When LinkedIn launched its Japanese-language platform in October 2011, it faced a market unlike any other. The company had just gone public and was expanding aggressively overseas, but in Japan the very idea of putting one’s career history online was unfamiliar, even uncomfortable. The local team began small, working to introduce not just a product but an entirely new professional behavior. What followed was a slow and often uneven climb, offering lessons in how global momentum can falter when a market requires deeper commitment and adaptation.
The Accidental Evangelist
LinkedIn’s founder Reid Hoffman had eyed Japan as early as 2007, forging an advisory relationship with his friend Joi Ito of Digital Garage (DG). Yet Japan wasn’t high on the global agenda until the company’s IPO momentum reignited global expansion plans. By May 2011, LinkedIn announced a partnership with DG and committed to launching in Japan within the year. The promise: to bring professional networking to a country where such a concept barely existed.
In October, LinkedIn launched its Japanese-language platform and opened a small Tokyo office. The company opted for a direct entry via LinkedIn Japan K.K., supported by DG in PR and marketing. The initial office was tiny: a three-person team helmed in part by Catherine Porter, a U.S.-based project lead, supported by Rei Hasegawa on marketing and by January 2012, Ryuichiro Sugimoto, a seasoned recruiter from Rakuten who would become the acting country head.
Sugimoto didn’t intend to become the face of LinkedIn in Japan. He stumbled onto a job post late one night, applied, and was promptly rejected by the automated system. Incensed, he wrote a pointed cover letter: “Do you even know what Rakuten is? I’ve led global MBA hiring and executive search.” That email got him a phone call, and eventually, a job offer.
Officially hired to lead HR, Sugimoto quickly became much more. With no clear hierarchy and no playbook, he handled recruiting, office ops, and evangelism. As one of LinkedIn Japan’s first local employees, he helped explain what LinkedIn was to a skeptical audience. In meetings, he played translator, cultural mediator, and pitchman. When Catherine departed, Sugimoto became the de facto country manager. For three years, he would carry the brand in Japan, despite having no official title.
A Platform Misunderstood
From day one, LinkedIn faced a steep uphill climb. Let alone their resume, Japanese professionals were reluctant to put their names online. The idea of advertising your career trajectory was viewed as distasteful, even disloyal.
Finding the right early hires proved just as difficult. Candidates often had LinkedIn accounts with only their school and company name. Some were even wary of being on the platform at all, fearing that just having a profile might tip off their HR department that they were job hunting.
Sugimoto had to recruit people using the very platform they were meant to evangelize, filtering by pedigree and hoping for the best. Reflecting on this period, he emphasized that the first hires in a new market need to be generalists: people comfortable being “nandemoya” (jack-of-all-trades), with flexibility, humility, and the ability to unlearn old habits. At LinkedIn Japan, the early team included subsequent hires in business development and enterprise engagement. Everyone wore multiple hats: marketing leads helped run events, HR leads doubled as evangelists, and even basic office setup fell to the small team. “What we needed for faster growth was clear: dedicated product and engineering for Japan, and someone full-time to champion the market internally,” Sugimoto explained.
The “Black Ship” Effect
In the media, LinkedIn was often painted with the “Black Ship” label, a foreign disruptor coming to change the rules1. While some foreign tech brands leaned into the rebel persona, the local team tried to steer the narrative by hosting events with entrepreneurs and featuring local tech leaders like Rakuten’s Hiroshi Mikitani. Even Hoffman made a multi-stop visit to Tokyo, appearing on panels and workshops. Yet the dual perception lingered: useful for bilinguals in global firms, but for most Japanese professionals, LinkedIn felt elitist, confusing, and potentially risky. The cautious, minimalist approach stood in stark contrast to Facebook, which doubled its Japanese user base within six months of launch, quickly passing the million-user mark (meanwhile LinkedIn had 400–500k users in 2011 and took nearly four years to cross the one-million threshold). As Sugimoto later noted, Facebook’s decision to appoint a dedicated country manager and push for deeper localization proved decisive.
Behind this perception gap were structural choices at headquarters. Engineers in Mountain View gave Japan low priority, and feature requests were often pushed to the back of the queue. A Digital Garage executive recalled that management also maintained a strong insistence on English-first communication, leaving little room to adapt to Japan’s business norms such as meishi (business cards) exchange and other relationship-driven practices. “Reid himself was fond of Japan. He even worked at Fujitsu Software early in his career, but at the management level there wasn’t the same urgency. For headquarters, Asia meant China first,” the executive reflected.
The GTM That Wasn’t
Early go-to-market efforts were centered on education rather than mass promotion. LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Navi, a Japanese-language how-to site, and the team spoke at events, onboarded influencers, and created localized case studies. They also pitched major corporations such as Panasonic and Nissan on Talent Solutions, showcasing overseas success stories.
But when it came to deeper localization, progress stalled. Every product change required engineering resources in California, and Japan rarely made it high enough on the priority list. Business development ideas faced similar hurdles. For example, the team explored having carriers like NTT Docomo pre-install the LinkedIn app on smartphones, something Masayoshi Son did to Twitter on Softbank devices out of his personal enthusiasm, but such initiatives rarely materialized due to limited resources.
Talent Solutions secured several marquee enterprise clients, enabling the creation of Japanese case studies and proof points. Microsoft Japan, for example, was shown how its U.S. counterparts used LinkedIn, essentially “copy-pasting” global success stories into the local market. Later, Marketing Solutions also delivered revenue from clients like Nissan, which leveraged the platform for global promotion. These accounts gave the Japan office enough credibility to continue operating.
In retrospect, Sugimoto emphasized that what was missing was balance: investing not only in B2B monetization but also in building the consumer side through deeper localization and product support.
The inflection point came after Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016. With deeper pockets and local clout, LinkedIn finally hired a country manager: Shin Murakami, ex-CMO of Yahoo Japan. Murakami was a product guy with marketing chops and deep ties in Japan’s tech ecosystem. For the first time, the company began producing Japanese-language content, improving search for double-byte characters, and launching localized learning modules.
Lessons in Patience, Power, and Positioning
The story of LinkedIn Japan is not one of failure, but of cultural mismatch and course correction. It shows what happens when a global tech giant assumes that what worked in one country will also work in Japan, and what it takes to recover from that assumption. Three lessons stand out.
- Early leadership matters: The absence of a dedicated country manager in the first years slowed adoption. Early team members like Sugimoto kept the lights on, evangelized tirelessly, and even won marquee enterprise clients, but growth never reached its potential. By contrast, Facebook’s appointment of a high-profile local lead sent a clear signal of commitment and unlocked resources.
- Local adaptation is not optional: Even a globally dominant platform struggled to gain traction without early investment in localization. Japan requires adaptation, but once accepted, the reward will be large. In hindsight, observers believe LinkedIn would have benefitted from partnerships with local players like Wantedly or Sansan2 to co-promote the culture of online business networking, rather than going it alone.
- Enter Japan early: Timing matters not just for user adoption but also for how much flexibility exists to localize. Twitter entered Japan when the company had only 20-25 people and could actively shape the Japan launch. By the time LinkedIn entered, it was already a scaled public company with a rigid playbook, and it faced a local market increasingly defined by emerging players.
Success in Japan requires upfront investment, autonomy for local teams, and a recognition that Japan will not follow the same curve as other markets. For startups, LinkedIn’s experience serves as a reminder that underinvesting at entry can cost years of traction, and that local leadership is not optional but essential.
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[1]: The label echoes Japan’s history, recalling U.S. naval officer’s arrival with Western gunboats in the 19th century that forced the country to open its borders. When used in the tech context, it suggests an outsider imposing a new model on Japan’s established order.
[2]: Wantedly (founded 2010) is a local social networking platform for professionals that emphasizes shared mission and culture over resumes. Sansan (founded 2007) is an enterprise SaaS company that digitizes meishi (business cards) and has become a standard tool for managing professional contacts in Japan, where business card exchange remains a core practice.
Who we spoke to
Ryuichiro Sugimoto is Japan Country Manager at Aquent, a global marketing and digital talent agency. Earlier in his career, he served as Acting Country Lead for LinkedIn Japan, and has held senior talent leadership roles at companies including Adobe, IBM, and Accenture, and Rakuten.
