Takafumi Horie

Takafumi Horie (堀江 貴文, Horie Takafumi^?, born October 29, 1972) is a Japanese entrepreneur who founded Livedoor, a website design operation that grew into a popular internet portal. After being arrested and charged with securities fraud in 2006, he severed all connections with the company. His trial began on September 4, 2006. On March 16, 2007, Horie was sentenced to imprisonment of 2 years and 6 months.

He is popularly known as Horiemon (ホリエモン^?) due to his resemblance to Doraemon, the chubby robot cat in a popular Japanese cartoon. The name Horiemon was also given to a racehorse he owned, after the name had been chosen by voting on a Livedoor website.

Horie was born in Yame, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan, and was raised in an unexceptional household by a salaryman father and mother from a farming family.

He was a student at the department of literature at the University of Tokyo and was going to major in religion, but dropped out after establishing a website development company called Livin' on the Edge in 1995 with friends and classmates.

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