Delaware, US, July 27th, 2023 – Final Aim, Inc., the leading smart contracts platform for post-signing contract management in design and manufacturing, has appointed finance and operations executive Rob Kazmarek as an Advisor.
Rob first met co-founders Masafumi Asakura and Yasuhide Yokoi through Berkeley SkyDeck, the prestigious university accelerator the founders were accepted into in 2022, and at which Rob is an advisor and member of the selection committee.

Prior to his involvement with Berkeley SkyDeck, Rob led trading and analytics for Bay Area-based Kingsford Capital and spearheaded creation of multiple new revenue-generating business models for international hospitality chain Dusit Thani. He began his career at Adobe, building up to a regional operations role that saw him at various times oversee responsibility for San Francisco, the east coast of the US, LATAM, and the entirety of the Japan and Asia-Pacific region.
Rob has lived overseas for nearly eight years, including three in Tokyo, Japan. He received his MBA from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, specializing in finance and general management.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-kazmarek/

With Rob’s proven global track record especially in the US and Japan, Final Aim is honored to welcome him as an Advisor and benefit from his experience and accomplishment.

“I was instantly drawn to Masa-san and Yasu-san,” said Rob. “Not only do they have remarkable Tier-1 customer traction at such an early stage – SONY and Panasonic as just a few – but their vision of an integrated legal tech solution is compelling. They both bring that ‘it’ factor that you want to bet on and be a part of,” commented Rob.

Masafumi Asakura, Co-Founder and CEO of Final Aim, commented on the appointment, “Rob was our Key Advisor during Berkeley SkyDeck (Batch15 IPP), advising Final Aim on all aspects of management and business. He is a wonderful colleague who supported Final Aim from the beginning when we were growing our US experience. Rob has been part of the team since Berkeley SkyDeck, as if we were in the same boat, playing an integral part. We are thrilled to have Rob join us on this global journey even after Berkeley SkyDeck, continuing to advise all around Final Aim, such as business, finance, marketing, and hiring. His ability to help us focus on accelerating our path to scalable success has been invaluable.”

Also, Yasuhide Yokoi, Co-Founder and CDO of Final Aim, commented, “I am delighted to welcome Rob, such an outstanding expert in startup development. He has been our Key Advisor in the Berkeley SkyDeck program and, ever since, has been extremely helpful in many aspects where startups struggle. I do not doubt that his significant experience would further accelerate our moonshot.”

About Final Aim
Final Aim has been driving the global adoption of blockchain and smart contracts technologies in industrial design and manufacturing. In November 2021, the company announced the beta version of its blockchain platform, “Final Chain.”
In April 2022, they established a headquarters in the United States. In September of the same year, Final Aim was accepted into “Berkeley SkyDeck,” a world-renowned Silicon Valley startup accelerator. In February 2023, they were chosen as “The Most Likely to Become the Next Unicorn” within the program. In June, the company won the “Japan-US Innovation Awards – Innovation Showcase,” a co-program by the Japan Society of Northern California and the Stanford University US-Asia Technology Management Center.

Company Name: Final Aim, Inc.
Location: Headquarters – Delaware, US / Subsidiary – Tokyo, Japan
Founders: Masafumi Asakura, Chief Executive Officer / Yasuhide Yokoi, Chief Design Officer
Business Description: Drive the adoption of blockchain and smart contracts technologies for design and manufacturing
Website: https://final-aim.com
Contact: contact@final-aim.com

Delaware, US, July 19th, 2023 – Final Aim, Inc. announced the appointment of Naeem Zafar as the company’s Business and Financial Advisor. Naeem Zafar is a seasoned executive who has led five high-tech businesses as the CEO. His last ventures include TeleSense, which was acquired by UPL, and Bitzer Mobile, which Oracle acquired. He is also a faculty member at UC Berkeley, where he teaches entrepreneurship and strategy.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naeemzafar/

Naeem Zafar’s specialties include raising capital for startups, corporate strategy, product positioning, marketing, business development as well as M&A.

He has led five high-tech businesses as the CEO and guided dozens as a Board member or an advisor. He works with CEOs as a coach and a Board advisor. His last venture, TeleSense (an AgTech company reducing spoilage for the post-harvest grain industry using IoT and AI), was acquired by UPL, a global provider of sustainable agriculture products and solutions, with annual revenue exceeding $6bn. Also, one of his last companies in the enterprise mobility and security space, Bitzer Mobile, was acquired by Oracle.

Naeem has been teaching entrepreneurship as a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, since 2005 as a part of the Haas Business School MBA program and in the College of Engineering to graduate and undergraduate students. He has consistently been one of the highest-ranked professors in entrepreneurship and strategy. Naeem is the faculty director and Professor of the Practice at Northeastern University (D’Amore McKim School of Business), San Francisco campus, where he teaches courses on Investments and Entrepreneurial Finance.

Furthermore, Naeem is a charter member of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), where he chairs the TiE Institute. He is also a charter member of OPEN Silicon Valley, where he served as the Board Chair and the President.

More profile details on: www.NaeemZafar.com

With Naeem’s proven track record in Silicon Valley and ambition to create global impact, Final Aim is honored to welcome him as a Business and Financial Advisor and benefit from his experience and accomplishment.

“I am very excited to be a part of Final Aim as they are solving the problem of companies working with outside design firms in product specification, design and manufacturing where creating trust and efficiency is key. Their approach is built on Web3 and that will be a main differentiator as they build the company,” commented Naeem Zafar.

Masafumi Asakura, Co-Founder and CEO of Final Aim showed his excitement about the appointment and stated, “I am confident that Naeem’s participation will further accelerate Final Aim’s growth, as he is an accomplished entrepreneur in addition to teaching at UC Berkeley. I will never forget the impact I had when I first spoke with him. His proven track record in enterprise-side strategy development, sales growth, and equity financing will be a great addition to Final Aim’s expansion.”

Also, Yasuhide Yokoi, Co-Founder and CDO of Final Aim, commented, “Naeem’s impressive background and achievement as an innovative entrepreneur, particularly in Silicon Valley and worldwide, aligns with Final Aim’s mission of developing new solutions to design and manufacturing enterprises. We are pleased to have Naeem’s expertise to accelerate every aspect of our company, like, corporate strategy, business and product development, and financing.”

About Final Aim
Final Aim has been driving the global adoption of blockchain and smart contracts technologies in industrial design and manufacturing. In November 2021, the company announced the beta version of its blockchain platform, “Final Chain.”
In April 2022, they established a headquarters in the United States. In September of the same year, Final Aim was accepted into “Berkeley SkyDeck,” a world-renowned Silicon Valley startup accelerator. In February 2023, they were chosen as “The Most Likely to Become the Next Unicorn” within the program. In June, the company won the “Japan-US Innovation Awards – Innovation Showcase,” a co-program by the Japan Society of Northern California and the Stanford University US-Asia Technology Management Center.

Company Name: Final Aim, Inc.
Location: Headquarters – Delaware, US / Subsidiary – Tokyo, Japan
Founders: Masafumi Asakura, Chief Executive Officer / Yasuhide Yokoi, Chief Design Officer
Business Description: Drive the adoption of blockchain and smart contracts technologies for design and manufacturing
Website: https://final-aim.com
Contact: contact@final-aim.com

Delaware, US, July 12th, 2023 – Final Aim, Inc. (Delaware, US, CEO Masafumi Asakura, and CDO Yasuhide Yokoi) proudly announced the appointment of Shin’ichiro Matsuo as the company’s Technology Advisor.
As an expert in cryptography, information security, and international standardization, Shin’ichiro Matsuo will oversee the company’s technology.

Biography of Shin’ichiro Matsuo

Summary

– Aspects of specialties: Research scientist in cryptography, its applications, and privacy; Expert in international standardization.

– A research professor of computer science at Georgetown University and Director of Blockchain research at CyberSMART Research Canter, where he leads multi-disciplinary research among technology, economy, law, and regulation.

– Deeply involved in blockchain academic research: Co-founder of “BSafe.network.” building an international neutral academic research test network; Research on security analysis on blockchain technology; Co-chair of Blockchain Governance Initiative Network (BGIN); Committed to ISO TC307 standardization as a committee member and liaison between ISO/IEC JTC1 SC27 and ISO TC307. A member of OECD’s Blockchain Expert Policy Advisory Board (BEPAB).

– Designed cryptographic protocols from fundamental protocols to application protocols: Key management protocols suitable for smartphone and RFID tags; Digital cash schemes; Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology; Digital time-stamping schemes based on PKI and hash-chain; Digital voting schemes; Privacy-enhancing technologies including anonymous digital signature and anonymous entity authentication protocols.

– Expert in international standardization of cryptography and information security: Head of Japanese national body of ISO/IEC SC27/WG2; Editor of ISO/IEC 29128 (Verification of Cryptographic Protocols), ISO/IEC 20009-2 (Anonymous Entity Authentication), ISO/IEC 19592 (Secret Sharing Scheme) and Standing Document 4 (Analysis and status of cryptographic algorithms); Editor of ISO TR23576 (Security of Digital Assets Custodians); Member of Japanese Governmental committees for cryptographic technologies; Founder of an international consortium on security evaluation of cryptographic protocols, “CELLOS.”; Proposer of new evaluation criteria of hash functions suitable for real information system and a common evaluation platform for SHA-3 candidates, conducting an evaluation for 14 finalists.

Work Experience – Highlights

– Blockchain Governance Initiative Network (BGIN), Acting Co-chair
– Virginia Tech, Research Professor
– Georgetown University, Research Professor
– NTT Research Inc., Head of Blockchain Research
– Keio University, Project professor
– MIT Media Lab, Research Affiliate – Director’s Liaison for Financial Cryptography
– University of Tokyo, Research Fellow
– ISO/IEC JTC1 SC27/WG2, Head of Japanese National Committee
– National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Director of Security Architecture Laboratory

About Final Aim
Final Aim has been driving the global adoption of blockchain and smart contracts technologies in industrial design and manufacturing. In November 2021, the company announced the beta version of its blockchain platform, “Final Chain.”
In April 2022, they established a headquarters in the United States. In September of the same year, Final Aim was accepted into “Berkeley SkyDeck,” a world-renowned Silicon Valley startup accelerator. In February 2023, they were chosen as “The Most Likely to Become the Next Unicorn” within the program. In June, the company won the “Japan-US Innovation Awards – Innovation Showcase,” a co-program by the Japan Society of Northern California and the Stanford University US-Asia Technology Management Center.

Company Name: Final Aim, Inc.
Location: Headquarters – Delaware, US / Subsidiary – Tokyo, Japan
Founders: Masafumi Asakura, Chief Executive Officer / Yasuhide Yokoi, Chief Design Officer
Business Description: Drive the adoption of blockchain and smart contracts technologies for design and manufacturing
Website: https://final-aim.com
Contact: contact@final-aim.com

Delaware, US, July 3rd, 2023 – Final Aim, Inc. (Delaware, US, CEO Masafumi Asakura, and CDO Yasuhide Yokoi) proudly announced the appointment of Jeep Kline as the company’s Board of Advisors. Jeep Kline is a seasoned venture capitalist, a senior executive at Intel and pre-IPO technology companies, a World Bank economist, and a faculty at UC Berkeley with more than 20 years of experience in the high-tech industry.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeepkline/

As a venture investor, Ms. Kline co-founded a venture capital fund investing in early-stage technology companies in Latin America, where she invested in notable impact-minded companies. She also served as a partner at a venture fund investing in early-stage high-growth companies across the US and Canada. Recently, she founded
SeaSky Lab an organization that brings knowledge and resources for tech entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley to Asia.

As an operating executive, Ms. Kline was the President of AHEAD Medicine – a life science company using machine learning for cell analysis – holding six global IPs. Prior to AHEAD Medicine, she was a senior executive at Intel Corp., where she pioneered, launched, and scaled the company’s first Android-based tablet device globally.

Ms. Kline was also an economist at The World Bank Group, where she supported Ministries of Finance in emerging markets to implement technology development projects in South America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe. Ms. Kline is one of the first Thai women selected to lecture a popular MBA course Impact Venture Capital Investing – Sustainable & Impact Finance Curriculum – at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. She also serves Berkeley Skydeck, a top accelerator program, as an investor and Global Ambassador to 48 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Her board work includes AHEAD Medicine (biotech), The Circulate Initiative by Circulate Capital (climate tech), Dietz Co. (health tech), and Intel Alumni Network (global tech executives). She is also an advisor to selected founders/CEOs at The Alchemist Accelerator and UCSF Health Hub Incubation in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Her multi-industry career paths are threaded together in one big theme: global impact. With this strong ambition and proven track record worldwide, Final Aim is excited to welcome Jeep to the Board of Advisors and to benefit from her experience and accomplishment.

“It’s rare to find a company that deploys technologies to create a large-scale impact on manufacturing and design. It’s even rarer to find two successful serial entrepreneurs from Japan who understand VC and impact entrepreneurship at a global scale. The combination of technology, business execution, and the founding team makes Final Aim a once-in-a-generation company from Asia.” said Jeep.

Masafumi Asakura, Co-Founder and CEO of Final Aim commented on the appointment that, “I am convinced that Jeep’s experience with the World Bank, Intel, venture capital, and her network in USA and Asia will help Final Aim grow to the next stage of its development. She is also a Professional Faculty of UC Berkeley Haas and I have learned a lot from her. I am honored to have this great opportunity to work with her.”

Also, Yasuhide Yokoi, Co-Founder and CDO of Final Aim stated, “Jeep has been fully supportive since our acceptance into Berkeley SkyDeck, and I am excited that she will be joining our moonshot as a Board of Advisors. Jeep’s incredible experience, especially in the US, Asia, and worldwide will be vital as we continue our ambitious plans to grow and develop blockchain solutions for our industry clients.”

About Final Aim
Final Aim has been driving the global adoption of blockchain and smart contracts technologies in industrial design and manufacturing. In November 2021, the company announced the beta version of its blockchain platform, “Final Chain.”
In April 2022, they established a headquarters in the United States. In September of the same year, Final Aim was accepted into “Berkeley SkyDeck,” a world-renowned Silicon Valley startup accelerator. In February 2023, they were chosen as “The Most Likely to Become the Next Unicorn” within the program. In June, the company won the “Japan-US Innovation Awards – Innovation Showcase,” a co-program by the Japan Society of Northern California and the Stanford University US-Asia Technology Management Center.

Company Name: Final Aim, Inc.
Location: Headquarters – Delaware, US / Subsidiary – Tokyo, Japan
Founders: Masafumi Asakura, Chief Executive Officer / Yasuhide Yokoi, Chief Design Officer
Business Description: Drive the adoption of blockchain and smart contracts technologies for design and manufacturing
Website: https://final-aim.com
Contact: contact@final-aim.com

Tokyo, Japan, April 20th, 2021 – As a leading company to support zero-to-one business creation, Final Aim, Inc., (Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, CEO Masafumi Asakura and CDO Yasuhide Yokoi), proudly announced the appointment of Professor Shinpei Kato at the University of Tokyo as the company’s Technology Advisor.
As an expert in deep tech domain including computer architectures and operating systems for embedded and real-time systems, cyber-physical systems, as well as parallel and distributed systems, Professor Shinpei Kato now works for the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo.

Professor Shinpei Kato also works at Nagoya University. He is a co-director of Embedded Real-Time Systems Laboratory (ERTL) and Parallel and Distributed Systems Laboratory (PDSL) in the Department of Information Engineering.
Outside academia, he is the Founder and CTO of Tier IV, Inc., one of the top leading deep-tech startups dedicated to sharing technology for safe intelligent autonomous vehicles where he leads the Tokyo and Silicon Valley office.
Correspondingly, he is the Co-founder and the Chairman of Board of Directors of the Autoware Foundation, which is the world’s first all-in-one open-source software for self-driving vehicles and hosts the world’s largest autonomous driving open source community.
And previously, he was an associate professor at the Graduate School of Information Science, Nagoya University from 2012 to 2016. He was also a postdoctoral scholar at Keio University, the University of Tokyo, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of California, Santa Cruz.

He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Keio University in 2004, 2006, and 2008 respectively. His research performed at Keio University was on multiprocessor scheduling theory and practice for safety-critical embedded real-time systems.
He also contributed a great deal to the advanced humanoid platform project directed by his advisor, Prof. Nobuyuki Yamasaki, in collaboration with Digital Human Research Center at AIST. During his Ph.D. program, he won the research fellowship (DC1) from JSPS in 2006 and the annual Young Author Award from IEEE Computer Society Japan Chapter in 2008.

After he graduated from Keio University, he became a JSPS postdoctoral research fellow (PD) at University of Tokyo, and worked in part as a member of the dependable embedded operating systems project directed by Prof. Yutaka Ishikawa.
In the fall of 2009, he was selected for the JSPS Excellent Young Researcher Overseas Visit Program to join Real-Time and Multimedia Systems Laboratory (RTML) directed by Prof. Raj Rajkumar at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) through the summer of 2012.
While he was at CMU, he took an initiative in research on GPU real-time computing, and now the autonomous vehicle developed in RTML, a.k.a. BOSS, is employing this cutting-edge GPU technology.
In July 2012, he moved to Systems Research Laboratory (SRL) directed by Prof. Scott Brandt at University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). In SRL, he led the QoS-aware storage and GPU-accelerated RAID6 projects.
As of April 2012, he has worked at Nagoya University as a tenured faculty member.

Final Aim has started with ambition to support zero-to-one with design and technology and to create a world where anyone can start a business regardless of nationality, academic background, age, and gender. Its projects had been expanded from Japan to Singapore, Indonesia and to Rwanda. A partnership with a Singapore-based startup in robotics, OTSAW Digital Pte Ltd., a collaboration with Tier IV Inc., and a joint-research with Sony Design Consulting Inc. are our great milestones. Final Aim continues its challenge for upcoming startups and new business development divisions in large corporations to support their zero-to-one steps from both service and product specialty.

Company Name: Final Aim, Inc.
Location: Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo
Business Description: Zero-to-one support with design and technology
URL: https://final-aim.com
Founders: Masafumi Asakura, Chief Executive Officer / Yasuhide Yokoi, Chief Design Officer
Contact: contact@final-aim.com