36-year-old makes US$62mil with instant Web flea market

Marketplace app Cash is displayed on a smartphone in this arranged photograph in Tokyo, Japan, on Thursday, Nov. 30, 2017. E-commerce entrepreneur Yusuke Mitsumoto, founder of Cash, agreed to sell the app to media and technology empire DMM.com for 7 billion yen ($62 million) and continue running the business. Photographer: Kentaro Takahashi/Bloomberg

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.