Where Work Meets Passion

After quitting a promising role at goldman sachs and failing in her quest to become a professional comic artist, wantedly founder and ceo akiko naka has finally found her dream job – and she’s helping others to do the same.

- Jodie Darlington

Bright, bubbly and incredibly driven, Akiko Naka is a woman on a mission. She wants to create a world where work meets passion. She wants people to be excited about what they do for a living. And rather than just dreaming about a perfect world where everyone loves their jobs, Naka is determined to make it a reality.

Naka is the Founder and CEO of Wantedly, Japan’s largest social recruiting platform. The Tokyo-based company aims to connect like-minded companies and individuals based on passion and shared values, rather than salary and benefits. Founded in 2010 and officially launched in 2012, Wantedly was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2017. At the time, Naka was just 32 years old, making her the youngest female founder in the world to have a company listed on the Japanese stock exchange.

Today, Wantedly has about 2.6 million monthly active users, most of them in Japan. The Tokyo startup officially launched in Singapore in 2017 before expanding into Hong Kong in 2018. Wantedly’s clients include large Japanese corporates such as Sony, Panasonic and Nissan as well as international startups including Uber and Airbnb. Naka refuses to rest on her laurels, however, insisting that she’s just getting started.

“When we first launched, I didn’t think we’d get to this point where we have more than 33,000 customers using our platform,” she tells The CEO Magazine. “But I don’t really consider us to be that big yet. I think we are still very small and have a long way to go.”

Wantedly is often described as being similar to LinkedIn, but Naka insists the two platforms are worlds apart. “The philosophy is very different,” she says. “LinkedIn is essentially taking a CV from a traditional paper format and putting it online.”