Insignia Ventures⁠ founding managing partner, ⁠Yinglan Tan⁠, returns to host this episode as we go on call with ⁠Shinji Asada⁠, Co-Founder & CEO, General Partner of ⁠One Capital⁠. As a 20+ year veteran in the SaaS and venture capital space in Japan (formerly ITOCHU Ventures, Salesforce Ventures), Shinji shares his decades of experience in investing and building software companies across Japan and the US.

In this episode, Shinji and Yinglan cover a range of topics, including Shinji’s approach to investing in market-transforming software companies from the likes of Mercari to Visional, One Capital’s digital transformation initiatives for their LPs, and their incubation of SaaS benchmarking and business modeling platform, ⁠Projection-ai⁠. They also discuss valuable insights on the Japanese SaaS market, advice for founders looking to expand to Japan and go public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and what the future of SaaS companies will be with AI.

Timestamps and Highlights

(01:04) From ITOCHU to Salesforce to One Capital: Shinji Asada’s 20+ years of growing and investing in SaaS companies from the US to Japan;

“I realized that great companies are founded with great products, period. If it’s not a great product, even if you have a great founder with a great background, that doesn’t really mean anything. So product was what really mattered.”

(06:20) Digital Transformation for LPs, Projection-ai, Visional: Stories from a SaaS VC’s Approach to Transforming Japan; 

“I’m a software investor, right? But I’ve never built the software myself. In order to be better at investing and to get a better understanding of how to build software, it would escalate my ability to become a better investor, right? And also have stronger empathy towards founders…And secondly, I wanted to build software that was relevant to VC.”

(13:07) Language Barriers, Tokyo Stock Exchange, 10 Billion VC Market, and The Evolving Japanese Entrepreneur: Advice on Cracking the Japanese Market for Founders and Investors;

“I see it’s probably a hard market to crack because of the language barrier and the cultural barrier, but at the same time, it’s a big market. It’s the third-largest economy in the world. Especially around enterprise software, it is the second-largest market after the United States. Let me give you some figures. It’s about 280 billion on an annual spend basis, and a lot of that is dominated by legacy software that I just mentioned about when I was using it at ITOCHU. So it’s a low-hanging fruit [market] if you have a great user interface experience.”

(20:02) Topical Discussions: Navigating Sales for SaaS in Tight Spending and Cost-Cutting Market, Implications of Generative AI for SaaS Building;

“And I think the companies that will do well are companies or SaaS companies that are a system of record that have enough data within their product set, either from a product standpoint or from a user standpoint, and utilize that data to make the experience better. So those are the companies that are going to do well. The companies that might struggle or even become obsolete are ones that don’t have data. Like it’s not a system of records, maybe a system of engagement, but I think those will be challenging, right?”

(23:05) #MinuteMasterclass: Metrics to Benchmark for SaaS Companies;

“Focus on the balance of spending in sales and marketing, R&D, and G&A. And for example, if you are a pure tech company catering towards engineers like Atlassian, of course, spend a lot on R&D, right? I think Atlassian spends over 50% on R&D, whereas Salesforce spends over 50% on sales and marketing because it’s a sales company. So depending on your product, depending on the demographics or segment that you’re targeting, use your sales and marketing, R&D, and G&A wisely and take a look at our database, Projection-ai.”

(24:58) #RapidFireRound;

About our guest

Shinji Asada is the Co-Founder & CEO, General Partner of One Capital, a Tokyo-based early-stage enterprise software-focused VC fund. The debut fund reached $170 million, the largest first-time VC fund in Japan history (source: Preqin). The firm also has an incubation arm and recently launched Projection-ai and db to help entrepreneurs build financial projections in seconds and also have instant access to relevant saas metrics.

Previously, Shinji was the Japan Head of Salesforce Ventures. Portfolio companies then include Sansan(TYO:4443), Teamspirit(TYO:4397), free(TYO:4478), Goodpatch(TYO: 7351), Yappli(TYO: 4168), Visional(TYO:4194), Flect(TYO: 4414), Andpad, Studist, Toreta, PhoneAppli(acquired by NTT Communications), and more. He invested into 7 of Forbes Japan’s Top 10 Cloud companies in both 2018 and 2019.

Shinji has over 20 years of extensive business development/operation and investment experience in the technology industry in Japan and in the U.S. During his days at ITOCHU Technology Ventures, Shinji invested into Mercari(TYO:4385), Uzabase (TYO:3396), Muse & Co.(Acquired by Mixi), Box(NYSE:Box), and WHILL. Also at ITOCHU, he invested into Aruba Networks(IPO, acquired by HP), Starent Networks(acquired by Cisco) and Cast Iron Systems(acquired by IBM). He earned a MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management and a BE in Economics from Keio University.

Transcript

From ITOCHU to Salesforce to One Capital: Shinji Asada’s 20+ years of growing and investing in SaaS companies from the US to Japan

Yinglan: Today we have a special guest, Mr. Shinji Asada-san, who has become a good friend and also a co-investor and a good partner for us in Japan. He’s a veteran in the venture capital space in Japan, and I would say definitely one of the top venture capitalists. I’ve learned a lot from him, and he shares a lot with us on the landscape in Japan. 

And I just want to kick things off with your decades of experience in investing and building software companies across Japan and the US. I’d love for you to introduce yourself and say a little bit about your background, and also share a pivotal moment or two in your career as you developed as a great partner for Japanese entrepreneurs.

Shinji A: I started my career at a company called ITOCHU Corporation, one of the biggest trading companies here in Japan. Recently, Warren Buffett invested a lot [in these companies], so there’s been a lot of press around trading companies. 

Within that company, I was doing investments into US companies and helping them come to Japan. That was my primary goal. Then I was also seconded to a subsidiary called TMT Ventures, which is a corporate VC arm that does mainly early-stage investments in Japan. And that’s when I fell in love with investing and I met a company called Mercari, which became the biggest tech IPO in Japanese history.

I realized that great companies are founded with great products, period. If it’s not a great product, even if you have a great founder with a great background, that doesn’t really mean anything. So product was what really mattered. 

Then I went on to Salesforce to head their Japan office, which was probably in the early days of SaaS in Japan, around 2015. Some people were calling it ASP, not SaaS, which means the same thing, but it was called differently. I was tweeting about SaaS all day and I think the timing was ripe. Many companies were founded around 2012 to 2015 and went on to become billion-dollar companies, such as SmartNews, Freee, Visional, and Inland. I’m sure you’ve met some of these founders.

Back in the days at my previous company, I was using internal software built by a system integrator in the likes of Fujitsu and Hitachi. I don’t want to be sounding a little bit rude, but it wasn’t easy software to use. Expense management was a nightmare. I had to log in with the VP sometimes when I was out of the office. Even if you clicked on the “forgot password” link, you wouldn’t get an automatic email reply. It would have to be overnight or the next day or something. So all around, it was a bad experience using enterprise software. 

Starting from around 2015, there was a lot of modern software, SaaS software, and the business model catered towards customers. If the customers were angry at the user interface or user experience, they would just cut it off and turn to another SaaS offering. At Salesforce Ventures, I learned a ton because Salesforce is the biggest SaaS company in the world. And I was a part of a small team that grew to about 20 people globally.

Yinglan: And I also wanted to go back to the time when you thought about starting One Capital, which has now developed into one of the preeminent, new-age, and best-in-class Japan-focused SaaS funds globally. I think globally you’re probably one of the top SaaS funds as well. So I wanted to know what was the thinking behind starting the firm? Yeah. And what is your background from Itochu and Salesforce Ventures?

Shinji A: Several things. First, from the market perspective, Japan’s SaaS penetration rate in 2015 was probably less than 1%, but it was growing pretty fast. Even today, it only accounts for about 4% of the enterprise IT spend within Japan. So there’s a lot of room to grow. That’s one. 

The second part is that I was getting older. I was in my early forties, and the founders that I worked with at Salesforce were like, “When are you going to start your own fund? You’ve been with the corporate for over a decade, right? Why don’t you start your own thing?” So I got a nudge from them. 

And thirdly, my experience at Salesforce Ventures was a big lesson for me. It was a corporate VC and an amazing one, but during that time, I had some issues doing follow-on investments, even for the companies that were really performing well and winning because it was a strategic investment. 

And when you strike the partnership initially with the initial check, you didn’t really have to do a second funding check or investment to solidify the partnership. We were trying to add more companies to the portfolio base, and follow-ons were a little bit difficult. I wasn’t really being totally supportive of the entrepreneur, right? Because if the companies were performing, existing investors would just follow on, right? And I wasn’t able to do that. 

That was also a big moment for me. With that big, emerging market, I had entrepreneurs who were like, “We’ll back you with your first fund.” And thirdly, I wanted to be a true partner for my entrepreneurs. I make my own decisions. I take my own risks. And that’s how I formed One Capital.

“I realized that great companies are founded with great products, period. If it’s not a great product, even if you have a great founder with a great background, that doesn’t really mean anything. So product was what really mattered.”

Digital Transformation for LPs, Projection-ai, Visional: Stories from a SaaS VC’s Approach to Transforming Japan 

Yinglan: That’s great. Could you tell us a little bit more about One Capital’s digital transformation initiatives?

Shinji A: Our mission is to transform Japan and make it faster. To achieve this, we believe that using the fund vehicle would be an effective method. We have two anchor LPs. One of them is a pharma company and the co-founder is a Boston Consulting Group veteran who has been transforming companies for decades. However, he felt that there was a challenge with the consulting model where you are contracted for about three to six months, or an extension of about 12 months in China, to transform a company. 

We wanted to utilize the fund model where an LP invests in your fund for about 10 years, giving us a lot of runway to actually help them transform. With that approach, we can target the large companies in Japan that are commanding a lot within the Japanese ecosystem from an economic perspective. 

If we can turn these companies into strong software companies, that would be a way to transform Japan. Our main business is to fund investments. We invest in the next Salesforce in Japan and have them installed in literally all the companies in Japan, fast-tracking their growth.

Yinglan: That’s great. I want to double click on this. So what do you mean to say is that, other than being LPs, do you do joint ventures with them? Do you do spinouts or insert startups into these companies as customers? It probably varies, but I’d love for you to elaborate a little bit more.

Shinji A: Yeah. There are several ways to digitize a company and one is for them to install digital products within their firm internally.

And our anchor LPs are actively looking at our portfolio companies in adopting those services to become more competitive in their respective markets. So that’s one. 

The second is to really sit down with them and help them put together a roadmap about how to become a digital company, like how Netflix went from a DVD rental business to a streaming service, right?

But mainly what we actually do is heavy consulting and also introduce our portfolio companies.

Yinglan: Fantastic. And I wanted to jump to another interesting innovation that One Capital has done, which is Projection-ai, which is a very interesting platform that you should share with the audience. I also wanted to see what’s the biggest learning from the experience of putting this platform together and some of the interesting insights that you have gleaned. I’ve personally seen the demo and it’s very impressive. I would urge all the listeners to check it out, but please tell us more.

Shinji A: Yeah, so the thinking behind that was, I’m a software investor, right? But I’ve never built the software myself. In order to be better at investing and to get a better understanding of how to build software, it would escalate my ability to become a better investor, right? And also have stronger empathy towards founders. 

And of course, I read a ton of coaching books. I took coaching lessons, and I try to always be empathetic, but at the same time, if you don’t have that experience, it’s really hard to emulate those kinds of characteristics. So that’s one.

And secondly, I wanted to build software that was relevant to VC. And I think there are several aspects to that. One, you need data, and especially enterprise software, there’s a lot of data around, and I really admire the reports that Bessemer actually publishes, like the Bessemer Cloud Index. So we have a similar version in Japan called One Capital Cloud Index. 

And starting off from there, we’re [thinking] like, why don’t we put together a database just for SaaS public companies? And also the database is evolving to capture private SaaS companies as well. And why don’t we publish this on the web? 

That would [not only] benefit the SaaS ecosystem, but also our founders whom we backed, because these founders whom we backed are building products every single day and talking with customers, and they don’t really have time to log down to Bloomberg every single second. 

Bloomberg is an amazing database, but it doesn’t really cover just SaaS. It covers everything, right? So we wanted to build a database that was just focused on SaaS, and I guess you took a look at it and I’m happy that you like it.

Yinglan: That’s fantastic. I think you’re very humble, but I would say it’s one of the most impressive software platforms that you’ve built, especially comprehensive Japanese data. 

So I want to also now turn back to your investing in One Capital. What would you say is the most impactful investment that you feel the proudest of? Either in One Capital or prior. Tell us the story of how you met the founders and the biggest challenge through the partnership.

Shinji A: Yeah, so One Capital is pretty new, so we’ve got interesting companies in our portfolio, like Ovice, Helpfeel, and Knowledge Work. And we’ve got a bunch of them which are emerging. They’re still in the early stages, but becoming middle to late stage companies. 

The company that we raised from an impactful perspective that’s already gone public is a company called Visional. My first interaction was when he was just after he graduated from the RO, building the Rockham baseball team, and he was thinking about starting a company. And he was thinking about maybe switching to a company, so he wasn’t really sure. 

But when he shared with me the deck of the BizMatch platform, I was blown away. I was not a VC then, I was trying to back him through my entity at ITOCHU but it wasn’t successful. And I regret that since that day, [but he’s been] a close friend and [we’ve had a] relationship after that initial discussion. And then I went on to become the Japan head for Salesforce, and then I backed him there.

It’s a very unique company where he raised just a small amount of money, built a business, and used that as fresh cash to fund his BizMatch platform. And Salesforce was a series A investor with him, but I think the round was around 50 million, which is gigantic from Japan standards. And now he is a public company worth close to 3 billion in market cap.

“I’m a software investor, right? But I’ve never built the software myself. In order to be better at investing and to get a better understanding of how to build software, it would escalate my ability to become a better investor, right? And also have stronger empathy towards founders…And secondly, I wanted to build software that was relevant to VC.”

Language Barriers, Tokyo Stock Exchange, 10 Billion VC Market, and The Evolving Japanese Entrepreneur: Advice on Cracking the Japanese Market for Founders and Investors

Yinglan: That’s a great story. And I’ve also seen his journey. I know all the great stories that he tells me about you, and that you have been a great business partner for him.

I think recently we have been very interested in Japan. We have made co-investments in Nudge. We actually just announced a new one called Bloomo in the investment space. And I know you are a grand master of Japan investing. What are the advantages of building a tech company in Japan versus other markets?

If some of our listeners may not be familiar with the market, what can entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia or elsewhere learn from the entrepreneurs you have partnered with and vice versa?

Shinji A: I see it’s probably a hard market to crack because of the language barrier and the cultural barrier, but at the same time, it’s a big market. It’s the third-largest economy in the world. 

Especially around enterprise software, it is the second-largest market after the United States. Let me give you some figures. It’s about 280 billion on an annual spend basis, and a lot of that is dominated by legacy software that I just mentioned about when I was using it at ITOCHU.

So it’s a low-hanging fruit [market] if you have a great user interface experience. You can land customers. The initial leeway should start with SMBs and then move it off to mid-market and enterprise. But it’s a very low-hanging fruit market. 

And I think Appier, which you backed when you were at Sequoia, they entered Japan with a great product. I think they got huge enterprise customers and they went public. So if you can crack the market from a language and a cultural perspective, you will do well in Japan.

Yinglan: That’s great. And you’ll be the first port of call to learn from. And I think you mentioned the Appier story, which IPO’d on the Tokyo Exchange.

In addition, we also see a number of our portfolio companies like Carro and Intellect expand to Japan. What advice do you have for founders looking to expand to Japan and also considering going public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange? 

Because I think one of the interesting things about the Tokyo Stock Exchange compared to NYSE or NASDAQ is that you can actually go public at a fairly early stage in the company’s life cycle.

Of course, I think there are some best practices [that need to be met like] you should have Japanese customers, but you will be the expert to talk about that.

Shinji A: So you’re definitely right. Some US investors call the growth market in Japan — the public growth market in Japan — as a series B round. A typical company that goes public does about 10 million of ARR, but it’s also profitable with about a million dollars of net profit, meaning slower growth in smaller companies. 

At the same time, history tells us that you can go public earlier, but your market cap is not going to grow as fast because you’re not spending enough cash to grow your business. There are pros and cons to everything. So that’s how I feel about it. 

And to answer your first question about Japan entry, I think you should really hire a strong country manager that isn’t purely about his or her bilingual abilities. Maybe the person you know might not have a Harvard Business School degree or something. The guy who can execute is who I would really recommend. 

And it’s challenging to be communicating with the local Japan head that doesn’t speak fluent English, but at the same time, we have all kinds of tools out there, like Google Translate and all that stuff. So I think you should really focus on execution versus the ability to purely communicate.

Yinglan: I also wanted to get you to give a landscape for our limited partners in the audience where we have quite a couple of listeners among them. Japan is a relatively new market to them. How do you articulate the opportunity set in Japan venture capital for someone who has not looked at the market?

Shinji A: So Japan’s 2022 venture capital market was around 10 billion, right? And the government is emphasizing that they want 10x that by 2027 to 100 billion. So there’s going to be a lot of cash that is going to be put in the market, which is a good thing all around because the economy size is big enough, but the innovation part is lacking. 

So why not put more venture capital money in the government and support it? And the multiples, which are extremely important for investors, are down and relative to what is in the US market, like a SaaS company, multiples would be trading around like 15 to 20x probably in 2021 figures. Now it’s trading around 5x to 6x. 

So I think it’s great timing to take a look at Japan from an LP standpoint and start at the low point of the market because if you are starting from the high point of the market and expecting it to go higher, that’s a difficult sell, right?

Yinglan: That’s great. And I would say the prior conception of Japanese founders is there aren’t many. They stay in a job for one their whole career. But I think it’s starting to change, and I don’t think people recognize that. [Maybe you can] share a little bit about the transition of the Japanese entrepreneurial.

Shinji A: So I was probably a typical Japanese guy that wanted to work at ITOCHU for life. I was there for 15 years, and it wasn’t a casual decision for me to leave ITOCHU. It was a great company. It was like a family culture. 

There are two types of entrepreneurs that I’m looking at. One is the ones that are early members of public companies right now like Samsung, Visional, and Freee. Those members have really been the catalyst of growing the companies from the ground up, and they are starting their own companies. 

The second one are people that worked at companies like ITOCHU, coming from any big company in Japan and transferred to a tech company here, like Google, Facebook, Salesforce — those members are also great potential entrepreneurs for us to back. 

And when you even talk to the younger generation, they have their own sophisticated career map, right? Start with a big Japanese company or US tech company. Be there for three or four years, and experience it. Go to a startup, build a business, and then start [their own]. 

Because as I mentioned, if the government is really trying to push forward entrepreneurship, there’s a lot of capital there, and then the cultural norm that you can’t make mistakes in Japan is probably going to change.

“I see it’s probably a hard market to crack because of the language barrier and the cultural barrier, but at the same time, it’s a big market. It’s the third-largest economy in the world. Especially around enterprise software, it is the second-largest market after the United States. Let me give you some figures. It’s about 280 billion on an annual spend basis, and a lot of that is dominated by legacy software that I just mentioned about when I was using it at ITOCHU. So it’s a low-hanging fruit [market] if you have a great user interface experience.”

Topical Discussions: Navigating Sales for SaaS in Tight Spending and Cost-Cutting Market, Implications of Generative AI for SaaS Building

Yinglan: That’s great. I wanted to say a little bit about the current economy, which is obviously going through uncertain times. What is your advice to founders, especially sales founders navigating sales and monetization in an environment where there’s tight spending and cost-cutting?

Shinji A: Yeah, totally. I think the straightforward answer is “burn multiple,” right? It used to just be growth, right? And in SaaS, if you grew triple, triple double, you would be awarded a term sheet from 10 different SaaS investors, right? But you also have to look at burn multiples, right?

Even if you are sacrificing a little bit of growth, I think burn multiple is how you should play the game. And David Sachs, the famous SaaS investor in the US, wrote a famous blog about burn multiples. If you’re at about 1x, you’re a great company. If you’re at 2x, that’s so-so. If you’re at 3x, that’s a bad growth rate.

So I have been really commanding this within my portfolio companies, and they are in the ranges of 1x to 2x per multiple. And congrats to the entrepreneurs that actually executed this and with a stronger market in a robust financial market. They will be awarded a term sheet with favorable terms.

But if you are burning money too much and saying that you’re growing your economics doesn’t make sense. That’s not a good business to be in. Burn multiple is my straightforward answer.

Yinglan: That’s great. And I also want to touch on the topic that’s quite hot recently, generative AI and ChatGPT. How are you seeing this impact the way new generations of companies are being built and grown?

Shinji A: I think it’s a huge threat and also a huge potential. It’s nothing in between. It’s interesting that Sam Altman came to Japan and met the prime minister at an earlier timing, right? Because there are some countries that are banning Open AI and ChatGPT, right? 

But generally, Japan is taking huge innovation in a positive way to try and transform Japan. So for SaaS entrepreneurs, you should obviously embrace it and connect to their API or build something related to LLMs and supercharge your service. 

And I think the companies that will do well are companies or SaaS companies that are a system of record that have enough data within their product set, either from a product standpoint or from a user standpoint, and utilize that data to make the experience better. So those are the companies that are going to do well. 

The companies that might struggle or even become obsolete are the ones that don’t have data. It’s not a system of records, maybe a system of engagement, but I think those will be challenging, right? 

Like even for an amazing company like Zoom, I’m sure there’s a lot of recorded data in their archives, but I think it’s just for an archive, not being really utilized. And if they do R&D there, maybe they will be supercharged, but if they don’t, since it’s not a system of record, it might be replaced by another party.

“And I think the companies that will do well are companies or SaaS companies that are a system of record that have enough data within their product set, either from a product standpoint or from a user standpoint, and utilize that data to make the experience better. So those are the companies that are going to do well. The companies that might struggle or even become obsolete are the ones that don’t have data. Like it’s not a system of records, maybe a system of engagement, but I think those will be challenging, right?” 

#MinuteMasterclass: Metrics to Benchmark for SaaS Companies

Yinglan: That’s great. We have a segment called The Minute Masterclass where, if you were to give a masterclass on growth for SaaS companies to founders, what would be one of the key lessons on benchmarking and leveraging industry data that you want your founders to take away? 

Shinji: I think it’s about four metrics, including burn multiple. Another important metric is your ratio of sales and marketing, R&D, and G&A spend. Initially, since you’re just trying to grow, you don’t really manage that kind of balance and you may focus too much on sales and marketing spend.

Or there are even companies that spend too much cash on G&A, which doesn’t generate any cash, right? Because there’s a lot of house screening to do from a governance perspective, from a documentation perspective. I’ve seen several companies that we’ve taken a look at spend about 30% of their revenue on G&A.

If it’s just one year, maybe that’s solid, but if that’s continuing, that’s a nightmare. So focus on the balance of spending in sales and marketing, R&D, and G&A. And for example, if you are a pure tech company catering towards engineers like Atlassian, of course, spend a lot on R&D, right?

I think Atlassian spends over 50% on R&D, whereas Salesforce spends over 50% on sales and marketing because it’s a sales company. So depending on your product, depending on the demographics or segment that you’re targeting, use your sales and marketing, R&D, and G&A wisely and take a look at our database, Projection-ai.

And you will have great examples of that. Those are public companies and you should not discount them because they’re public. Those are outstanding businesses that have become public and are growing. So I think you should take a look at that ratio.

“Focus on the balance of spending in sales and marketing, R&D, and G&A. And for example, if you are a pure tech company catering towards engineers like Atlassian, of course, spend a lot on R&D, right? I think Atlassian spends over 50% on R&D, whereas Salesforce spends over 50% on sales and marketing because it’s a sales company. So depending on your product, depending on the demographics or segment that you’re targeting, use your sales and marketing, R&D, and G&A wisely and take a look at our database, Projection-ai.”

#RapidFireRound

What’s currently your favorite generative AI use case and tool? 

Shinji A: To be honest, I’m overwhelmed with all the tools. And I’m trying to use them here and there. Chat GPT has been my golden tool, right? I think the ratio is 50-50 between Google Search and Chat GPT right now, and it’s increasing.

If you were invited to produce a Netflix show what would be the title of the show and what would it be about in one.

Shinji A: Japan SaaS.

Looking back now, what is one skill, either soft or hard skill that you believe you should have learned back in your time in school or early parts of a career? 

Shinji A: Coding.

If there’s something that you could automate in your Just by wishing for it, what aspect of your job would this be? 

Shinji A: Portfolio construction.

What’s your favorite go-to destination in South Asia? Apart from Singapore? 

Shinji A: I grew up in Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur.

So what’s your favorite activity to tress? 

Shinji A: Basketball. 

Favorite book to recommend. 

Shinji A: I think it’s “Zero to One” by Peter Thiel. And also, “A Billion Dollar Coach” by Bill Campbell. I recommend the book written by Soichiro Swimmy Minami, the founder of Visional. It talks about questioning your judgment all the time, which I think is very tactical.