About Us

Bringing hands-on experience to our own business

Our founder, Hideo Takahashi, began his career as a communications infrastructure engineer before working as an IT consultant on system modernization, cloud platforms, business transformation, and project delivery. His work involved clarifying challenges, developing plans, and putting them into action with stakeholders. Drawing on that experience, he founded GRID Start in 2023 to set the direction of a business himself and take responsibility for its outcomes.

Sharing Japanese confectionery and the appeal of travel

Our first in-house service was JAPANBITE, which delivered Japanese confectionery to customers overseas. We selected sweets from confectioners across Japan and shipped them with booklets introducing their makers and Japan's seasons. We handled everything from product selection and international sales to packing and shipping.

We then planned and developed DangoTravel, a map designed to help visitors to Japan find local attractions by theme and crowd levels. Steven Wong, whose background is in design, led product planning and design. Both businesses ended in 2026.

Connecting the history of work to the next decision

Through the IT and business consulting we have continued since founding the company, we have seen how difficult it can be to understand the context behind decisions by following meetings and documents alone. Lyqa grew out of that experience. Together with Wong, we are developing and testing an AI assistant that organizes the background, changes, and open questions across scattered conversations, with links back to original statements and documents.

With AlpAI, we research and develop systems used to analyze and manage investments in US equities using our own funds. Providing information or software to external users is under consideration.