Founding IIJ in a country with no commercial ISP (1992)

Who is first to open demand that has no price yet

The core of this venture lies less in the novelty of the technology than in being first to put a price on demand no one had yet priced, and to open it as a market. To replace connectivity that flowed free among researchers with a product enterprises paid to use, there were no numbers to prove the demand was real and no precedent to point to. The business plan the banks dismissed as a “tall tale” was, turned the other way round, evidence that this demand was still invisible to everyone. A judgment to bet on demand that could not be seen is what opened the door to Japan’s later internet industry.

Being first, however, did not mean being safe. Amid the dot-com boom’s euphoria and its backlash, IIJ lost its capital independence once, and only after a long labour of rebuilding its business toward a stock model did it recover stable profit growth and its independence together. The one who first opens a market is not guaranteed to remain its protagonist. IIJ’s course reflects both the advantage of going first and the trial that going first imposes. Who is first to open demand that has no price? That question, in changed form, keeps reappearing in the contest over the next digital infrastructure.