Kosuke Sogo doesn't dress like a typical Japanese CEO. When we first met for an interview at his company's office in downtown Bangkok last month, the 31-year-old was wearing a button-down blue and white checked flannel shirt on top of a white T-shirt, which suited his boyish look.
KOSUKE SOGO
CEO and Co-founder, AnyMind Group Limited
Born
- April 7, 1987, Kagawa, Japan
Education
- Bachelor of Commerce, Management, Nihon University
Career highlights
- April 2010 - March 2012: Business development, MicroAd Inc
- March 2012 - October 2012: Head of Vietnam preparatory office, MicroAd Inc
- November 2012 - March 2016: CEO, MicroAd Vietnam
- June 2013 - March 2016: COO, MicroAdSEA
- February 2014 - March 2016: CEO, MicroAdSEA Philippines Inc
- March 2015 - March 2016: CEO, MicroAd Thailand
- April 2015 - March 2016: Managing director, Asia Pacific, MicroAd Inc
- April 2016 - Present: CEO, AdAsia Holdings Pte Ltd
Honours and Awards
- Asia’s Most Influential Digital Marketing Professional Award, World Brand Congress 2015
- Top 100 Most Influential Global Marketing Leaders, 2016, World Marketing Congress
- Under-30 Achiever of the Year, Mumbrella Asia Awards, 2017
"Once a month I wear a suit, normally when I have a meeting with clients, especially in Japan. But in Southeast Asia, a lot of people wear casual clothes, especially in this business," says Mr Sogo with a smile.
By this business, he means the technology business, in particular digital marketing and related services built around artificial intelligence (AI). Mr Sogo is the co-founder and CEO of Singapore-headquartered AnyMind Group, one of the fastest growing AI-based startups in Asia.
His innovative approach has won him accolades including "Asia's Most Influential Digital Marketing Professional" at World Brand Congress 2015 and "100 Most Influential Global Marketing Leaders 2016" by the World Marketing Congress.
The business began life as AdAsia Holdings in April 2016, with AnyMind Group formed in January this year as the parent holding company of AdAsia, along with new affiliates TalentMind and CastingAsia. The group provides industries, businesses and professionals with an AI-based matching engine and software to increase efficiency and scale in marketing, human resource recruitment and other activities.
It recorded revenues of US$12.9 million from April to December 2016, and $26 million last year, and has been operating at a profit since January 2017. Currently, the two-year-old business operates in 11 countries with 290 staff.
With revenue now exceeding that of many other regional startups, the business appears to have become successful pretty quickly, but in fact Mr Sogo has been on this path for many years. Becoming a CEO or having his own business is a goal he set for himself since he was in high school.
"When I was a child, I went to my grandfather's town near Osaka where he has his own construction company. Everybody called my grandpa shachou ('chief' or 'director' in Japanese). A lot of his employees respect him," recalls Mr Sogo.
"When I saw that, I began to think of my grandfather as a kind of hero. He has very good leadership. That's why a lot of people respect him and a lot of people follow his direction. I really like his style. That was the first time I realised that I really wanted to become a kind of CEO or shachou like my grandfather."
Mr Sogo's grandfather and his father, who also has his own construction business, are now retired. None of his siblings -- one brother and sisters -- are entrepreneurs. His younger sister is a civil servant and another works with Japan Airlines.
"Back then, I hadn't decided what I wanted to do or what kind of industry I was going to choose. But I did know that I didn't want to waste my time," he says. "At that time, the IT industry was booming and young entrepreneurs were becoming very successful.
"Even though I'm still young, it doesn't matter. I have a passion. As long as I have business ideas, I think I can be successful in the IT industry. It grows much faster than other industries. That's why I decided to join this industry."
Mr Sogo chose to study business management at Tokyo University to pursue his dream of becoming an entrepreneur.
"When I was a university student, I looked at several IT giants in the United States like Google, Microsoft and Facebook. A lot of them spent a lot of money on advertising which was mainstream in the IT industry at the time," he says.
"I chose advertising because it's a major way for IT companies to generate money to reach out to customers. And the internet advertising industry was booming, especially here in Southeast Asia.
"A lot of people spend more time on the internet than on watching TV. Even in Japan, internet advertising has the highest growth rate compared with other advertising channels and traditional media, such as TV and newspapers."
FAST MOVER
After graduation, he joined MicroAd, an online company based in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward, in 2010. He was assigned to the company's newly set-up direct marketing section. In eight months, it became the company's key revenue source. Not only was Mr Sogo the best performer, he was bringing in nearly twice as much as the second-ranked salesperson.
His boss from his first job remembers being surprised at how quickly his young marketing protege moved. "At first I thought he was just talking big," his old boss was quoted as saying in a Nikkei Asian Review feature earlier this year. "But he was able to take action and could really sniff out opportunities."
In his third year with MicroAd, Mr Sogo was sent abroad to help set up units in Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. By age 26, he was chief operating officer of MicroAd Southeast Asia, and two years later became managing director of MicroAd Asia Pacific.
"That company has a lot of young employees but I was the youngest board member," Mr Sogo tells Asia Focus. "Other board members were around 40 year old. That's because my contribution was outstanding.
"Even though I was a fresh graduate and the company had 200 employees, I generated almost 20% of the company's total revenue by myself."
But despite his achievements, he was growing restless and looking for new challenges. He initially spent $50,000 from his own savings to set up AdAsia at age 29. Harnessing the potential of AI, the new company set out to match airlines, food makers and other kinds of corporations with influencers -- people who have built large social media audiences. Its customers include All Nippon Airways (ANA), the confectionery maker Ezaki Glico and other well-known brands.
"Of course, whenever one starts a new business it's kind of difficult. But we were lucky because two years ago, there were not many competitors, especially in Southeast Asia. It is a very new industry," notes Mr Sogo.
"Luckily, we clinched deals with a lot of advertisers. We got quite a big job and immediately we earned trust from big advertisers, so we had new accounts and clients and many of them are quite big.
"We provide new technology that none of our competitors can offer. That kind of technology has helped us attract attention from potential clients."
"Sogo was able to quickly get things off the ground," AnyMind co-founder and chief operating officer Otohiko Kozutsumi told the Nikkei. "And in only 10 months, he had the business running in the black."
Displaying high confidence in his business model, Mr Sogo explains that AI helps a company's marketing people to achieve their targets more easily, and probably faster than humans can do. The applications go beyond marketing as well.
"In the area of human resources, we provide AI software that can save your time," he explains. "Our AI engine can help you with the CVs of candidates so you don't have to look at CVs anymore.
"Our AI does a kind of matching, [based on the] job description and scanning a candidate's CV, to assign a score. Thus it helps save a lot of time and you can focus more on interviews with the candidates who have high scores. We are thinking that we can use AI for the interviews as well in the near future."
The cost, meanwhile, is cheaper, he adds. "If you hire an HR assistant, you have to pay a salary every month. Our software is cheaper than what a human costs.
"Let humans focus on doing strategic work or some specific tasks that humans have to do. Checking CVs is very routine work. Anyone can do that, actually. AI can understand job descriptions as well. If any junior HR staff don't understand job descriptions, they cannot do matchmaking properly. Our AI cannot make any mistakes."
AnyMind's revenue is currently growing by 30% quarter on quarter, thanks to the high growth of the industry, especially in the markets where it operates. Meanwhile, the two new subsidiaries -- TalentMind and CastingAsia -- represent new revenue streams that will contribute to the holding company's growth.
TalentMind offers recruiting software that streamlines and enhances the recruitment and hiring process, based on the same technology used by CastingAsia, which specialises in tapping the reach of social-media influencers for marketing.
"Now there are some competitors but our business is growing faster than other companies because we developed the business earlier than our competitors," says Mr Sogo.
To expand the business further, AnyMind is now aiming to penetrate Russia, the Middle East, the United States and India, with a goal of having 400 employees by the end of this year. The US is also a potential destination for a stock market listing in the future.
"In the US, there are many [listed] IT companies like Alibaba and Facebook but I'm also thinking of Asian stock exchanges as well, like Hong Kong or Tokyo. We haven't decided yet," he says.
"Our business growth is really high and our financial condition is ready to be listed but timing is also very important. We just started our new business units. I think I really want to see good results from our new businesses and when they are quite ready, I think we will then get ourselves listed on a stock exchange. We are no hurry so we are preparing."
RISK TAKER
AnyMind has grown to such a size that that the founder might no longer know all of the employees, but Mr Sogo still prefers to call his company a startup. He usually hangs around the office just to spend time with his employees or walks back to the office after a business dinner to exchange opinions with local managers. On weekends, he camps out in the office to explore future strategies.
"Now the number of staff is 290 and the revenue is bigger than that of a startup. That surprises a lot of people," he says. "Our revenue and the business are getting bigger but I would like to say that we are still a startup because we are still a very young company, just two years old, even though people mention to us that our business is very successful."
He admits that while a number of startups have sprung up in Asia, many don't make it. Japan, meanwhile, is considered a mature market for startups with many turning profitable and floating their shares on stock exchanges.
"Not all startups are successful," Mr Sogo acknowledges. "In Japan, most of the startups focus on the domestic market. They never go abroad. Even if they do go abroad, their business often does not go well. That's a problem for startups in Japan. Compared with other Japanese startups in Southeast Asia, our business is much bigger."
Asked about the factors that have made AnyMind a success, Mr Sogo is quick to reply: "Passion and strong commitment". That passion starts from the top, which is why he was named the "Under-30 Achiever of the Year" in the 2017 edition of the Mumbrella Asia Awards, sponsored by the Australian marketing and media group Mumbrella.
"I never give up and am never satisfied with myself," he says. "I always think I can do better even though people say, 'You are successful already'. If we look at startups, IT giants like Alibaba or Tencent, they are doing super great. If we look at those companies, I can't say I'm already successful. I can't say that."
At the same time, he agrees that it's risky for the company to expand very fast at a very early stage in its development.
"I take risks," he says. "But also I strongly believe speed is very important. A lot of people think Southeast Asia is a kind of emerging market. They have questions about Southeast Asia but I understand all the markets in Southeast Asia so I have enough confidence to be successful in this region. That's why we are doing that even though sometimes people say we are expanding too fast. It's kind of risky."
While his grandfather and father are his inspiration, Mr Sogo looks at billionaire Masayoshi Son, the founder and CEO of the Japanese multinational conglomerate SoftBank Group, as a role model.
"Masayoshi Son is very cool. He is my role model because he is never fully satisfied with himself even though the company is doing great and very successful," he says.
"SoftBank is still very proactive. Mr Son is very aggressive about doing something new. He has a desire to make his company much bigger. As long as I have a passion, a desire, I hope it's possible to be a big entrepreneur in the future."
Mr Sogo believes that while both he and the company are still young, it's important for him to be a hands-on manager in order to set an example and show results to his employees.
"I really want to jump in on the details about our business. Even though I'm the CEO I still manage some parts of the business directly," he says.
"That's my style and I believe that is very important because I'm still young. If I don't work super hard, if I don't contribute to the company myself, no one will want to follow me. I need to show some results by myself sometimes.
"I'm very open to discussions and close to junior employees. For dealing with employees who are older than me, I think age does not really matter.
"Now, we have five board members and I'm the youngest one. Ever since I was a fresh graduate, I've worked with clients, all of them older than me. So I know how to work with older people."
Given how heavily occupied he is with work and business travel, Mr Sogo admits he's not ready to settle down to start his own family yet.
"It's kind of tough for me to establish a difference between private and business life because I'm always thinking of my business," he says.
"Even on the weekend, I come to the office. If I have a girlfriend, how can I take care of her? I'm not ready to get married with anyone because my priority is business now."
