Takanori Nakamura pulled out of Silicon Valley in 2015 after his mobile marketing software flopped and decided to focus everything on his home country, Japan.
Now those efforts are paying off. His company, Rakus Co., has surged more than 4,500% since going public in Tokyo that year for one of the best performances on the country’s benchmark stock index.
Nakamura, who owns 34% of the cloud-based expense software firm and serves as its president and chief executive officer, has seen his net worth jump to about $1.8 billion (¥199 billion), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.