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Days of flying around the country with the department manager
I had joined the company as a trainee programmer, but before I knew it, I was flying all over Japan visiting manufacturers with the department manager, who was also the head of development. That was the practical start of my journey as an “entrepreneur.”
Our team consisted of literally just “the department manager and me.” The department manager took charge of overall development, while I handled planning, sales, on-site setup, and customer support – everything except programming. In my early twenties, I was blindly performing roles that would now be called “player-manager” or “product manager.”
How to compensate for overwhelming resource shortages
Our rivals at the time were multinational corporations like Texas Instruments (TI), mentioned in the previous chapter. They had ample advertising budgets, sophisticated manuals, and robust support systems. In contrast, we had a few pages of handmade brochures, a floppy disk containing source code written by the department manager, and an “I’ll do anything” attitude. That was our only weapon.
Under normal circumstances, the odds of winning were practically zero. However, we began to chip away at that giant stronghold on one particular point: “overwhelmingly fast response to on-site pain.”
Selling “solutions,” not “features”
This happened when I visited a major automotive parts manufacturer. They had implemented TI’s latest system, but they were struggling to process a specific type of measurement data. While they might have found a solution by poring over the manuals, the engineers on-site didn’t have the time.
I called the department manager on the spot and confirmed the specifications. The next day, I wrote a custom modification program specifically for that measurement device and returned to the factory.
“Regarding what you mentioned yesterday, this should resolve it.”
The moment a graph appeared on the dark screen, the担当者’s face lit up.
While TI sold high-performance general-purpose machines, we continuously offered “custom-built machines that solve the problems right in front of you, today.” The strength of having someone who understands technology in sales lies here. We could propose how to implement a customer’s request, considering “technical feasibility” and “ease of use,” on the spot. We weren’t selling software; we were selling “mechanisms” that resolved on-site stagnation.
Four years of hard work taught me the “essence of business”
These four years were not, by any stretch of the imagination, a “smart business.” I wrestled with program bugs late into the night and took the first train of the morning to regional factories. There were times I got drunk during entertainment events, and times I had to apologize for unreasonable complaints.
However, during this period, I learned the tangible feel of “business.”
– No matter how excellent the technology, it has zero value if it’s not translated into the other party’s context.
– Small teams can outperform large corporations with point-strike speed.
– Trust is born not from the thoroughness of manuals but from one-on-one commitment.
This feeling of “competing with giants using wisdom and speed as weapons in a small team” is strongly inherited as the DNA of the current SPARX CREATIVE STUDIO.
And now, to the next adventure
The tumultuous four years I spent with the department manager were the most intensive training period of my life. By accumulating small successes, we were steadily building a solid position in our field.
However, as I approached my late twenties, I began to look towards an even wider world. It was a challenge to a world where hardware and software were even more closely integrated, and business scales would jump to tens or hundreds of millions.

Founder Principles 2: Agility is your edge.
We don’t look for what large companies can’t do. The only way for small teams to survive and win is to continuously solve “things that large companies find bothersome and won’t do” with overwhelming speed.