A new series exploring the journeys of c-suite leaders in Japan.
Kei Shibata built Venture Republic Group from scratch in 2001, creating Japan’s largest online travel metasearch website Travel JP, which now has over 35 million monthly users. We sit down with Kei, now a notable leader in Japan’s travel space, to hear his story as a CEO – everything from his early-day challenges to his outlook on diversity & inclusion and plans for the future.
What was the biggest change for you when you first set up your business?
The amount of responsibility was the biggest change for me coming from a corporate job and into a diverse industry when I stepped into this role. It was pretty much the opposite of being in the corporate world. As an employee, you have some level of responsibility, but it is finite. As a CEO, you are suddenly in the driving seat and in charge of everything. From the business itself to the marketing team, to admin, to shareholder relationships, to finance; everything.
When first starting up, how did you listen to feedback from your employees and make them feel valued to stay working with you?
That's a really good question. To be honest with you, it was so hard back in the beginning, especially trying to hire great talent. We had to move fast you know, which involved having to make a lot of compromises. There's a wide range of talent within organisations, right, so it's a very high standard of deviation. There's no magic formula to be able to actually persuade team members to follow your company. It's really case-by-case, I think. There are always two things I keep in mind when engaging with my employees: one is being honest and approachable, and the second is to be logical. Being honest and approachable shows transparency and enables you to become a trustworthy leader for your team. Being logical is very important since everything I need to explain with my team, such as why we are doing what we are doing, needs to flow logically so everyone understands and can get on board. I believe these elements are very important for SMEs and ventures. You need to keep showing results and progression. When your employees can see this themselves, it puts them at ease and makes them feel comfortable enough to keep going with you. I believe it’s the little day-to-day results and successes accumulated over time that makes my team stay.
How did you manage reporting and communicating immediate success in your first 90 days?
I think reporting and communicating success was much easier than reporting and communicating failures. As a start up, you basically want to communicate success pretty easily, right? If you actually brought some success in the first 90 days of course you know it would definitely be a moment of excitement, right? I think you shouldn’t get too caught up in the excitement from just one success though; it needs to be a continuous process of successes while analysing situations where we can also be improving as well to make successes more regular. I think it’s also important to keep your companies’ goals and missions at the forefront with your employees and actively talk about them regularly for everyone to stay on track.
How did you build trust with your new team?
I believe treating everyone with fairness is the most important thing you can do. Everything you do for your employees has to be based on being fair, which also ties into the logic component I spoke about earlier. If something involving risk or crisis happens, whether it’s stocks crashing or some cultural conflict in the team, as a leader, I believe we can be empathetic but not too emotional; as the captain of the ship, while it is important to be emotionally tuned in with your staff, you cannot let your emotions run in difficult situations. We must bring the conversation back with logic and connect it to the business vision and mission with reason.
Do you have a strategy for mentorship in your business?
We don’t have an official mentoring programme per se, but we do make sure to partner senior hires and junior hires and have them work together on a project, which can foster mentorship-like qualities. Back in the day, when I was working for a large blue-chip company, there were always mentoring programmes; they were a little forced, and I think this is harder to implement with start-ups. I think this way of setting up our teams to work alongside each other is a great way to bring about mentorship organically rather than a cookie-cutter initiative that could have little meaningful impact.
Imagine you meet a manager or director stepping into a c-suite level position for the first time. What is one key piece of advice you would give to them?
Having clear and transparent communication with your team – I believe this is one of the best things you can offer. I remember first starting this business, the leadership team agreed on our basic business model, the company goals and things like that, but there were still so many cultural differences to overcome. Taking the time to sit with each member of the team individually as well as in groups and making sure everything was communicated openly, I believe this paid off and led us in a good direction. Of course, this involved having difficult discussions, and we have had arguments along the way too, but at least they happened and allowed challenges to be voiced, so we were able to come up with solutions to eventually overcome them. Having such communication also helps to foster an open culture within the business where concerns are allowed to be raised and questions are allowed to be asked without fear of being put down; we learned to value each other and build stronger trust.
Are there any specific strategies you do yourself to maintain a good work life balance as a CEO?
Yes. Actually, I have quite a unique opinion on this subject: making a clear boundary between your work life and personal life doesn’t make sense to me. Of course, I like to have some downtime or fun time, but the way I think about life, I think about it as a game. Work is just another game to me, like golf. Enjoying nature is another game. Especially in today’s world, where we have the ability to work from anywhere, I think this also influenced my view of not drawing a clear boundary between work and personal life; I often get some of my most creative moments and imaginative ideas when I am not at my desk, instead they come when I’m taking a shower, going for a run, hiking or snowboarding in a national park up in the mountains. I make an effort to be able to work from anywhere and put myself in settings which help me to be more creative and not necessarily forced to work in the same office space all the time, which can lead to the opposite. I can connect with my team anywhere by jumping on a call on Zoom or Teams so my office is where I want to make it on any given day, in Japan, overseas— regardless of location basically.
What do you think are the qualities a CEO needs to successfully lead a business into the future?
I'll say two things here that may sound opposite: being resilient and being flexible. You prepare for the many changes in today’s world, especially in areas like technology, right? AI, for example. Everybody is talking about it now and believe it will still bring enormous impact to organisations. In the end, as a leader, you do want to embrace change and implement what you can into your organisation to enhance it for the better. And then, you also have to face things like the pandemic we have just come through, in other words, things that are completely unpredictable. For this, being flexible is crucial and finding a plan B where you only saw plan A before and could not even imagine that you would need an alternative. So, I would put being prepared for unexpected crisis and disaster at the top of your list and equipping your team to be able to prepare for and tackle such situations when they arise.
What does a typical day for you as CEO look like?
This is related to what I mentioned earlier about not having my work and personal life as clear separate entities. I often work from vacation homes, so you can say I am enjoying a kind of “bleisure lifestyle” (bleisure: a blend of business & leisure). For example, I am going to work from Nagano this coming weekend, where we are currently building a mountain house.
I love nature and waking up to the sound of the birds singing while brewing my own coffee; I always start my day off with a good cup of coffee! Another routine thing I always do while I enjoy my coffee is to keep up with the latest news, both industry news from the travel industry I work in and current affair news of what is happening both in Japan and around the world, so I am up to date with the latest trends. Usually, this is followed by a few online meetings with my team and clients.
But working from anywhere, this allows me to fill in more personal things between meetings like going out for a run, going to the gym, or having lunch or dinner with my family and friends. Having this more flexible working style allows me to weave my personal life around my work life rather than having them rigidly separated in two.
We have heard that up to 90% of start-ups fail in the first couple of years. You have now been in business for more than 20 years. What are some of the key reasons for your success?
There are many elements involved, but the bottom line is simple: are we actually making revenue or not. We have been able to stay in business so long because we have been fortunate enough to keep making revenue. Back when I was in business school in the States and took a class on entrepreneurial management, one of the core elements we were taught as a leader of a start-up business is that the first thing you must do is sales, the second thing: sales and the third: sales – basically generating revenue is your bread and butter. Unfortunately, some start-ups just run of money because they are not making revenue and accumulate mass debt.
I would also say that nowadays fundraising is also gaining popularity among start-ups and has seen some success. Back when I first started my business, there weren’t as many fundraising options as there are today; now, you can be very creative by launching fundraising campaigns to generate revenue.
What efforts has your organisation made for creating a diverse & inclusive workforce and work environment?
Our situation is quite different from, let’s say, a large corporation, and being diverse & inclusive is at the very core of who we are as a business. We always focus on hiring talent based on their skill alone, regardless of their gender, race or background. Looking back over 20 years in business, we actually employed more female than male talent simply because they proved to be better equipped to do the job. As we provide a service for the travel industry across international destinations, we naturally employ people from all over the world. To give an example, our office in Singapore has a management team coming from five different countries. We have teams of writers and editors who work for more than 100 country destinations worldwide and usually they live in the local market or from the local market they are writing for. At present, we are currently strongest in the APAC region but are planning to strengthen our business for destinations in Europe & North America, so we are looking to hire writers and editors in those regions as well.
Kei Shibata is a travel & technology entrepreneur based in Singapore and Tokyo with 20+ years of experience. He led his company to an IPO, a MBO, two exits and one acquisition.
As a founding CEO, Kei runs Venture Republic Group, which owns a group of online travel businesses across Asia, including "TRAVEL.jp", Japan’s largest travel metasearch & travel guide media, “TRAVEL jp for Business”, a chat based corporate travel management service in Japan, and “Trip101”, a Singapore-based global online travel guide media that curates the world’s best short-term rentals, accommodations and destinations.
He received the "WiT Hall of Fame" award in 2019, which honours individuals who have had the greatest influence on the progress and professionalism of the digital travel industry in Asia Pacific.
He is an angel investor in the travel & technology space and serves as a board of director for various startups including BeMyGuest, Singapore, a Harvard MBA and chairman of Keio University's alumni association for startup founders/CEOs and an avid Nordic cross country & alpine skier/snowboarder. He loves jazz, coffee and working from vacation homes.
