The latest articles on DEV Community by Kevin (@kevincantrell). https://dev.to/kevincantrell https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F1111860%2F2edbbefd-11b2-4ca6-ab31-410d012f3261.jpeg https://dev.to/kevincantrell en Kevin Fri, 03 Jul 2026 11:08:45 +0000 https://dev.to/kevincantrell/moving-to-japan-to-start-a-company-from-scratch-4d3p https://dev.to/kevincantrell/moving-to-japan-to-start-a-company-from-scratch-4d3p <p>Hello All!</p> <h2> Purpose of writing this: </h2> <p>I wanted to document a little bit about the past few years for me, perhaps it will help others out.</p> <h2> Background </h2> <p>Back in 2016, I managed to land a 100% WFH job. (Back before covid, it wasn't quite as common) Things were great. I was an avid Angular developer. But over for about 5 or so years, my intrest in creating CRUD forms for banking, getting the data from users, verifying it, shoving it into a db, pulling it out of the db, doing some formatting ops on it, and pushing it back out onto another webpage was fading.</p> <p>Form after form, page after page, updating to the next version of Angular, fixing small bugs... I wanted something more.</p> <p>From where I was sitting, I never actually knew how my work actually impacted anyone, and where I had worked were large, so I never even saw customers, and never really even knew if any of my work was being used.</p> <p>My job had become easy, I was bored. My wife and I decided to move to Japan and start our own business. I figured worst case, I had a remote job... right?</p> <p>For the next year or so, I started building my dream company: An IoT company that helps real people. People I could see, and make a positive impact on the world.</p> <p>Covid hit, I got canned.</p> <p>And that day, I realized really fast that this company I had been building in my off time wasn't my backup plan, it was my only plan.</p> <h2> My plans for the series of posts I hope to make here: </h2> <ul> <li>I am planning to document my journey into building (my now successful) company.</li> <li>I will talk about what went right (that post should be pretty short)</li> <li>I will talk about what went wrong.</li> <li>I will talk about what I would have done different, and what I wish I had known about in the begining of all of this.</li> <li>I will talk about what it was like for a code monkey to move from being a developer and only a developer, to making business decisions and doing very very non-developer type tasks.</li> <li>Why Japan of all places?</li> <li>The difficulties of building this company in Japan.</li> </ul> <p>So, before I start with the posts, I want to ask:<br> Is this something people on DEV want to read about?<br> Do people even care?<br> Will this info help anyone?</p> <p>Let me know in the comments, If there is any intrest I will write more.</p> startup learning career