At 22, he dropped out of a top Japanese university and got his startup acquired

In Japan, a single test can decide your life. Get into a great school and your career path is set.
Even the entrance exams to kindergarten are fiercely competitive. “I just wanted to be a sound engineer,” says Takuya Moriguchi, who attended one of the top private universities in Japan.

Altr Think’s founder and CEO, Takuya Moriguchi.

While still in college, Takuya founded a music label for fun with his friend in the hope of honing his sound engineering skills. The label gained a few artists, but it was this one time collaboration with his brother, combining music with images, that sparked something in Takuya.

Takuya saw that while CD sales were declining, live concert ticket sales were going up and believed that there would be a big change in the way that music was consumed.

Takuya never imagined starting his own company. He just liked music and wanted a new way to produce it. He began thinking about a sound-based geolocation app where people could tag sounds and music in places around the globe.

“I was stubborn and I didn’t know anything,” reflects Takuya. After taking his idea around to friends looking for feedback he had a chance encounter with a famous entrepreneur who told him to just do it.

Takuya started his new company Altr Think and called an old high school classmate whom he knew could program. Soon he exhausted his savings and was about to throw in the towel. His co-founder, however, suggested taking the idea to Movida Japan, a seed acceleration program in Tokyo.

Investors were interested in his company and it closed a round of seed funding while adding a few members. The team still did not have a designer, so Takuya began to learn photoshop. Almost every hour outside of school was spent in a shared office.

Fallout with co-founder

Progress was slow and Takuya was still learning design. He says: “Things were buggy, the user interface was crappy, and we couldn’t even do user tests.”

The app was so unstable that every time they tried to do a user test it would crash. Without a way to get useable feedback, the team wavered. Takuya felt the product vision was not clear enough and wanted to pivot. His co-founder disagreed.

Things escalated when Takuya’s co-founder fell off the radar and didn’t show up for an investor meeting with Taizo Son, the brother of SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son. Over a week later, on his Facebook feed, his co-founder’s profile had been updated, “No longer working at Altr Think.”

Shocked, Takuya kept trying to make contact. The co-founder had lost motivation and didn’t agree with the pivot. “I’m done,” he told Takuya, “and I am holding on to the stock.”

A short while later, another member left the team and Takuya was alone. Thinking back now, Takuya says he used to blame his co-founder but now feels he himself didn’t do a good job handling their relationship.

Takuya strongly recommends vesting contracts between founders and setting up mutual expectations. Poor company structure in the beginning can create a huge headache later.

Throwing up a prayer

Dropping out

Acqui-hired

Money, money, money