Author: Ryu Araki

In 1953, the year he turned 35, Sam Walton and his wife, Helen, put their interests in two Arkansas variety stores into a family partnership.

Each of their four children received 20%. All four were under ten.

Sam and Helen kept 20% between them—10% each, according to published accounts.

The first Walmart wouldn’t open for another nine years.

I keep thinking about that 10%.

Each child held twice the founder’s interest in the partnership.

As a Japanese investor, I tend to picture the founder as the family’s largest shareholder. Walton chose differently.

Ownership percentages alone do not establish who could remove him from management. Still, most of the economic ownership belonged to his wife and children.

Family relationships can change. Children develop their own priorities. Disagreements over dividends, a sale, or succession can become painfully personal.

What made him willing to share so much?

Helen’s father had made his own children partners in the family business and encouraged them to follow his example. They had seen shared ownership work.

Walton later wrote that transferring ownership early had spared the family substantial gift or inheritance taxes.

But Helen identified another benefit: it developed the children’s sense of responsibility toward one another.

That changes how I read this story.

To me, the arrangement suggests considerable trust within the family. In Helen’s account, shared ownership also strengthened their relationships.

Sam described decisions at Walton Enterprises as being made by consensus. They sometimes argued. They still found ways to act together.

Decades after his death, his descendants continue to coordinate their holdings. Walton Enterprises’ roughly 3 billion directly held shares, disclosed in March 2026, would be worth about $356 billion at Walmart’s October 19, 2026 closing price.

Business growth, tax savings, and sustained family ownership: remarkable results, even if they cannot tell us everything about the family’s private lives.

To me, the foresight was in giving the children ownership while there was still time to learn what owning something together required.

I admire the trust that took—and the responsibility Sam and Helen tried to build alongside it.

A wise man, Mr. Walton.

Only one in Japan.

That is the count of tech founders under 60, each worth over US$1 billion, inside their market’s Forbes top 50.

Japan’s one is Yusaku Maezawa, who founded ZOZO in 1998.

The names you might expect are missing for a simple reason. Masayoshi Son (69) and Hiroshi Mikitani (61) are past the age line.

🇨🇳 China: 11
🇰🇷 South Korea: 8
🇸🇬 Singapore: 8
🇦🇺 Australia: 8
🇭🇰 Hong Kong: 1
🇯🇵 Japan: 1
🇹🇼 Taiwan: at least 1
🇹🇭 Thailand: 0
🇲🇾 Malaysia: 0
🇮🇩 Indonesia: 0
🇵🇭 Philippines: 0

The companies say more than the totals.

China: ByteDance, Tencent, PDD, Xiaomi, Cambricon, DeepSeek.
Korea: Coupang, Naver, NCSoft, Smilegate, Yanolja, Dunamu.

Singapore: Sea, Razer, Espressif, Flipkart, JOYY, and Facebook’s Eduardo Saverin.

Australia: Atlassian, Canva, AirTrunk, Stake/Kick.

Hong Kong: Lalamove’s Chow Shing Yuk.

Taiwan: Hon. Precision.

Two of China’s eleven are AI founders around 40: DeepSeek’s Liang Wenfeng and Cambricon’s Chen Tianshi.

Japan’s only qualifier built ZOZOTOWN, which took off in the late 2000s.

I live in Kuala Lumpur. I take Grab almost every day, shop on Shopee and Lazada, and use Lalamove for deliveries now and then.

The founders of Sea, which owns Shopee, are on this list. So is Lalamove’s. Grab’s founders, who started the company right here in Malaysia, are not. Not yet. I expect that to change.

Japan’s count will change too. The question is when.

Source: Forbes market lists as of Oct 10, 2026 (China: 2025). Telecom excluded. Taiwan: confirmed minimum.

Coming from Japan, I always assumed Kyoto was the best place to feel time slow down.

This week in London, I realized I was wrong.

On Tuesday at 7am, I watched bankers rush past St Paul’s Cathedral, a dome that has stood there for more than 300 years.

I spend most of my days thinking about AI and where it is taking us. The pace is only increasing. The future is super exciting but scary at the same time.

London gives me something rare: the feeling of stepping out of that acceleration.

Kyoto has the history. But it is still home. The language, the customs, the rhythm are all familiar, so part of my mind never leaves my daily routine.

In London, almost nothing is familiar. The architecture, the language, the traditions.

Being a foreigner makes all the difference. In Kyoto, I’m surrounded by history I know. In London, I’m surrounded by history that feels completely unfamiliar.

What struck me most is that London’s history isn’t locked away in museums. It stands in the middle of one of the world’s great financial centers, still in daily use.

This trip taught me something I want to remember:

When the future feels too fast, don’t just go somewhere old.

Go somewhere old where you don’t belong.

In the age of AI, the ultimate luxury may not be access to the future.

It may be the ability to step out of it for a while.

Britain helped invent the modern world. But who owns the technologies it creates today?

That question stayed with me while visiting London.

Arm, the Cambridge-born chip designer, trades on America’s Nasdaq. Yet Japan’s SoftBank owns approximately 86.4% of it.

The broader numbers are striking.

I compared the combined market values of companies in CompaniesMarketCap’s broad “Tech” category, grouped by its country classifications:

🇺🇸 United States: $42.0 trillion
🇨🇳 China: $2.40 trillion
🇰🇷 South Korea: $2.19 trillion
🇯🇵 Japan: $1.44 trillion
🇨🇦 Canada: $328 billion
🇬🇧 United Kingdom: $325 billion
🇦🇺 Australia: $120 billion

These are database totals, not measures of entire national tech industries. Coverage and classifications matter, especially for China.

Even so, America’s total is approximately 129 times Britain’s.

And Arm alone was valued at about $273 billion on October 12—roughly 84% of the reported UK total, if that aggregate is accurate.

Most of Britain’s listed tech market value in this dataset rests on one company. Its controlling shareholder is Japanese.

DeepMind offers another example: founded in London, acquired by Google in 2014.

Britain clearly knows how to create globally important technology. But creating it and retaining ownership of the businesses that commercialise it are different achievements.

Foreign acquisitions aren’t necessarily failures. They can reward shareholders, bring investment and help companies grow. Yet they also transfer corporate control.

For Japan, Britain’s experience challenges a familiar explanation for the tech gap with America.

Britain shares America’s language. It has outstanding universities, global finance and exceptional scientific talent.

So if language were the decisive barrier, why is the gap so enormous for Britain too?

Perhaps the deeper questions are how countries scale technology businesses, attract capital and retain ownership as those businesses become global leaders.

Walking through London, surrounded by reminders of Britain’s history, I kept returning to one thought:

Britain once dominated global trade. Today, some of its greatest technological achievements are controlled from abroad.

In the 21st century, creating the future and owning the future are not necessarily the same thing.

Sources: CompaniesMarketCap (Tech, Oct 12, 2026; country totals unverified); Arm FY2026 Annual Report. USD rounded; listed companies only.

Amancio Ortega, 90, built Zara.

By Forbes’s count, he is also the world’s largest individual owner of real estate.

Since Inditex listed in 2001, he has spent about $24 billion on 216 properties. He still owns 206, worth around $25 billion across 13 countries.

What he did not do was sell Zara.

His stake in Inditex has stayed at roughly 59%.

The buildings were paid for with dividends.

For fiscal 2025, Inditex is paying €1.75 a share. On Ortega’s holding, that is about €3.23 billion a year, paid in May and November.

His investment company, Pontegadea, turns much of that into offices, logistics centres and hotels. Tenants include Amazon.

Most founders diversify by selling stock.

That dilutes control, can signal doubt, and puts a large block of shares on the market.

Ortega’s route leaves the operating company untouched. The diversification happens one level up, one dividend at a time.

It only works because of what Inditex is.

Last year it earned €6.22 billion. It pays out 60% as an ordinary dividend and still funds about €2.3 billion of store and logistics spending.

A business that throws off more cash than it needs can feed a second one.

The two also run on opposite clocks.

Zara’s demand turns over every season.
Pontegadea’s leases run for five to 25 years.

If Zara stumbles, the rent keeps coming, but the buying slows.

As a private investor, this is the idea I keep returning to.

The most important decision is often not what to sell. It is where the income goes next.

Twice a year, Zara pays for the next building.

For most of modern history, fame came with a price: privacy.

If millions of people knew your work, they probably knew your face. They might know your real name, where you grew up, whom you married, and eventually far more than you ever intended to share.

That bargain is beginning to break.

Banksy became one of the world’s most famous artists without publicly confirming his identity.

Ado became one of Japan’s biggest singers before the public had clearly seen her face. By 2025, her Hibana world tour had reached more than 500,000 people across 33 cities. She has since revealed more of her appearance, but crucially, she did not need to do so to become famous.

Then there are VTubers.

YouTube analyzed a sample of just 300 virtual creators and found that they generated more than 15 billion views in 2024.

COVER, the company behind hololive, had 78 VTubers with a combined 95 million YouTube subscribers as of June 2026. Forty-five had passed one million subscribers.

Something fundamental has changed.

Fame used to be bundled:

Name + face + voice + biography + work + private life.

The internet is unbundling it.

You can reveal your voice but not your face.

Your face but not your real name.

An avatar and personality but neither.

Or simply your ideas and work.

This does not mean anonymous celebrities will outnumber conventional ones. Most people seeking fame will probably continue to use their real identities.

But the ceiling for anonymous fame has risen dramatically.

A pseudonymous artist can become globally valuable.

A singer can fill arenas before the public clearly knows what she looks like.

A virtual character can attract millions of fans and become the foundation of a public company.

For creators, this creates a choice that barely existed in the mass-media era.

You no longer have to choose between being unknown and surrendering your privacy.

Fame and identity are becoming separate assets.

The strongest consumer businesses I know sell membership in an obsession.

Ferrari is the clearest example. In 2025, about 84% of new Ferraris went to people who already owned one. The company shipped just 13,640 cars and still earned a 29.5% operating margin.

Those numbers describe a community that keeps renewing itself.

Here’s why I think dense, niche communities are worth paying for as an investor.

1. Demand doesn’t run out. A normal customer stops buying once the need is met. A fan never feels finished. There is always another model, another edition, another piece of the story.
2. Fans market to each other. They talk, compare, show off and recruit. The community does much of the work of keeping the brand visible.
3. Pricing power comes from identity. When a purchase says who you are, a higher price can make it more desirable.
4. Competitors can copy the product, not the bond. Engineering can be matched. Decades of shared history cannot.

The same pattern shows up far beyond luxury. Adult LEGO collectors buy sets no child will ever touch. Different products, same psychology.

The risk is real, though. A community that feels taken for granted can turn on a brand faster than any ordinary customer base.

Overproduce, cut corners or ignore what fans care about, and the asset that drove growth becomes the source of backlash.

Before I invest in a consumer company, I ask whether its existing customers would line up for whatever it launches next.

Most businesses spend their lives chasing new customers. The best ones are built on people who never really leave.

In 2001, South Africa’s Naspers invested just $34 million in a little-known Chinese internet company called Tencent.

It acquired 46.5% of the company.

For 17 years, Naspers sold nothing.

Then, in 2018, it sold just 2% of Tencent for $9.8 billion — nearly 300 times its original investment.

In 2019, Naspers placed Tencent and its other international internet assets into Prosus and listed it in Amsterdam.

Today, Prosus still owns roughly 22% of Tencent.

That stake alone is worth about $112 billion.

Prosus itself is worth only about $86 billion on the stock market.

Think about that.

A $34 million investment made 25 years ago has evolved into a stake still worth more than $100 billion — after tens of billions of dollars have already been sold.

The lesson is usually framed as one of the greatest venture investments in history.

But I think the more interesting lesson is about globalization.

Naspers did not build Tencent.

It did not invent WeChat. It did not develop China’s gaming industry. It did not send thousands of South African engineers to Shenzhen.

It identified an extraordinary company in another country, bought a meaningful stake, and held it for decades.

Companies often assume that becoming global means exporting what they built at home.

But products, management systems and corporate cultures do not always cross borders easily.

Capital does.

Naspers began as a South African newspaper publisher in 1915.

Its most consequential global expansion was not exporting South African media.

It was allocating $34 million to the right company 12,000 kilometers away.

You do not always need to build the global winner.

You just need to own one.

Today, the comparison sounds ridiculous.

Elon Musk is worth an estimated $936 billion.

Horie Takafumi is an online Japanese influencer with millions of followers and runs several successful businesses in Japan, but the scale of operations is not comparable to Musk’s.

Rewind twenty years, and the picture changes dramatically.

In December 2005, Horie owned roughly 17% of Livedoor, worth about $1.2 billion.

Livedoor had acquired 27 companies in five years and increased revenue 22-fold to nearly $800 million. Its fiscal 2005 revenue reached ¥78.4 billion (about $712 million), with net income of ¥15.5 billion (about $141 million).

Horie was 33.

Musk, meanwhile, says his after-tax proceeds from PayPal were about $180 million. He was deploying that capital into extraordinarily risky ventures including SpaceX and Tesla.

On observable equity value and corporate scale, Horie was clearly ahead.

Then their paths diverged.

In January 2006, prosecutors raided Livedoor. Horie was arrested, later convicted of securities-law violations, and lost control of his primary compounding vehicle.

Musk kept his.

His PayPal capital ultimately became major stakes in Tesla and SpaceX. The compounding continued for another twenty years.

Horie kept building, despite spending time in prison (2011–2013). Today, his businesses range from media and technology to restaurants and space. In 2026, he said he was involved in operating more than 100 restaurant locations across multiple brands. He is also the director of Interstellar Technologies, a Japanese space infrastructure company developing orbital launch vehicles and communication satellites, which has raised ¥44.6 billion (about $282 million).

There is no reason to assume Livedoor would have become another Tesla or SpaceX.

But at 33, Horie already had a billion-dollar equity position, a fast-growing public company, an appetite for aggressive M&A and an interest in private space development.

Horie isn’t Japan’s Elon Musk today.

But in 2005, he had a credible path to becoming one.

Or perhaps he would never have needed the comparison at all.

He might simply have become known around the world as Horie or Horiemon.

($1 = ¥110.18 for 2005 figures and $1 = ¥158 for 2026 figures)

South Korea has become the global face of demographic collapse.

But on one important measure, it isn’t even the most extreme society in East Asia.

Childlessness.

Among Japanese women born in 1975, 28% never had a child.

In Singapore, the figure is also 28% for women born between 1975 and 1980.

In Hong Kong, it reached 35% among women born in 1971 and remained around 30% for those born in 1979.

South Korea’s comparable figure?

About 13%.

Yet all four now have extraordinarily low fertility rates: 1.15 in Japan (2024), 0.87 in Singapore (2025), 0.73 in Hong Kong (2025) and 0.75 in South Korea (2024).

This reveals something fertility rates alone can’t explain.

There are different ways to become a low-fertility society.

In Japan, an unusually large share of women never become mothers at all.

In South Korea, historically, more women became mothers but fewer went on to have larger families.

In 2022, third and higher-order births accounted for only 8% of births in South Korea, compared with 17% in Japan.

So East Asia doesn’t have one fertility crisis.

It has several.

South Korea has extraordinarily low annual fertility.

Japan and Singapore have exceptionally high permanent childlessness.

Hong Kong has gone even further.

We obsess over the total fertility rate. But permanent childlessness asks a simpler question:

What percentage of a generation goes through life without ever having a child?

For some recent completed cohorts in Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, the answer is roughly three in ten.

That is not a projection.

It has already happened.