Winning When Everyone Tells You to Quit – Yuki Ito

Over the last 25 years, both Zest and Yuki Ito have been through several different incarnations. Interestingly, these incarnations perfectly mirror the changes we have seen in Japan’s startup scene in that time. Today Zest makes cloud-based, field-service software, which is used to dispatch expensive resources for complex jobs, but they started out years ago as a software outsourcer when that was almost the only option for a small technology startup. We talk about Zest's products and plans, of course, but Yuki’s own story of becoming a programer when Japanese girls simply did not do that kind of thing, and how she grew her business even in a time when Japanese women simply did not make sales calls, is an amazing one. It’s a great conversation with an incredibly resilient entrepreneur, and I think you’ll enjoy it.