Haruo Amano

Executive Vice President

Born in Suginami, Tokyo in 1975, Haruo Amano grew up as the youngest of four siblings. Because of childhood asthma, he was only able to attend kindergarten about half the time, and spent most of his time at home reading books and watching anime.

When he was in the second grade of elementary school, Nintendo released the first NES, and he went to his childhood friend’s house in the neighborhood every day to play the first Mario Bros. The following year, his father bought him a NES, and he and his older brothers became obsessed with playing it. In the third grade of elementary school, a childhood friend invited him to join an abacus class, and by the time he was in junior high school, he had won the first place in a metropolitan tournament.

In 1994, he entered Waseda University internally. He majored in corporate law at the School of Law, which he heard was “highly liberal. Some time after entering the university, he came across a pamphlet from a preparatory school for accountants that claimed, “Civil law is now an elective subject for the CPA examination, making it easier for law students to take the exam. He decided to take the exam, thinking that a CPA would allow him to make use of his abacus and legal knowledge, and that he would be able to see a variety of companies in a different way than his older brothers and sisters who worked for large corporations. He began studying hard for the exam in the spring of his sophomore year, but failed the thesis exam in his senior year. He voluntarily stayed in school for one year to retake the exam, and although he was confident that he would pass the thesis exam in 1999 because of the positive response, he failed again.

When he was about to start job hunting after finishing his study for the CPA exam, he found HENNGE’s predecessor, Horizon Digital Enterprises, in a special feature on venture companies in a certain business magazine. The company name was too long and the fact that a person of my generation was running the company left a strong impression on me, so I applied for the job, thinking it would be fun. He was also attracted by Ogura’s quick thinking and humble attitude when he met him at the interview, and joined the company as a new graduate in 1999 as an accountant.

A few years after joining the company, the global economic downturn and other factors caused the company’s performance to suffer, and in 2002 it was on the verge of bankruptcy, but Ogura and others worked hard to raise funds to get the company back on its feet. When they married that same year, he was introduced to his in-laws as “the man of the IT venture business of the moment,” but they were nervous inside.

In 2012, he launched a global internship program for programmers with Ogura and others, which led to a major transformation of the company, and from around 2017, he spent his time preparing for the company’s listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers market, which it achieved in 2019.

In 2020, he became the first non-founding member of the company’s Board of Directors. He believes that the “jazzy organizational culture is the charm of HENNGE” and tries not to be conscious of the fact that he is a board member. In the future, he plans to further increase the diversity within the company and make it a more globally oriented company.

His most recent major failure was a knee ligament tear and meniscus injury sustained while playing futsal, a hobby he enjoys. He is now CHALLENGE to muscle training instead of futsal and is physically HENNKA every day. His latest gadget recommendation is the Power Plate® PULSE MINI TM, a full-body vibration machine that relieves stiff points on the body. She loves greenhouses and dreams of creating greenhouses and greenhouse cafes in the future.