Ken Nishimura

Experience

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  ASCII

  Apr 1993 - Mar 1996

  Staff Writer

  - Wrote a countless number of articles related to personal computers and gadgets with passion.- Covered the advent of Windows and Linux. Being a techy, I started using Linux as a desktop in 1994. (*) ASCII was a monthly personal computer magazine founded in 1976, which, at the time I was working for, boasted one of the largest circulations among the likes in Japan.- As a Perl programmer, I processed a couple of huge amount of unstructured text files into XML to produce a CD-ROM dictionary. The amount of data was about 300MB, which was far bigger than the memory size of the Linux workstation I built with Pentium Pro-200MHz. The idea was to combine 4 dictionaries from different publishers into a single CD-ROM, which was literally unprecedented back then. With a prototype CGI based dictionary app I built, my boss and I succeeded in persuading elderly people in the conservative publishing industry to do something so game-changing, which resulted in a runaway success, generating one million USD in the very first year alone. The sequels lasted more than 5 years and earned more money for the company. Show less

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  Monthly ASCII/Weekly ASCII/Online ASCII

  Apr 1996 - Nov 2006

  Assistant Editor

  - Sketched out lots of featured articles, leading a team.- For Weekly ASCII, I wrote numerous articles for less tech-savvy readers and learned how to relate technologies to everyday life.

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  ITmedia

  Nov 2006 - Jun 2013

  Deputy Editor / Senior Reporer

  - Covered enterprise IT, software technologies and web startups extensively.- Published a series of interview articles of start-up founders in Silicon Valley. - Have worked on a Ruby on Rails project as a product owner as well as a code contributor to build a Japanese version of StackOverflow.com, which is a QA web site for engineers.- Helped convert thousands of articles in cluttered HTML files to a specific markup format using software stack such as Ruby, Sinatra, Heroku and Nokogiri. Show less

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  Sophia University

  Apr 2013 - now

  A lecturer (socio-information and communication studies)

  I share my knowledge about venture capital, tech industry and startups with students at one of the most prestigious universities in Japan.

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  TechCrunch Japan / Oath Japan

  Jul 2013 - Jan 2018

  Chief Editor, TechCrunch Japan

  - has been leading the team consisted of translators and writers.- has been in charge of recruiting writers and reporters.- has been covering startup companies and people in Japan as a tech journalist.- has produced interview videos with remarkable entrepreneurs. - has been organizing events with about 60-80 attendees on a bi-monthly basis.- has helped a client launch and manage an owned media, creating media policies, the content team and content itself.- grew an annual event TechCrunch Tokyo from 600 to 2500 attendees over 4.5 years, making it the largest startup event in Japan.- has been moderating / interviewing phenomenal entrepreneurs on stage with passion and a lot of fun.- has tripled the traffic and revenue over 4.5 years, maintaining good relationship with sponsors. Show less

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  Google

  Jul 2018 - Jul 2019

  Industry Head, startups, strategic relationships

  * I led a newly formed startups team in Google Japan to help Japanese startup companies to grow and go global. * Working with the global team, we launched a three month global accelerator program in Tokyo, accepting 7 startups locally. It included 3 bootcamp weeks in Tokyo, Tel Aviv and San Francisco with 20+ global mentors, 100+ mentoring hours. NPS was 9.75.* We delivered workshops, Startup School with local partners. It is a carved out one-day program for startup founders. We worked with WeWork, the University of Tokyo FoundX, Plug&Play Japan etc. Average NPS was 9.6.* We have done an investment in a Japanese AI startup, which was the first case Google did in Japan. Show less

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  Coral Capital

  Aug 2019 - now

  * Quadrupled the traffic and visitors to the blog site in the first 4 months* Actively participating in the weekly investment meeting

  • Partner

    May 2023 - now

  • Partner & Chief Editor

    Aug 2019 - Jun 2023