Pressure is something that you feel only when you don’t know what you’re doing

I don’t believe I can really do without teaching.  The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself, “At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I’m making some contribution”—it’s just psychological.

Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.

It's not possible to get any distance from my project: being alive. Objectively, from the outside you might say, my life is terrible, unbelievable. And it's true, I hate this. I hate the way I am at the moment. But there is no objective view, I am here, in it, and there is nothing else, and this fact brings with it many things that make it of course easier. And beyond that there are many other things to think about.

Many times when I found myself at a personal crossroads – when I graduated from Hitotsubashi University and was unsure about whether I wanted to go into research or become a businessman, when I quit my job at the Industrial Bank of Japan (currently Mizuho Bank), when I founded Rakuten, when I tried to buy Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) – I always visited my dad in Kobe to ask his advice. Like my wife, my dad was a behind-the-scenes counselor to me.

If so, stop that. Stop thinking, and act.

We didn’t research the product. We didn’t launch a focus group or field a study. We had an idea, and we acted. The results informed our thinking.

When I asked for advice on how to start such a business, many senior executives told me, "You can't possibly succeed doing what big companies have failed to do."

Well, unlike our competitors, Google, EBay, Amazon, and most of the Chinese internet startups, we never got any fun or money from any VC (ph). We started with our own capital, by our self, with our own business model.

In Rakuten's case, adjustment certainly took time. At first, meetings often felt awkward. The first board meeting after the Englishization decision took four hours to complete – double the normal duration. But whenever executives asked if they could say certain things in Japanese, I told them no. I knew that the challenge would pay off – and it has.