Yusuke Mitsumoto had a hunch: what if you paid people instantly for their used goods over the Internet, with no guarantee that they would hand them over?
The 36-year-old e-commerce entrepreneur launched an app in June to test the idea. It worked better than he imagined; after 16 hours, he was stunned to discover he was on the hook for 360mil yen (RM13.02mil) and shut the service down. A day later, truckloads of clothes and electronics gadgets started to arrive, with his startup’s employees forming a bucket line to move packages into his company’s tiny office in Tokyo.