Disrupting Japan

(Photo Credit: WurFi) This is a short and very personal episode. Things will be changing for me and for Disrupting Japan, and sometimes when you are facing a lot of big changes, it really helps to be able to share your thoughts with people you care about. That's you. There is no guest this time. It's a story about me and magic and chivalry and startups.  I hope you find something in it. Transcript Disrupting Japan Episode… well, that’s kind of complicated. Hi. Tim here. I’ve got some big news that I can only tease you with right now, but I wanted to share it with you in this special, short in-between episode.  There are no ads this episode, because … well, because this one is not brought to you by our sponsors, it’s too personal. It’s brought to you by me. Now, no one has ever been surprised to learn that I was a huge nerd in high-school. And this was back in the 1980’s, a very long time before nerds were even remotely cool, and female nerds simply didn’t exist. Actually, no I take that back. I’m

Two of the most persistent and damaging myths about Japan are that it is hard to start a company here and that it is hard to do business as a foreigner.  Well, those are not complete myths. Both of those things are indeed difficult, but no harder than they are in any other country. Today Marty Roberts explains not only how he started and rapidly grew a successful startup here in Japan, but how he got the Japanese government to pay for it. To contain health care costs, the Japanese government is pushing doctors to prescribe more generic drugs, and that is forcing the pharmaceutical industry to change they way they do business or to go out of business. Marty saw an opportunity in this shift, and his company has quickly grown to be the leader in its space. Marty also offers some very practical advice for anyone thinking of leaving a senior management role to start a startup. It’s a great discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes How pharma sales is broken in Japan Why work is about to get a

Japan has a long history of small shopping streets and tiny markets. In fact, despite the population density, American-style mall culture never took off here. The back streets of even the most crowded downtown office districts are filled with little specialty stores and vegetable stands. Akiko Nishiura, the CEO and founder of Nokisaki, wants to see that culture spread even further in Japan, and her company is helping small merchants find physical spaces for pop-up shops, vegetable stands and food trucks. Nokisaki is connecting these small merchants, who need just a little bit of space, with commercial landlords who have a little bit of free space and are looking for some additional foot-traffic. It’s an interesting business model, and Akiko and I discuss how it will work outside of Japan or even outside of Japan's big cities. She also explains how Nokisaki survived a crisis that would have bankrupted almost any other startup — at least any other startup outside Japan. It’s a great discussion, and I think

Platform as a Service (PaaS) has been a difficult startup business model in the US, but Wayland Zheng, founder and CEO of Mobingi, has found a way to make it work in Japan. His approach involves a combination of leveraging both a unique feature set and some unique aspects of Japanese technical buyers. Wayland also shares his story of what is probably a record for the fastest time to startup launch for any foreigner in Japan. Within two months of landing in Tokyo, and unable to speak the language, he had settled on a startup idea, found a Japanese co-founder, and been accepted into one of the most competitive startup accelerators in Japan. Three years later, Mobingi has an impressive and growing list of clients and investors. We talk about how he made all this happen, the importance of accelerators, and how you need to tailor your startup not just to a rational business model, but to the business culture of the market. It’s a great discussion and I think you will really enjoy it. Show Notes How Mobing

It’s rare for a Japanese startup to challenge NTT and come out ahead. But that’s exactly what Takehiro Ogita and his team at TownWiFi have accomplished. TownWiFi is a mobile app that automatically detects and logins into available WiFi hotspots. Since TownWiFi was very modestly funded, Takehiro and his team relied on a better user experience and word of mouth to get the word out. Today we sit down with Takehiro and dive into that story, but we also look at the company's existing overseas userbase and his plans for global expansion on a shoestring. There is so much changing among Japanese startups right now, and Takehiro explains some of the social forces working for and working against new Japanese startups. It’s a great discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes The universal problem with free WiFi What allowed TownWiFi to gather a userbase so quickly Why Rakuten produces so many startup founders Why Takehiro had to hide his startup from his family How TownWiFi managed to beat NTT i

This is a rather personal episode. We have no guests this time. It’s just you and me. We talk a lot about Japanese startups on this show and the role they will play in shaping Japan's economic future. Well, today we are going to look at this from a different angle; one that puts the hype aside and looks at some cold hard numbers. The result is sobering, surprising and,  believe it or not, kind of inspiring So let's get right to it. [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript Disrupting Japan Episode 91 Welcome to Disrupting Japan straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for listening  Once again, I’ve got a special show for you today. There will be no guests, no beer, no playful banter with someone speaking English as a second language. Today it’s just you and me. For the next 20 minutes, I’ll be whispering in your ear about something I consider very important, but that not enough people are talking about. It’s been a while

Most great startup ideas don’t grab your attention right away. It takes a while before the founder’s vision becomes obvious to the rest of us. On the other hand, the startups that immediately grab all the press attention often go out of business shortly after shipping their first product. Reality never seems to live up the to promise. And then there are products like Orphe. This LED-emblazoned, WiFi-connected, social-network enabled dancing shoe seems made for fluffy, flashy Facebook sharing, but only when you really dig into it, do you understand what it really is and the potential it has in the marketplace. Today we sit down with Yuya Kikukawa, founder of No New Folk Studio and the creator of the Orphe, and we talk about music, hardware financing, and why this amazing little shoe is finding early adopters in places from game designers to hospitals. It’s a great conversation, and I think you’ll really enjoy it. Show Notes The inspiration for musical shoes Why Yuya's first musical instrument attempt

After the March 2011 earthquake and the explosions at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, TEPCO and the Japanese government tried to assure us that everything was just fine. The repeatedly insisted that there was no serious danger posed by the radiation. Not very many people believed them. Reliable data from fallout areas was sparse at best, and many Japan residents doubted that the government was telling the truth in the first place. It was in that environment that Pieter Franken and his team created Safecast. Safecast began as a small group in Japan with home-made Geiger counters making their reading available to everyone. They have now grown into an international movement involving private citizens, universities, non-profit organizations and government agencies. Pieter also explains why environmental science will look very different ten years from now. It’s a fascinating discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups Why Japan's disaster preparation failed Why you need high-res

Selling innovative software to conservative Japanese businesses is never easy, but it’s particularly challenging in the cutthroat and low-margin restaurant industry. Today, we sit down with Masao “TJ” Tejima and talk about how he brought OpenTable into Japan, and why it took him much longer than he had originally hoped. It’s a wide-ranging and deep-diving discussion on how to identify which companies are most suitable for Japan market entry and TJ’s rather extreme approach to maintaining a consistent corporate culture between Japan and corporate headquarters. We also take a look at some of the biggest mistakes Western companies make when hiring a Japan Country Manager and a few simple ways those mistakes can be avoided. It’s a fascinating discussion, and I think you’ll really enjoy it Show Notes Why leave a  company after a successful market entry? How to build a product around a human network Why you need to run market entry like a startup OpenTable's real business model and how is was adapt

Education is one of the hardest sectors to disrupt -- or even improve upon -- and most EdTech startups struggle. Today we sit down with Go Arai and we talk about how his company, Arcterus, is taking a bottom-up approach to improving education. Arcterus has developed a service called Clear, which profits by helping students help each other study. Clear is basically a study-notebook sharing platform, and now Go and his team are building it out into something much more than that. We talk about Arcterus’ recent Asian expansion and why some seemingly small cultural differences made their product unviable in certain countries. We also explore why it's sometimes hard for Japanese startups to pivot and the effects of the company and the team when a radical change in direction is needed. It’s a fascinating discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups Why notebook sharing works in Japan but not in America How lessons from a corporate  turnaround were applied to a startup How a terribl

The translation and localization industry has seen some impressive innovations over the past decade, but in many ways, it has remained stubbornly resistant to change. Today we sit down and talk with Jeff Sandford co-founder of Wovn.io. The Wovn team has developed a way to take the pain out of web localization and translation. They promise to do it all with a single line of code. We talk a bit about the mechanics of web-site localization and state of the industry as a whole, and we also discuss some important but surprising differences between with makes compelling UI/UX design for Japanese and for Western users, and what kinds of tasks machine translation can really be trusted with. Jeff also explains why he decided to start a company with someone he had never meet. It’s a great discussion, and I think you’ll really enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups Why website translation is important but often overlooked Why Jeff chose to start a company with someone he had never met  How to combat Japan's "D

Seeking help for even minor mental health problems still carries a stigma in Japan. This is particularly unfortunate because clinical research shows that a significant portion of Japanese adults suffer from depression or other mental illnesses. Ayako Shimizu, the founder of Hikari Labs, has an innovative approach that represents a huge step forward in addressing this problem. Hikari Labs develops and distributes video games based on cognitive behavior therapy, and these games enable players to literally train their brains out of depression. Her approach bypasses both the stigma and costs involved in seeking treatment. Even in conservative Japan, she is seeing increasing and enthusiastic adoption by corporate wellness programs. But this whole project was almost shut down by the very people who should have been helping her. Ayako has a fascinating story, and I think you’ll really enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups How gaming can treat depression and reduce suicide rates Why marketing mental health game

Today we sit down with Dave McClure under the cherry blossoms and talk about startups, funding, failure Dave has long been involved in Japan and in the startup community here, and in this episode, we talk about the progress Japan has made in the past decade and the changes that still need to be made. We go over what Dave sees as the gaps in the Japan’s venture capital ecosystem and also dispel some of the pervasive myths that have spread throughout Silicon Vally and the entire startup world. We spend a bit of time diving into what Dave and 500 Startups consider to be a risky business model, and it may not be what you expect, but it’s great advice for anyone thinking of starting a company. It’s a great discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups Who is doing most of the investing in Japan right now Why Japan needs more angel investors What startups should be looking for in investors How to find a startup idea What Japan should learn from Silicon Valley and what it should i

Growing our meat in a lab or factory has been a science fiction staple for decades, but much like jetpacks, it has never quite worked out in practice -- at least not at scale. Yuki Hanyu and his team at Shojinmeat, however, are changing that. Actually, scientists have been growing muscle tissue in labs for more than 100 years, but Shojinmeat has developed techniques that bring the cost down to less than one 1,000th of traditional approaches. Now, that still leaves it too expensive for most commercial applications, but Yuki explains how his team (and others) will bring the costs down into the commercial range very soon. We also talk about both why Japanese life-sciences startups have such a hard time raising money in Japan and how Shojinmeat found a way to make the system work for them. It’s a great discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups How do you grow meat in the Lab? Why cellular agriculture doesn’t get funding Is lab-grown meat kosher? Combining open research and p

Many VR startups are a solution is search of a problem, but Holoeyes is already in use at hospitals around Japan. Although the medical industry is one the most highly regulated, conservative and hard to disrupt, Holoeyes has made inroads by solving a very specific problem for surgeons. Today we sit down with Naoji Taniguchi, CEO of Holoeyes, and talk about the steps his startup had to take to sell into the medical market in Japan and to win over traditionally conservative doctors. Holoeyes builds up virtual reality models of organs from CT scans, and lets doctors analyze and discuss these matters much more directly and clearly than they could before. It’s a great interview and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups How VR can actually save hospitals money and improve outcomes Why the world needs a GitHub of surgery What Japanese startups get out of accelerator programs Why the real value in surgical VR is not what you think How Holoeyes achieves medical quality in low-spec devices

It’s often surprising to discover which problems are hard for AI. We hear stories about artificial intelligence being better than the most skilled humans at go, chess, Jeopardy, and better than many at driving a car, and we assume that computers will be as smart as we are very soon. Then we discover how hard it is for AI to fold the laundry. Shin Sakane and his team at Seven Dreamers have been working on this particular problem for 12 years, and they are now rolling out the first commercially available laundry-folding robot. They will be first to the global market and have secured a production partnership with Panasonic. Shin and I talk a lot about AI and innovation in Japan, and also cover his rather unusual corse to innovation here. Seven Dreamers is not your typical venture-backed startup, and they might just provide a blueprint for innovation that many existing Japanese firms can follow. It’s a great interview, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups Why AI can drive a car but not fo

It’s hard to make money with music apps. The competition is intense, and most people simply are not willing to pay much for music apps; either because music is something they only do casually or because if it’s something they do professionally, they probably don’t have money. Akinori Fumihara of Nana, however, is succeeding despite the odds. Nana is a collaborative music creation app, where different users upload and submit different tracks to a song, which can be edited and remixed by others to create an unlimited number of arrangements. Today Nana has a highly engaged global user-base that numbers in the millions, but it almost did not work out that way. Three months after the initial release, Nana was running out of money and was watching new installs trend towards zero. How Aki and his team managed to turn things around is an amazing story, and one I think you’ll really enjoy. Show Notes for Startups Why "casual music" is important How to develop an overseas user-base by word of mouth Why tee

Soracom is one of those rare Japanese startups that has the potential to become a major global player and to change the way Internet of Things devices work. The real deployment bottleneck in the Internet of Things is not the hardware or the software, but the connectivity. There are still relatively few inexpensive, flexible and scalable ways that IoT devices can transmit and receive data. Cellular connectivity is expensive, and WiFi is largely limited to stationary devices in homes and offices. Today we sit down with Ken Tamagawa, CEO of Soracom, who explains his solution to this problem, and it's a good one. Soracom operates a mobile virtual network and provides widespread connectivity for IoT devices for pennies a day, and since their infrastructure runs completely on AWS their costs are significantly lower than the competition's. Soarcom is extremely well-funded, and they are quickly expanding globally. You are going to be hearing a lot about them in the future, so let’s get to know them today. I think

Miwa Tanaka, CEO of Waris, is working to make things better for working women in Japan. Although things are slowly changing, most Japanese women still must leave the workforce when they have children. The Waris platform helps them get back on track, either as a freelancer or by restarting their career. We talk about her startup, of course, but we also talk about the difficulties women still face, the kinds of roles they are traditionally placed into, and the traditional employment structures and roles are changing. It’s a optimistic interview and Miwa explains why she believes that corporate Japan truly wants to change things for the better. It’s a fascinating discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups Why Japanese women leave the workforce when they have children The problem Japanese women face during negotiations How the Tohuku Earthquake changed Miwa's life path Why the Japanese government changed its opinion on freelancers What "diversity training" actually means in

From the transistor radio to the Walkman to the Gameboy and the Playstation, Japan has always been both a leading force in hardware technology and a Mecca for gadget geeks. Over the past ten years, however, Japanese dominance in consumer hardware has been slipping away. The falling price of not just computing, but of manufacturing and prototyping has resulted in some amazing connected devices appearing all over the world. But while Japan’s large corporations have been falling behind, Japan’s startups have been rushing ahead. Today we sit down with Ichiro Amimori of Xenoma to talk about why he left a successful 20-year career in materials science at FujiFilm to found a company that makes a low-cost, washable motion capture shirt they call e-skin. It’s a order of magnitude cheaper than existing technology and opens up the possibility of applications in gaming, sports technology and heath and medicine. We also talk about the challenges Japanese enterprises and universities have turning fundamental research in