50: Jim Weisser, CEO & Co-founder, SignTime K.K.

<p><span style= "font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;"> Jim Weisser shares his leadership journey in the Japanese IT sector after arriving in Japan to initially teach English to becoming a leader of many internet businesses since the mid-90s. After realizing his IT skills were in high demand in Japan during the mid-90s pre-internet era, he began developing further expertise in the area by working for an internet service provider and then working for Enron to help establish their broadband business. From 2000 to 2006, Mr. Weisser founded three companies. The third company he established, PBXL KK was an SaaS based company focused on cloud calling. The company was acquired by BroadSoft in November 2015, which was later acquired by Cisco. Mr. Weisser is currently the CEO & co-founder of SignTime, an electronic contract service provider.</span></p> <p> </p> <p>At SignTime Mr. Weisser aims to make the contract process in Japan much more manageable for companies with the use of technology. They have taken on a Silicon Valley style agile work process while implementing Japanese level of quality control insurance. He finds that his team members are surprised by his company’s culture where mistakes are taken as a lesson to make future improvements. SignTime has landed successful deals with Japanese multinational corporations by promoting their fast-paced responsiveness in which they provide same day responses to compete against larger companies.</p> <p> </p> <p>As a young leader starting from his early to late 30s, Mr. Weisser recalls the mistakes he had made and the valuable lessons learned from them. He recalls: “I didn’t listen very well…and [being educated] in an engineering environment…I have no problems [with] someone saying, Jim, you're an idiot. This is why…And it took me a long time to realize most people were very uncomfortable in that kind of an environment.”</p> <p> </p> <p>From past experiences and mistakes, Mr