LaunchStarz Inc.

Co-founder & Co-CEO of LaunchStarz (Pronounced ローンチスターズ in Japanese), a start-up training platform for Asian Entrepreneurs with an initial focus on Japan. The goal of LaunchStarz is to create a startup ecosystem that will help nurture, support and train passionate Japanese entrepreneurs launch their startups in the US.

Co-Founder & Co-CEO

Zumper

Senior Director, Sales & Marketing

Expanded my region to manage the entire West Sales team -  Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho and New Mexico

Regional Sales Director West Region

Zumper is the largest rental marketplace in North America with more than 178 million visits per year. We are disrupting the real estate industry by making renting fast, more human and as easy as booking a hotel room.

 • Manage a team of Regional Account Executives in the Pacific Southwest Region - Southern California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico

• Provide hands-on mentorship and guidance to each Regional Account Executive on effective sales methodologies from discovery, qualification of leads, assessment of buyer profiles, deal closure and contract renewals. 

• Coach sellers to achieve assigned metrics of cold calls, sales presentations, pipeline creation, and quota attainment. Recruit, hire, train, develop, and retain sellers by using creative incentives and a team-focused approach

• Work with peers in sales management and departments like sales ops, sales enablement, or customer success to build best practices and process efficiencies

Regional Sales Director Pacific South

Agoda

Agoda is one of the world’s largest online travel accommodation platforms. Founded in 2005 and now part of Booking Holdings (Nasdaq:BKNG), Agoda has a network of over 2,000,000 vacation rentals and hotels worldwide. Our web and mobile products provide a first-rate reservation service in 38 languages that uniquely combines local knowledge and local connections to provide the best deals for business and leisure travelers. 

 • Manage a team of 3 Area Managers and 9 Market Managers for the Pacific South Region, which includes California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. 
 
• Provide guidance and leadership, to ensure the successful account management of Agoda’s major accommodation partners with a focus on Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Anaheim. Lead and facilitate training, best practices and knowledge share for the entire Account Management team in the West. 
 
• Develop and execute new initiatives and experiments by coordinating with the Senior Leadership Team on strategic planning and International objectives. 
 
• Secure global distribution agreements, roll-out operations for new projects and ensure price competitiveness and product consistency.

• Executive Sponsor for Agoda Together, Agoda's Life group (ERG) for promoting, educating and spreading cultural diversity and awareness.

Associate Director Pacific South

Japan Crate

** Aquired by BOKKSU ** Japan Crate is the leading subscription box company for all things Japan. Our company was founded in 2014 with the mission to share the excitement of Japan through candy. Since then, we've grown to a worldwide brand, with offices in both Tokyo, Osaka and Los Angeles, and expanded to offer five unique crates. Our recent partnerships include pro skater Tony Hawk, Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia,  Cardcaptor Sakura, Pac-Man, Fruits Basket and Katamari.

• Managed teams in the Los Angeles office, Tokyo office and Osaka Warehouse. In charge of running all day to day business, managing the P&L, creating new business partnerships and continued to increase revenue YoY. 

•  Innovating and creating new business ideas such as a newly launched subscription crate and created a new revenue channel by selling our products to major retail chains in the U.S.

•  Managed all departments with hands on experience and guidance in building out young teams in the Marketing, Customer Support, Human Resources, Operations, Design and Curation Departments. 

• Established structure and processes in a fast growing start-up by implementing company principles, workflows, data analysis to help drive the company to the next level of a medium sized, profitable company. 

• Extensive experience in hiring, training, motivating, setting KPIs, financial budgeting / analysis and instilling core leadership principles in a fast growing company.

Amazon

Amazon Prime Now Restaurants is one of Amazon’s latest innovations, enabling Amazon customers to order meals from the best restaurants in North America from their Amazon Prime accounts. Since the launch in major cities in North America, Amazon Restaurants is expanding in the US and also the UK.

• Successfully launched Amazon Restaurants in the East Bay Area (Oakland & Berkeley). Worked closely with cross functional teams under tight deadlines in a fast paced, entrepreneurial work environment to hit all our launch goals. Created and maintained a robust sales pipeline focusing on hyper local and targeted restaurant selections for our customers for launch and post launch.

• Responsible for increasing the number of daily orders in the East Bay Area by growing the selection of restaurants in our partner network and increasing customer engagement through local marketing initiatives. Analyzed weekly sales/metric data to help evolve market strategy, exceed region health targets and lead the overall direction of the business in the metro.

• Cultivated relationships with restaurant owners to help increase order revenue. Grew the total orders in Oakland week over week since launch. Responsible for owning, creating and executing local marketing initiatives.

City Manager (General Manager), Amazon Prime Now Restaurants

Jive Software

• Senior Consultant and configuration expert working directly with Fortune 500 companies in all major sectors to implement solutions for their external and internal Jive Social Business Platforms. 

• Facilitated consulting engagements with customers both onsite and remotely and helped them troubleshoot specific issues while ensuring that they achieved their desired business goals. Managed high profile customers to ensure they continued using Jive.

• Worked on complex issues where analysis of situations or data required an in-depth evaluation of variable factors and also a clear understanding of the overall goals of the client.

• Initiated new business development and client acquisition in the APAC region with a major focus on the Japanese market. Actively participated in sales and scoping calls with potential clients by providing technical expertise and previous knowledge and experience from successfully launching Groupon’s first Social Business Collaboration platform.

Senior Business Consultant

Groupon

• Managed and led the International implementation of Groupon's first enterprise wide Social Business and Engagement Community based on the Jive Software platform (Social Collaboration for Social Business). 

• Continuing to grow the platform by increasing user participation and engagement in all departments on a global scale. Managing HR and Communication leads in 47 International Groupon offices. 

• Cross functional collaboration with the Engineering, Product, Communications, Human Resources, Customer Support, Finance and Internal Tools teams in North America, EMEA and APAC.
  
• Create, curate and report user engagement analytic reports for all countries on a weekly and monthly basis. Manage and direct a team of 40 International community enterprise managers to ensure they hit their monthly and quarterly KPI's and continue to increase their local user engagement.

• Hold global workshops, visit International offices to provide training, work with Senior Executives and department heads to gather support for our platform and increase the number of advocates and experts in the Groupon social business community.

Senior Project Manager (Global Social Business)

• Managed a team of 10 travel sales staff across Japan. Responsible for hitting weekly sales targets and growing the travel business. 

• Reported weekly numbers to the APAC head office and implemented new sales strategies and business plans for the local market. Consistently achieved the weekly travel sales target and helped to re-design a new travel team structure. 

• Traveled to various cities throughout Japan to acquire new business partners for travel and Premium deals.

Travel Director

Corporate Planning & Strategy / Groupon Premium 

• Worked closely with the CEO, President and Board Members through reporting daily operations, International KPIs, bridging communications with the U.S. head office and effectively implementing new business strategies. 

• Responsible for Business Development, International business opportunities, and introducing new mandates from the United States and Germany.  

• Worked with the City Planning, Risk Management, Finance and Sales Operations Departments. Daily communications with all International Groupon offices as well as participated in International knowledge share calls and meetings. 

• Designed and implemented the very first system for International product and travel deals for Groupon Japan.

Groupon Premium

• Led the implementation and sales of a new black label service called Groupon Premium (Groupon Reserve in the U.S.). 

• Managed and trained a specialized team of 3 Premium Sales Representatives. Acquired the very first Premium restaurants and hotels to run deals with Groupon Premium in Japan.  Presented new products and ideas to Executives in top class restaurants and hotels.

• Worked closely with luxury brand hotels, spas and Michelin restaurants to produce top quality deals for Premium Groupon users. Facilitating the growth and expansion of Groupon Premium in the APAC region and sharing best practices with International offices.

Corporate Planning Manager & Groupon Premium Sales Director

LIFEmee Inc.

• Co-Founder of LIFEmee.com, a life logging service that allows users to document all aspects related to their lives. This service allows users keep a more private record of their life by helping them choose the right balance between their private and social life. 

• Finalists at TechCrunch 50 in San Francisco in September 2009. 

• Invited as a guest to the DLD (Digital Life Design) event in Munich, Germany in January 2010. 

• LIFEmee was a case study and final project for the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business students in 2010. The USC MBA team flew to Tokyo to present their findings to us in person.

• Responsible for management over the programming staff, translation (Japanese – English), sales, media promotion and human resources. The main representative and speaker for LIFEmee at all International and public events.

Co-Founder

Alpha-Do Inc.

• Responsible for coordinating shipments of file folders, Japanese washi (paper), menus, chopsticks, stainless steel furniture and ceramic floor tiles from Southeast Asian countries to Japan.  

• Managed printing orders and translation works. Translation works are mainly in the restaurant field where we translate from Japanese to English.

• Key customers include NTT Communications, Pronto Café, Illy's Espressamente (Suntory Group), Fuji Electric Retail Systems, Lawson's Convenience stores, Rex Holdings Co. (Gyu Kaku, Oniyasai and Doma Doma), and Monterossa Group (Shirokiya Izakayas). 

• Responsible for sourcing new business throughout Southeast Asia and North America. Mainly to find new products to import into Japan and also taking Japanese clients on factory visits.

International Trade Consulting Manager

Alpha-Do English School

• Founded and managed a small English school of over 100 students in downtown Tokyo. 

• Operated and taught at the English school with my business partner. Worked diligently to grow our student numbers and well as keep our current students satisfied. 

• Responsible for teaching and all management duties related to the English field. Daily duties include teaching English, counseling students, student renewals, customer service as well as sales and paperwork. 

• The school was closed in 2006 due to the increase of new import/export projects and business in the trading department of Alpha-Do Inc. and also my business partner leaving to pursue an MBA. After the closing the school I focused all my energy on the import/export business.

Founder and Owner

Co-Founder / Co-CEO of LaunchStarz, a startup training company for Asian entrepreneurs with an initial focus on Japan. 20 years of experience in various C-Suite, executive management and business development positions. Kenny is a seasoned leader and serial entrepreneur who has launched and scaled multiple successful ventures across different industries and markets.

Kenny's mission is to create a startup ecosystem that will nurture, support, and train passionate Japanese entrepreneurs to launch their startups in the US. He leverages his expertise in sales, marketing, relationship management, and business development to help his clients achieve their goals and elevate their business. He has a strong background in working with Japanese companies as well as fluency in English, Japanese and Cantonese. 

Kenny is a dynamic and visionary leader who is always looking for new opportunities, challenges and ready to “embrace the uncomfortable”.

Previous companies & roles:

Zumper - Senior Director, Sales & Marketing
Priceline Agoda Global Partner Services - Associate Director, Market Development
Japan Crate - Chief Executive Officer

Amazon, Groupon & Aurea (Formerly Jive Software)

Co-Founder at LIFEmee (Finalist - Demo Pit at TechCrunch 50 in 2009 in San Francisco)

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