Treasure Data Inc. co-founders Yusei Yoshikawa and Kazuki Ota have been appointed as advisors to Lazuli Inc.
Press Release
Lazuli Inc., which develops AI-powered cloud-based product master SaaS (Headquarters: Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director: Seigen Hagiwara; hereinafter ‘Lazuli’), is pleased to announce that Mr. Yusei Yoshikawa (co-founder/former CEO of Treasure Data Inc.) and Mr. Kazuki Ota (co-founder/former CTO of Treasure Data Inc.) have been appointed as advisors to the company.
At Lazuli, we leverage AI (machine learning) and the cloud to develop and provide SaaS that allows anyone involved in business to use product information from around the world. We are pleased to announce that Mr. Yusei Yoshikawa (former CEO) and Mr. Kazuki Ota (former CTO), co-founders of Treasure Data Inc., the leading company in the rapidly growing CDP (Customer Data Platform) market and currently both directors of the company, have been appointed as advisors to our company.
We will make the most of the management and technical experience and skills that Mr. Yoshikawa and Mr. Ota, who co-founded Treasure Data Inc. in Silicon Valley in the United States and grew it into a leading B2B SaaS company, bring to Lazuli, to expand our business, stabilize our management foundation, and accelerate our growth.
■Comment from Yusei Yoshikawa
For a company to succeed, people, things, and money must come together at the right time, and this trinity brings in luck, leading to future growth. Of that ‘luck,’ the biggest factor that startups cannot control themselves is market timing. There is no shortage of examples where the underlying technologies are in place, but the market is not yet asking for them, or where needs have emerged but technology and product development cannot keep up.
Through my experience at Treasure Data, I was convinced that the steady improvement of data quality is essential to the success of the various data projects carried out by enterprise companies. On the other hand, the product market for providing high-quality data in a specialized and stable manner by industry was still underdeveloped, except for examples such as ad technology.
Lazuli is a company that will break through this situation. I see this as a rare opportunity to create a new product category in response to well-timed market needs. I am very grateful for the opportunity to help support the growth of a company built by an experienced and high-quality founding team led by Mr. Hagiwara, together with Ota, with whom I built Treasure Data.
■Comment from Kazuki Ota
At Treasure Data, we provide a CDP (Customer Data Platform) that links ‘customer’ data scattered across customers’ systems. What becomes necessary after integrating customer data is the ‘product master,’ but most customers managed it manually and the data quality was low.
Product master management requires technologies such as natural language processing and disambiguation, making it a highly challenging technical area. However, with recent advances in machine learning technology and the knowledge and experience that Mr. Hagiwara brings, I believe we have reached a stage where we can provide a higher-level solution.
I hope to contribute to Lazuli's growth by leveraging the know-how I gained from building, from scratch, a subscription business exceeding 10 billion yen together with Yoshikawa, the founder of Treasure Data, Inc.
■Comment from our CEO/CTO, Hagiwara
It is a great pleasure for Lazuli to have Mr. Yoshikawa and Mr. Ota join us as advisors. I am convinced that it is highly meaningful for us to be able to draw up and execute a strategy for Lazuli with a view to the global market, while absorbing the insights of both men—how Japanese founders can achieve global business expansion, and how they have won in global competition from scratch rather than expanding existing businesses.
We have been talking regularly, and through hearing their real stories of both success and failure in relation to the challenges we face, I feel our thinking and strategy are being refined. They are unparalleled advisors for improving the odds of success and the growth trajectory of a startup, and I am proud that both of them have also taken an interest in Lazuli.
Together with them, we hope to further evolve Lazuli and our services.
■Biography of Yusei Yoshikawa
Born in 1978.
From 2001, while attending Waseda University, he worked at Red Hat in the United States, an open-source software company.
2007: Worked at Mitsui & Co.'s venture capital fund, and moved to the United States in 2009.
2011: In Silicon Valley, he co-founded Treasure Data, Inc. with Kazuki Ota and Sadayuki Furuhashi, and subsequently served as CEO. Treasure Data, Inc. raised a total of $54M from prominent VCs in Japan and the US across three institutional investor rounds, becoming a leader in the big data and CDP (Customer Data Platform) markets.
2018: Arm Ltd. of the UK acquired Treasure Data, Inc. for approximately $600 million (according to Bloomberg), after which he served as General Manager of the company's Vice President, Data Business Unit.
Currently: Board director, Treasure Data, Inc.
■Biography of Kazuki Ota
Born in 1985. Completed a master's program at the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo.
2006: While still an undergraduate, he joined Preferred Infrastructure Inc. (Preferred Infrastructure), a company focused on developing natural language processing and search engines, and became Chief Technology Officer.
2011: Founded Treasure Data, Inc. in Silicon Valley, U.S., and launched its Customer Data Platform (CDP) service. Led the company's expansion as CTO.
After the acquisition by Arm in 2018, he served as VP of Technology in its Data Business Unit.
Currently: Board director, Treasure Data, Inc.
■Company Overview
Company Name Lazuli Inc.
Representative Representative Director Seigen Hagiwara
URL https://corporate.lazuli.ninja/
Established July 22, 2020
Location 2-1-13-1003 Koishikawa, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo
Business Description Development and provision of cloud-based product master SaaS