Kenzaburo Ikushima, CEO of Globee Inc.　

You never know what a business is until you try it! That's why I'm taking on the challenge

President and CEO of Globee Inc.　Kenzaburo Ikushima(Akisaburo Ikushima)

■ Profile
Graduated from the Faculty of Law at Keio University in March 2015. Founded Globee Inc. in June 2014 while still a student.
Through running an English school, he realized the potential of IT combined with English education, and is currently developing "abceed," an AI English learning material with the mission of "maximizing learning volume x learning efficiency," and "abceed for school," a flipped learning platform with the mission of "maximizing learning support efficiency."

Globee Inc. operates abceed, an AI-powered English learning service that helps improve English skills in the shortest time possible. By utilizing AI, the company provides effective English learning that is personalized for each user. We spoke to President Ikushima, who is impressive for his positive and earnest approach, about his experiences starting a business while he was a university student and the strengths of his company.

I was confident in my English for entrance exams, but when I enrolled in university, I was surprised by the large number of fluent non-native speakers, including returnees and international students. This made me keenly aware of my own lack of English skills, and I decided to hone my practical English skills during university. Specifically, toward the end of my first year of university, I studied abroad in the Philippines for a short period, making friends with international students in an international exchange club while studying English. As a result, my English speaking and listening skills improved dramatically, and I became more confident in my English. Many people asked me how to improve my English. I believe this ultimately sparked my interest in English education. Later, in my third year of university, I actively promoted English education by running international exchange events and discussion groups for university students and working adults. This led to the founding of Globee. As for starting a business, I knew it was possible to do so while still a student, and there were no restrictions, so there was no reason not to. However, because I started the company out of a vague idea that "starting a business is kind of cool," there were times when I wondered whether being the CEO of an unknown company was having a big impact on the world.

■Shift to innovative businesses

I started out by running international exchange events and English conversation classes. I hired friends and international students as part-time instructors and managed the lessons and classrooms myself, but various issues arose and there were days when I couldn't proceed as planned. I realized I needed to find a way to expand my business without relying on my own time and minimizing stress. I chose to switch to software development, which would reduce management costs and enable more efficient business operations. When I considered the purpose of my company, I realized that we weren't differentiating ourselves from other English schools and lacked innovative elements. This led me to focus on the challenge facing the English education industry: "People who want to learn English aren't actually learning it." I came up with the idea of ​​utilizing technology such as AI to significantly improve learning efficiency. I believe my experience starting this English school has brought me to where I am today. It made me realize that "you never know what a business is until you try it."

■ Accumulating down-to-earth efforts

The roughly one year and five months leading up to abceed's official launch were incredibly challenging. At first, I didn't even know how to develop an app, so I reached out to my engineer friends and spoke to entrepreneurs. Hoping to meet talented engineers by joining a company, I joined SoftBank. There, I met Ueaka, our current CTO. Furthermore, the three key elements to creating the AI ​​that makes abceed so appealing were content, software development as a learning tool, and user acquisition. However, we faced many challenges, including being turned down for all our content licensing inquiries and experiencing periods of barely 30 downloads per month after launch. Despite these challenges, I believe our consistent, unwavering efforts to overcome each challenge were key to our success. We believe abceed's differentiation from other companies lies in its overwhelming data volume and the quality of its content. Currently, our database contains approximately 15 billion pieces of training data, and we're proud of this vast amount of data. In terms of age group, students make up about 4% of the total users, and the remaining 6% are working adults. Some junior and senior high school students also use the service, and as some schools have introduced abceed for school, the number of people using the service through their schools is increasing.

■ I want to lower the barrier to learning English

Despite studying hard for entrance exams, many people lack confidence when using English in real-life situations. We've been working hard to expand our content offerings to cover the English skills needed by a wide range of age groups, from elementary school students to high school students, university students, and working adults. We want to continue to develop a service that lowers the barrier to entry and helps students acquire versatile English skills, so that they can use abceed from their student days and reach a level where they can use English smoothly even after entering the workforce. To achieve this, we will continue to expand our content offerings and refine our functionality. We also want to expand our business globally and build a global brand that people around the world can trust. One of our major goals is to increase our paid membership base from our current figure of just under 100,000 to 1 million. While we haven't yet hired new graduates, we place great importance on professionalism in our selection process—whether candidates approach their work with responsibility and pride. I don't believe that people who don't see value in their own work can do a good job, so I want to place importance on the attitude that people have toward their work, regardless of their position.

■Message to university students

I would like to tell people to take risks and take on challenges. I know it's difficult, but as you become an adult, you can no longer take on challenges just for yourself, and I think you need to take a certain amount of risk to achieve something big. If you have ambitions or dreams that you want to pursue, I would encourage you to actively take on challenges.

Interview with Student Newspaper Online on November 14, 2023 by Shiori Ohno, a second-year student at Sophia University Junior College