堀江貴文 A Japanese Bill Gates

堀江貴文( Horie Takafumi)，被譽為「日本的比爾蓋茲」。他只花九年，就從一無所有，打造出市值超過新台幣兩千億元的公司。他今年才三十三歲，沒有富爸爸、沒有人脈，連大學文憑都沒有。

Acclaimed as a Japanese Bill Gates, businessman Horie Takafumi has built from scratch over the last 9 years a business empire worth NT$200 billion, with neither family wealth to back him up nor social connections, nor even indeed a university degree. And he’s still only 33 years old.

他的傳奇崛起，帶給日本年輕人「有為者亦若是」的無窮希望。他呼籲年輕人，要勇於拒絕再被社會既得利益者剝削，勇敢去創業，因為只有創業，「才能賺到大錢，就算失敗，也沒有什麼損失。」。

The ascent of the Takafumi legend has inspired young Japanese with boundless hope that a person of promise can be just like him. He calls upon the young to refuse to be exploited by the vested interests of Japanese society and to have the courage to get out and start their own business, because only the entrepreneur “can really make the big money – and even if you fall, there’s no damage done.”

勇於冒險的堀江，在就讀東京大學時，就預見到網路的商機而輟學，一如微軟董事長比爾‧蓋茲在七○年代中期看準個人電腦商機而自哈佛大學輟學創業。雖然創業年齡比蓋茲晚，但拜講究速效的網路時代之賜，堀江致富的速率，比起蓋茲猶有過之，創業九年，已擁有將近新台幣三百七十億元身價，平均每年賺進四十一億元。他幾近冷血的「數字管理」經營方式，對於一向在派閥政治、利益交換間生存的日本商界來說，堀江無疑是「怪胎」。日本企業大老恨他入骨，但一般民眾卻對他拍手叫好。

Unafraid of the risks, Takafumi, dropped out of Tokyo University when he realized what opportunities the internet was offering, just like Bill Gates had done in the 1970’s, dropping out of Harvard to found Microsoft when he saw the future of personal computing. Though he got off to a rather slower start than Gates had, the speed of the Internet era drove Takafumi’s rise to wealth a lot faster, so that within 9 years of starting out, his personal worth had reached NT$37 billion, the equivalent of NT$4.1 million of clear earnings every year. His almost cold-blooded numbers management approach makes him something of a freak in Japanese business circles where playing factional politics and trading off interests are the conventional keys to survival. Indeed, Takafumi has incurred only the enmity of Japan’s great business magnets, but he enjoys the enthusiastic acclaim of the general public.

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faction-based politics 派閥政治

insider trading 內線交易