Kenji Kasahara is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of “mixi” , the most popular social networking service in Japan.

Inspired by the case studies of IT business he studied in one of his university seminars on management strategy, and by the rapid rise of Internet business in Silicon Valley, USA, Kasahara started up an online job information site, “Find Job !” , in 1997.

The former company name of was “eMercury” and was incorporated in June, 1999. The social networking service, “mixi”, was launched five years later in February, 2004.

The company name was changed from eMercury Inc. to mixi, Inc. in February, 2006, and mixi, Inc. was first listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers market in September 2006. The number of “mixi” montly log-in users has surpassed 15 million (as of July 2011) and still continues to grow.

Kasahara graduated Tokyo University, from the Department of Economics.

Will be speaking at:

How Japanese Corporations can ride the Globalization Wave