User:Dosuka/Kaoru Hayashi

Kaoru Hayashi (林 郁, born December 26, 1959) is a Japanese entrepreneur. He is the Founder, President and Group CEO of Digital Garage, Chairman of the Board of DG Financial Technology, and Chairman of the Board of Kakaku.com.

Biography
Kaoru was born in Hokkaido, Japan. His family moved to Kunitachi City, Tokyo, where he would spend his teenage years.

He graduated from Toyo University, Department of Applied Social Studies, majoring in mass communication. In 1983, he founded From Garage, an advertising and editorial production company. He later founded Creative Garage, a design firm, and Studio Garage, a multimedia software production company, becoming a 3-company group. In 1995, he merged the three-company group with Ecosys, which created Japan's first private webpage "Tomigaya," and co-founded Digital Garage with Joichi Ito, becoming its representative director.

In 1996, he became the Representative Director of Digital Advertising Consortium. In 2002, he invested in Kakaku.com and assumed the position of Representative Chairman. He continued as the Chairman of the Board of Directors at Kakaku.com in 2003. In 2010, he established Japan's first seed acceleration program, 'Open Network Lab', and has served as the head of the jury to the present day. In 2012, he joined the Board of Directors of Monex Group. In 2013, he became the Chairman of the Board of Directors at VeriTrans. In 2016, he was appointed as a Board Member at Credit Saison. In 2021, he assumed the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors at DG Financial Technology.

In 2021, he published "Digital Garage: Where the Future is Born and Begins: To the Next First Penguins," a book that looks back on 25 years of Japanese Internet history and talks about the future of the next 25 years.

In 2017, he was ordained Chevalier du Tastevin (Order of Burgundy Wine).

In 2021, he donated 18 contemporary Japanese craft works, including nine works by living national treasures, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, New York City, USA.