Jay Winder
CEO

Our CEO originally came to Japan in 2001 to study martial arts. In 2003, Jay started his first business, Webnet IT, providing IT Staff and Services to foreign companies. In 2010, Jay co-founded MakeLeaps, an online quoting and invoicing system designed for businesses in Japan.

Paul Oswald
CTO

Our CTO first visited Japan in 2005 after meeting a Japanese woman in New York who would later become his wife. Paul brings extensive software development experience from his years as a lead architect at Sony Music as well as several internet startups.

Sales and Marketing

Joined in August 2013. She has a working experience at a large Japanese IT infrastructure company after working as a translator as a freelancer. She has been involved with various sales and marketing projects.

Design

Our graphic designer makes beautiful pictures and art for everything to do with MakeLeaps, from our UI to the background on our Twitter page, to our icons. She brings great quality design into everything we do at MakeLeaps and she is an indispensable member of the team

Front-end/UI Programmer

Our front-end UI and HTML/CSS programmer. His multi-year experience in making high quality interfaces make a big impact on the look and feel of the main site, and the application. If you look at any MakeLeaps webpage, and it looks great, Max had something to do with it.

Business Analyst

Joined in May 2012. He has a great insight and experience in technical issues which requires analyzing customer’s obstacles in business and suggesting practical solutions. He has also involved in product management as an engineer. He is also passionate about playing in the orchestra and riding a bicycle.

Back-end Developer

He came to Japan to work with us from Venezuela. Daniel is a talented back-end programmer and specialises in listening to customers, and turning over complex features that solve difficult problems in simple and easy ways. Daniel speaks Spanish, German, English, and is studying Japanese every day.

Back-end Developer

He is from Texas who joined in July 2013. He is a front and also back-end developer who has an amazing skill in Javascript. He graduated from university in France after he studied at Tokyo University.

Back-end Developer

Joined in January 2014 from California. He is great at system integration and has worked as a freelancer in San Francisco. He has lots of interest other than programming such as hiking, dancing, and video games

Jeff Char

Jeffrey Char is a serial entrepreneur with experience in social and technology ventures. CEO at J-Seed Ventures and Chief Mentor at Venture Generation, a Tokyo-based venture community. He is also Managing Director at SEAbridge, an investment and M&A advisory firm that specializes in the ASEAN region with a particular focus on technology. Originally from Hawaii, but a long-term resident of Tokyo, Japan.

Patrick McKenzie

CEO and co-founder at Starfighter. We make CTFs (games one plays by programming) to identify talented engineers. We then find them great jobs. Also Principal at Kalzumeus,where sells software (currently Bingo Card Creator and Appointment Reminder) on the SaaS model over the Internet to end-users, and also occasionally does consulting work for other SaaS companies on selling more software, typically via marketing-focused engineering improvements like A/B testing, conversion optimization, and lifecycle email campaigns.

Richard Dunne

Richard Dunne (richarddunne on HN) – CEO of www.bdellium.com, which designs customized performance evaluation, competitive intelligence and decision-support tools for the financial services industry

500 Startups

500 Startups is a Silicon Valley venture capital seed fund & accelerator founded by PayPal & Google alumnis. They have invested in hundreds of internet startups all over the world.

Darius Cheung

Darius Cheung is co-founder of BillPin and CEO/co-founder of McAfee-acquired tenCube. Focus on product design, marketing strategy, marketing, sales, team building, fund raising. Prior to startup, engineering by training, high tech marketing by career.

David Dacus

David is an EIR with Strive Capital who built HitPlay from nothing to a highly profitable boutique software company. In addition to being an entrepreneur, David advises and invests in early stage Internet companies, serving as an EIR at Venture Generation in Japan.

Jay Ashton

Jay Ashton is the co-founder and CEO of Revinate, the leading social media solution for the hospitality industry. He has also developed Epinions.com (now Shopping.com, owned by eBay) to one of Japan’s first major e-commerce portals at Digital Garage.

Naval Ravikant

Naval Ravikant is the CEO and a co-founder of AngelList. He is an active Angel investor, and have invested in dozens of companies, including Twitter, Uber, Yammer, Stack Overflow and Wanelo.

Richard Chen

Richard Chen is an active and accredited seed-state invesstor focusing on early stage technology companies. Previously worked at Google Inc. as a senior business product manager in charge of Japanese market.