Ken Sumitani, President
Ken Sumitani is a 20-year veteran of the Japanese tech landscape, renowned for his hands-on leadership in launching hundreds of high-growth ventures. By architecting the Japanese foundations for industry icons—including Red Hat, Brocade, tableau, Citrix, Wind River, MicroStrategy, Nuance, Advertising.com, AdRoll, PubMatic, Thingworx, Brightcove, Skype, etc. Ken has established the firm’s reputation for market entry excellence.
As President of Japan Entry, Ken ensures a seamless fusion of Business Development DNA and Talent Acquisition. He provides the strategic oversight for all client projects, ensuring that every market entry plan is battle-tested and aligned with global HQ objectives.
Ken’s leadership is defined by a high-performance team structure:
• Business Development & Execution: Our Business Development practice is led by Yoshi and his dedicated team, who drive the day-to-day market validation, partner negotiations, and direct sales acceleration. Ken supports these initiatives by providing high-level strategic counsel and access to his extensive industry network, ensuring the BD team has the necessary leverage to close complex deals and scale rapidly.
• Strategic Recruiting: Ken personally directs the Full-Stack Recruiting division, leveraging his elite “who’s who” network and two decades of industry contacts to build out your local organization—from executive leaders to mission-critical SEs and Support staff.
This collaborative approach allows Japan Entry to operate as a high-energy extension of your company.
Before leading Japan Entry, Ken held a pivotal leadership role as Vice President at Recruit, overseeing a team of 70 professionals in the Full-Stack Search Division. His international expertise was further solidified by founding and managing Recruit’s Los Angeles subsidiary, where he led cross-border business initiatives. Ken holds a degree in Economics from Keio University.
Yoshio Matsunaga, Managing Director
Yoshio Matsunaga is in charge of business development activities for clients, ranging from direct sales representative, reseller channel development, strategy making, establishing a Japanese entity, and other day to day activities necessary to run the Japanese business. Mr. Matsunaga has multiple Country Manager roles at technology startups and founded three companies. He graduated from City University of New York Baruch College with a double major in Entrepreneurship and Industrial Organizational Psychology.
Jack Plimpton, Founder & Former President
Japan Entry is built upon the leadership of founder, Jack Plimpton, former General Manager of Lotus Development Japan, a start-up he developed into a 35-person organization with $10 million in first-year revenues. Lotus Japan went on to sell 20% of the total worldwide volume of Lotus Notes throughout the 1990′s. Mr. Plimpton is completely bilingual in spoken/written Japanese. He holds an MBA from Stanford University, studied at Tohoku University on a Rotary Scholarship, and graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Harvard College.
William Lohse, Advisor
William Lohse serves as an advisor to Japan Entry. He has been an angel investor since 1990. In addition, Mr. Lohse previously was CEO of Softbank Expos where he grew revenues to $200M. He was President of Ziff-Davis Publishing and managed 1,800 employees with revenues of $350M. Previously, he founded Breakthrough Software which was later acquired by Symantec.