Shunsaku Sagami — A game-changing billionaire

If life is a game, Shunsaku Sagami is a winner. The 35-year-old founderGründer(in)founder and CEO of the mergerFusion, Zusammenschlussmergers-and-acquisitionErwerb, Kaufacquisitions brokerageVermittlungbrokerage M&A Research Institute, Sagami became Japan’s youngest self-made billionaireMilliardär(in)billionaire, in 2023, when his shareAnteil, Beteiligungshare of the company rose to more than $1 billionMilliarde(n)billion in value. He says his business skills come, in part, from playing the game of Mahjong, which is similar to rummyRommérummy. “Reading a situation, the give and take — they’re skills that are transferable to running a company,” he told Forbes. 

Mahjong may have taught him about business, but Sagami was inspired to start a company by his grandfather, who upon retirement, in his 80s, had to close his property business in Osaka because he had no successorNachfolger(in)successor. Now, through his company, Sagami helps other ageing entrepreneurUnternehmer(in)entrepreneurs by using AI to find buyers for their companies.

Just do it until you nail it

Sagami told Bloomberg his grandfather gave him the desire to save companies from disappearing and to be successful in business himself. “I always listened to my grandfather tell me stories about how to be successful as an entrepreneur when I was a boy. He told me, ‘Let’s say you have a lottery ticket with a one per cent but sure chance of winning. Even if you fail 99 times, you’ll win it in your 100th go. Just do it until you nail sth. (ifml.)etw. schaffen, perfekt hinkriegennail it.’” 

At Kobe University, Sagami studied biology and agriculture, and taught himself computer coding. Later, he worked as a designer, software developer and marketing officer. He thought it would be important for a business leader to be familiar with many different aspects of a company.

In 2016, Sagami had his first success — starting a women’s fashion media company called Alpaca. He sold the business a year later to the public-relations agency Vector for around ¥950 million (€5 million). The sale taught him how lengthylangwieriglengthy and inefficient mergers and acquisitions (M&A) can be, inspiring him to develop an algorithm that would streamline sth.etw. optimieren, rationalisierenstreamline the process.

Solving a huge social issueThema, Problemissue 

That algorithm became the basis of M&A Research Institute, which Sagami found sth.etw. gründenfounded in 2018 and take sth. publicetw. an die Börse bringentook public in 2022. It has become one of Japan’s top M&A firms serving small and medium-sized enterpriseskleine und mittelständische Unternehmensmall and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) — more than 3.36 million SMEs in Japan account for sth.etw. ausmachenaccount for over 99 per cent of all businesses and about 70 per cent of total employment.

Japan has the world’s oldest population, and many of the country’s business owners are now in their 70s, and it’s estimated that about half of the SMEs have no clear successor. If they all closed down, it would put millions of jobs and trillionBillion(en)trillions of yen at risk. This is a serious danger for Japan’s economy and society, but Sagami is determined to find a sustainablenachhaltigsustainable solution through technology.