Chapter 01
Bitlink andReserve Link
What I want to convey most in this article is Yamamoto-san's values and way of thinking, but before that, I would like to first introduce the company that Yamamoto-san founded. By learning about what Yamamoto-san was like at the time of the company's founding, the company's philosophy, and the type of business he has been involved in, I think you will be able to feel closer to the values and way of thinking that I will talk about later.
The beginning of a company is not about what you do, but who you do it with
Yamamoto first launched his company on January 4, 2000, when he was 31 years old. Yamamoto, who had the know-how as a software engineer, and Asai, who had already started his own business in the advertising and planning industry at that time, thought, "It would be interesting to try doing some business together," and started Bitlink, Ltd.
The place where the company was founded. The carpenter who built Yamamoto's house rented a storage space for materials at a low price.
Mr. Yamamoto and Mr. Asai. I visited Mr. Asai's company to report that I had graduated from Reserve Link. They are both 51 years old, 20 years after the company was founded.
It wasn't that they had "this is what I want to do" from the beginning, but rather that they both thought "I can do something with this person!", so from the time they started talking about starting a business to the time they actually launched the company, it was a six-month period in which the two of them would get together and drink canned coffee, thinking about what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it, believing in their own potential, letting their imaginations run wild, and talking about their dreams. "I really enjoyed the time we spent together during this strategy meeting," Yamamoto recalled.
Starting with a free paper, the main focus shifts to system development
When they started the company, the Internet was still in its infancy and very few companies had their own websites, so Yamamoto and his team decided to make website production their main business. To achieve this, they first created a portal site that introduced local websites and a free paper that was a print version of that site. Using these as a starting point, they would go out and cold-call every day asking people if they wanted to make a website for themselves. It was around this time that they experienced the thrill of selling a product they had designed with their own efforts.
Bitlink's office when it was first established. The cathode ray tube display gives a sense of the era. This was a time when the internet was still paid for as you went along.
However, soon competitors appeared and the differentiation factor disappeared, so considering the future of the business, they decided to shift their main business from website production to web system development. It was in 2001 that they received a call from the local chamber of commerce. They asked them to turn a corporate information magazine for university and high school students looking for jobs into a website starting that year.
However, for a website, you have to ask a contractor each time to update information such as job information and company news, which changes every year. If you put a database on the back, store the information there, and create a web system that dynamically generates a page every time you access it, you won't have to ask a contractor every time. Why don't you try to create such a system? He counter-proposed and received the order. This track record became the starting point for more work on web system development.
"At the time, Perl was the mainstream language, so I studied it, and Horiemon, as an engineer at the time, wrote a technical guidebook for Perl, so I read it often. At my first company, I was using C language, but I was able to master it with all my might, and I remember that I was able to bounce back in a short time, even though I had a seven-year hiatus after that. When I gave up on the path to being an engineer, I never thought there was any chance of me coming back, but the work I did seriously during the period when my ability to absorb information was high stayed with me (Yamamoto)."
One year after its founding, Bitlink changed from a website production company to a web system development company.
BitLink: Individual Cooperation
"The image is something like this. There are good-hearted and capable individuals (bits) scattered around, and the company in the middle connects (links) them to each other. It's not a pyramidal organization bound by hierarchical relationships and team frameworks, but rather respects individuals and gives them discretion, allowing them to work as much as they want, whenever and wherever. If a company is full of people like that, it's bound to be fun." (Yamamoto)
BitLink's logo. Bits (individuals) come together to form a heart.
When we asked about the origin of the company name Bitlink, we received the following answer:
2011.07 Don't be shy! What needs to be said, say it to the right person.
First move: A multi-tenant building in Mishima-cho, Hamamatsu City
Although the two of them started the company, they didn't think from the beginning, "Okay! Let's hire more people and create an organization!". They kept hiring people one by one as the business grew, thinking, "Let's hire a woman to do general affairs because the amount of clerical work is increasing, we need a server engineer because we're doing rental server business, we need maintenance for contract development, so we need more engineers..." and so on. They said that it gradually became more like an organization as the business expanded. They decided to move to a multi-tenant building in the second year after opening because they couldn't hire people in the original office, which was a storage yard for materials.
As we steadily worked on creating websites and developing web systems for local companies, the company had grown to the point where it would come up first in Google and Yahoo searches for "web system development". In 2005, we moved for the second time. At the time, we had only about eight people, but this time we moved to one of the city's leading office buildings, within walking distance of JR Hamamatsu Station. We also considered moving to Act Tower, the symbolic tower of Hamamatsu Station, the highest building in the city, but since all employees commute by car, we decided to move a little further away from the station so that we could have a parking lot close to the office. Our Hamamatsu office is still in this location as of 2021.
Management based on the assumption that people are good is based on trust
Second relocation. Current Hamamatsu branch office
Yamamoto has several management philosophies, one of which is "management based on the assumption that people are fundamentally evil." While the world and business are said to be based on the assumption that people are fundamentally evil, Yamamoto believes that "at least within the company, I want human relationships to be based on the assumption that people are fundamentally evil." Yamamoto's idea of management based on the assumption that people are fundamentally evil is to first trust the other person, leave it to them, and then just watch over them.
When Yamamoto gave a presentation at an English conversation school in Canada about his company's employee benefits program called "Filial Piety Day" (a system that covers the cost of dining and travel with parents within a set amount), some people commented, "Is the only way to settle the bill the presentation of receipts? Don't they even check receipts for dates?" Yamamoto's response of "Just Belive!" surprised everyone. This made an even bigger impact, especially in the Western, managerial-style corporate management where the assumption that people are fundamentally evil is a given.
2016.03 Sincerity and Honesty
"Trust can be converted into money, right? If you had trust, you wouldn't need it, but if you don't, there's a cost. If a group is based on trust from the start, that cost can be spent elsewhere. People won't betray you if you trust them first. At least, I want to believe that this is true within the company and with the members I have handpicked. Society is based on the theory that humans are evil, but within a family, we believe that humans are good, right? I wanted to create a company where this theory was true at least within the company. Not surveillance and control, but trust and delegation. That way people can concentrate fully on their work, which leads to better results, and ultimately it should benefit the company as a whole." (Yamamoto)
Bitlink's company brochure from 2005. In keeping with their philosophy of valuing "honesty," the brochure is stylishly designed to allow the "honesty" of the company to be seen through both people and products.
The first system in Japan to specialize in reservation management
For the first few years after Bitlink was founded, contract development was the core of the business, but in 2008, inspired by trends of the times and customer needs, four products (ChoiceEC, ChoiceRESERVE, ChoiceSP, ChoiceSNS) were born as in-house services. It took three engineers about two years to release them, which is quite fast. Of the four products released in rapid succession, ChoiceRESERVE was the only one that had a different market response from the
ChoiceRESERVE product introduction screen from that time
It all started after a few years of contract development. We had the opportunity to develop online reservation systems on a contract basis, such as a reservation system for a local hair salon, reservation management for a hotel chain, and facility reservations for a bass fishing spot, but because the reservation targets and flows were completely different, we had no choice but to develop from scratch each time. One day, we suddenly realized that we could package the system by standardizing the common parts that are not dependent on the industry or business type, and dividing the different parts into several patterns. It was an idea that we could only come to because we had experience working on a variety of projects on a contract basis (Yamamoto)..
The impetus for developing the product was that there were virtually no cross-industry reservation
"But I'm sure there were a few people out there who were thinking about a reservation management system at that time. Even if they could come up with the idea, only a few people would actually take action. There's a big difference between just thinking about it and just saying it, and actually doing it. I don't want to regret not doing it." (Yamamoto)
2009.11 Decide on the spot! Act on the spot!
This slogan was used during the time when the company was at its most dynamic, around the time we released four products, including ChoiceRESERVE. You can really feel the company's momentum just from the words.
The birth of the reservation company, ReserveLink
When Reserve Link was founded, its headquarters was located in the building called "Lattice Aoyama." It was a stylish, fully renovated old building that was a hot topic in the construction industry.
In 2010, 10 years after BitLink was founded, Yamamoto established ReserveLink Inc. to develop a business specializing in reservation management systems. Two years earlier, in 2008, he had opened the BitLink Tokyo office in Jimbocho, Chiyoda Ward, in search of business opportunities, but ReserveLink was registered in Minami-Aoyama, a business district with a tranquil environment. At the time, the company had about 20 employees.
"At the time, our company didn't have the financial means to move into this building. But the person in charge at Mitsubishi Estate was so sincere in dealing with such a small company that I decided to go for it. And the moment I saw the address, I decided. The number was 1-1-1. My birthday is November 1st. It just seemed like a good fit," Yamamoto said.
In the 10 years since then, many other competing reservation management systems have appeared. However, thanks to our origins as a system integrator for web system development, our accumulated know-how and technical capabilities in reservation management, and our stance based on the philosophy of building deep and long-lasting relationships with customers in good faith, we have become a pioneer in the reservation management system industry, and have worked with many customers of all sizes and industries, from large companies to local shops, financial institutions, educational institutions, and local governments.
The current Aoyama headquarters office.
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