This is Hamamoto from TIMEWELL.
Yuta Bando grew up reading Jump. He wanted to be a manga artist. He chose a corporate career instead — but spent every subsequent year finding ways to stay connected to manga, anime, and creative content. His path from telecom company employee to spinout founder carries practical lessons for anyone trying to build a business around something they genuinely love.
Profile: Graduated from Kobe University Faculty of Business Administration, joined a major telecom company. Gained broad experience in sales, HR, and office management. Started a creator side business while employed. Participated in multiple internal and external entrepreneurship programs while refining his business idea. Founded CrestLab as an internal startup, then spun out. Now building services aimed at becoming essential infrastructure for the anime industry.
From Manga Artist Dreams to Telecom
— Tell us what you're working on.
Bando: I joined the telecom company after university and went through sales, administrative work, office management, and HR. While working in HR recruiting, I felt a strong pull toward building something myself — and I started entering internal new business competitions.
— You won one of those competitions. What was the idea?
Bando: I proposed a service that addressed challenges manga artists face, and won. Alongside my main job, I'd been doing creator work as a side business — I started posting my own manga around ten years ago, when digital drawing tools were becoming widely available. The real reason I joined a telecom company in the first place was that they had a digital publishing division. I always wanted to work in content.
— Why manga specifically?
Bando: I grew up reading Jump and wanted to become a manga artist. I couldn't make the leap professionally straight out of school, so I took the corporate path — but I never stopped. Side projects, company contests, always finding some connection back to manga and content. The pull was just always there.
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Sharpening the Idea Through Programs
— You went through several programs before winning the internal competition. What was that process?
Bando: I was participating in CHANGE — the challenger support program run by Hamamoto at the time — alongside the internal competition. I'd already tried and failed a few times at company contests. I figured that refining the idea through CHANGE would help me break through.
— Did it?
Bando: I made it to the final selection and presented at DEMO DAY. Beyond improving the business concept, it trained my presentation skills in a way I hadn't expected. And that carried directly into the internal competition result.
— What were you working on concretely during the program?
Bando: Mainly just grinding on the idea — how do you solve the income problems and working conditions that manga artists face? Going through that from multiple angles produced a lot of clarity.
— Balancing CHANGE with your main job sounds demanding.
Bando: Honestly, yes. I actually passed on applying to the "Shido Next Innovator" innovator training program twice, partly because I was feeling the strain of managing the corporate job alongside everything else. But the learning and the sense of achievement from that period were genuinely significant. Having a creator's perspective built into my approach to service development became a real differentiator.
WARP: Building the Technical Skills to Ship
— You later joined the WARP development program. What brought you there?
Bando: I'm not an engineer. I wanted to develop an engineering perspective — to understand how things get built. WARP taught me V0, Cursor, and Git. Being a complete beginner, it was genuinely hard. At one point I met an engineer who was going to be building products alongside me, and I briefly thought — maybe I don't need to learn to write code myself after all. I nearly dropped out. But I pushed through to completion.
— Did what you learned actually get used?
Bando: After WARP ended, I had to build the company website myself — I wanted my co-founding engineer to stay focused on product development, so I took on the corporate site. Almost everything was new territory, but the foundation from WARP meant I could figure out what I needed without starting from zero. I shipped it.
WARP also covers business fundamentals alongside the technical side — you can get advice on strategy, and there are experienced people you can ask about incorporation and registration. That combination makes it particularly useful for someone building a startup, not just learning to code.
— What would you say is WARP's main value?
Bando: The curriculum is genuinely designed for non-engineers. They start from the very beginning and go at a pace where someone without a technical background can actually complete it. That's rare. And the business coverage means it's not just a coding class — it's oriented toward people who are building something.
— Who specifically would you recommend it to?
Bando: Anyone who's interested in starting something but doesn't have engineering confidence. I came from the humanities, zero coding background. I got functional skills from zero. And if you have a specific idea you want to build, WARP is probably the best place to learn how to do that.
The Mission: Infrastructure for the Anime Industry
— Where is the business headed?
Bando: Right now I'm focused on building services for anime production companies and animation studios. The long-term goal is to become infrastructure the anime industry can't function without — providing tools that help creators maximize their creative output and contribute to the industry's development.
— A final message for people considering starting something?
Bando: "Challenge" can sound intimidating. But starting from "this seems interesting, let me try it" is the right level of intensity. Entering a startup support program carries very little risk. Think of it as lightweight. And start with a small step toward what you want to do — you'll find you're capable of more than you think.
Founding a company is something I arrived at naturally, not something I decided to do as a grand act of will. I was always just trying to be involved in manga and content. Following that eventually led here. If you pursue what you want in a relaxed way rather than treating every step as a major test of character, the path tends to reveal itself.
Summary
Yuta Bando's story is a useful model for anyone who has a deep passion for a creative domain and is trying to figure out how to build a career around it. The path was not direct: a major company, side work, competitions, programs, a spinout. But the thread connecting all of it was consistent — the content he loved, and the people building it.
The WARP program played a specific practical role in that path: giving a non-engineer enough technical capability to ship a real product independently, while also providing the business context that makes those skills useful for someone building a company.
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