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# Lessons from Hiroshi Mikitani
- URL: https://www.antoinebuteau.com/lessons-from-hiroshi-mikitani/
- Published: 2026-06-30T17:20:17.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-05T03:04:37.000Z
- Description: Hiroshi Mikitani, founder of Rakuten, built Japan’s largest e-commerce platform by empowering merchants, using a company-wide English mandate and the “Rule of 3 and 10” to balance rapid growth, execution speed, and independent-seller partnership.
- Author: Antoine Buteau
- Tags: Profile, Tech Entrepreneurs & Founders Profiles

Hiroshi Mikitani founded Rakuten and built it into Japan's largest e-commerce platform by prioritizing merchant empowerment over strict platform control. He is widely known for implementing a company-wide English mandate and for defining the "Rule of 3 and 10" framework for organizational scaling. This collection details his practical approach to managing rapid growth, maintaining execution speed, and building internet businesses that treat independent sellers as partners.

![Visual summary of operating lessons from Hiroshi Mikitani.](https://www.antoinebuteau.com/content/images/2026/06/lessons-from-hiroshi-mikitani-profile-infographic.webp)

## Part 1: The Business-Dō Philosophy

1. **On Absolute Thinking:** "All concepts are relative. Never believe in the absolute. No one single way of thinking is perfect." — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On Relentless Questioning:** "Particularly when things are going well, question yourself and your process. What can you improve?" — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On the Value of a Brand:** "Your brand is a symbol of your values, as important a symbol as a nation's flag." — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On Building Foundations:** "Without a solid foundation, even the most beautiful of buildings can collapse. The same goes for your dreams." — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On Personal Development:** "Having the right attitude, the necessary skills, and the desire to keep learning are the three key components to personal success." — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On Working with Urgency:** "We have only one life, and it must be lived to the fullest—not someday, but now." — [*Source: Harvard Business School*](https://www.hbs.edu/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On Self-Awareness:** "The key to success is knowing the areas in which you are strong and the areas in which you are weaker." — [*Source: Business Insider*](https://www.businessinsider.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On Positioning:** "When you know your strengths and weaknesses, you can position yourself to be as successful as possible in any given situation." — [*Source: Business Insider*](https://www.businessinsider.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On Conventional Wisdom:** "People will tell you not to pursue your dreams. If you believe in your dreams, pursue them anyway." — [*Source: getAbstract*](https://www.getabstract.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
10. **On Professional Humility:** "Avoid thinking you deserve success. Luck plays a role, and everything can change instantly." — [*Source: getAbstract*](https://www.getabstract.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)

## Part 2: The Speed of Execution

1. **On the Core Mantra:** "When you launch a business, you may be tempted to move ahead carefully and slowly. My advice is the opposite. Embrace speed." — [*Source: Entrepreneur*](https://www.entrepreneur.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On Launching Early:** "Too often, a worried entrepreneur will sit on a great idea, waiting until it is fully perfected before launching it. My suggestion is that process takes too long." — [*Source: Entrepreneur*](https://www.entrepreneur.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On First Mover Disadvantage:** "While you are perfecting your wares in your R&D lab, your competition is out in the marketplace, trying new ideas, refining and tweaking as necessary." — [*Source: Entrepreneur*](https://www.entrepreneur.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On Momentum:** Speed is not just about getting ahead early, but about generating the necessary momentum for a project's long-term viability. — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On Iteration Over Perfection:** You do not need to be 100% ready to act; setting hypotheses with about 60% certainty allows for rapid execution and data verification. — [*Source: Note*](https://note.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On Embracing the Inevitable:** "I believe speed is essential to success in business. But what I have been forced to realize is that when I insist on speed, I have to accept that will come with another element that does not make me as happy – mistakes." — [*Source: World Economic Forum*](https://www.weforum.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On Launch and Refine:** The path to a strong product relies on getting to market fast and operating a cycle of continuous refinement based on actual customer feedback. — [*Source: Entrepreneur*](https://www.entrepreneur.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On Bureaucracy:** Rigidity and slow decision-making are the biggest threats to maintaining an entrepreneurial spirit inside a growing company. — [*Source: IMD Business School*](https://www.imd.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On Quick Corrections:** The goal is not to avoid failure entirely, but to discover problems and fix them rapidly before they compound into systemic issues. — [*Source: World Economic Forum*](https://www.weforum.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
10. **On Daily Urgency:** Treating speed as a daily practice ensures that the organization remains highly responsive to technological shifts and market demands. — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)

## Part 3: Scaling and The Rule of 3 and 10

1. **On Organizational Breakpoints:** "Every time a company triples in size, everything breaks." — [*Source: Business Insider*](https://www.businessinsider.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On the Timing of Change:** "Everything changes at roughly every third and tenth steps." — [*Reference: Sequoia Capital on the Rule of 3 and 10*](https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/the-rule-of-3-and-10/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On Infrastructure Lifespans:** "Anytime a company hits a '3 or 10' mark in terms of employee count, all of the infrastructure that got it to that point needs to be replaced." — [*Source: World Economic Forum*](https://www.weforum.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On Communication Limits:** As teams grow beyond the 10 and 30 employee marks, informal communication channels fail and formal structures must be implemented. — [*Source: Sean Hogue*](https://seanhogue.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On Process Bottlenecks:** Simple tools and ad hoc HR procedures that worked for a small group become significant operational roadblocks at larger scales. — [*Source: Business Insider*](https://www.businessinsider.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On the Founder's Role:** At higher intervals of the rule, founders can no longer be involved in every decision and must build capable layers of management. — [*Source: Changemaker Academy*](https://changemakeracademy.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On Proactive Redesign:** Leaders must redesign their internal systems actively before the next tripling milestone strains their operations. — [*Source: Chris Beaumont*](https://chrisbeaumont.co.uk/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On Invisible Transitions:** Many chief executives blow right through growth milestones without realizing it, accumulating severe organizational debt in the process. — [*Source: Business Insider*](https://www.businessinsider.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On Structural Evolution:** Just because a management process worked for you previously does not mean it will survive the next tripling in headcount. — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)

## Part 4: Marketplace 3.0 and E-Commerce

1. **On Virtual Empowerment:** "I decided Rakuten's mall would offer the opposite of the big companies' malls. It would offer not a controlled storefront, but rather virtual empowerment." — [*Source: Tharawat Magazine*](https://www.tharawat-magazine.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On Collaborative Retail:** "Rejecting the zero-sum, vending-machine model of ecommerce... Hiroshi Mikitani argues for an alternate model that benefits merchants, consumers, and communities alike." — [*Source: Goodreads*](https://www.goodreads.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On Merchant Autonomy:** "We offered merchants the opportunity to customize their web presence, rather than to fit into one designed by us." — [*Source: Tharawat Magazine*](https://www.tharawat-magazine.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On the Third Era:** "If Web 2.0 described the shift from static to interactive life on the Web, then 3.0 is the next sea change—driven by personalization, intelligent search, and user behavior." — [*Source: Goodreads*](https://www.goodreads.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On Philosophical Differences:** "I started the business to repair society, community and local merchants. They started the business to replace the gigantic merchants, so that's a fundamental philosophical difference, and it is very difficult to change." — [*Reference: LinkedIn News interview on YouTube*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd6PdLHSzPU&ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On Avoiding the Amazon Model:** "Employees hate me changing, and I say, if we wanna just copy Amazon, they're gonna hate me." — [*Reference: LinkedIn News interview on YouTube*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd6PdLHSzPU&ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On Small Business Support:** The internet operates best as an ecosystem designed to support and grow small and mid-sized brick-and-mortar businesses. — [*Source: Goodreads*](https://www.goodreads.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On Transactional Commerce:** Treating the internet purely as a vending machine focused on speed and profit ignores the value of human connection in retail. — [*Source: Goodreads*](https://www.goodreads.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On Long-term Relationships:** E-commerce should foster deep engagement and lasting relationships between independent sellers and their customers. — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)

## Part 5: Englishnization and Globalization

1. **On the Language Mandate:** "I remain fully committed to the process I've come to call Englishnization—making English the language in which we do business." — [*Source: Council on Foreign Relations*](https://www.cfr.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On National Interest:** "I do this because I am convinced it is the best thing I can do both for Rakuten and for Japan." — [*Source: Council on Foreign Relations*](https://www.cfr.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On Global Baseline:** "Put simply, global companies speak English. I do not believe a Japanese company can survive unless it can become a global company." — [*Source: Council on Foreign Relations*](https://www.cfr.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On True Competitiveness:** "More than just surviving, I am certain that if Japanese companies can transform themselves into truly global companies, we will see the return of prosperity to Japan." — [*Source: Council on Foreign Relations*](https://www.cfr.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On Ambition:** "Our goal is not becoming No. 1 in Japan but becoming the No. 1 Internet services company in the world." — [*Source: Simon Foucher*](https://simonfoucher.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On Growth Imperatives:** "As we consider the future potential growth of the Japanese market and our company, global implementation is not a nice-to-have but a must-do." — [*Source: Simon Foucher*](https://simonfoucher.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On Operational Efficiency:** "It is not just preferable, it is really critical for us to be able to do business and operate in English. Our staff doesn't need translators." — [*Source: Diggit Magazine*](https://www.diggitmagazine.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On Talent Acquisition:** Requiring English allowed the company to rapidly expand its recruiting pool to hire the best engineering and business talent globally. — [*Source: Rakuten*](https://www.rakuten.co.jp/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On Economic Stagnation:** Japan's economic malaise is deeply tied to a reluctance to adopt international frameworks and participate fully in the global market. — [*Source: Goodreads*](https://www.goodreads.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
10. **On Sharing Culture:** Using a global language does not erase Japanese culture, but provides the necessary medium to share Japanese business values with the rest of the world. — [*Source: Dokumen*](https://dokumen.pub/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)

## Part 6: Empowerment and Omotenashi

1. **On Providing Opportunity:** "My goal was not as simple as giving someone a break; it was about empowering people to make their own breaks, over and over again." — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On Core Mission:** "At Rakuten, we have dedicated ourselves to realizing our core value of 'empowerment'—of people and society—since founding in 1997." — [*Source: Rakuten*](https://www.rakuten.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On the Internet's Nature:** "What is the core value of the internet? Put simply: Fairness. With the internet, gaps in access to information and knowledge can be narrowed dramatically." — [*Source: Rakuten*](https://www.rakuten.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On Redefining Hospitality:** "We are not here simply to facilitate e-commerce transactions, but to be in a service mind to our customers on a constant basis." — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On Service Standards:** "When we come to a market with the theme of omotenashi, we say: 'We are at your service.'" — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On Anticipating Needs:** The practice of omotenashi means anticipating customers' requests and addressing them before they are formally voiced. — [*Source: Internal Consulting*](https://internalconsulting.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On the Personal Touch:** Retaining a human, personal element in digital interfaces prevents the platform from feeling like a sterile utility. — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On Decentralizing Power:** Giving control over page design and customer data directly to merchants creates a stronger overall ecosystem than hoarding it centrally. — [*Source: Tharawat Magazine*](https://www.tharawat-magazine.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On Long-term Value:** Cultivating selflessness and attention to detail in merchant interactions builds trust that outlasts short-term pricing battles. — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)

## Part 7: Failure and Continuous Improvement

1. **On the Cycle of Progress:** "Try, fail, learn, grow." — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On Defining Failure:** "Failure is only truly failure when it does not lead to improvement." — [*Source: World Economic Forum*](https://www.weforum.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On Actualizing Proverbs:** "In Japan, there is an old proverb saying that failure is the foundation of success. When you take the attitude of implementing improvements soon after a failure, you are actualizing this proverb." — [*Source: Scribd*](https://www.scribd.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On Finding Value:** "When you trip over a stone, take a good look at that stone. It may well turn out to be a diamond." — [*Source: World Economic Forum*](https://www.weforum.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On Societal Pressure:** "As we grow older, we become afraid of failure. This is because society does not tolerate failure. However, innovation is born from failure." — [*Source: Note*](https://note.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On Taking Risks:** "When you take risks, sometimes mistakes will happen. Nobody likes them, but mistakes are going to happen. The trick is to embrace them as learning opportunities." — [*Source: World Economic Forum*](https://www.weforum.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On Resilience:** "Even if you challenge yourself and fail, if you keep challenging yourself, there will always come a time when you can recover from that failure." — [*Source: Note*](https://note.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On the Cost of Inaction:** "If you don't challenge yourself and regret not doing so, there is no way to recover from that." — [*Source: Note*](https://note.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On Small Adjustments:** A dedication to kaizen means viewing daily operations as a continuous experiment where minor tweaks yield major long-term gains. — [*Source: Entrepreneur*](https://www.entrepreneur.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)

## Part 8: Mindset and The Moonshot

1. **On Setting Goals:** "Believe in the power of the moonshot. Aim higher than you think is reasonably possible. It's the stretch goal that fuels greatness." — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On Group vs. Team:** "Learn the difference between a group and a team. A group is a gathering. A team is united towards a common goal." — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On Corporate Ownership:** "Don't just do your job. Think of yourself as part of the larger whole of the company—part of a team." — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On Outpacing Rivals:** "It's not impossible to overtake others on the same route, but it's extremely difficult. In order to overtake your rivals, it's better to seek out a new path." — [*Source: 12min*](https://12min.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On Acting with Intent:** "Don’t merely dream. Work hard and commit to success." — [*Source: getAbstract*](https://www.getabstract.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On Unknown Limits:** "You have no idea what you can achieve. Set almost impossible goals." — [*Source: getAbstract*](https://www.getabstract.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On Overcoming Bureaucracy:** Applying strict Key Performance Indicators to traditional environments is necessary to cure the safety-focused stagnation common in large institutions. — [*Source: Goodreads*](https://www.goodreads.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On Foundational Mantras:** Start small, follow your inspiration, and remain completely open to altering your course when circumstances change. — [*Source: SuccessStory*](https://successstory.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On Individual Responsibility:** No business can sustain market dominance if its employees operate as a disjointed collection of individuals rather than a unified entity treating the firm as their own. — [*Source: Rakuten Today*](https://rakuten.today/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)