TOOL Corporation

Hideaki Hontao
President, TOOL Corporation

In 1980, he joined Tool-sha Corporation, which later became TOOL Corporation. As a programmer, he worked on development of layout CAD tools. With the goal of expanding business for products developed by the company, TOOL Corporation was established in 2002 and he assumed the position of president. In 2008, to assist sales and provide technical support for the company's products in North America, he established TOOL America, Inc. and became the company's CEO as well. Since then, he has been involved in activities aiming at worldwide development of EDA tools.

Taking an Interest in Software

I first became involved with software around the time I took college entrance exams. I wasn't very good at math, but I did lean more toward the sciences than the humanities, so I offhandedly decided to take exams for an agricultural department that didn't include mathematics among its exam subjects. (laughs) I passed, but since I hadn't really wanted to study agriculture, I didn't study. (laughs) Instead, I was interested in programming languages like BASIC, so I spent all my time studying programming languages on my own.

When I was in college, in the late 1970s, there weren't any computer science departments, and very few colleges even taught programming at all. Even the word "software" wasn't very common. When most people heard that, they imagined some kind of underwear. (laughs)

As graduation approached, I thought I needed to find a job, so I started job-hunting. But just like with college entrance exams, I wanted to avoid what I was no good at. I was looking for something that wouldn't require me to do sales, when I found out it was possible to work as a programmer. Those were the early days of the software industry, and my department was the target of some recruiting activities, so I applied to a software company right away, and got accepted. That was 1980. The company was Tool-sha Corporation, which would later become TOOL Corporation.

Becoming Aware of the Wider World

Tool-sha was mostly involved in entrusted development of software in the field of semiconductors. Back then, in the 1980s, America was the center of the software industry, but I was hardly even aware of America. I was busy day in and day out with my development work within Japan. I first became aware of the wider world toward the end of the 1980s when I went to America for the first time to attend DAC (Design Automation Conference), an international conference that includes semiconductor design tools among its topics.

As part of that trip, I visited some American companies making EDA (electronic design automation) tools I was surprised to see their work stations. The engineers had their own individual work rooms and each person had his or her own work table. At Tool-sha, we would fight over the available terminals, so the difference in work environments couldn't have been any clearer.

However, the American companies showed us some of their source codes. Some were impressively written and very informative, but others weren't so great that I wanted to fix them up. I remember thinking that while we might not have the greatest work environments in Japan, we definitely weren't losing when it came to strength in programming.

Becoming President

Then the economic bubble burst in Japan and a long, harsh winter ensued. Throughout the 90s, it was all we could do just to survive in the Japan market. What brought about a change in that situation was the collapse of the Internet boom in America around the year 2000.

At the time, the scale of data in semiconductor design was so immense that it was becoming difficult to handle with the existing tools. The software industry was calling it the "Two-Gigabyte barrier. "It was thought to be incredibly difficult to develop software that could handle over two gigabytes in size. I thought, "we'll make semiconductor design software capable of handling data over two gigabytes!!" When I presented my idea of this new software to a client that had expressed some dissatisfaction with the existing tools, they stipulated some rather high conditions, and said that if we could clear them in half a year, they would adopt it.

I formed a five-person team and we began working on development from morning to night. We didn't make the six-month deadline, but at nine months we had cleared the "Two-Gigabyte barrier" and satisfied the target conditions. That was the birth of our current main product LAVIS (a versatile layout visualization platform). I got excited and thought, "LAVIS can go beyond Japan and take on overseas markets as well!"

Later on, as the result of discussing the future of the company with the president, we reached the conclusion that we should change our principal business from contract development to development of packaged software like LAVIS. In 2002, we founded TOOL Corporation to take over the work of Tool-sha, and I took on the responsibility of president.

Taking the Business Overseas

In 2003, TOOL Corporation exhibited LAVIS at DAC and received an even better reaction than we had expected, so we began seriously thinking about developing business in the U.S. However, I didn't have any business experience or a network in the U.S. I employed several U.S. consultants, who introduced us to prospective clients, and we were able to supply our product to several U.S. companies. The results, however, weren't really all we had hoped for.

What I learned from that experience was that unless we actually came to America, there was a limit to how much could be accomplished. In this field in particular, American companies possess a big share of the American market, so no matter how great your product may be, if you don't have a support system in America, not many American companies will buy from you. So in order to make an all-out effort at developing our business in America, we applied to participate in JETRO's incubation program. In February 2008, we established an affiliate and dispatched field engineers from Japan to offer on-site support.

Having field engineers who can offer support whenever some kind of trouble arise earns trust from our clients and makes it easier to follow up our sales activities. When it comes to sales, we give a prospective client a free three-month trial, during which time we have them evaluate the product, and that often leads to a sell. Since the end of 2009, sales have been gradually going up, and I feel like perhaps the economy has finally turned around.

"I Hate Being Called President."

I hate being called president. I haven't been a president for very long, so when someone calls me that, it just doesn't feel right. I have people in the company call me Hontao-san. I think only the new employees address me as President. But it isn't long before even they start calling me Hontao-san. (laughs)

When you address each other with titles, it throws up a wall and you can't communicate openly. We're a small outfit, with only about 80 people, so I try to create an environment where people can say what they want and do what they want in the manner in which they want to do it. In order to establish open communication, lots of staff members look for reasons to plan a party, or rather, social get-togethers. (laughs) These days there's a tendency to hold them in a company meeting room because it's cheaper that way and easier for everyone to participate. Even if you're busy, you can have just a bit to drink and then go right back to work, and if you want, you can join again later on.

Throughout my career, I have done the things that I wanted to do, so I want the company's employees as well to do what they want to do in the way they want to do it. Before, I moved the company along by making myself central to development, but I hardly touch it at all now. I'm leaving our future plans for development in their hands. That the company is starting to run without me shows I've raised an excellent team, and that makes me happy.