From TIMEWELL
This is Hamamoto from TIMEWELL.
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From Pharmaceutical MR to Entrepreneur
From pharmaceutical MR to entrepreneur building an SNS-based recruitment support service for medical institutions — Ryota Migitaka's journey has been one of constant trial and error. Through multiple programs and multiple business pivots, his path to where he is today was anything but straight. He shares the turning point that WARP represented, his candid thoughts on entrepreneurship in the age of AI, and a powerful message: "Get out into the field and keep going until someone pays you." We bring you the story of his challenge to change the future of healthcare.
Launched his career as an MR at a pharmaceutical company in 2019. After sales experience in Shizuoka, he moved to headquarters to evaluate and research overseas drug development pipeline candidates. He subsequently participated in Globis MBA, CHANGE, the METI Shido innovator program, and others, experiencing four business pivots. In December 2024, he was selected for Nankai Electric Railway's Japan-first corporate spinout scheme "beyond the Border," and in April 2025 founded a company offering SNS-based recruitment support services for medical institutions. #pharmacist #MBA
Profile:
- From Pharmaceutical MR to Entrepreneur — The Healthcare Challenge That Set a New Course
- Finding the Answer Through Pivots — How WARP Accelerated Business Growth
- "I Have Something I Want to Do" Is Enough — WARP's Exceptional Support System
- Toward a Future Where Healthcare Workers Smile — Migitaka's Field-First Vision
- Summary
From Pharmaceutical MR to Entrepreneur — The Healthcare Challenge That Set a New Course
— Could you tell us about your current work?
Migitaka: I currently run a company called MedX Co., Ltd., which offers recruitment support services using social media. We primarily use Instagram and TikTok to help medical institutions recruit healthcare professionals.
I started my career as an MR at a pharmaceutical company in 2019. After two or three years of sales in Shizuoka, I moved to headquarters, where I evaluated overseas biotech startups and their development pipelines to assess their potential for our company. Then I left the company and founded my SNS recruitment business in April of this year.
— That was a major career shift. What prompted the move to entrepreneurship?
Migitaka: When I was doing sales, I honestly felt my value-add was limited. But I could see that hospitals and medical institutions had a lot of problems. Around that time, I was attending Globis's MBA program — it wasn't so much that I wanted to start a company, but more that I wanted to solve the problems I was seeing around me.
In terms of my connection to Hamamoto-san — that was about four years ago. I participated in a program for corporate challengers called CHANGE. After that, I also joined the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's Shido innovator development program, and through those activities I gradually moved toward actually launching a business.
Finding the Answer Through Pivots — How WARP Accelerated Business Growth
— What led you to join WARP?
Migitaka: I saw an announcement on Hamamoto-san's Facebook. At the time, I didn't know much about AI and had no experience actually building something with it. But I knew AI was going to be essential going forward, and I thought it would be useful to have more foundational knowledge when talking with engineers — to have a common language.
WARP also ran in the evenings, so it wouldn't put too much strain on my current work. And it was free. Those factors made the decision easy.
— What programs have you participated in, and how did your business evolve through them?
Migitaka: In CHANGE, I was working on a referral letter business — a service to digitize the referral letters that clinics send to hospitals. But I discovered that electronic health record companies weren't doing this because it wasn't profitable. So I pivoted.
In the Shido program, I worked on a service for pharmacists. I have a pharmacy background and a pharmacist license, so I thought about building a knowledge-sharing service for chemotherapy drugs — a tool that would let non-specialist pharmacies access the knowledge of specialist pharmacists. I built an MVP and had about ten pharmacists use it, but it turned out they were too busy during the day and only logging in after 8pm, so I concluded it wasn't workable as a business.
After that, I joined MIRAI, a healthcare program run by St. Marianna University School of Medicine, and HATSU, an entrepreneurship support program in Kanagawa Prefecture.
— With so many programs behind you, what path led you to your current business?
Migitaka: It was about two winters ago, during my time with MIRAI. In conversations with hospital administrators, I kept hearing about the cost burden of recruiting agencies — especially for nurses. The demand for pharmacists existed too, but the stronger requests were around nursing staff, and the market size and scale of the challenge pointed clearly toward nurses.
As for my company structure — I'm an entrepreneur through Nankai Electric Railway's "beyond the Border" program, which is Japan's first corporate spinout scheme. I transferred from Tanabe Mitsubishi Pharma to Nankai Electric Railway, and they immediately supported me in founding a company. I was selected in the final screening in December of last year and incorporated in April of this year.
"I Have Something I Want to Do" Is Enough — WARP's Exceptional Support System
— What did you find most valuable about WARP?
Migitaka: The support is genuinely remarkable. Engineers like Naito-san and Ando-san are happy to answer questions on chat, or they'll say "Want to jump on a call?" and set up a quick video session right then.
These are people whose time would be worth tens of thousands of yen per hour, and they give it generously out of a spirit of volunteerism. Programming schools can be very expensive, but with WARP you get high-level support for free.
I was trying to build tools to automatically generate TikTok scripts and auto-evaluate them, but honestly the level was too high for me to finish them. Still, the knowledge and experience I gained in the process was significant.
— Who would you recommend WARP to?
Migitaka: It's especially good for people who want to build something with AI but don't have engineer friends. You don't even need to have your business idea fully formed. Many programs require you to demonstrate strong market potential — "Is this really scalable? Could this become a unicorn?" — but WARP accepts you with something as simple as "I have something I want to do."
I was in the first cohort, so honestly there were parts of the engineering content where I couldn't keep up. Finding time for hands-on work was difficult. But even so, the best outcome for me was the relationships — I made a close connection with an engineer who was a bit younger than me, and we're talking about working on something together in the future.
On the practical side, WARP also helps cover incorporation costs for participants who want to start a company (note: optional, subject to pre-screening). For anyone looking to incorporate, that's a very meaningful benefit.
— Were there knowledge benefits as well?
Migitaka: Learning about tools like Cursor and v0 was huge. Without WARP, I wouldn't have known that Cursor grew in market cap faster than Zoom. Having the experience of building an app through text prompts means that when you decide you want to do something yourself, you're in a completely different position — knowing versus not knowing is worlds apart.
I've lost my resistance to AI — it's no longer something I feel completely unable to do. Whether it's immediately useful in a practical sense, I'd have to be honest and say not entirely yet (laughs), but I feel I've built knowledge that will definitely be necessary in the future.
Toward a Future Where Healthcare Workers Smile — Migitaka's Field-First Vision
— What do you want to do going forward?
Migitaka: My vision is "for healthcare workers to smile." Right now I'm focused on recruitment support, but in the future I want to improve workplace environments and create a world where people can work flexibly.
For example, there are services like Timee where you can earn money in your spare time. There are plenty of nurses who want to work in the field, but the field is short-staffed. In the care sector, a service called Kaiteku already allows for spot-shift working. I want to create that kind of system for the healthcare industry at large.
Using social media as a thread, I want to become someone who can change the healthcare industry with new values that don't rely on existing frameworks.
— Finally, a message for people who are thinking about taking on a challenge.
Migitaka: Looking back at myself — I'm someone who spent two or three years going through programs before actually founding a company. If I could tell my past self anything, it would be: "Just do it." Participating in programs builds connections and in a way gives you a sense of comfort. But that "feeling of doing something" can actually get in the way. That's why I want to encourage people to step out of the program environment and into actual practice.
"Get out into the field and keep going until someone pays you" — don't let yourself get swayed by other people's opinions. Face your customers, and keep pushing until you can provide what they truly need.
Through this interview with Migitaka, it became clear that the road to entrepreneurship is rarely a straight line. Starting as a pharmaceutical MR, going through multiple programs, experiencing multiple pivots — the accumulation of challenges that led to his current business was substantial.
What struck me most was his candid message: "Participating in programs is important, but don't rely on them too much." Even about WARP, which he valued highly as a place to build AI knowledge and expand his network, he gave his most passionate message about the importance of getting results in the real world.
Migitaka continues to challenge the status quo with new approaches to solving healthcare problems. I have every expectation that people like him are exactly who will change the healthcare industry.
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