside remarkable people who treat society’s problems as their own — taking responsibility for solving them as their personal mission.
And I am grateful to believe, from the bottom of my heart, in the power of social business as a way of building society — and to witness the concrete changes it creates.
What’s my next challenge?
In 2023, for the first time since founding Borderless, we put our shared purpose into words: SWITCH TO HOPE — switching social issues to everyone’s hope. To achieve it, I am taking on two challenges.
First, spreading the Borderless ecosystem worldwide: the support systems and community from which social entrepreneurs emerge one after another. Second, giving shape to the “public ally”: switching issues to hope is not something our members can do alone. We will design many ways for allies — people who empathize with social entrepreneurs and stand beside them — to take part, updating society into a system where everyone builds a better world together.
