About

Kenichi Uchikura
Businessperson, Entrepreneur, Inventor

Email Addresses
ken@uchikura.co
ken.uchikura@pspinc.com

Background
After graduating from Ashiya High School in Hyogo, Japan, Kenichi Uchikura attended Azusa Pacific University in California. After graduation, he went back to Japan and started working for Japan Computer Science Corporation, a computer software company in Osaka, in their overseas business development group.

After two years, Ken was selected to open a subsidiary company in Seattle, Washington. As the General Manager of Sun Grade, Inc., he was in charge of licensing and publishing US micro computer software for the Japanese market. However, the parent company decided to close its operations in the US after another 2 years.

Instead of going back to Japan, Ken purchased the assets of Sun Grade, Inc. and started Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. (PSPinc) in July 1987 in his apartment in Mercer Island, Washington. The plan was to continue software licensing and export from the US to Japan.

PSPinc was responsible for licensing and publishing of US software titles such as: Symantec Timeline, Bungie Software Myth, Micrografx Designer, Norton Backup, zApp, Phar Lap Software, Microway, Metware C and many others. PSPinc was known as “Double Byte Specialists” in the industry. In addition to licensing, they have helped companies to localize their software for Japanese consumers. These companies include Novell, Wordperfect, Micrografx and Symantec.

PSPinc also published KanjiWORD and KanjiKit which enabled non-Japanese Windows to display and input Japanese. They became one of the best selling Japanese language utilities in the US market, further establishing PSPinc as Double Byte Specialists and a leader in US and Japanese Business.

In 1995, Ken decided to branch out the business – the focus was now on the Internet. In 1996, PSPinc started its own Domain, Web and Email hosting service. This was a year before Jomax Technologies, which later became GoDaddy, entered into the field. Quickly, hosting grew to become the main business of PSPinc. 

In 2009, Ken became the Chairman of PSPinc to seek other business opportunities. Uchikura & Co. LLC is one of his efforts to expand the business beyond PSPinc. In July 2019, Ken was reinstated as the President of PSPinc and he is currently on a mission to grow PSPinc. 

Born: August 30, 1959 (Age 60 years), Hyogo, Ashiya, Japan
Education: Azusa Pacific University, 1983
Known for: Founder, Pacific Software Publishing, 1987

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