2005年度（2005.4～2006.3）　ワークショップ講演

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Record of Workshop/Lecture

Record of Workshop/Lecture (Eighth Workshop Ⅱ)
Date: December 1, 2005
Lecturer: Mr. Osamu Tsuji, President & CEO, SAMCO, Inc.
Theme: From Starting a Business in a Garage to Public Listing
Recorded by: Osamu Yamashita, Juichi Koyama

1. Profile of Mr. Osamu Tsuji

Mr. Osamu Tsuji was born in 1942. He graduated from the College of Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University. He was temporarily assigned to the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Kyoto University (researching organic microanalysis and low-temperature plasma chemistry), concurrently with a position as an analytical-equipment manufacturer.
Subsequently, after working as a researcher at the NASA Ames Research Center in the United States, he established SAMCO International, Inc. He filled posts successively as a part-time lecturer at Kyoto University and other educational institutions, and as a member of the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency Technology Assessment Committee and the Kyoto City Venture Business Connoisseur Committee.
His current research themes include plasma materials science and MOT (Management of Technology) practical theory.

2. SAMCO's Profile 【http://www.samcointl.com】

SAMCO was founded in a garage near Teradaya, Fushimi-ku, Kyoto in 1979. The current headquarters is located in front of the headquarters of Kyosera Corporation in the same ward.
SAMCO is famous as an international high-profit, high-tech venture company which is based on the manufacture and sales of electronic-component manufacturing equipment, including equipment for manufacturing semiconductors using thin-film technology.
In 2001, SAMCO went public. The company has laboratories in the Silicon Valley in the U.S. and Cambridge in the U.K.
At end of 2004, the capitalization of SAMCO was 1.2 billion yen, and its annual sales amounted to 3.4 billion yen, with 115 employees.

3. Summary of the lecture

●Growing into a High-Tech Venture Company
Acknowledging himself as a "techie," Mr. Tsuji, president and CEO, left the corporate life to start his business a while after returning home from the NASA Ames Research Center. The first job he handled was selling imported Armagnac, a French brandy. Next, he ran a cram school. However, full-scale commercialization of either was not realized, and he quickly abandoned them.
Then the telephone rang. The caller was his old friend who worked for a leading electrical appliance manufacturer. He said, "Would you help me manufacture equipment related to a new project on solar cells?"
During his days at NASA, Mr. Tsuji conducted research on the recycling of substances in space, amassing technology and knowledge concerning thin-film deposition technology. The equipment that his old friend consulted him on was manufacturing equipment for forming amorphous silicon thin-films. As a result, based on Mr. Tsuji's knowledge of "creating a new substance in plasma," a thin-film deposition system that forms silicon-hydrogen compound thin-films utilizing a glow discharge was completed. This prepared the way for SAMCO entering a growth orbit with its proprietary thin-film deposition technology forming the core of its business.

●Starting a Business in a Garage and Mr. Tsuji's Original Strategies
The first job after founding the business was to build an L-shaped workshop into which a space of a rental garage with room for two cars (monthly rent of 12,000 yen) was partitioned. This was the embodiment of a Japanese "garage company."
Despite the large scale of the silicon thin-film market, it is exposed to fierce competition. Therefore, SAMCO focused its attention on the compound semiconductor (gallium, arsenic, gallium nitride etc.), a niche in the market which required great technical expertise, and chose it as a field where the company could compete to adopt a strategy that differentiated it from the major companies.

Mr. Tsuji, president and CEO, delivering a lecture

●To Make Up for Shortage
Although at that time SAMCO was short of human resources, materials and money, they invited outside lecturers to hold technology seminars on a regular basis. The place for seminars was a meeting room (without a charge for usage) at a city bank and SAMCO's lender, which produced the unexpected effect of creating an image of credibility among their business partners that "a bank backs them up". To make up for the shortage of facilities, they conducted joint research with a research laboratory at Kyoto University and co-authored a paper with the professor and others and published it for an international academic society. This resulted in a dramatic improvement in credibility with foreign companies. As a result, SAMCO received orders from U.S major companies, and subsequently, orders from conservative domestic companies started to pour in.

●From Kyoto to a Global Venture Company
When founding his company, Mr. Tsuji, the "techie" president and CEO himself, visited the Chamber of Commerce and Industry to learn accounting, and undergoing all kinds of hardships. Accumulation of broad and deep knowledge (self-education) of management served as a solid basis for the profit-planning-oriented management of the company. Venture companies in Kyoto which lack markets are famous for their high-profit corporate structure which is less vulnerable to economic conditions. SAMCO is not an exception, and it places great importance on high equity capital and maintains a gross profit ratio of more than 50%. The setting and achieving of simple goals is precisely their strength.
Currently, they have research laboratories in the Silicon Valley in the U.S. and Cambridge in the U.K. Research results from the latter have been licensed to U.S. companies, and this is starting to bear fruit indeed. SAMCO, a high-tech venture company, which went public in the 21st year after its foundation, has just started expanding new markets on a global basis.

●Comments from Students in Charge of Recording
"Important points of management are positioning in the market and profit planning," said Mr. Tsuji, president and CEO. We heard that in the early days of the company, he stayed nights at the "garage" in order to devote his energy to building the foundations of the company. Looking back on those days he remarked, "It was fun and I did not have a sense of tragic heroism," but gave us the advice: "Practically, you had better experience financial hardships..." We felt inexpressible weight from, and persuasiveness in, the words of the president and founder of the company, who had honed his skills in many ways to attain his current status at the time of shifting from "techie" to "owner of a company." We felt that, despite his calm appearance, his lecture showed enthusiasm and very refined strategic tastes, as one of Kyoto's most prominent owners of a venture company.

Mr. Tsuji, President and CEO, surrounded by students

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