Mitsu Kikuchi

CEO & Founder Shirofune

I began my career at Japan’s largest advertising agency, where young ad professionals worked tirelessly to optimize campaigns. Even after testing the latest automation tools from the US and Europe, none could match the performance of our own managers. That’s when I realized: if I could build a system that replicates their daily expertise, it could help marketers worldwide. Inspired by the Black Ships that once brought transformative technology to Japan, I wanted to do the reverse—bring powerful innovation from Japan to the world. That vision became “Shirofune,” meaning “White Ship.” I then spent more than 20,000 hours coding, turning the manual work of these professionals into what eventually became Shirofune.