Aki enjoys working with visionary entrepreneurs in frontier tech. He is also passionate about WiL’s empowerment efforts to bring WiL’s corporate partners’ organizational and corporate cultures more in line with Silicon Valley’s ethos. Through his facilitation of Silicon Valley Bootcamp and coaching to the corporate executives, he has deepened his. relationships with corporate executives which are influential in opening up business development opportunities between corporations and startup companies.. Aki’s career began in Tokyo where he worked in construction. In his free time, he taught himself computer programming which led to an engineering position with a software company. In 2003 he joined Digital Garage, and in 2008 he moved to the Bay Area to launch its US operations. Through Digital Garage’s investment, he joined Twitter International team where he was instrumental in the company’s expansion to Japan. Soon after he became a head of Digital Garage’s investment arm, resulting in investments in Udemy and Intercom.
