CEO Ryuta Hamamoto Interview — Part 2: TIMEWELL's Challenge Toward the "Democratization of Challenge"
Many people want to challenge themselves but can't quite take that first step. In this context, we sat down with Ryuta Hamamoto — CEO of TIMEWELL, Inc., a company that holds the vision of "building the world's No. 1 challenge infrastructure" and aims to expand opportunities for people to challenge themselves.
Continuing from Part 1, Part 2 goes deeper into why Hamamoto came to pursue the democratization of challenge, and how he's pushing toward that vision — alongside the work TIMEWELL is doing. We hope that by connecting with Hamamoto's thinking, it becomes the spark for you to take your own new first step.
The Inside Story of Developing TIMEWELL BASE: Democratizing Events The Joys and Challenges Unique to Startups Eastern Philosophy's Wisdom for Pushing Challengers Forward The Future of TIMEWELL Is Built by Your Voice Conclusion
The Inside Story of Developing TIMEWELL BASE: Democratizing Events
— Tell us what prompted the idea for TIMEWELL's latest service, TIMEWELL BASE.
The concept and vision behind TIMEWELL BASE actually goes back to around 2018. At the time, I was working on a white paper on youth innovation for the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and I was thinking that going forward, people would gather around projects rather than the organizations they belonged to. In my own life, I tend to connect with people more through hobbies and interests than through work — and those connections often lead to work. From that experience, I developed the desire to create more spaces where people could connect through shared interests, and that connects to the matching function at the heart of the BASE service.
On top of that, I believe AI agents will spread widely going forward, enabling people to use multiple apps in a seamless, cross-platform way. However, large enterprises tend to resist multi-app integration. So my idea is that BASE, by having mini-app functionality similar to a super-app, could deliver almost the same usage experience as an AI agent. In this way, reading the changes of the era, my desire to create a world where people connect with each other more naturally and events can be run more efficiently led me to the development of BASE.
— Among the services currently in development, are there reasons why the ones you're prioritizing are the ones being adopted?
First, since it's an event app, it has to actually be usable for creating event pages. That's the number one reason. The second is the digital business card function — I've used Prely Card myself at times, but I've always felt it was dangerous for your personal information to keep circulating forever if you lost your card. So I built business card functionality into the phone's wallet, making it possible to exchange contact information even if you forget your card at an event. I also made sure logs remain of which event you met someone at. On Facebook all you know is how many years ago you became friends — you often can't remember where you met them.
On the event creation page AI feature: writing event descriptions when creating events requires mental effort and takes time. I thought it should be possible to use AI to streamline this based on past event information — but having to think up prompts in ChatGPT every time is inefficient. So I built AI directly into the event app.
I've also enriched the customer acquisition features. Specifically, I've used AI to enhance and automate the email distribution function to customers. It's a feature that enriches customer information from data available on the web and generates and delivers individually customized messages. Within that, I'm planning to add the ability to opt out of sending emails to people who seem unlikely to be interested. We're still in beta, but I want to keep delivering emails that genuinely resonate with customers.
Finally, an AI-based event report generation feature is also planned. This came from frequent requests from event organizers. After an event wraps up, there's a desire to share what happened with 1,000 people when only 100 attended — but when you're exhausted, it's tempting to pour a beer and suddenly find a month has gone by. If you can just enter text on the day of the event and have a report generated automatically — so you only need to make edits — that's the idea. That's why I'm prioritizing these features.
Going forward, I also plan to implement features that visualize the engagement scores of event participants and human development program participants, making it possible to extract people who are at high risk of dropping out or those likely to lead the overall program. I want to get to a point where the analysis results are displayed right there in the management interface, so organizers don't have to pore through post-event survey results manually.
— What was the most difficult part of developing BASE?
The hardest thing in development was the selection and concentration of which features to implement first. I always want to cram in all the features immediately — but if I do that, it risks becoming a bento box with a little of everything, and nobody knows what kind of app it is anymore. A clear concept is easier for users to understand. I agonized over this a great deal.
What I'm still wrestling with is what features will get users to use the app heavily and often. To identify features that people will always want to come back to, I know I'll need to keep running experiments and improving the accuracy. Something not turning out the way you imagined it happens quite frequently. Of course, if I were building everything myself it wouldn't happen — but when my thinking and ideas don't fully get communicated, things can come out differently than expected. How to deal with that has become a particular source of stress recently. I want to find a good answer for how to get to a product that matches my vision.
— How do you personally deal with things when you're stuck?
For business development challenges, I think the simplest approach is just to listen to the voices of users. One person's opinion has inherent bias, so I make a point of talking to multiple people. Beyond words alone, I look at the nuances of how people respond when they're talking — trying to figure out which opinions feel most resonant, most likely to land.
Of course, important decisions affecting the business need my real involvement. But for things that don't carry that much risk, I'll sometimes hand them off to the team temporarily and check the results before correcting course.
In the end, there's no one outside of us to show us the way. All I can do is listen sincerely to the voices of users, sometimes go through rounds of trial and error, and pursue the best approach. There are many things to agonize over — but I believe that overcoming them is the driving force that moves the business forward.
— Have there been any positive outcomes from developing BASE?
The fact that we could focus on developing BASE without needing to raise capital — because programming and consulting support were running on a separate axis — was genuinely a relief. Developing applications that are close to social networks involves enormous costs. If we had needed to raise capital, all sorts of challenges would have arisen — like how to handle the CTO's salary.
But being able to move smoothly through development using funds earned through other businesses was a huge help. That said, what gets built often turns out differently from what I imagined. How to deal with that is something I'm currently wrestling with. I want to find a good answer for how to get to a product that matches my vision.
That said, being able to make your own vision the company's vision is one of the unique pleasures of being at a startup. There's no greater joy than being able to move the business forward while reflecting your own thinking and philosophy deeply within it.
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The Joys and Challenges Unique to Startups
— How do you personally feel about the differences between your previous job and TIMEWELL?
My previous employer was a mega-corporation, so everything is different from TIMEWELL. On the positive side: my own vision has become the company's vision. At TIMEWELL, our passion — "building the world's No. 1 challenge infrastructure" — has become the company's core. At a large employer, that would simply not be possible.
Also, the fact that I can pursue all the work I actually want to do is a major difference. In fact, I try not to force myself to take on work I don't want. My stance is to meet customers' requests to the fullest possible extent — but with finite resources, there are inevitably times when you have to pick and choose. My standard for making that choice is whether it's a request made with genuine care.
On the other side, there are realities that come specifically with startups. The starkest: if we don't do sales, the company goes under. At a major corporation, if I alone stopped doing sales, the company wouldn't collapse. With 20,000 or 30,000 employees, someone else picks up the slack.
And the worry about money and people never goes away. I look at the company's bank balance and calculate how long we can keep going at this pace. Cash flow has to keep moving, or the company dies.
On the people side: who you work with shapes the company's culture. In a giant corporation, the culture doesn't easily shift just because one or two strange people join. But in a startup, one wrong person can tilt the company quickly. That's exactly why I'm deliberate about hiring in alignment with our vision and culture. By gathering people with honest hearts and an altruistic spirit, I want to build a healthy culture.
— What do you keep in mind in your contact with employees?
We work fully remote with core-free flex hours. When working online, communication volume tends to drop. If we were in an office, you could see someone's face and immediately notice when they seem tired or struggling with something. Online, that's hard. That's why I make a point of doing regular one-on-ones properly.
I think it's good for both the company and the individual when each employee is performing at their best. To that end, I try to identify what's getting in the way right now. Startups also have the aspect of being an environment where it's easy to focus on one thing. I'm constantly trying to minimize internal coordination work and increase the time spent facing customers directly. That's how things should be as a company — and ensuring that environment is my responsibility.
That said, it's not good to weigh in on every small detail. Give people a degree of autonomy, watch how it goes, and correct course — that's the stance I try to maintain. Hand off the lower-risk parts with confidence. Make up for it with my own full commitment to what matters. I want to achieve both employee growth and company development, with a clear sense of where to push hard and where to ease off.
— What's the biggest thing that drives you at TIMEWELL?
Above everything, it's the ability to give concrete shape to the vision, little by little. The feeling that I'm working toward "building the world's No. 1 challenge infrastructure" — that's when I feel most alive. Especially when we're running programs, I sometimes get to witness the moment when someone's eyes change. When I get to be there for that moment, I feel the work is truly worthwhile.
For example, seeing someone who couldn't use a certain tool suddenly light up when they can, or having someone tell me they gained new skills through a course we provided — feeling each person's growth is an indescribable joy. It's an AI era now. Rather than just doing the same work with the same skills, I believe the way to work going forward is to challenge something new every day. When someone can feel that their knowledge and skills genuinely grew through that process — that's truly wonderful.
Each individual's growth will eventually become a bigger wave — increasing the number of people who challenge themselves, and ultimately moving the world. I envision that future and push forward every day.
Eastern Philosophy's Wisdom for Pushing Challengers Forward
— You support many challengers, and you used the expression "eyes changing" — does that connect to what you talked about in Part 1 about the historical figures?
"The moment eyes change" may be precisely the moment someone has discovered what the Yomei School calls "Ritsumei" — or "establishing one's life's purpose." In Yomei philosophy, "ritsumei" is an important concept. The word "unmei" (fate or destiny) carries a sense of things being left to forces outside oneself. But "ritsumei" is different. It means standing up for your own life with your own will — carving out your own life by your own intention. "Chigyo Goitsu" — the unity of knowledge and action — which is the cornerstone of Yomei philosophy, is the same kind of thinking: once you gain knowledge, put it into practice immediately. Knowing alone is meaningless. I understand it as a teaching about the importance of input and output happening together.
There's also the concept of "Chi Ryochi" — which, put simply, means an honest heart or sound judgment. Specialized knowledge and advanced skills are important, of course, but at the same time, maintaining a pure heart and having the capacity to make ethical judgments is something required of any leader. This wisdom from Eastern thought has relevance in today's business world too. Challenging by your own will, putting what you've learned into practice, and never losing a righteous heart no matter what happens. While learning from the great figures of history, perhaps we modern people should be aspiring to that kind of way of living too.
The Future of TIMEWELL Is Built by Your Voice
— Where do you want to take TIMEWELL going forward?
I want more and more people to use TIMEWELL's latest service, TIMEWELL BASE, and establish our position as a challenge infrastructure company. Even now, I believe we're providing opportunities to challenge to some people. But I still want many more people to experience the full flow: using TIMEWELL BASE to record the history of their challenges, and from there, connecting to the next challenge.
I want to create a world where TIMEWELL BASE — as an event app that supports challengers — gets used by more people, and events become more efficient and more effective, maximizing the wonder of encounters and learnings. That's my current goal.
Of course, just getting people to use it isn't enough. If users share feedback like "this feature would make it so much more useful" or "I'd love to be able to use it this way," I want to feed that directly into the next round of improvements.
Through TIMEWELL BASE, share your thoughts with us. Your voice might change the future of TIMEWELL BASE — and indeed, the future of the world. Let's expand the circle of challenge together.
— Finally, a message to those who have become interested in TIMEWELL or TIMEWELL BASE.
TIMEWELL BASE is still a newborn service. We want to grow together with everyone going forward. If there's something you want to do with it that you currently can't, or a feature you feel would make things much more useful — please tell us.
There may still be many rough edges. But precisely because of that, it's also a chance for your ideas to be reflected in a real and meaningful way.
Your voice creates TIMEWELL's future. Please share what you're thinking with us. Let's build better services and a better world together.
Conclusion
Across Part 1 and Part 2, we delivered this interview with TIMEWELL CEO Ryuta Hamamoto. Driven by the goal of democratizing challenge, and pushing forward on the development of the event app TIMEWELL BASE — behind that vision was a passionate belief, born from foresight that an era of connecting through interests rather than organizational affiliation was coming, and a burning desire to give as many people as possible the spark to challenge themselves.
The struggles and joys of development, the differences from large companies, the support of challengers through the lens of Eastern philosophy — through Hamamoto's words, his sincere dedication and passion for the work come through clearly.
What Hamamoto emphasized at the end was the importance of listening sincerely to the voices of users and feeding that into service improvements. The future of TIMEWELL is built by the voice of each customer.
We invite you to take this opportunity to explore our services starting with TIMEWELL BASE, and to share your thoughts. One word from you might change someone's life.
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Read Part 1 of the Ryuta Hamamoto Interview: "A Philosophy for Living Life to the Full in the 100-Year Era"
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