The Japan Times had the privilege of welcoming William Hiroyuki Saito, a special advisor to the Cabinet Office on cybersecurity to a lecture held at The Japan Times' Nifco Hall on March 13.

Having entered the University of California, Riverside, at the age of 16, he later incorporated I/O Software with high school classmate Tas Dienes before graduating from the UCLA School of Medicine. He became a medical doctor to fulfill his parents' expectations, but quit on the first day at work, firmly determined to continue 44-employee-strong venture software business. He jokes that he could always restart as a doctor if his business failed, but his company went on to become a leader in biometrics and information security, and his technologies are found in fingerprint recognition and contactless IC cards are used around the world today.

After selling his company to Microsoft at the age of 33, he had his first free time since he had launched his business as a teenager. He could have retired then and actually tried to do nothing but relax in Hawaii only to end up bored. That was when he decided to come to Japan, his parents' home country, to start a venture capital firm. "It was the major Japanese companies that supported my startup with jobs when I was still a teenager. I felt I owed Japan and wanted to give something back, especially to the next generation here," he said.