How Sansan Built an Internal Coaching Program to Scale Bill One

Sansan’s Arata Mitsuhashi and Bill One sales manager Shihoko Kume explain how internalizing coaching — individual and team — helped sustain rapid growth at a SaaS startup.

• Sansan runs two in-house programs: individual coaching (“Kōcha”) and team coaching (“Kōcha Team”), both opt-in and delivered by internal coaches.
• Mitsuhashi began learning coaching 9 years ago; the goal was to make it available to all employees, not just executives, since external coaching fees make that cost-prohibitive.
• Kume joined as Bill One’s 4th salesperson and used individual coaching when facing targets she had no framework to motivate herself toward; she credits it with unlocking the clarity to then build out the West Japan office.
• Team coaching sessions run a minimum of 3 sessions at 2–3 hours each, starting with StrengthsFinder and Enneagram to build mutual understanding, then KPT retrospectives to surface hidden team dysfunction.
• A concrete team result: a member who never spoke in meetings became the team’s mood-maker after Mitsuhashi deliberately called on him first in a session — something Kume said she would not have done as the manager due to perceived power dynamics.
• Sansan now has roughly 5 individual coaches and 3 team coaches, all working part-time alongside day jobs; Mitsuhashi says the number has grown through word-of-mouth and high repeat rates.
• Both speakers argue the main barrier in Japanese startups is a “handle it alone” mindset — treating asking for help as failure — and say that belief may be quietly capping business growth.

2025-06-26 · Watch on YouTube