I'm currently working full time as a software engineer here at a small company in Tokyo. In my spare time, I started building a side business. Things have been picking up recently and I estimate to sit at around 8M-9M total gross revenue for this fiscal year from my business. Which is in the ballpark of where I'd consider transitioning to this full time.
Now looking into visas. I'm currently on a work visa, just 5 points short of HSP (mostly held back by my salary which isn't great). Looking at business manager visas, it seems that up until recently you could get a visa if you incorporate a KK with at least 5M. Now however, the requirements have shifted by a lot and it seems you need 30M + a Japanese employee.
This seems unattainable to me. 30M is one thing. But what really worries me is the requirement to hire an employee.
It worries me because even hiring one employee would add a whole dimension of administrative overhead and responsibilities to my plate. Realistically, hiring one and only one employee doesn't seem like a valid option. Most likely, I'd have to hire a whole team to cover everything legal, administrative, payroll and finances etc. Plus, at that point I'd run into the next block which is: while I'm skilled in my technical niche, I don't have any experience of leading teams or companies. Even if I somehow had the funds to do it, I would be irresponsible to transition my one-man consulting business into a whole company that spans multiple employees all at once.
But also, this means that 30M is an arbitrary number. Since a company cannot really operate with only one employee and I'd have to hire a whole team at that point. 30M is nowhere near enough starting capital for something like this. We're now looking much closer to 80M+ capital that would be required to pull this off plus a steady income stream that justifies having multiple employees in the first place.
I'm at a loss. This feels like an impossible puzzle to me.
All this makes me think: am I misunderstanding something here? Am I overlooking something? Maybe there are other visas for someone in my position? Because if I'm not misunderstanding the implications of this, then this new visa change has basically made it so that foreigners on a visa cannot organically build and grow businesses in Japan anymore. Which sounds like an absolutely horrible policy that no one benefits from? I hope someone more experienced in the business and/ or legal world can maybe chime in and give their 2cts.
by Ok_Shop_5326