Dr. Kohji Kato, a venture capitalist: "No one knows," "There is no set way," and "There are multiple solutions" is the best environment.

Mr. Kamemoto participated in the Career Discovery Forum, the predecessor of the Ad Venture Forum, and joined Galderia, which he met there.

The best environment is one where "no one knows," "there is no set way," and "there are multiple solutions."A place where people can take on diverse challenges without stability.

He works at his company during the week, and about once a month he goes to the university from Friday night to the following Tuesday, sometimes staying up all night to conduct experiments. After obtaining his master's degree, Mr. Kamemoto made the greedy choice to enroll in graduate school for his doctorate and at the same time join the deep-tech venture Gardelea, Inc. During his master's program, he was conducting research at a university in Tohoku while also job hunting, but he did not go around to dozens of companies to secure job offers like other students in the Tokyo metropolitan area. He said, "It is meaningless if I don't find it interesting and end up quitting right away. I thought I should take care of the companies I found interesting and not rush to get job offers," he said. The reason he made the choice mentioned at the beginning of this article was due to his preference for a job that would allow him to be exposed to a variety of themes, rather than sticking to one job. In the beginning, he did not have the option of working for a venture company at all, but instead approached mainly large companies. This is because a large company has a variety of businesses throughout Japan, and it is possible to rotate through a variety of jobs and environments within a single company. However, I became interested in venture companies when I heard that it is actually because they are small organizations that they can be in charge of all kinds of work.

I want to take a risk, but choose for "fun".

He was interested in Galderia not only because of the microalgae it handles, which is related to his own university research on microorganisms, but also because of its vision of implementing the results of its bio-research into society and solving social problems, which he says strongly attracted him. At the time, algae was mostly used for biofuel or food, but Galderia had the unique advantage of recovering rare metals. That was not the only thing that attracted him to the company. At the time, the company's management told me, 'We have a lot of work to do, but the company has only been established for a short period of time and we don't have a system in place yet. I felt that such an environment would be easy for me to work in. I felt that such an environment would be easier for me to work in. He did not have such values when he was an undergraduate, but as he progressed to graduate school, he thought about what he wanted to research and what kind of life he wanted to lead. As a result, Mr. Kamemoto says that his thinking changed to "I would rather take a risk and do something interesting than choose something safe and regret it. The environment surrounding a university student and a graduate school student changes drastically. He has now embarked on a career that he probably would not have chosen if he had been an undergraduate.

Members of the Institute and Mr. Kemoto (as of September 2023, front row, right)

It doesn't hurt at all to study all over again from scratch.

Currently, seven researchers are assigned to different projects at the institute, and Mr. Kammemoto, who is in his fourth year, is also a project leader. The mission of the project is to develop and manufacture a prototype of a metal adsorbent that will soon be launched on the market. There are many possible options in terms of processing methods and operational processes, and he is considering each of them. We can't do everything by ourselves, so we need to cooperate with researchers and other companies, but we have much more autonomy than we did at the university," he says. At university, where basic research was the main focus, the goal was to elucidate a single event. Now, however, there are multiple axes to consider and multiple events to solve, such as cost performance and customer perspective, and projects often do not move forward unless I take ownership and make detailed decisions on my own. He is also making full use of fields that he had studied extensively in university courses, such as hygiene and food engineering, which he thought he would never use before he started working for the company. For him, it is not painful at all to delve deeply into a new field, to study it all over again, or to acquire new knowledge. The "need to think for oneself" and the "need to try new things" are the best environments for researchers. (Reprinted from Human Resources Support Vol. 22)

Participating Partner Companies Wanted】】 【Partnerships

Students and post-doctoral fellows are invited to participate.