CEO of Wantedly: Learn Fast, Be Focused, Think Simple, and Be User-Oriented

We concluded our Startup Asia Singapore 2013 event last week with a blast, and our female entrepreneurs had fun on the panel debating issues facing women at tech startups.

At the event I had the privilege to speak with Akiko Naka, CEO of Wantedly, a Japan-based social recruiting site. She told me of her struggles during her corporate career and how she managed to take the first leap to pursue entrepreneurship. Her love for coding and a stint at Facebook Japan inspired her to create her current startup, and she hasn’t looked back since.

Her advice to entrepreneurs out there? Gender doesn’t matter. The three skill sets necessary to survive in this technology and startup industry? Read on to find out more.

Tell me a little about yourself.

I was born and raised in Japan, always had an interest in web services and front-end coding as my dad was teaching IT at a university. I had my own Mac since elementary school, and used to create visual games using Visual Basic. Later at a university I ran a small business with few other members, who are all students, creating static homepages.

I chose Goldman Sachs as my first career, but I just could not forget my passion for web services. So, I moved onto Facebook Japan at the age of 25 where I felt a phenomenonal social wave coming to Japan. I then started building my own service Wantedly, a social recruiting site at the age of 26. Now the service is taking off after a year from its launch, having over 1,000 clients and about 40,000 members, making us the largest social recruiting site in Japan. Now Wantedly has eight full-time team members.

What is the startup about and what’s your role?

We believe good hires happen through friends’ recommendations, because having mutual friends guarantee the quality of candidates to an extent. It works the other way too – where candidates have a good chance of meeting a good team through mutual friends. We have a core feature called “support this job listing” that encourages your friends and team members to share job listings. In this manner, through the power of social media, the listing gets passed around, leading to a good match.

Companies are able to list one job for free, forever, but will be required to pay JPY 35,000 (US$355) for unlimited job listings. Our clients include DeNA, CyberAgent, Amazon Web Services, SalesForce, and Engine Yard.