Cybozu
Cybozu, Inc. (サイボウズ株式会社 Saibōzu Kabushikigaisha) is a Tokyo-based software company that provides a web-based groupware known as Cybozu Office, popular in Japan.
Background
In 1997, Toru Takasuka resigned as the Vice President/Director of Matsushita Electric Works V-Internet Operations, an in-house venture company he helped to create. Along with partners Yoshihisa Aono and Shinya Hata, he started an improbable software company in Matsuyama, Ehime with a $200,000 loan from family and friends. The idea for the company surrounded one of Japan’s first Web-based groupware products. Cybozu, Japanese for “cyber-kid”, rapidly gained market share in the Japanese market. Within three years the company went public – at that time the fastest company rise to IPO in the history of Japan’s Tosho 2 stock market. Today Cybozu is the number one groupware product in Japan. They are currently listed on the Tosho 1st Stock Market in Tokyo, the equivalent to the New York Stock Exchange in the U.S.A.