Akihabara News (Tokyo) Mercari was founded in February 2013 by entrepreneur Shintaro Yamada, who had come to the conclusion that there could be a bright future for a new Japanese mobile app that offered a fixed price customer-to-customer service, quite similar to an online flea market.
Yamada had once interned with Rakuten, helping to develop Rakuten Auction, while he was studying at Waseda University. It was after a number of other moderately successful ventures and after a six-month tour of the world hitchhiking and staying in cheap hostels that Yamada recruited two colleagues, fellow Waseda alumni Tommy Tomishima and Ryo Ishizuka, and launched the new venture.