Mogic considers

Welcome to Hell

It's strange because a week ago it was hot and sweltering, but today it's chilly and my mood will soon change.

When sanma (mackerel) is served for dinner and pears and grapes are in the mouth, it is no longer just autumn.

When this happens, Mogic's annual last spurt until the end of the year begins.

We will be making an original calendar for next year, developing a New Year's greeting card application for the new year, and preparing events to commemorate the founding of the company.

We call the process "hell" in our internal terminology.

The deadline was approaching, but the project was not finalized until two weeks remained, or it was not well made, and the project was ruined, and we had to start all over again.

What I always hear in the review sessions is, "Let's finish with more time to spare next time," but I have never seen that happen.

I am sure that many will try to go to hell again this year.

You don't know yourself best.

I was interested in statistical data on the body, so I looked into immunology and bacteria, which seemed to have a large amount of data.

Then, as I read the papers and books, it seems that only 40% of the intestinal flora and about 20% of the oral cavity is known to begin with, and I am sure that completely new findings will emerge in the future due to its compatibility with computer analysis.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
'Gut bacteria' determines healthy life expectancy
https://www.shueisha-int.co.jp/publish/%E3%80%8C%E8%85%B8%E5%86%85%E7%B4%B0%E8%8F%8C%E3%80%8D%E3%81%8C%E5%81%A5%E5%BA%B7%E5%AF%BF% e5%91%bd%e3%82%92%e6%b1%ba%e3%82%81%e3%82%8b

Thus, as the study of the gut progressed in the 20th century, it came to be said that the gut is a second brain.

The power of human thinking does not reside only in the brain; the intestines were also important organs with the power to think.

omission (of middle part of a text)

Then, in the 21st century, "molecular biological methods" were applied to the study of intestinal bacteria.

By "molecular biological methods," I mean, in essence, DNA analysis. In other words, genetic analysis of intestinal bacteria is now possible.

As a result, it has become possible to identify the types of intestinal bacteria in poop in great detail, and it has been considered that there are at least 500 species in the intestines these days, perhaps as many as 1,000.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

This is exactly what I mean when I say that I don't know myself best. I would like to accumulate and analyze data on "changes in thinking" someday.

Outside the box

There is an English expression, Outside the box (let's use our imagination).

I am not a native speaker, so I am not sure of the exact nuance, but I find it an interesting expression and am open to interpretation.

When someone says, "I'm bored. When someone says, "I'm bored... I'm looking for something interesting to do," they are probably already in the box.

Looking around from inside the box, there are walls all over, above, below, to the right and left.

And because the walls are always familiar, I am also bored with them.

Because we cannot see beyond the walls, our thinking never extends outside the box.

But what if there were magic glasses that allowed you to see outside the walls?

In fact, you may find that the sea is spreading.

Then you could make a magic fishing rod and slip a line outside the box.

If we can't create a magic fishing pole, we can still have hope beyond the wall.

If we can Outside the box in such a way, "new meaning" will be born, and it will become a vitality for life.

The wall here is just one example, and the wall itself can be replaced by "future", "self", "partner", etc.

Boxes appear here and there in everyday life, so it would be nice to be able to see through them a little bit.

Obon vacation and a rare look back

I rarely look back on past events, but since it was the Bon vacation, I was unusually looking back at the events that have taken place since the company was established.

There are about 12 years worth of logs, so it took me about an hour just to look at them.

My impression after reading the book is that there were many more accidents, troubles and shocks than I expected.

If we include those that are not recorded, the number is likely to be quite large, so there is never a time when management is completely uneventful.

Even if nothing happens today, something could suddenly become a problem tomorrow.

However, I believe that I have been able to make it to this day because I have had more joys and happinesses than shocks, so it is important to accumulate the years properly first.

Strangely enough, there are also many things that happened that were shocking at the time, but in hindsight seem like good things.

Of course, the opposite is also true: I enjoyed it when I started, but I had to stop halfway through because it became too painful.

I'm going to look back on it during the occasional long vacation, as I don't seem to understand the overall implications until about three years have passed.

Inconvenience likely to be created in 5 or 10 years

Recently, I have often been asked for advice on starting up a business, so I was thinking back to the time when I created Mogic.

I think it would definitely be easier now as an environment to start a business.

At that time, there were no shared offices, no coworking spaces, no crowdsourcing, no crowdfunding, no back-office crowd tools.

Of course, there were no blogs or communities for entrepreneurship as there are now.

Strangely enough, however, it is not as if it is easier to develop a business now that the environment is more conducive.

After all, "solving inconvenience and dissatisfaction" is at the core of business, so it can be said that the convenient environment has already been solved.

And if people are aiming for the same field, they will be competing with the same increased speed.

If you were to start a new business in this more convenient environment, what would you do?

As in the past, I feel that we can only anticipate the inconveniences and dissatisfactions that may arise in the next 5 or 10 years due to our convenient environment.

Products are released, services are nurtured.

Mogic has a project called MicroTech, in which young people release a small product every six months or so.

Right now we are struggling to come up with something perfect for the summer holidays. In the process of trial and error, we came to the conclusion that products and services are different.

Mogic defines a product as something that reaches its peak in about one month after release, and a service as something that continues to grow from the time of release.

Since the preparation time and thinking time are completely different, we decide from the beginning that we will release this as a product and that we will create this as a service.

Products are created starting from a single idea or technology, and since you only need to look at it from one perspective, it is rather easy to create.

In the case of a service, we examine the appropriateness from all perspectives, including the idea, technologies to be combined, design direction, market timing, other companies' movements, statistical data analysis, service scalability estimation, personnel hiring, team development, finance and cash flow, marketing and branding, etc. It is a painstaking process.

And if the timing is not right, even the best plan will eventually fail to grow, so we reject it.

Once a service is started, it is difficult to stop, so we have to be brave and stop first.

Furthermore, the biggest challenge is how to develop the personnel to nurture the service.

It would be easier if we could just hire someone from the outside to create the service, but that is not possible.

In the end, I hope that while building a lot of our own products, we will be able to give them feedback and save our strength for the service we will provide someday.

Combining Branding and Marketing

Branding and marketing are two business terms that are often casually uttered.

Surprisingly, it is a peculiar thing whose definition and use cannot be explained well.

It is hard to convey because it is not something you can pick up or see, but Mogic explains it as follows.

Branding: showing what you want to show and not showing what you don't need to show

Marketing: something that is placed casually in the recipient's lead line.

A clear example of branding is a theme park, which is designed so that the apartments and other living spaces are not visible in order to preserve the world view.

Marketing is the gum next to the checkout counter at the supermarket. It's the part that you hold onto while waiting for the cashier and think, well, I'll buy it.

That said, the two are not relative and should be blended well.

In the case of a theme park, the marketing should use branding to create a world view, and the merchandise section should be located near the entrance and exit.

And since both terms are ongoing ing, we need to think about how to capture the "changing feeling over time".

A story about not finding what you want to do

In talking with many interns, I often encounter the problem of "I haven't found what I want to do in the future yet" or "There are too many things I want to do and I can't decide what I want to do.

I don't think there is any need to rush into anything, so I just commented that I hope it will be decided soon.

I was once asked about this by a well-known job-hunting instructor.

Then he said, "From my experience, 90% of people don't know what they want to do. That is normal," he said.

I felt like this situation was similar to something that, in retrospect, could be traced back to "people who want to start their own businesses".

I want to start a business but haven't found what I want to do," "There are too many businesses I want to do and I can't decide," "I want to start a business someday but I don't know when.

The bottom line is that it is quite difficult to pick something and choose to focus on it when there is a high degree of discretionary freedom.

If the only way out is to find a job, and if you have to choose between 10 different companies, it may be simpler.

If you only have three business models and the only way to start a business now is to start a business, it may be easier to make a decision.

If we assume that we are free to choose both timing and direction, the next moment we begin to struggle with the focus itself.

Therefore, if we dare to think that our life choices are limited, we may naturally be able to reduce the amount of effort we need to focus on them.