How 500 Startups is helping these Japanese entrepreneurs get to the next level

Spacee CEO Keisuke Uchida (left) and CFO Takuya Umeda.

“When I first met Keisuke it was at a party with old middle school friends. He was the only one I didn’t know, I was like – who the “f” is this? I thought he was totally weird,” laughs Takuya Umeda, CFO of Spacee.

“No, no, no,” disagrees CEO and founder Keisuke Uchida. “When I first met Takuya, he had long dreadlocks down to his waist. Don’t you think he’s the weird one?”

Friends for 10 years, the two share a warm banter. Takuya’s banking background and Keisuke’s hustle work well for Spacee, which helps companies rent out unused office space. The journey began with Keisuke’s desire to improve education for children around the world.

A volcano and a dream

Keisuke did his dues as a standard businessman in Japan. “It was really repetitive. It was a really boring three years,” he reflects.

He took a year off to travel the world and had a festive time in Mexico, Cuba, and Jamaica. “What I was thinking at the time was happiness and wealth were a balance. If one side gets wealthy, the other side gets sad,” thought Keisuke. “Isn’t there a way for everyone to be happy?”

After his globe trotting, Keisuke continued backpacking around Japan even visiting a tiny active volcano island for three weeks. “It erupted last year. It does that about every 30 years,” he chuckles unphased.

Photo credit: Pixabay.

There were only six elementary school students and two middle school students on the island, recalls Keisuke. It wasn’t poor, but it wasn’t wealthy. Islanders bartered with each other and electricity and gas were expensive. Still, people watched YouTube videos on their flip phones. “I thought if I could upload educational videos to YouTube, it would bring the cost down for those kids,” he says.

When you are born your future is already determined [..] but education can change this.

The model hadn’t really been tested before – those were the days before Khan Academy and online courses. Yet, Keisuke was convinced it could work based off his own experience of taking classes remotely.

“I felt that basically when you are born your future is already determined. Where you come from, your parents, your country, your environment, these all impact your life,” Keisuke thought, “but education can change this.”

After a stint at a web company to learn how to code, Keisuke set off to find a new job to support his education dream.

The power of the sun

A Disneyland ride

Sharing everything