The people you work with.

Leadership

Hajime Hirose

CEO

Keeps the team focused on solving customers' problems, and brings the latest from the US cloud industry to customers in Japan.

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Hajime Hirose

CEO

How would you describe your work in one sentence?

As CEO, I'm responsible for making sure the team is aligned on solving our customers' problems, and that we have the people and funding to keep doing it. New developments in the cloud industry usually start in the US, so I go there twice a year and bring what's happening back to our customers in Japan.

How did you get here?

I've worked in software development my whole career. Nothing makes me happier than seeing an idea reach the world and change how people work and live. As CEO, my job now is to build the team that builds the product. We automate everything outside our customers' core business so they can focus on it. My goal is to take a product made in Japan and make it one the world uses.

How do you switch off?

I live in Kuala Lumpur with my wife and two sons, and spend about 10 days a month in Tokyo, plus plenty of other business trips. When I have time, I play golf. On the road I pick hotels with a sauna and use it first thing in the morning and before bed. Strength training and the sauna are how I recharge.

Leadership

Shungo Arai

COO/CFO

With Alphaus since 2015. Oversees our training and consulting teams and helps run the FinOps community in Japan.

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Shungo Arai

COO/CFO

You joined in 2015. What did Alphaus look like then, and what's the biggest change since?

As with most startups, our founding idea and product didn't immediately find product-market fit, so we went through a pivot. We launched Ripple in 2018 and decided to put all our resources behind it the following year. That was right when the term "FinOps" was starting to catch on in the US and Europe, and looking back, the timing worked out really well for us.

You sponsor our training and consulting teams in Japan and Southeast Asia. Why does FinOps education matter?

Companies and organizations in Japan and the rest of Asia have been several years behind their US and European counterparts in adopting FinOps and paying attention to it. That gap isn't only a disadvantage, though. It also means they can learn from practices already developed by organizations in more mature markets. To do that well, it's important to understand how FinOps is understood globally, so everyone is working from the same frame of reference.

After almost 11 years at Alphaus, what keeps the work interesting for you?

I'm interested in how FinOps, a way of thinking that goes beyond cost reduction and shapes an organization's culture, will spread in Japan. It may not take hold exactly as FinOps is currently defined; parts of it may be localized along the way. I've been looking for clues through my involvement with Cloud FinOps (O'Reilly), widely regarded as the textbook on FinOps, and through helping run the FinOps community in Japan.

Leadership

Chew Esmero

CTO

Leads engineering across Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam from Tokyo, working in both Japanese and English.

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Chew Esmero

CTO

As CTO, what does a normal week look like for you?

I start most days by checking our systems and cloud spend. After that, a lot of the week goes to the team across Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam: sync-ups, brainstorming, and unblocking people, all while switching between Japanese and English. I save time for reading and do a bit of coding late at night, mostly tooling and prototypes.

You joined in July 2017. How did you end up leading engineering at Alphaus from Tokyo?

Before Alphaus I spent years in research. I joined when the company was still called Mobingi K.K., and I'm what you'd call an "accidental CTO": the role came ahead of schedule, so I learned it on the job through several pivots and our move into FinOps.

What does a good day off in Tokyo look like for you?

A slow one with a good book, usually high fantasy with an interesting magic system or a crime series. I also play music a bit, and love watching live performances in popular train stations in Tokyo.

Business team

Yo Fukuda

Sales Lead

Leads the business side in Japan, working with new and existing customers and turning their feedback into product improvements.

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Yo Fukuda

Sales Lead

What does a typical week in Japan sales look like for you?

I oversee our business-side team in Japan and work with both new and existing customers. Beyond tailoring proposals and support to each customer, I manage the team's pipeline and KPIs and set priorities. I also work with our engineering and marketing teams overseas, in both Japanese and English, to turn what customers tell us into product improvements.

When you introduce Ripple to an MSP, which feature makes them lean in first?

The biggest reaction comes from being able to handle everything for each end user, from cost visibility and analysis through to issuing invoices, in a way that fits Japan's detailed business practices. Many MSPs still do their monthly billing by hand in Excel. It takes a huge amount of time, and because the calculations are complex, mistakes happen and the work ends up depending on one person. With Ripple, you can set rules such as discounts, markups and support fees for each customer, and automate both the cost view and the invoice amount for each contract type. Add Guaranteed Commitments and it goes beyond more efficient billing: you can offer cost optimization support to your end users as a value-added service, with very little extra work.

What do you do on a weekend to recharge?

I usually recharge by moving my body. I go to the gym three times a week, rotating chest, back and legs, with some HIIT mixed in. I also make a point of meeting and talking with lots of different people. Hearing from people in other industries is always stimulating, and I often come away with new ways of thinking and new ideas.

Business team

Shinichiro Komatsu

Customer Success

Supports customers in Japan so they get the most out of Ripple and Wave.

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Shinichiro Komatsu

Customer Success

What's your role at Alphaus, and what team are you part of?

I'm on the Customer Success team in Japan. I support our customers so they can get the most out of Ripple and Wave.

What's the first project you've owned here?

Handling customer inquiries. I still do it every day, and it's the best way to learn both the product and our customers. Big thanks to the tech support team for always helping me out.

What's your go-to recommendation in Tokyo for a visiting teammate?

Sushiro! It's casual, affordable, and very clean. I worked there in high school, and we had to wash our hands five times before entering the kitchen. So I can personally vouch for it.

Business team

Mau Osanai

Customer Success

Supports customers using Ripple, turning what they really want to achieve into reality alongside our engineers.

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Mau Osanai

Customer Success

What do you do at Alphaus, and who do you work with most?

I work in Customer Success, supporting customers who use Ripple. Beyond answering inquiries, my job is to understand what customers really want to achieve and help make it happen, working with our engineers when needed. What I find most rewarding is making cost management even a little easier and more comfortable for them. I work most closely with Yo and Shin on the CS team, and with our Tech Support team.

What's one thing you've already learned about cloud cost management that surprised you?

Before joining, I assumed cloud usage fees wouldn't differ much from one customer to another, and that cost management was mostly about finding places to cut. In reality, MSPs come up with their own ways of delivering cloud services, and at Alphaus we design models where no one loses out, whether that's our customers, our partners, or us. It was several steps beyond what I had imagined. Discovering that cost management can lead to building entirely new mechanisms was fascinating to me.

Three words your friends would use to describe you?

"Caring," "unique," and "a go-getter," I think. I love being relied on, and when someone needs help, I can't help jumping in. Sometimes I get a little too eager and end up spinning my wheels, but I think that's just part of who I am. I like to think that uniqueness is part of why Alphaus decided to bring me on.

Engineering

Masafumi Noguchi

Senior Software Engineer

Works between engineering and customers, joining meetings as the technical lead and turning what customers need into product.

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Masafumi Noguchi

Senior Software Engineer

You're an engineer on the GTM side. What does that mix look like day to day?

In a word, I go back and forth between technology and business. About half my time I'm hands-on as an engineer: designing new features for Ripple and Wave, and lately working out the design and architecture for FinOps event management, all the way through to the documentation. The other half leans GTM. I join customer meetings as the technical lead and handle the deeper technical questions that are hard for sales or CS to answer on their own. Hearing directly from customers makes it very clear what they really need and what our products are still missing. We then sort out the core issue and its impact as a team and take it to engineering. Getting what's valuable into Alphaus products faster and into customers' hands: that's what I see as the GTM team's job.

Where does the nickname "Gucci" come from?

Simple: my surname is Noguchi, so "Gucci." I think it started when we decided to call each other more casually. I'd actually never been called that before in my life, but I'm used to it now.

What are you into outside of work right now?

Outside work, I'm focused on training. I love exercise, and right now I'm really enjoying running in sprint races, so I keep experimenting with what kind of training will make me faster.

Engineering

Haruka Horioka

Senior Software Engineer

Works on Wave Experience, so anyone looking at cloud cost data knows exactly what to do next.

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Haruka Horioka

Senior Software Engineer

What does "Wave Experience" mean, and what's your part in it?

Helping anyone who looks at the data know exactly what to do next. That's what our team means by "Wave Experience." The cloud costs Wave handles are numbers that engineers, finance and leadership all read from their own angle. As people in FinOps often say, if everyone can't read the same number the same way, nothing moves forward. I want the screen to be the bridge between them. AI has made us much faster at building, which is exactly why I want to spend more time on what to build and how people will act when they see it. More than building individual screens, my role is keeping the experience consistent across the whole product.

What first got you into software engineering?

I spent many years in the music industry as a sound engineer, with no programming experience at all. The turning point came when a friend asked me to help at a company he had just started. That's where I first learned JavaScript, and little by little I got involved in building the product. Before I knew it, that had become my career.

What's a product or app outside work whose design you admire?

Apple's products are hard to beat. I like Google too, and lately there are so many well-designed products coming out. With AI, it's now easy to bring good design into your own work. I don't see that as a bad thing; if anything, it's a good trend. Show your own character where it matters, and elsewhere, learn from products that already have great UI/UX. If that means more things are easy for people to use, that's what counts.

Engineering

Haruhiko Kodo

Senior Software Engineer

Co-leads Corporate Products, building the internal tools everyone at Alphaus uses every day.

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Haruhiko Kodo

Senior Software Engineer

What does the Corporate Products team build, and who uses it?

On the Corporate Products team, we build the internal tools Alphaus members use every day. The main one is Pondr, which brings task management, sprints, roadmaps, OKRs, documents and leave tracking into one place. Everyone in the company uses it, not just engineers but sales, CS and back-office members too. Unlike customer-facing products, the people using it sit right next to you, so feedback arrives the same day. That's what makes it fun, and also what keeps you on your toes. We aim to build tools people find they're using before they even notice.

How did "hAL" become your name on Slack?

It comes from my given name, Haru, but I didn't just go with "HARU." In the '90s, ads for the HAL computer college were always on TV, and as a kid I dreamed of going to a computer school someday. I never did, but when I joined in June 2017 and had to pick a Slack name, that memory came back, so I made "hAL" as a play on my name. Only the first "h" is lowercase because "Hal" looks like an ordinary English name and gets lost in the Slack member list. With "hAL," the capital "AL" catches your eye, so you can tell it's me at a glance.

What's a hobby or interest your teammates might not know about?

My days off are almost all DIY. It started with re-papering a single wall, and before I knew it I was completely hooked. My biggest project right now is a run-down apartment of unknown age that I rent as a workspace. I put in wood flooring, repainted the walls, switched the lighting to a track rail, and kept going until there's hardly a trace left of how it looked when I moved in. My power tool collection keeps growing too, and I think it's gone a bit past hobby level (laughs).