TEAM
Last updated
Last updated
About CEO and MessageCore TeamAdvisors
Hiro Mashita Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
I, Hiro Mashita, strongly believe that new technologies and ideas in IT and the blockchain world will lead to a more affluent society and bring out more smiles, and this belief informs my thoughts and actions on a daily basis, as I travel around the world to talk with people and try to bring this outcome closer to reality.
At Akiverse, within the framework of the web 3.0 metaverse, we really want to develop a worldview that will make even people and companies that “don't feel it now” want to actively participate.
We hope that people who have always loved games, people who play games in their spare time, and creative people who are willing to take on new challenges will enjoy and feel uplifted by the games, and that we will work together with individuals and companies who are at the entrance to the Metaverse to make it a more exciting place. As CEO, I will fully utilize my past experience to help the talented AKIVERSE team members (introduced below) to actively promote this project and achieve our vision.
First, I will put in order the overall and corporate structure of the project, drawing on my past experience in structured finance at Nomura Securities NY.
I will also utilize my experience as CFO, Head of Business Development, Head of CVC, and Head of Internet Business at Hikari Tsushin, as well as my experience in venture investment, M&A, business alliances, joint ventures, and IPOs at over 500 companies, to brainstorm with our team members on business development, organization building, headhunting, financing, business alliances, individual and corporate development, system building, and more, in order to improve the precision of our execution.
Since leaving Japan and moving abroad in 2013, I have invested in, advised, or promoted more than 200 ventures, and in 2018 I was named one of the 42 people who have contributed the most to the Indian startup ecosystem by Inc42, an Indian internet media outlet!
I have worked with 10 companies that are expanding their game businesses around the world, including a Vtuber business with AnyColor, and 5 companies that are expanding their businesses for creators in Japan and India.
I have also invested in Razorpay, a unicorn company that is developing its payments business in India, from an early stage, and supported a Japanese QR payment company from the startup stage, providing strong support for its overseas expansion. We are proud of our broad and deep knowledge, especially in the payment area.
In 2018, I also invested in OpenSea and Helicarrier from the early phases of these projects, and had early access to the NFT and African crypto markets. With those achievements and experience, I am committed to making the world of AKIVERSE a reality!
Educational background:. MBA from Duke University, BA in Economics from Keio University
Favorite or influential games: Bubble Shooter / Solitaire / Mystery Detective June
Ikuma Ueno Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer
Ikuma is responsible for directing the token listing, offering, marketing, and overall corporate strategy. Incubator and an investor for various GameFi, Web3.0 projects to design and strategize the tokenomics. One of the first people to list the Japanese oriented P2E token to the government regulated exchange. Ikuma has full experience in crypto business since 2018 working as Business Development Manager at Cumberland - a DRW company focused to expand Crypto OTC services specifically in Asia as well as a frontier of NFT GameFi Project that lead Play-to-Earn business to adopt globally. Prior to DRW, Ikuma was a Senior Digital Strategist at Mizuho Financial Group, one of the largest financial conglomerates in Japan, where he was in the planning division to focus on driving FinTech initiatives, especially in the area of blockchain and distributed ledger technology. Ikuma was a primary participant of r3 consortium and resident advisor for the New York tech venture capital RRE Ventures. Ikuma started his career from Mizuho Bank as a SME banker to offer lending and banking services. Later he transferred to Settlement and Clearing Services Division Mizuho Corporate Bank to custody assets such as JGB, equity, SB of largest foreign financial institutions.
Favorite or most influential computer games: Counter Strike 1.6 / Final Fantasy X,XIV, IX, VII / Apex Legends
Peter de Blanc Chief Technology Officer
As a full stack engineer, he has 13 years of experience in fintech, AI, and math research. In 2015, he co-founded Heaven Zero to develop cutting-edge NLP for English and Japanese. He was also a software engineer at Standard AI, a vision-based autonomous checkout system, payment engineering at Google Wallet, and financial modeling at Real Capital Innovation (RCI) Liquidity.
Favorite or influential games: Factorio / Dance Dance Revolution / Airtone
Kohsuke Tone Product Officer
In graduate school, he majored in behavioral economics. After dropping out of graduate school, he started his career as a web front-end engineer. While managing a SaaS product development company for e-commerce businesses, he was involved in the development and operation of casual esports apps and the launch of several startup products, including the development of a community-based SNS app. Fascinated by the blockchain technology that could make the virtual world sustainable, he jumped into the Web 3.0 world to create a paradigm shift in the current civilization.
Favorite or influential games: MONSTER HUNTER FRONTIER / CHRONO TRIGGER / UNDERTALE
Hibiki Sakuraoka Product Manager
He previously worked as a backend engineer developing (PHP, TypeScript) and operating a video distribution service. He has also a strong interest in front-end development, often using React, and has studied EVM compatible chain development through Uniswap, PancakeSwap, Iron Finance, and Loot NFT, and participates in the Japanese community on blockchain development. He is also developing Ganerative Art NFT on his own.
Favorite or most influential computer game titles: SUPER MARIO WORLD / Chocobo’s Dungeon 2 / Star Wars Battlefront II
Ryuichi Nishizawa Platform Planner
Game creator and UX engineer. He has been involved in game development since the early days of arcade games in the 1980s and has witnessed the growth and transition of the game industry closely over the past 40 years, designing and directing games for numerous platforms ranging from 8-bit consoles to smartphones. He sees Web 3.0 as "a technology that enables the mixing of real and virtual society," and notes that the potential of games is beginning to be fully exploited for the future. He sees the current blockchain games as a first step, and is keenly interested in exploring the great possibilities that lie ahead.
Favorite or influential games: ATARI Star Wars / The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild / Gran Turismo Sport
Akanksha Jain Art Director
Akanksha Jain is an art director with 8+ years of expertise in design and communication. As a 3D visual designer she works with numerous clients in the technology, art and fashion industry. She has immense love for creating fantastical landscapes and character-design. Her work has been featured in publications like Creative Boom, Homegrown.in and various other digital platforms. Her connection to other 3D artists through various NFT art discord communities inspired her interest in blockchain technology. Most recently her NFT animation was selected to be featured in Paris Hilton’s exhibit at the Sevens Grant Foundation. Independently, Akanksha also guides companies towards Web3 integration and digitisation of brand assets as NFT’s.
Favorite or most influential computer game titles: Journey / Midtown Madness / Vanguard Ace
Joshua Wu Executive Tech Advisor
Founding Engineer at OpenSea; Facebook tech lead. In the past, he was the first engineer at OpenSea, where he worked on all parts of the project such as the website, custom smart contracts, blockchain integration, community management, and business development. Prior to OpenSea, he was a foundational developer at Facebook in business partnerships. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, where as a student he founded Heaven Zero, a tech research startup. In his free time, Joshua enjoys working on his own software projects, selling his own NFTs, and enjoying Japanese cuisine.
Favorite or most influential computer game titles: League of Legends / Library of Ruina / Animal Crossing
Shohei Nakata Token Economics Advisor
After graduating from university, Shohei worked as a software developer at a domestic manufacturer, and in 2019, he personally developed a secondary distribution market for CryptoSpells which is called “Ether Market”, one of the first domestic blockchain game. He also participated in a crypto exchange project using sidechains as a developer, and worked on it until July 2021. During the same period, he started investing in crypto currencies and crypto projects. He invested mainly in DeFi and GameFi projects, and in 2021, playing Axie Infinity for 2 months, he was able to make a profit of over 160 million yen(approximately 1.4 million USD) as an investor. He has been involved in The Sandbox's Land sale since its early days, and in DeFi, he started with Yum Finance, participated in the launch farming of Sushi Swap, and generated over US$2,000 in profits on Pancake Swap based on his research. He has invested in DeFi on various chains including Ethereum, BSC, Matic, Solana, Harmony, PolkaDot and Arbitrum. In September 2021, he joined Vict(Currently AKIVERSE LAB) as a Token Economics Advisor and is utilizing his knowledge he gained from analyzing various GameFi projects.
Favorite or most influential computer game titles: BIKE RIDER / Legend of Mana / Dragon Quest Monsters (Dragon Warrior Monsters)
Kazutaka Mori Legal Advisor
Head Fintech & Blockchain team of ONE ASIA LAWYERS, Lawyer Since 2016, he has been involved in a number of blockchain and crypto-asset projects as an advisor and angel investor. He has 18 offices around the world and has spoken and written extensively on fintech and blockchain. Advisor to BCCC (Blockchain Collaborative Consortium / Japan), Visiting Professor at Kobe University
