Yoshihisa Yamada, at 44 a holder of an MBA from Harvard, quit his job as president of Rakuten Travel Inc. and established Neyn, a handmade doughnut shop in Tokyo's Akasaka district last month.
After graduating from the University of Tokyo, he landed a job at the prestigious Industrial Bank of Japan, which later merged with other banks to become today's Mizuho Bank. He moved on to Goldman Sachs Japan Holdings and then to online shopping operator Rakuten Inc. to work in its M&A section before taking the helm of Rakuten Travel.
People may wonder why he abandoned his lucrative career just to open a small doughnut shop. But to Yamada, it was a perfectly rational decision.