This post is a transcript of Zero Topic Podcast episode #148, "The COO Person Is Here" (originally published March 30, 2021), featuring guest Fukushima Kozo — COO at Raksul. It was one of the most popular episodes we've done.

For me, this conversation functioned as a kind of public mentoring session — an enormous source of learning. We covered topics from managing BizDev across different domains to how executives think about separating governance from execution. This is Part 1 of a two-part series.

Speakers:

  • Fukushima Kozo (Managing Director & COO, Raksul) — "Fukushima" below
  • Yamoto Masatake (Founder/CEO, 10X) — "Yamoto" below

Intro

Yamoto: Today we have Raksul COO Fukushima Kozo-san. Thank you so much for coming.

Fukushima: Thank you! I've been looking forward to this.

Yamoto: Truly an honor. You're someone I almost feel embarrassed to be hosting.

Fukushima: Not at all. (laughs)

Yamoto: "BizDev? That means Fukushima Kozo." There's that kind of reputation, right?

Fukushima: Honestly, it's a set of practices we started building about two and a half to three years ago, and it's only recently that they've really spread. Three years ago nobody was talking about this. But seeing it permeate is really gratifying.

Yamoto: The non-Product-Led-Growth model — what you might call "total combat" BizDev, using every lever to grow a business — feels like it's been growing more naturally as a model lately.

In that sense, having you here as a pioneer is incredibly valuable. Can you give a brief three-minute intro?

Twenty Years in Startups, Starting with Dennotai

1:11~

Fukushima: I'm Fukushima Kozo.

Looking back through the lens of startups and business development: in my student days, around 2000 right before the IT bubble, I was aspiring to be an entrepreneur. At that time, I was working part-time as a Java programmer at Dennotai — the company founded by Kawabe-san, who now leads Yahoo Japan / Z Holdings. That was probably my first step into startups.

After about a year and a half as a programmer there, the IT bubble burst. Dennotai was acquired by Yahoo. During that period, I was also taken to Silicon Valley on a trip organized by Kasahara-san of mixi. Those early-stage startup experiences — the raw energy and dynamism of being there — were formative.

Then in 2015, I joined Raksul. They were about 30 people and ¥3B in revenue at the time — roughly post-exit stage compared to Dennotai. Now we're at ¥30B revenue and 300 people. In five or six years, a literal 10x.

Raksul's characteristic: we started with printing (= Raksul brand), then expanded to advertising (= Novacel), logistics (= Hacobell), and now packaging materials (= Danboruwan). Building out a portfolio of about four businesses is the distinctive thing.

Those twenty years of startup experience — watching each business go from zero to ¥10B, ¥20B in the printing business — is the time axis and business specificity perspective I hope to share today.

Yamoto: That's a great setup. The Dennotai part was completely new to me. (laughs)

Fukushima: In my student days I was aiming to be an entrepreneur, but that wasn't common then — each university had maybe one entrepreneurship circle. The president of ours happened to be Kawabe-san.

I joined when I enrolled, and he offered me a part-time job at Dennotai to "get a feel for things." The office was in Ebisu at the time, and everyone was sleeping on sleeping bags. I didn't contribute much, but being in that environment — watching the people there go on to do remarkable things — gave me an early taste of that kind of growth and dynamism.

Yamoto: Looking at your career summary — IT consulting, then strategy consulting, then Raksul — the startup connection wasn't visible at all. So the startup roots were actually in the most raw, early-stage experiences.

Fukushima: Right. I was heading for entrepreneurship, joined Dennotai, went to Silicon Valley, and was ready to go — then the IT bubble burst and all the entrepreneurs around me disappeared. (laughs)

Meanwhile Dennotai got acquired by Yahoo. I saw that world too — startups getting absorbed by established players. When I was in Silicon Valley, I had a session with Cisco's Strategy Head, who explained that Cisco's strategy was to incorporate emerging startups into their portfolio.

In Japan's startup ecosystem, the default narrative had been "build something to a trillion yen all by yourself" — one-way. But watching this, I started thinking: a system where the baton gets passed between phases — a real ecosystem — might actually be the right model. So I've been exploring different phases and trying to understand startups from the established-company side, across these twenty years.

Raksul's Three-Phase Growth

6:06~

Yamoto: That story connects so well to what Raksul is doing today. Let's come back to it later.

Right away — I went and read everything you've published before today. There was a great passage in a recent article from HERP ("COO Work Principles") from last year: "Raksul has progressed through three phases." COO Work Principles: Raksul's Fukushima Kozo — The COO as Builder of an Unfinished World Heritage Site - HERP LAB.

Can you walk us through those three phases?

Fukushima: Yes. Roughly speaking:

Phase 1: PMF (Product-Market Fit). This is the stage of figuring out whether there's a real market for what you're building. At Raksul, we were offering a marketplace for printing, helping SMBs print business cards, flyers, etc. The early hypothesis was: if we aggregate print demand, we can reduce unit costs by better utilizing idle printing capacity at print shops. Phase 1 was about validating whether that market actually existed.

Phase 2: Growth. Once you've confirmed PMF, you shift to scaling. For Raksul, this was building out the printing marketplace — acquiring users, improving quality, expanding supply.

Phase 3: BizDev / New Business. With a proven core business, you start leveraging it to build adjacent businesses. For Raksul, this was using the printing network to enter advertising and logistics.

Yamoto: And where are you now?

Fukushima: We're in Phase 3, while also managing the maturation of Phase 2 (printing is now a large, stable business). The challenge in Phase 3 is that each new business starts its own Phase 1 — but you're running them in parallel while maintaining Phase 2. That's what makes the COO role at this stage particularly complex.

Yamoto: The "why the COO role specifically" question — you've written about this. The separation between governance and execution?

Fukushima: Yes. As businesses scale, the CEO should increasingly be thinking ahead — identifying the next opportunity, doing long-horizon thinking. The COO role exists to maximize execution of the current priorities. If the CEO is spending 80% of time on execution, that's a problem — there's no one looking at the horizon.

At Raksul, the split is roughly: CEO Matsumoto focuses on strategy, long-term bets, investor relationships, and things only a founder can do. I handle execution across the portfolio. But the line isn't rigid — it's a question of where each person's leverage is highest.

Yamoto: That's exactly what I'm thinking about for 10X. The timing question — when does it make sense to hire for a COO type role?

Fukushima: The signal to watch for: are you, as CEO, consistently finding yourself pulled from strategic thinking into operational firefighting? If you're solving coordination problems that someone else should own, you've lost leverage.

The other signal is phase transition anxiety. Every time a business moves from one phase to the next, there's enormous anxiety — "is this actually working?" "should we push harder or pivot?" — and that anxiety can paralyze the CEO. Having someone who holds the execution thread means the CEO can absorb that anxiety constructively rather than reactively.

Yamoto: You've talked about short-term vs. long-term thinking as a necessary condition for discontinuous growth. Can you say more?

Fukushima: Here's the way I think about it: short-term execution and long-term vision are both necessary, but they're in tension. A company that only optimizes for now loses the capability to change. A company that only thinks long-term can't sustain itself.

The resolution isn't balance — it's sequence. You need to be exceptional at execution in the short term to earn the trust and resources to invest in long-term bets. The question is always: what is the right proportion right now given the business phase?

At Raksul's early stage, it was almost all execution. Now, with printing stable, a larger share of senior bandwidth can go to building the next thing. But even now, execution discipline in the core business creates the credibility for new ventures.

Yamoto: One last topic — OKRs. How do you use them to bridge the execution/vision gap?

Fukushima: OKRs are a communication tool more than a measurement tool. The process of setting them forces alignment: "what does success actually look like?" "what are we willing to sacrifice?" "what's not the priority?" Those conversations are the value. The numbers are the artifact.

What I try to avoid: OKRs that are set by one person and handed down. The goal-setting process needs to involve the people doing the work. Otherwise you get OKRs that are technically achievable but miss what actually matters.

Yamoto: This has been incredible. Thank you so much.

Fukushima: My pleasure. Let's continue in Part 2.