Disrupting Japan

We've been talking about smart homes and smart cities for a long time. However, it turns out that we are not willing to pay very much for simple convenience, so the technology is coming into our homes bundled with different agendas. We've seen this happen with the success of Alexa and Google Home, and we are now seeing it here in Japan with Nature Remo. Today we sit down and talk with Haruumi Shiode, the founder and CEO of Nature, and we discuss not only what the future of home automation will look like, but who will be paying for it. It's an enlightening conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes The real motivation behind smart home purchases How hardware entrepreneurship went mainstream The one way in which crowdfunding is still relevant Why Nature decided to launch English-first How to outsource hardware production without going bankrupt Nature's real business model for the future The importance of demand-response in Japan The growing significance of corporate alumni netw

Selling services in Japan is very different than selling products or software. Everyone knows that relationships are important in Japan, but not many people understand why they are so important, and how you can use that understanding to build a successful business here. Today Sriram Venkataraman explains how he grew InfoSys Japan from a one man operation to over 1,000 employees and how understanding why Japanese enterprises must trust their vendors far more than companies in other developed countries. And we dive into what that means for the new generation of SaaS startups. Our conversation is basically a blueprint for how to grow a startup from nothing to thousands of people in Japan, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Leave a comment Links & Resources Follow Sriram on Twitter @japansriram Connect with him on LinkedIn Transcript Welcome to disrupting Japan straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. I’ve got another great Disruption Japan Sel

This is a rather personal episode. We have no guests this time. It’s just you and me. New listeners might not know that for about one year, Disrupting Japan was sponsored and was my primary source of income. So today, rather than diving deep into a specific aspect of startups in Japan, I thought I would share the history of Disrupting Japan itself, about my decision to go pro (and then go amateur), my visions of a podcast empire, and how it came crashing down. I'd like to tell you the story behind the stories. Leave a comment Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan. Straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. I’ve got a special show for you today. There will be no guests, no beer, no playful banter about making, marketing or monetization.  For the next 20 minutes, it’s just you and me. It’s been a while since I’ve done a solo show, and these solo shows tend to be some of the most popular. So today, I thought it would be a good idea to share with you some of my thoughts about podcastin

The promise of renewable energy has always been alluring. Now that the technology has caught up to the promise, record amounts of wind and solar are coming onto the grid both in Japan and throughout the world.  But so far startups, especially Japanese startups, have been playing a very limited role in this transformation. But that's starting to change. Today we sit down with Ken Isono, founder and CEO of Shizen Energy, and we talk about what it takes to succeed as an energy startup in Japan, and since Shizen Energy is rapidly expanding globally, what it takes to succeed as a startup in the global energy markets. We talk about which renewables are working in Japan and which are not, what the real bottlenecks are, and more important, how we can fix them. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes Why startups struggle in the energy market How solar plants get built in Japan How to find wind projects worth building The importance of going local in a global market Why the

It's a great time to be a programmer in Japan. Everyone is hiring and there simply is not enough talent available. But why is that? The truth is that until about 10 years ago, programming was considered kind of a blue-collar, low-skill job. It was OK to start your career as a programmer, but if you had not moved into management by the time you were 30, clearly you weren't that bright. The startup boom has changed that, and developer salaries (and respect) has improved significantly. But the education system has not caught up, and far too few people know how to code. Today we sit down with Masa Kato, founder of Progate, and discuss how Japan got herself into this situation, and what Progate is doing to fix it. The problems run deeper than expected. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes Why Japanese elementary students are learning Javascript The problem with computer science in Japan Why Japanese universities resist change - even when they know they need it The fla

Corporate accounting is not usually the first thing the comes to mind when you think of disruptive technology, and for the most part, that’s a good thing. Daisuke Sasaki of Freee, however, is changing the way sales are made in Japan from the bottom up.

A few years ago, shiny new startups were using their marketing dollars to tell the world that chatbots were going to change everything. Those marketing dollars have now been spent and most of those startups are no more. But for the past few years, one company has been quietly making chatbots useful, and they are now starting to make some noise. Today we sit down with Akemi Tsunagawa, founder of Bespoke and creator of the Bebot chatbot. In several important ways, Bespoke is one of the most successful chatbot companies in the world, and you'll be hearing a lot about them in the years to come. Today, however, Akemi explains how she and the team managed to succeed where so many better-funded companies failed, and she gives some great advice about how to get consumers to try out new technologies. We also talk about why you should absolutely never build your business around Facebook or WeChat. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes Why most travel websites are doomed to failure

Everything about employment in Japan is changing. Lifetime employment is gone.  Skilled workers are discovering that they have job mobility and large Japanese companies are increasingly confused by the fact that many new graduates don't want to work for them. Wantedly has been one of the companies that has changed the way corporate recruiting works in Japan, and today we sit down and talk with the founder and CEO Akiko Naka. We first talked with Akiko a few years ago when Wantedly was starting to gain traction, but since then Wantedly has grown, IPOed and become of the most highly valued public companies in Japan. We talk about her journey, of course, but we also dive into how the nature of work is changing in Japan, the best way to promote yourself and your company in Japan, and the one terrible piece of advice that women founders need to stop listening to. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes Why Japanese companies can’t hire creative employees How to deal with star

Uber and Airbnb represent a new very kind of startup, one that could not have existed twenty years ago, and the very thing that make these companies so transformative in the United States ensures they will never succeed in Japan. You see...

The developed world is facing a severe programmer shortage. Around the world, coding boot camps have stepped into this gap to teach newcomers basic programming skills quickly. But in like so many other areas, Japan is different. Coding boot camps have been slow to take off here, and programmers are taught by a patchwork of academic degrees, on the job training, and informal meetups and study sessions. Kani Munidasa, the co-founder of Code Chrysalis, is changing that. He's started one of the first Western-style coding boot camps in Japan, and the ecosystem is already seeing the results. Code Chrysalis has an amazing placement rate with grads receiving above-average starting salaries, but there is something more going on here as well. Kani and I talk about how the job market for programmers is changing in Japan and, more important perhaps, how their place in society is changing as well. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes Why Japanese engineers don’t participate in open

For decades, Japan has been struggling with the economic need to attract more foreign residents to the country and the general social reluctance to do so. Over the years there have been some well-publicized failures and a few quiet successes, and Japan retains her image as a generally closed nation. But reality changes much faster than perception in Japan. Things are already changing and that change is about to accelerate. Today I'd like you to meet Nao Sugihara founder of MTIC, who is going to explain these trends in detail. Nao runs a recruiting platform called GaijinBank that deals exclusively with blue-collar, foreign labor, and he'll show you not only that Japan's has opened up far more than most people acknowledge, but that this trend will likely accelerate over the next 20 years. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes Which companies hire foreigners for blue-collar work n Japan The biggest misunderstandings between Japanese companies and foreign staff The overtime

The aerospace industry has been particularly resistant to disrupting in Japan. In the rest of the world, launch vehicle and spacecraft technology has made incredible gains over the past decade, but here in Japan its still mostly the same government contracts going to the same major contractors. Naomi Kurahara of InfoStellar, has come up with an innovative way to leverage existing aerospace infrastructure and to collaborate globally by renting out unused satellite ground-sataion time, Airbnb style. You see when an organization launches a satellite, they also build a ground station to communicate with it. The problem is, that as the satellite obits the Earthy, it’s only in communication range of the ground station for less than an hour a day. The rest of the time the ground station just sits there. By renting out that unused time ground-station operators earn extra income, and the satellite operators are able to communicate with their satellites as often as they need. It’s a great interview and I think you’

There is something odd about the way we treat sleep.  We understand that it is essential for good health, but we are almost ashamed when we admit that we get enough of it. We are rightfully proud when we keep our resolutions to go to the gym more or to eat a more healthy diet, but if we get a good night's sleep, we tend to keep it to ourselves. In fact, when we talk about sleep at all, it's usually to brag about how little sleep we are getting. We seem to consider getting a healthy amount of sleep to be some kind of luxury, or worse, as evidence of laziness.  Today we are going to talk with Taka Kobayashi, the founder, and CEO of NeuroSpace, and he's going to explain how things got so bad, and what he plans to do about it.    Taka is is building a business around that idea that companies should not only encourage employees to get more sleep but that they should pay NeuroSpace a helthy sum to do so.  Most sleep-based startups have failed in the past, but Taka explains how NeuroSpace is doing thi

Whenever you hear someone claim that the Japanese will never do something for unspecified "cultural reasons", you know there is a fortune to be made. Lu Dong is the co-founder and CEO of Japan Foodie, a cashless payment system currently masquerading as a restaurant discovery application. Lu and I talk about the boom in inbound Chinese tourism that led to the creation of Japan Foodie, and how he and his team quickly managed to identify and dominate this massive and underserved market. We talk about how tourism is changing Japan, the best way to build a two-sided marketplace, the only way forward for most e-commerce platforms, the future of e-payments in Japan and the history of women's lingerie in China. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes The real problems with Japan being a cash-based society What people really care about in a restaurant app How to build a two-sided marketplace Why e-commerce platforms are really advertising companies What happens in Japan afte

Japanese thoughts on risk are changing, but they are changing slowly. Many people still consider failure to be a permanent condition, and that makes it hard to take risks, or in some cases even to be associated with risks. Today we talk with Hajime Hirose, one of Japan's new breed of serial entrepreneurs. Hajime has started companies in three different countries and several different industries.  We talk about the challenges and importance of going global and how a Japanese founder ended up running a Chinese company that IPOed in New York. And of course, we also talk about how difficult it is for startups to combat rumors in Japan, even when everyone knows those rumors to be false. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes The road to China runs through Seattle Today's management crisis in Chinese and Indian companies Why leave Japan to start a startup Why not all publicity is good publicity in Japan Why the truth cannot fix lies How to survive when your competition

The conventional wisdom is that traditional Japanese companies can't innovate. And traditionally, that's been true.  Hosoo, however, might be carrying on a 1200-year-old tradition, but they are hardly a conventional company. Today we talk with Masataka Hosoo, who is the 12th-generation leader of Hosoo, one of Japan's most famous kimono silk makers. And while the company used to provide kimono fabrics to emperors and shogun, times have changed. Masataka explains how he is changing with the times and working with not only fashion brands like Dior and Chanel, but companies like Panasonic to develop user interfaces that involve textiles rather than simple lights and buttons. We also talk about a possible innovation blueprint that Japan's other small businesses can follow. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes How ancient weaving techniques are used in modern fashion When Japan hit peak-Kimono (it’s not when you think) Bringing kimono fashion to Paris How to retrain a 3

Disrupting Japan is four years old, so we decided to invite a few hundred movers and shakers from Tokyo’s startup community over to have few drinks and to hear three of Japan’s most successful foreign startup CEOs talk about what it takes to succeed in Japanese when you are not Japanese. Our panel included some of the most influential foreign startup founders in Japan. Tim Romero (@timoth3y) - Moderator Paul Chapman (@pchap10k) - CEO, Moneytree Jay Winder (@itsjaydesu) - CEO, Make Leaps Casey Wahl (@caseydai2asa9sa ) - CEO, Wahl & Case We talk about strategies for growth, how to leverage your "foreignness" to your advantage, how to best manage multi-cultural teams, and what the future looks like for foreigners in Japan. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. On a personal note, thank you for reading and listening and for being a part of Disrupting Japan. When I started this project ago, I never imagined how large and influential the show would become, or how large and passionate 

There are a lot of aerospace startups in Japan these days. We are seeing innovation in everything from component manufacturing to satellite constellations to literal moonshots. All of those, however, depend on the ability to place new satellites in orbit, and that is getting harder and harder due to the ever-increasing amount of orbital debris. It's simply getting too crowded up there. Nobu Okada founded Astroscale to solve this problem. Today we sit down and talk about his solution, and we also dive into the very real political and financing challenges that have prevented this problem from being solved. In many ways, the removal of space debris of a classic Tragedy of the Commons problem. Everyone agrees that it is an important problem that should be solved, but no one wants to spend their own money to solve it. Well, Nobu and his team have developed a business model that they believe will be able to address this problem.  It's an innovative and important approach. And yes, we also talk about dancing sate

There are relatively few biotech startups in Japan. Few investors are willing to write the multi-million dollar checks and have the decades-long patience that is required to really succeed investing in this industry. But startups find a way, and an innovative biotech ecosystem has started to develop in Japan despite the lack of traditional funding. In fact, we might be seeing a new, uniquely Japanese, model of innovation that we'll call "the innovation supply chain". Today, we get a first-hand look at how this innovation supply chain functions, as we sit down with Yuki Shimahara the CEO and founder of LPixel.  LPixel uses AI image analysis to detect potential problems in patients MRI and CT scans. The technology itself is fascinating, but Yuki and I also talk about how medical research and medical innovation might be taking a very different path in Japan than it is in the West. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll really enjoy it. Show Notes The real problem with using AI for medical diagno

Most of us don't actually zone out in front of the TV. In fact, we give off all kinds of clues to what we really think about the shows we are watching. Japanese startup, T-Vision Insights has come up with a way both to measure and to monetize those reactions. Today we sit down with founder and CEO Yasushi Gunya and we talk about T-Vision's business and the future of advertising in video. T-Vision Insights already has 100's of customers and is monitoring thousands of households both in Japan and the US and we dive into some of the differences in how different kinds of people watch and react to TV. I guarantee some of the results will surprise you. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes How AI can determine viewer engagement Proof that women watched the super bowl more closely than men How men and women watch TV differently Which TV shows and commercials  are most engaging The danger of advertising on the Walking Dead How privacy concerns are addressed Why it's