Why I Left a Stable Career to Build Something of My Own

When I handed in my resignation at Suzuki, my manager asked if I was sure. Stable salary, clear promotion path, good benefits. By every traditional measure, it was the right place to stay.

But something had been building in me for months.

At Keio, I studied how markets shift. How new industries emerge when someone decides the old way of doing things is no longer good enough. I wrote papers about it. I analyzed case studies. But I was watching it happen in real time with blockchain and decentralized finance, and I was sitting on the sidelines.

The turning point came during a weekend trip to Akihabara. I met a group of developers who had built a payment system that settled transactions in seconds, with near-zero fees, completely transparent on-chain. No bank. No middleman. No waiting three business days for funds to clear.

I kept thinking: what if you could run an entire company like this? What if payroll was automatic, verifiable, instant? What if the barriers between employer and employee were reduced to just... work and compensation?

That question would not leave me alone.

I spent the next three months building a plan. Not a pitch deck for investors. A real operational plan. How would hiring work? How would you protect employees if the token price drops? How do you build trust with people who have never met you?

The answer to most of these questions came back to transparency. If everything is on-chain, there is nothing to hide. If creator rewards go 100% to buybacks, employees know the company is aligned with their interests. If payments happen every 15 minutes, nobody has to wonder if they will get paid.

I named it The Zaibatsu. Not because I think I am building the next Mitsubishi or Sumitomo. But because those original zaibatsu understood something that most modern startups forget: you build for decades, not quarters. You diversify. You take care of your people.

Starting this company meant giving up a salary, a title, and the comfort of knowing exactly what next month looks like. But it also meant waking up every morning working on something I actually believe in.

Six months in, I still think about my old manager's question. Am I sure?

More than ever.