Here's a folk tale for the digital era.
Our hero is a quiet, unassuming young man named Kazutomo Robert Hori. Robert is plugged into the future. As president and CEO of Cybird, a Japanese company that calls itself as a "one-stop" shop for people looking for mobile content and management, he has to be.
Robert was a first mover. Once upon a time he had a Web company (1994, to be precise), well before the Net took off in Japan. It was "an AOL-like" concern that put contents on the Net. Unfortunately, the Net back then was a scary place -- a lot like the deep dark woods -- and those who attempted to traverse it faced two problems along the way. First, the Net was uncharted territory, virtually unknown in Japan (and most everywhere, for that matter), so the market was pretty small. Second, it was impossible to get money from the few people who were Net-savvy. Micropayment schemes were a good idea, but nothing more than a gleam in a savant's eye.
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