Internet Entrepreneur Slain in Hawthorne Robbery

One of Japan’s leading Internet entrepreneurs was shot to death near a Hawthorne intersection after he cooperated with a robber and handed over his money and cell phone, sheriff’s officials said Wednesday.

Roger Boisvert, 50, who was born in Canada and worked in the Japanese business world for the last 20 years, was killed about 4 a.m. Sunday.

“We’re very shocked,” said George P. Taylor IX, who worked with Boisvert in Japan. “Roger was a visionary, a very kind man loved by hundreds in Tokyo if not more. He’s viewed as a father by lots of people who know him, an outstanding person.”

Boisvert and a friend, who was driving, were headed to a Torrance hotel when they became lost, said Sheriff’s Capt. Frank Merriman. They stopped in the 4600 block of Imperial Highway and were studying the car’s computerized navigational system when a gunman approached. After the gunman took their money and cell phone, Merriman said, he shot Boisvert.

The driver of the car is working with a sheriff’s composite artist to create a sketch of the killer.

The death hit many of Boisvert’s friends and colleagues hard in Tokyo. Colleagues at CTR Ventures K.K., the venture capital company he founded in April 2000, were huddled in meetings Thursday to figure out succession plans even as they struggled with the loss.

Boisvert was perhaps best known for founding Internet service provider Global OnLine Japan K.K., an influential player as Japan struggled in the early 1990s to catch up with the United States and Europe in Internet use.

Over the years, bigger Japanese players recognized the importance and potential for the market and eclipsed him and his company. But his influence was still felt.

“GOL contributed quite a bit to the very early development of Japan’s Internet infrastructure,” said Toshiaki Sakurae, editor of Nikkei netnavigator magazine. “And this in turn inspired many Japanese engineers and entrepreneurs.”

Before starting GOL in 1994, Boisvert had worked in Japan for McKinsey and Co., the consulting company, for nearly nine years managing their internal communications. In an interview in April 2001, Boisvert said the McKinsey job was starting to bore him so he hit on trying to develop the Internet in Japan. In classic entrepreneurial fashion, the company started out on a shoestring with little more than Boisvert’s savings and a few credit cards. The company parlayed fees gathered by early customers to buy more equipment.

As competition heated up, the firm lost ground to larger players with deeper pockets. Today there are about 3,500 registered ISPs in Japan. GOL had about 16,000 customers as of earlier this year.

A memorial tribute by one of Boisvert’s former employees, Catherine Lowther, described him as a capitalist, visionary, dreamer and brilliant salesman who was also an incompetent manager at times.

“Roger could not handle money if his life depended on it, and often it did,” she wrote on a link to the GOL Web site. “[But] Roger was one hell of a leader.”

Boisvert had just wrapped up a presentation in Seattle and had come to Los Angeles to explore U.S. investment and alliance possibilities for CTR Ventures.

Boisvert is survived by his wife, Yuriko, and two sons, Christopher, 21, and Steven, 18.