Hi there. This is 服部陽良, founder of coiai Inc., one year into running my own company.
As the founder of a technology-centered IT company doing system development and product development, I share the reality of running a startup on this show every Monday. This time, I have a hiring announcement, along with a fun story and a rough one.
We're Hiring
Starting this week, we're using Wantedly's trial plan to hire for the following two roles.
- Infrastructure engineer — someone who can handle everything from design through proposals
- Project assistant — process management, schedule management, phone handling, and so on
We're planning to expand the business starting around July, and this hiring push is in preparation for that.
As for who we're looking for — first and foremost, someone who can keep to a schedule. That's because I personally am not great at time management or process management myself, so I want someone who can properly assist with exactly that.
If you're even a little interested, please reach out through Wantedly, or through the contact form on coiai Inc.'s website.
A Fun Story: an XR Development Retreat in Karuizawa
I went on a two-day development retreat in Karuizawa over the last stretch of Golden Week, together with the team from a contracted XR development project.
We were basically buried in development the whole time and didn't get to sightsee much, but it was still a nice change of pace, and it was great to be able to set aside a solid block of time to push development forward.
Since I use a desktop PC for XR development, I bought a roughly 7,000-yen backpack from Amazon that could fit a desktop and brought it along — everyone laughed at me for "carrying way too much stuff," which is a good memory now.
I also bought some jam with whole strawberries in it as a souvenir, from a jam shop a team member recommended, and it went down really well — that team member clearly has an excellent eye for souvenirs.
On the night of the first day we had a barbecue with some drinks, and I ended up drinking like a college kid again... I regretted it a bit, but it was fun. It was my first time in Karuizawa and my first time on a work retreat like this, so it turned out to be a genuinely great experience.
A Rough Story: Four Weeks with No Days Off, and Not Even Getting to Rest When Sick
I'd gone almost four weeks with basically no days off, and ended up catching a cold. My throat was in serious pain, I had a stuffy nose on top of it, a headache, and my whole body felt heavy. Even so, I had my part-time shift today, so I worked from 10am to 8pm.
I've never really had a strong constitution to begin with. I look at founders who can just power through nonstop and feel envious, but I'm genuinely the type whose health actually breaks down.
The alterations job I work part-time runs on a one-person system, so if I get sick, there's nobody to cover for me. Combined with the fact that the other part-timer can't always work Sundays, I really can't take time off no matter what. I spent the whole day essentially curled up, and physically, it was genuinely rough.
A World Built for the Physically Strong
In the end, I've come to feel that working is a world built for people who are physically strong.
In any job, the person who has a complete grasp of every single task is incredibly powerful. No matter how much technology advances, hard work never seems to actually decrease, and I think that's because the strength of someone who fully understands the whole operation never really changes.
My Discomfort with "Think Like an Owner"
You often hear the phrase "have an owner's mindset" at startups. What this basically means, I think, is that the company wants more people who have a full grasp of every task, just like a founder does.
From a founder's point of view, it's incredibly convenient if you can just hand an abstract task straight to a subordinate and have them break it down into something concrete and execute it. But I actually think one of the core jobs a founder is supposed to do is properly break the abstract down into the concrete themselves, and hand that concrete piece to their subordinate.
That said, doing it that way means you need more headcount per task, which makes the organization bigger and costs balloon. In a small setup, I do understand the impulse to want employees to think like owners.
Still, if you're being handed stock options, that's one thing, but being told to work with a sense of ownership over the company when you don't even hold any equity — I can't help but feel that's asking a lot.
Humans Are Animals That Live in Packs
I'm not someone who can just grind endlessly, and I'm not a versatile person who can do everything myself. I'm not exactly built to fit neatly into society either. Which is exactly why building a team is the only path forward for me.
But I'm also not the type of person who could get hired at a big company, so building my own pack was really my only option. That's one of the reasons I started this company in the first place.
People who can get into a big company should go into a big company. Some people look down on the path of studying hard, getting into university, and joining a big company, but honestly, if you're capable of that, you should just do it. I never even made it to university myself, and I was never able to work at a big company either.
No matter how far society advances, I still think humans are, fundamentally, animals that live in packs. As individuals, we're simply too weak. And that's not just physical weakness — the variance between individuals is huge in intellectual labor too. Being able to do everything all on your own looks cool on the surface. Maybe that's exactly why humans keep ending up wanting a dictator or a charismatic figure somewhere.
Company
The word "company" comes from the idea of eating bread together. I've always been on the receiving end of being given things, my whole life. But now that I've gotten a bit older, I want to start building an environment where everyone can eat together.
I never, ever want any of the people involved with this company to go hungry. I've been through some genuinely difficult periods financially, and it's exactly because of that that I feel so strongly about never wanting anyone else to feel that way.
I'm not planning to force any headcount growth, but if anyone reading this is interested in working together, please do reach out.
About coiai Inc.
coiai Inc. works in the following areas:
- Web development
- XR development
- Core business system development
- On-premises AI adoption support
With the motto "never bring a hard-to-use system into the world," we put real effort into both design and system architecture.
If you've had a project turned down by another company, or one where the quote felt too high, we'll look for the best possible way forward and put together a proposal. Quotes are always free, so please feel free to reach out.
New episodes every Monday. Please subscribe to the channel, and come back to listen again next week.