| Representative |
Shinji Aikawa
While still in high school, he won a manga award from Weekly Shonen Jump. After graduating, he joined TYC Corporation, a company that develops business systems. In 2019, he founded BooQs, Inc., and developed DiQt, a "dictionary and vocabulary app that helps you remember" to solve the problems of learning and forgetting English vocabulary that he became keenly aware of while struggling with English technical documents as an engineer. He has released a web version, mobile app version, and Chrome extension version. He is nominated for the "Generation Award" in the InoVation program sponsored by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in 2022. |
| Main Achievements |
2023: Participate in the ICT Startup League
2023: Selected for the Microsoft for StartUp Program
2022: Nominated for the Innovention Program "Generation Award" |
| Childhood Dream |
When I was in junior high school, I uploaded a video to Nico Nico Douga and viewers drew fan art of my work. This inspired me to start drawing pictures myself and for a while I aspired to be a manga artist. |
| Influential People, Things, and Events |
People:
"The CEO's father", "Yamada Noboru, former CEO of SRL Inc.", "Kikawa Yoshiaki, Director of Hanno Geriatric Center", "Sadojima Yohei, CEO of CORK Inc.", "Friends of independent developers", "Friends of CEOs"
Things:
"Yazawa Eikichi's "The Rise to Power", Fukuzawa Yukichi's "Encouragement of Learning", Yamada Noboru's "How to Grow the Plant Called a Company", Kusunoki Ken's "Likes and Dislikes, Management and the Psychology of Influence", Robert Cialdini's "Influence: The Psychology of Influence", Daniel Kahneman's "Things, Fast and Slow" "Naseeb Taleb's 'Best of Your Money'" "The World Tree"
Things:
"I was by myself when my grandfather passed away. I learned that no matter how you live, what you build, or who you are, in the end, it will end in an unreasonable and unwanted death, not dramatic or romantic. I realized that what is important in life is to be prepared for unreasonable and miserable destruction, and to walk a path that allows you to be prepared, one that will not cause you regret or feel self-pity, even if it means dying miserably halfway through." |
| Motivation, Goals, and Ideal World |
There are several reasons why I started my own business.
One of them was the folklorist Kunio Yanagita.
When Yanagita, who dreamed of becoming a poet, learned of the terrible state of agriculture in his own country, he criticized himself as a "dilettante," gave up his path as a poet, and joined the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce to save Japan's rural areas.
When I learned this, I, like Yanagita, criticized myself and asked myself, "Is it really okay to write fiction when Japan is in such a difficult situation?" and, although it may be presumptuous, I wanted to contribute in some way to break the terrible state of Japan's IT industry.
On the other hand, there are positive reasons.
Before I started my own business, I was writing fantasy works that combined magic and computer science, and in the process, I became very interested in the field of software, and in order to gain a deeper understanding of this magical technology, I began to learn programming.
Programming was a very enjoyable experience for me, and I began to want to create my own works using this technology.
At the same time, I was also studying psychology in preparation for writing my work, and in the process, I learned that scientific findings about memory and learning, such as the "testing effect" and "variance effect," were largely unknown to the public, and that as a result many people study inefficiently.
So I decided to develop an app that would enable psychologically effective learning, and so I developed and released a learning app called BooQs, the precursor to the current DiQt, and founded BooQs Inc.
My goal is to be of some use to Japan and the world. |
