
Billionaire Porn King Reinvents Himself as Japan's Startup Guru - champagnepapi
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-23/billionaire-porn-king-reinvents-himself-as-japan-s-startup-guru
======
patio11
A lot of DMM's other businesses are also seediness arbitrage. The FX exchange,
for example, is a bucket shop.

(This is a shorthand criticism, but since many HNers might not know it
already: pretend you have a country where gambling is mostly illegal. Wagering
on the roll of a die is illegal, but people really want to wager, so, you give
them "investment" options like "Is the yen going to trade up against the
dollar?" While you swear blind that this is investing and that the proverbial
Mrs. Watanabe is making informed investment decisions after deeply analyzing
the latest market trends, Mrs. Watanabe is actually just depositing yen with
you and withdrawing less yen later. She doesn't actually own dollars at any
point; she is just "trading" with you. _You_ might not even own dollars at any
point. The only purpose of the exchange rate is to be a source of legal random
numbers, since a die or deck of cards would be a source of illegal random
numbers.)

I haven't used DMM's FX offering but out of morbid curiosity I looked at a
Bitcoin exchange which is widely reported to have copied it. It was like Zynga
had made a pachinko game with slightly more numbers and less chesty mermaids.
There was even a "bloop" sound effect when other people's trades went through.

~~~
will_brown
>She doesn't actually own dollars at any point; she is just "trading" with
you.

How is that different than trading oil; gold or public stock? If you have ever
traded any of those, I'd be willing to _wager or invest_ that if you have, you
never took possession of and never really owned barrels of oil; gold bars or
even actual stock certificates.

You are most likely to have actually owned stock, but when you get into the
real nitty gritty of litigation, you would be very surprised (or not, but many
would) how stock trading and _ownership_ actually work.

~~~
patio11
I presently own, for the sake of argument, one share of Bank of America. I
purchased it through a broker presently owned by eTrade. The custodian for the
account is Apex Clearing; they possess custody of the share. The underlying
share is somewhere at (IIRC) the Depository Trust Corporation; there may or
may not be a physical certificate.

Which is a complicated way of saying that the share that I think I own
actually exists in the world, through an admittedly complicated web of
commercial relationships maintained by professionals at regulated financial
institutions. It is _not_ simply a bookkeeping entry that my broker made up to
take my $2. If I sell it, I will likely end up selling it to an internalizer
who pays eTrade for the privilege (Citadel?), rather than a counterparty on a
lit exchange, but it still exists. It votes in BoA matters. It receives
dividends. It seemlessly transfers when I migrate between brokerages, which I
have done twice since buying this share. If I wanted to pay an irrational
amount of money to win internet points, I could probably even gain physical
custody of an actual share certificate.

If you want to nerdsnipe further about the difference between bucket shops,
Bitcoin exchanges, and financial institutions, I am happy to go into this
topic in arbitrary depth.

~~~
vostok
> Which is a complicated way of saying that the share that I think I own
> actually exists in the world, through an admittedly complicated web of
> commercial relationships maintained by professionals at regulated financial
> institutions. It is not simply a bookkeeping entry that my broker made up to
> take my $2.

Why is this the line between investing and gambling? I might own $1 billion of
equities on swap. This is just a bookkeeping entry that my dealer made up to
take my money. I don't see how not owning the physical stock suddenly makes it
gambling.

~~~
qf303rjr3
If you own $1 billion of equities on swap, you can guarantee that your broker
has actually bought the equities (or something close to them) as a hedge.
There is no way that your broker has an unhedged $1 billion equity swap with
you. They collect a spread on the swap transaction of a few basis points,
which is hopefully less than the cost to hedge the swap. They don't want to
take the risk of the position moving against them by more than a few basis
points (typically the equity market moves hundreds of basis points per day) so
they almost always hedge.

The Japanese FX broker, on the other hand, has the odds so firmly stacked in
their favour that they have no need to actually do any FX trading (though I
expect that they do some). If the margin is high enough, the statistical
fluctuations don't matter that much. That's the difference between a brokerage
and a bucket shop.

~~~
lz400
What do we mean with "odds so firmly stacked in their favor" here? You seem to
imply spreads so large they eat all the volatility? Is that all?

------
faitswulff
Wow, this guy is a hustler. I just got to the part of the article describing
his entry into producing porn. Apparently, he mass-produced the VHS tapes
using thousands of household video recorders, then used a clever pricing model
("here's 100 tapes, pay me only for what you sell") to get into video stores.
The next bit really impressed me:

"The next big idea was a cash register Kameyama developed that looked like a
tablet computer. He gave it to customers for free, in exchange for their sales
records -- data that made him better than anyone at tracking the preferences
of Japan’s porn consumers."

------
Abishek_Muthian
The writer says,

"Asked to explain his philosophy, he struggled for a tidy phrase and settled
on this: “I like to be able to think, ‘I’m a little less flawed today than I
was the day before.’”

But IMO, his philosophy is pretty clear with these quotes -

"To him, porn is the proverbial widget -- a thing to sell for more than it
costs to make and market, no different from any other product."

"If my own daughter told me she wanted to be an adult film actress, I’d tell
her, ‘look, there are risks, but it’s something for you to decide.”

Another interesting anecdote is that Mr.Kameyama is part of the growing list
of Billionare who choose to keep their identity dark (or) go great lengths to
protect their privacy.

I wonder whether not running a publicly traded company directly gives these
kind of people an advantage to secure their privacy over the counterparts who
run businesses which fall into public scrutiny.

~~~
gboudrias
> "If my own daughter told me she wanted to be an adult film actress, I’d tell
> her, ‘look, there are risks, but it’s something for you to decide.”

This is so similar to Thank You For Smoking, I have to wonder if that's where
he got the idea from.

~~~
adanto6840
Was my first thought as well, and is one of my favorite quotes from the movie
-- the movie is fantastic & one of my favorites.

Though I was half way expecting his answer to be, "if you really want to, I'll
have my cameras rolling!" =)

------
halflings
Reminiscent of Xavier Niel [0], who started with "Minitel rose" services
offering phone sex, peep shows and sex shops (was even arrested because one of
his peep show businesses was a cover for a prostitution business)... then went
on to found Free (and later Free Mobile), who truly disrupted telcos in France
(and arguably everywhere else in Europe) with cheap broadband and mobile plans
+ acquired some of the largest French media, started a tech school in Paris,
and recently opened the biggest startup campus in the world [1]. Now worth 9.6
billion USD.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/business/global/xavier-
nie...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/business/global/xavier-niel-
billionaire-who-breaks-the-mold.html)

[1] [https://stationf.co/](https://stationf.co/)

~~~
Perados
Oh, and he also did this: [http://www.19h59.com/10238_Le-directeur-de-
lecole-42-donne-d...](http://www.19h59.com/10238_Le-directeur-de-
lecole-42-donne-des-fessees-une-fille)

~~~
monsieurbanana
No he didn't, that's Nicolas Sadirac.

------
nayuki
> Some of his best ideas, including the one for the hit video game “Fleet
> Collection,”

The title translation was a bit too literal. It's actually
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantai_Collection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantai_Collection)
.

~~~
laurieg
I used to work as a Japanese to English Translator. It's all to common to see
titles like this become the canonical English title because some editor who
has a shaky knowledge of English says so. Once the title is canon it's hard to
push back against it even when you as a translator know better.

~~~
aedron
I've always been convinced Donkey Kong is named thus because some Japanese guy
mistook 'donkey' for 'monkey'. (Haven't bothered to look for the history
though so feel free to set me straight)

~~~
ludicast
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_Kong_(character)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_Kong_\(character\))

"Donkey" conveys stubbornness.

------
rgrieselhuber
I shared a taxi with him a few years ago. Really cool dude and smart as hell.

~~~
conanbatt
Sharing a cab with the Porn King sounds like the beginning of a type of movie.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
Maybe the grandparent is a Haruki Murakami character and the porn king shared
some deep insight into a gnawing uneasy feeling that originated from a
terrible event that happened in an alternate reality.

Really smart guy.

------
colbyh
Porn has led the way on a number of technological innovations, I'm surprised
there aren't more billionaire porn kings/queens.

edit - modifiers are hard

~~~
TaylorGood
Surprised a porn related blockchain token hasn't taken ahold yet. There are
attempts.

~~~
max_
Ethereum Adult Cams, [http://www.spankchain.com](http://www.spankchain.com)

~~~
volkk
Gotta say, I love the name

------
peteretep

        > “I hate it,” he says. “But 
        > if it works, great. If it 
        > doesn’t, we’ll try something  
        > else.”
    

Quite the mantra

~~~
naiv
Setting personal preferences aside for the sake of revenue is something that
you learn in the adult industry quite well.

------
max_
This interview he gave make think he has really unique ways of making
decisions.

[http://africa.dmm.com/special/chairman-
interview.html](http://africa.dmm.com/special/chairman-interview.html)

------
akamaozu
For those looking to hear more about DMM's work in Japan's tech community, I
think you'll find this podcast episode interesting.

[https://www.disruptingjapan.com/taking-akiba-back-otaku-
dmm-...](https://www.disruptingjapan.com/taking-akiba-back-otaku-dmm-make/)

------
lowry
The founder of Pornhub is a startup guru in Belgium.

~~~
naiv
To put this into perspective:

Pornhub was founded by Matt Keezer, not someone from Belgium.

A German who lives in Belgium that used to be the ceo of Mindgeek for a while
(which purchased Pornhub) invested some of his money into some startups after
he left Mindgeek.

~~~
Mikushi
And Matt wasn't alone either, Brazzers & Pornhub founders went to uni together
and their businesses were always very closed (one, then two, then one again
IIRC).

MindGeek did not purchase Pornhub either. Mansef did (founders of Brazzers),
then was acquired by Fabian (german dude) who renamed the company Manwin, then
MindGeek.

------
gfredtech
Wow, he's a billionaire and he's still talking about masking himself and his
privacy

~~~
sgberlin
Look up the founders of ALDI and Lidl, among the richest people in the world
and there are barely photos of them.

~~~
pluma
Well as many people in Germany know, ALDI is a contraction of "Albrecht
Discount". Theo Albrecht (who founded Aldi Nord and Trader Joe's) was
kidnapped in 1971 for ransom so it's obvious why they'd rather want to keep
out of the public eye. Theo Albrecht died in 2010, his brother Karl (who
founded Aldi Süd) died in 2014.

Dieter Schwarz (who owns Lidl) is still alive and currently the richest man in
Germany. Technically Lidl started out as the Schwarz-Gruppe, founded by his
father. Interestingly none of the people involved in Lidl were called Lidl.
His father bought the naming rights from a man called Lidl who had no further
affiliation with him or his company.

Germany has strict privacy laws so it's not as easy to publish photographs
without consent.

~~~
germanier
As the legend goes, Theo Albrecht's kidnappers forced him to show his ID to
make sure they actually got him.

------
wprapido
jackie treehorn gone digital

~~~
unclerico
Oh yeah? I still jerk off manually.

~~~
wprapido
even his dudeness had gone digital

------
TaylorGood
What a title.

