From Buenos Aires to the pro tables
·5 min read
Friends reading Akagi and Saki, a forum thread and a set of tiles from Chinatown: how riichi mahjong took me from Buenos Aires to Tenhou, to Osaka and to the Japan Professional Mahjong Association.
Osaka, Japan
Helping AI and developer platforms succeed in Japan.
I’m Nicolas. I grew up in Buenos Aires, started playing mahjong there, and came to Japan to turn pro. Today I live in Osaka, where I work in customer success and go-to-market for developer platforms (currently at Vercel) and build websites and tools, for myself and for clients. I work in Japanese, English and Spanish.
- Talks, interviews and broadcasts, in tech and mahjong
- 36
- Working languages: 日本語, English, Español
- 3
- As a certified professional mahjong player
- 9 yrs
Today in Japan
Idiom of the day
On stage and in the press
- NHK Special
- Qiita Conference
- Geodesic Developer Lab
- AWS Startup Loft Tokyo
- Findy
- Vercel Meetup Tokyo
- Strapi
- 麻雀新聞
- Mahjong News
- World Riichi Championship
- M-League Watch
- Riichi Nomi NYC
- Serverless Meetup Tokyo
- Digima 越境EC Week
Speaking
Selected appearances
Hackathon
Tokyo AI Hackathon
Anthropic × Raycast × Supabase × Vercel
See Event PageBroadcast
World Riichi Championship Tokyo 2025
世界麻雀 TOKYO 2025
Watch Video (Japanese)Keynote
Keynote: Connecting Japan and the World After Unconventional Careers
Qiita Conference 2024 Autumn
See Event PageTV
NHK Special: Reiwa Future Conference 2020, “Opening Up Japan”
NHK
See Press Page (Japanese)
Recommendations
Kind words
From my LinkedIn recommendations, exactly as written.
He’s top-tier at his job and an absolute joy to work alongside. Any team or organisation would be fortunate to have him.
APAC Channel Lead, Island ·
What stands out to me is his ability to identify what the company needs to do next in Japan and actually make it happen.
Member of Technical Staff, Vercel ·
He is an excellent communicator, but just as importantly, he listens.
Founder & CEO, ScaleInsight ·
Projects
Sites I’ve built
npmahjong.com
NPMahjong
Riichi strategy in English from a certified Japanese pro: free guides and tools, plus coaching in English, Spanish and Japanese, hand reviews and translation for players and teams overseas.
- Mahjong
- Coaching
- Guides & tools
otaku-osaka.com
Otaku Osaka
An English guide to Nipponbashi, Osaka’s otaku district: shops, food and experiences for visitors who would otherwise get lost among 200-odd specialist stores.
- Travel guide
- English
es.japanremotely.com
Japan Remotely
Spanish-language help for remote workers and freelancers moving to Japan, from the visa to settling in.
- Relocation
- Spanish
Writing
Recent articles
Customer success in Japan: a practical guide for enterprise accounts
·6 min read
How to run customer success with Japanese enterprises, from the weekly teirei to incident reports and renewals timed to the April fiscal year. Written by Vercel’s first Japanese-speaking CSM.
How large Japanese companies actually adopt AI coding tools
·6 min read
The order it really happens in, from the security check sheet to the first internal hackathon, seen from the vendor side. With checklists for buyers and vendors.
What professional mahjong taught me about decisions
·6 min read
Riichi or damaten, push or fold, and the hand right after a big loss: the calls a riichi mahjong pro makes every game, and how I use them in renewals and deals.
Work
- Company
- Vercel Inc.
- Dates
- Present
- Role
- Interim Country Manager, Japan
- Dates
- Present
- Company
- Synergy Marketing, Inc.
- Role
- Frontend Engineer
- Dates
- Company
- ZenGroup Inc. (ZenMarket / ZenPlus)
- Dates
- Role
- Web Marketing Director, ZenPlus
- Dates
- Company
- Centro Universitario de Idiomas (University of Buenos Aires)
- Role
- Japanese Instructor
- Dates
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