Back in October 2023, I registerd a company named Millefe. The first financial year has ended so here's my review.
- Goals when setting up the company, did we achieve them?
- What problems did we have along the way?
- Did we learn anything?
- What’s next?
What was the goal?
Initially, the company was meant to be a joint venture between myself and a relative for investing in Japanese real estate investment.
We ended up not doing any, from a combination of several factors.
- BoJ raising interst rates
- my principal banker got promoted and moved to HQ, his replacement wasn’t too hot about our plans
- most important of all, the RoI seemed really low for the amount of risk and work that was needed
So that went away. Was there a goal number two?
Sort of, yes.
I had planned to launch Millefeuille.app (hence the company name). I never got around to finishing the prototype because the real estate thing distracted me quite a bit.
So goals 1 and 2 failed.
What problems did we have along the way?
Well it depends. Problems regarding our goals, or problems in general?
I had spent almost the whole of 2023 researching the market, checking out the condition of various buildings on foot, monitoring market rates and speaking with multiple real estate agents.
Then I created a business plan with a few simulations and brought it to my banker. We discussed getting a loan of 100 million yen at a rate somewhere between 1 to 2% to buy a building worth around 150 million yen.
Nothing concrete but my banker was quite positive about it overall and gave several good suggestions. Then he got promoted and left. His replacement was much less enthusiastic and actually kept putting up barriers. I took the hint and just stopped.
That was around April 2024. So about two thirds of the way through our first financial year. I probably should’ve approached other banks but by then I was already quite discouraged as the projected RoI was somewhere between 4 to 5% and so decided it wasn't worth the effort.
What were our problems regarding Millefeuille.app?
There weren’t any actual problems with it really, other than it not existing. Yes, it was a relatively sudden pivot with too late of a start to make any impact this year. The actual problems were personal though. I was having relationship issues and could not concentrate. That’s over now so work on Millefeuille.app should be proceeding along nicely from now on.
Did we learn anything?
I skipped the general problems in the previous section because it’s more relevant here. I learnt a lot regarding running a business, handling books (properly) and other bureaucratic matters. Bank accounts, pensions, laws and regulations. That kind of stuff.
Dabbling in real estate taught me quite a bit about how commercial loans in Japan and the multi-tiered banking system works. I also learnt quite a bit about various grants and start up programs the government provides which should prove quite useful in the coming months as we work on Millefeuille.app.
I’ve also learnt quite a bit about appraising property, how to take advantage of depreciation and building management. I’m considering open sourcing some tools I created for calculating all that, we’ll see.
Obviously, I learnt a lot about taxes, health insurance and the pension system. I already had a good idea about how those work, but now I have a clearer version of the actual numbers and calculations involved.
What’s next?
Millefe shall remain as a software consultancy, but we will also spend around 20% of our time developing Millefeuille.app.
I’ve neglected to do any of the branding for Millefe so time to get around to that. First thing is getting the websites set up. Not too much though, Millefe is very much in lean start up mode and a website does little for us.
I would also like to write about running a business in Japan, as well as release all the various tools I’ve created for calculating salaries and taxes and so on. Not actually that easy as they’re mostly little functions scattered here and there with a lot of manual calculations required.
But it sounds fun and IMO would be a good branding exercise.