Hi and welcome to episode #1 of Short and Sweet, FocusCore's video blog. Episode #1 I want to say thank you; we just have celebrated our 8th anniversary, and it's thanks to you, our customers, and everything you've done to help us be successful in the market.
For us, we started up the company right after the earthquakes in 3.11, and we know that we wanted to create a company based around relationships, not a transactional company but a company where we could really service the customer. My first contract was with a good friend, Fabien Cipriani who was at Apple and signed me up. And our first paying customer was Andrew Hainkinson. It was very exciting times, we would have our best days and our worst days, sometimes on the same day. But it was always based on relationships and that was so important.
People talk to me and ask me about the future of recruitment in Tokyo. One of the things thats coming already in US and Euroupe is AI and the importance of AI for recruitment. But that's not going to be as important for small and medium companies and for boutique recruitment firms like ours that are really engaged to helping those SMEs and giving them the best customer service experience that we can. FocusCore, that's what we're dedicated to, here in Asia with offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Myanmar and Tokyo. It's about bringing that personalized customer service experience to the client and the candidate.
So, thank you everybody for making 8 years very successful, very wonderful, it made me very happy that I founded this company and it has had an impact in so many lives, and in so many families, making people love what they do, love their work. Thank you so much.