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30 UNDER 30 • ASIA ALUMNIMARCH 2020 FORBES ASIA
AI to judge a borrower’s creditworthiness from
its sales data, then buys its receivables at a dis-
count. If the merchant doesn’t get paid, neither
does Yell. “Lending is bustling, but we need more
time to validate our model,” says Tsuruoka, 30.
Online lending and an IPO are just the latest
in a busy few years for Tsuruoka since earning
a slot in the inaugural 30 Under 30 Asia list in- Base, which Tsuruoka set up in 2012 and
still runs as CEO, now offers everything from
doughnuts to designer hoodies. With 136 em-
ployees, the company is expanding its products
and services, and wants to go global. Since list-
ing, Base’s stock has climbed nearly 28%, making
Tsuruoka’s roughly 15% stake worth ¥4.9 billion.
The inspiration for Base came from Tsuruoka’s
mother, who wanted to sell online from her small
women’s apparel shop, but found Amazon and
similar sites difficult to use. “I thought it would
be good to have online shops for people, like my
mother, who weren’t that adept on the inter-
net,” he says. So instead of returning that fall to
resume studying for his information technolo-
gy degree at Tokyo University of Technology, he
started the service in November 2012.
Base enables sellers to quickly set up an online
shop, including a payment system. A month af-
ter launching, Tsuruoka had signed 10,000 shops
to the site, helped by word of mouth and Twitter.
With no business experience, he sought advice
from Japanese crowdfunding site Campfire’s CEO
Kazuma Ieiri and one of his investors, Jakarta- and
Tokyo-based VC firm East Ventures’ cofounder
Taiga Matsuyama—Tsuruoka had once interned at
Campfire. “I basically had no knowledge of how to
raise funds or to value companies,” says Tsuruoka.
Ieiri and Matsuyama gave him more than
pointers: when Base in January 2013 raised ¥30
million in seed capital, both invested, with East
Ventures providing ¥20 million. Ieiri now sits on
Base’s board. “Tsuruoka struck me as someone
who would push until the end to get results,” says
Matsuyama. “His idea was really great because I
knew that the time would come for small stores
to have their own (e-commerce) sites, rather
than being on a large marketplace.”
Setting up on Base is free; the site charges a fee
based on sales, which rose over 60% last year to
almost ¥66 billion, with the average shop selling
roughly ¥140,000 a month. Sole proprietorships
selling fashion merchandise account for a ma-
jority of merchants. Base posted a ¥459 million
loss for 2019 on ¥3.8 billion in revenue. Daiwa
Securities, Base’s lead underwriter, in October
projected that Base would turn a profit in 2021,
earning ¥1.5 billion on ¥7.9 billion in revenue.
Tsuruoka added fintech early in Base’s growth.
In 2014, he introduced a settlement service, Base
Easy Payment, that charges merchants 6.6% of any
transaction, plus ¥40. The next year Base started
offering a payment service to other e-commerce
sites and in 2016 developed a cashless payment
system. “The users were really small-scale busi-
nesses,” says Tsuruoka, whose merchants couldn’t
afford payment systems designed for larger com-
panies. “Just because you were a sole proprietor
your payment system was different from big com-
panies, and had significantly higher fees.”
Yell Bank helps small business owners get the
financing that’s long been difficult to get in Ja-
pan. While traditional Japanese banks do offer
accounts receivable financing, they often require
owners to personally guarantee repayment, a sig-
nificant hurdle. “He’s looking ahead to what its
merchants will need, such as the new loan ser-
vice,” says Matsuyama. “He’s not just another EC
site operator. He really loves his users.”
Base has rolled out other services, such as
low-cost shipping. Shoppers outside Japan can
now use its app and, if there’s enough demand,
Tsuruoka says he will open the site to overseas
merchants.
One loyal customer is Tsuruoka, who estimates
he spends at least a few hundred dollars a month
on the site and buys most of his clothes through
Base. His most recent purchase? A new black
hoodie from a video blogger’s shop to complement
his signature look—a black T-shirt and goatee.Reception
area (left) at
Base office
entrance
(right).Yuta Tsuruoka in
Base’s office in Tokyo.
The inspiration for
Base came from the
difficulty of Tsuruoka’s
mother in setting up
an online shop.