Introducing Fredrik Simonsson

It’s with great pleasure that we introduce our newest Ginza Hub member, software development engineer Fredrik Simonsson.

Fredrik is a Scandinavian engineer who has worked with several major research & development companies in the mobile and semiconductor industry, like Nokia, Reneas, and Sony Mobile.

The company that he works for, Fingerprint Cards, is a high-tech, listed company which develops, produces and markets biometric technology that verifies a person’s identity via their unique fingerprint. The company’s sensors are present in some of the major flagship models on the market, like Google Nexus, Sony Xperia and Xiaomi mi5. Fredrik is the local technical support for Japanese customers in Japan.

He says, “I’m very excited to be part of a growing business in a vibrant community.”

Introducing Tia Haygood

It’s with great pleasure that we introduce our newest Ginza Hub member, photographer Tia Haygood.

Tia is an American photographer born and raised in North Carolina who’s been living in Japan for over four years. Photography was an isolated hobby for Tia until she came to Japan and marvelled at its many treasures and cultures. Now TopTia Photography assists artists and businesses, both from Japan and from abroad, who are hoping to grow here and beyond. Tia’s goal is to provide excellent photos that promote brands and businesses to others in their respective professional fields.

We’re helping Tia with her mission by providing our conference & event room for her to use as a photographic studio.

Tia says, “I’m happy to be joining Ginza Hub and look forward to adding my services to this growing family.”

The Pivot (Part 1)

For years I’ve been coaching people on the tools and strategies needed to succeed in business. And I’ve been pretty much doing it for free, but today that has to stop.

You see, over the past 15 years or so I’ve founded or bought, then built and sold, several successful offline and online businesses, such as Zeros And Ones Japan Limited and Qhub.com, so I know a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t work for startups. And I think I’ve been pretty good about sharing what I’ve learned in an effort to help entrepreneurs find the successes I’ve enjoyed while avoiding the failures I’ve endured. But I’m increasingly finding that helping people out pro bono is eating into the time I should be spending on my customers who are paying me. That is, my Ginza Hub monthly members.

So, I’ll humbly and happily continue to offer my knowledge, experience and technical expertise to Ginza Hub members free of charge. Forever. But for non-Ginza Hub members, I’ll be charging an hourly rate for all in-person business consulting or Virtual Assistance.

Now, I don’t expect people to suddenly start throwing money at me, but I do expect some people to see the value of becoming a Ginza Hub member, and I also expect some others to see that I no longer work for free and kindly stop asking for free advice. There will, I hope, also be some who see that they will probably only get one shot at building a successful business, and invest in the expert guidance that Ginza Hub members currently enjoy.

In a way, this is a bit of a career pivot for me, because for the past couple of years I’ve been quite happy to mostly just be “the guy who makes the coffee” at GHub. Then again, this isn’t half as big as my other pivot that’s coming up later this month. So stay tuned for Part 2! 🙂

To see how I can help you build the kind of efficient, effective, profitable business that I’ve been building for years, check out my other post at the link here.

– Robert

P.S. Please also check out “The Pivot (Part 2)” at my sister site if you want to know why this post is Part 1 of 2.

More coffee!

Today we added a second coffee machine to Ginza Hub to double our output of caffeinated goodness for our members and visitors!

This also means that if one coffee machine breaks down or otherwise goes offline, which occasionally happens, there is now another machine to back it up. So we’ve doubled our output and halved our risk of upsetting our coffee lovers.

Introducing Mazyad Alabduljalil

It’s with great pleasure that we introduce our newest and youngest Ginza Hub member, game programmer .

After deciding to leave his home country of Kuwait 4 years ago, Maz worked in various cities around the world in software programming as an intern, a developer, a contractor, and also independently. He loves to experiment and try new things, and his latest project is a company called Level3, which he plans to start and build at Ginza Hub! He then aims to work on building casual games for the mobile industry, and slowly growing a team of professionals here in Tokyo.

We’ve already helped Maz get started by introducing him to our visa lawyer, Mr. Nishioka, and by translating for him so that there were no misunderstandings.

Maz says, “Exciting times, around exciting people, in a very exciting city!”

Ginza Hub Hanami Party 2016

We had great fun at the Ginza Hub hanami party under the cherry blossoms yesterday! Thank you so much to all the members and guests who joined us! 🙂