Outcast and alone in Canada, a picture book changed this entrepreneur’s life

Founder and CEO of BizReach Soichiro “Swimmy” Minami.

Soichiro “Swimmy” Minami never thought he would be an entrepreneur, but his first grade teacher may have planted the seed.

At six years old, Soichiro’s family moved from Japan to Canada. He couldn’t speak English and didn’t have any friends. Feeling alone, he remembers the first day of class when his teacher put a book on his desk – Swimmy by Leo Lionni.

Swimmy by Leo Lionni. Photo credit: Amazon.

Swimmy is the wet version of the black sheep story. Dr. Seuss would have had trouble counting this book. One fish, two fish, red fish, red fish, red fish. Swimmy was the only dark fish in his family so he stuck out like a black pearl.

One day, a giant tuna came and ate all the red fish. Swimmy escaped but found himself alone, scared, and very sad. He traveled the great ocean, visited amazing places, and saw rainbow colored jellyfish. He found a new school of red fish but they were too afraid to join Swimmy on his adventure.

Swimmy refused to give up and thought of a plan. The red fish trained to swim in the shape of a giant fish with Swimmy as the eye. All together they cruised the depths, saw the world, and chased the big fish away.

Soichiro adopted the nickname “Swimmy” for himself to adjust to life in Canada – and it has stuck ever since. It’s actually on his social security card.

Now Swimmy is on to his next adventure with his startup. He sees hiring in Japan as the next blue ocean.

Japanese recruiting practices are a little old, a little unique, and very Excel. He wants to change that with BizReach, which shakes up the job applicant tracking system.

Stepping up to bat

Swimmy graduated from university in the US and returned to Japan to work for Morgan Stanley. After a stint in banking, he moved on to help found the Japan arm of Hong Kong-based telco giant PCCW.

He sees Japan’s tradition of lifetime employment ending in the next 20 to 30 years.

Later, Swimmy received the education of a lifetime starting up one of Japan’s new expansion baseball teams with three of the country’s most prominent businessmen. “We had to sell fan goods without having a team and tickets without having a stadium,” he reminisces. He proudly refers to the time as his “MBA.”

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