NOW ROOOM Fumio Chiba｜Points for starting a zero-to-one business from a popular serial entrepreneur

It all started with a side job. Until a student who wanted to be a teacher aims to realize "free living" with a real estate startup Is not it. Even if the business you are currently working on is stable, some people may say, "I can't think of new business ideas."

Fumio Chiba of NOW ROOM Co., Ltd. is a serial entrepreneur who has created new businesses one after another and led them to success.

Currently, Mr. Chiba operates NOW ROOM, a monthly rental platform that allows you to easily search and reserve short-term rental properties with furniture and home appliances from apps and websites, and is driving growth. Mr. Okubo of the founder's notebook asked about the career he has walked, which has attracted attention from the business world, and the points of the idea method to succeed in starting a business from zero to one.

Fumio Chiba, Representative Director of NOW ROOM Co., Ltd. Born in 1983 in Kanagawa Prefecture. After graduating from Waseda University, he completed a Postgraduate Diploma at Kings College. In 2009, he was in charge of corporate sales at NTT Europe LTD. London branch. After returning to Japan in 2016, he founded a crowdfunding-type cross-border EC, and in 2018 succeeded in M&A to a listed company. Feeling a problem with how to choose a place to live in Japan, he founded NOW ROOM Co., Ltd. in July of the following year to realize “free living” and assumed the position of CEO. In May 2020, we launched “NOW ROOM”, a rental platform with furniture and home appliances, and achieved the No. 1 number of monthly rentals and rentals with furniture and home appliances nationwide in one year. In June 2021, we will launch “NOW ROOM Biz”, a corporate housing arrangement service for corporations, and are working to solve problems in choosing housing and expand services. Interviewer Sachiyo Okubo Founder's Notebook Co., Ltd. Representative Director A major IT venture officer. After seeing many entrepreneurs, he realized that "the troubles after starting a business are common" and devised the company's guidebook "Founder's Notebook". Current: Established Founding Techo. Successful unique business model. The print edition has a total of 2 million copies, and the number of monthly web visits exceeds 1 million people in the field of entrepreneurship. He is also a member of the standing committee and teaches at universities. He is also a hot topic as a person who created T-shirts every day. Founding Techo Representative Director Yukiyo Okubo's profile is here

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Contents of this article

Business overview of NOW ROOM

Okubo: First, could you tell us about the business overview of NOW ROOM?

Chiba: Yes. NOW ROOM provides a service that allows you to easily search and reserve rental properties with furniture and home appliances such as monthly apartments from the app or website, and complete the contract. It is positioned as a monthly rental platform. In addition, NOW ROOM Biz is a service that mainly introduces corporate customers to regular rentals of one year or longer. Through our unique intermediary system, we are able to offer more properties at lower prices, in greater numbers, and easier to see.

Okubo: I see. I think the demand has fallen due to the corona crisis, but what about that?

Chiba: For us, the host who rents out monthly rentals is in a difficult situation due to the corona crisis, so it is also an opportunity to provide new demand such as temporary housing, remote work, and self-isolation places. became. There is no listing fee on NOW ROOM, and we believe that we were able to provide the owners with an opportunity to capture new demand with low risk. As a result, we were able to get many owners to post, and I think we were able to turn a crisis into an opportunity.

Before COVID-19, demand for monthly rentals had tripled in five years due to lower transportation costs and inbound demand. If that demand returns in the future, we anticipate further tailwinds.

Originally, I was a student who wanted to be a teacher

Okubo: Did you aim to start a business when you were a student?

Chiba: No, my parents were teachers, so I naturally wanted to become a teacher. My undergraduate degree was in the Faculty of Education, so I never thought about starting a business.

Okubo: I see. You were aiming to become a teacher.

Chiba: Yes. Three teachers from elementary school, preparatory school, and university were the ones who influenced me the most. I myself wanted to be a teacher who could not only teach the subject, but also convey real-world experience.

In addition to studying, I wanted to gain a variety of experiences during my school days, so I joined about 20 university circles, and worked as a tutor, cafe, izakaya, convenience store clerk, etc. , I worked 5 jobs and traveled around the world.

Okubo: Didn't you have a chance to come into contact with business at university?

Chiba: My parents weren't very positive about business, so I didn't have many opportunities to be conscious of business.

However, at the time, a friend from another university, who I thought was strange, started a bar in Shinjuku, so I thought it would be an interesting experience. It began. Involving the students around me, I eventually managed to run up to three stores when I was a third-year university student.

Okubo: You went to England for graduate school, right?

Chiba: That's right. I was still aspiring to be a teacher, so I went on to study education at graduate school. I decided to go to graduate school in the UK because I thought I would be able to become a more interesting teacher if I had the option of using English to teach abroad, and if I could teach English in Japan, I would be able to convey my actual overseas experience.

Unsuccessful salesman days at NTT Europe

Okubo: After graduating from graduate school, you got a job at a private company.

Chiba: Yes. I still wanted to teach, but I decided that I wanted to become a teacher after gaining more real-world experience.

Okubo: You also had the feeling of "let's make it interesting" when you got a job.

Chiba: Yes. I wanted to experience something different from other people, so I searched for a job overseas as a new graduate. In terms of job hunting, I used my feet in Europe, but I also traveled around Asia and went to interviews at local companies. It is very difficult to obtain a VISA as a new graduate when it comes to finding a job overseas, but NTT Europe, a company in the UK, sponsored me, and I was able to find a job without any problems.

Okubo: Didn't you aim to start a business at this point?

Chiba: No, but once I experience working in society, I vaguely want to start a business as a teacher or in a related field as a sole proprietorship. Declared. I ate a big eyeball.

Okubo: That's right (laughs).

Chiba: As a company, I think it's only natural for people to say, "We worked hard to get a work visa, but what are you talking about?" I may have said it for the sake of it.

I was really upset because I couldn't get any orders for three months after I joined the company as a sales person. Although it was a Japanese company, most of the workers were foreigners and had a foreign culture. I mean, you're fired. I suddenly went to the verge of being fired.

Okubo: It was hard.

Chiba: I was selling SI and infrastructure to local companies, but they didn't sell at all. While native English salespeople and veteran salespeople were dealing with large orders, they lost their confidence. At that time, I found a news that a certain university was establishing a base in London for the development of a research institute. I thought, "This is it," and was given the opportunity to give a presentation to a certain university professor, and barely decided to accept my first order. After receiving orders from the university, I was able to receive orders from other Japanese companies, and finally became independent as a salesman.

Okubo: It was surprising that Mr. Chiba also had such a period.

Chiba: You have the power to survive, or rather the power to not die (laughs). I always have the strength to hold on at the last minute. Even at that time, I felt like I had more horsepower because I was driven into a corner.

Inspired by an IT entrepreneur of the same generation, he started a side business

Okubo: It feels like you're finally starting to see Mr. Chiba as a business person.

Chiba: When I was a student, I learned that the feeling of working at a restaurant is completely different from being an office worker. However, I made a quick decision, and after working as a company employee for about a year and a half, I thought that I had learned enough as a company employee, and my interest shifted to starting a business.

At the time, me and an older generation of internet entrepreneurs were in the media. I saw them and thought, "What am I doing?" So, I decided to try and see if there was anything I could do by making the most of my strengths in the field.

Okubo: At first, it started as a test.

Chiba: Yes. Using my company salary, I rented an apartment right in front of the company and started a subleasing business. It's a so-called "sublease". We lent it to expatriates of Japanese companies and international students who came to Europe.

Also, around that time, the Lehman Brothers collapsed and the yen was extremely strong. I recently saw retail stores in the UK closing down one after another, so I thought, "It's time for brand-name items to become cheaper," so instead of buying up the retail store's products using the pounds accumulated from subleasing, they made it even cheaper. I bought it and started to create a website for Japan and sell it.

Okubo: So you were running both the real estate business and the export business.

Chiba: Yes. Increase pounds by investing in real estate. Purchase local products with the increased pounds and increase the yen by selling products. Using the increased yen appreciation, rent local real estate and increase the pound. After going through such a cycle, the company grew to the point where, after a year and a half, it was able to purchase a lump sum of real estate equivalent to 550,000 pounds (150 million yen) locally.

It was difficult for me, an immigrant, to borrow or procure money from local financial institutions when starting a business overseas. It was a trigger.

How to start a business from scratch

Okubo: So you went to the beat.

Chiba: That's right. The company was in a debt-free state and was running around, but he said, "The product sales business has a lot of fashion and is easily affected by the economy, so let's get a fixed income by going to the side that provides sales tools instead of being a sales player." I thought.

At the time, "BUYMA", a C to C platform for branded goods, was gaining popularity, and many small and medium-sized enterprises such as "Rakuten" were creating online shops that handle individual imports like individual stores. However, in Europe, logistics services that support such sales players were not yet developed.

Therefore, we started the European version of Tenso Euro, referring to the business called Tenso.com, which is popular in the United States. With shared warehouses in the UK and Italy, applications and procedures can be completed on the web, and even small and medium-sized businesses and individual shops can attach guarantees when shipping, and shipping can be cheap. It is a logistics sharing service.

This kind of service has led to stable sales for companies that receive commissions without taking risks such as purchasing, and it has become possible to entrust the management of the company itself.

I had a vague idea that I would like to live abroad for about five years in Europe and the United States and all over Asia before I turned 30. I went around and lived in various Asian countries.

Okubo: It's like Steve Jobs (laughs).

Chiba: Around 2015, when I was still overseas, I learned that "startups" were gaining momentum in Japan as well. It's a "startup" that raises a large amount of funding, gathers friends, and creates a service that will change the world at once.

Because all the business entities that I have managed so far have been "small businesses", I have never run a so-called "startup". So I thought, "I want to try a 'startup' next time," and returned to Japan.

Until then, it was customary to hold an exhibition when bringing overseas products to Japan. However, it takes time and money to hold an exhibition, so I found a problem that "it is difficult for overseas products to spread in Japan because of the exhibition cost." Therefore, I launched a cross-border EC called “DISCOVER” with the idea of ​​“creating an online exhibition platform” and sold it to a listed company after 1 year and 8 months of cash flow.

Okubo: That's amazing. What should I do to find the seeds of successful businesses one after another like Mr. Chiba?

Chiba: I can't say it well, but I guess it means "history repeats itself". I'm neither a genius type nor a genius type, so it's not a completely new business, but I think it's an image of combining elements well and coming up with ideas.

I don't think the business I've created before founding NOW ROOM has a completely original idea. We are creating with a little ingenuity, such as referring to things overseas and switching online demand from the original.

Okubo: I see. I think that it will be a great hint for the readers.

Chiba: After selling "DISCOVER", I was thinking of doing a "startup" again. At that time, I was living in a situation where I changed my residence depending on the situation, but I felt that the living environment in Japan was not yet convenient enough to flexibly change residences.

On the other hand, overseas there are services like Airbnb that allow people to live freely. I used to use services such as Airbnb overseas, so I was wondering if there was something I could do in this area. This is how we came up with the launch of NOW ROOM.

Problem-free startups are weirder

Okubo: What experiences and know-how from your previous entrepreneurial careers are being used at NOW ROOM?

Chiba: A similar area when I was doing "DISCOVER" was crowdfunding sites such as CAMPFIRE and Makuake. Listed companies and companies with capital policies have capital strength, and it was difficult for the platform business model to penetrate the market.

Since I had that experience, I learned that "if you want to do a platform business, you have to think about capital policy from the beginning and raise funds on a large scale to get users all at once." At NOW ROOM, you are using what you have learned to speedily develop your business.

Okubo: At this point, do you feel that the market has penetrated to a certain extent?

Chiba: No, we are still in the middle of the road, but in the market called NOW ROOM within a year or so, we are beginning to acquire the target users.

NOW ROOM, which is a market within a year, is easy to "acquire properties" in terms of market timing, so we believe that first increasing the number of properties and then acquiring "users" will be the way to win. .

The number of properties has increased, SEO has improved, and the number of “users” has also increased steadily.

On the other hand, NOW ROOM Biz, which has been in the market for more than a year, is acquiring corporate users first while proceeding with business development.

Okubo: NOW ROOM has continued to grow rapidly since its launch in May 2020. What are the key points in managing a rapidly expanding organization?

Chiba: It is to proceed while entrusting each team member with their own specialty. Each person has a lot of discretion, and despite the small number of people, decision-making and business development are progressing quickly.

When a problem arises, it is dealt with immediately, and if there is a sense of incongruity, the team members discuss it repeatedly until they are satisfied with each other.

On the other hand, I think that an organization that does not have problems will be strained somewhere, and if you are doing a startup, you will have problems.

Okubo: Today, we heard a valuable story from Mr. Chiba of NOW ROOM, a rapidly growing monthly rental platform.

In the booklet version of the founding notebook, there are plenty of information related to entrepreneurship that is useful for founders, such as interviews with famous startup managers. It's free, so please feel free to request it.

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(Interview cooperation: Fumio Chiba, CEO of NOW ROOM Co., Ltd.)

If you are thinking of starting a business or becoming independent in the future, please refer to this article as well. Explain the five benefits and procedures for a sole proprietor to become a corporation! What is Entrepreneur Interview Freelance? Explanation of the basic knowledge you want to know as the first step of starting a business Entrepreneur interview Advantages and disadvantages of a side job office worker setting up a company and how to not be found out by the company

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