Ryo Kikuchi

Ryo Kikuchi, Founder of ZeBrand A visionary by nature, Ryo Kikuchi embarked on his entrepreneurial journey at Morisawa, the leading typeface foundry in Japan, where he acted as Chief Innovation Director and developed expertise in new business development, customer acquisitions, and intrapreneurship. His drive and passion led him to form MORISAWA BRAND NEW LAB in 2017, an internal team dedicated to exploring new and emerging ideas that inform and challenge the current state of the font industry. His most current brainchild is ZeBrand, a web-based branding tool and the first of its kind. As its director and founder, Ryo has led his team from product conception to development, eventually launching and revealing the new product at SXSW in 2019. Ryo holds an MBA from NUCB Business School in addition to spending time at the Rhode Island School of Design as a research fellow with John Maeda in the US and the EDHEC Business School in France. He has recently been featured in various media outlets including Forbes, A/D/O by MINI, Entrepreneur, Killerstartup, WORK MILL with Forbes Japan and NHK (the sole public broadcaster in Japan). He has got chosen as the finalist of Enterprise and smart data alternates for SXSW PITCH 2022.