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Last week I published a article on Medium about why I was shutting down my current startup. If you haven’t read it yet, you can find out Why I turned down $500K, Pissed off my investors, and Shut down my startup.

The outpouring of support, questions, advice and random thoughts I received from readers made me realize that rather than my usual chaotic way of deciding what I will be doing next, I should really ask your advice about it.

In this special (and rather short) episode I explain who listens to Disrupting Japan and why it makes sense to ask for advice on what is normally a very personal and secretive topic.

Let me know what you think, and I look forward to hearing from you.

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Transcript from Japan
Disrupting Japan episode .. well that’s a bit tricky.  Let’s call this episode 47 1/2.
You see this is a special show, oh yes, I know we have special sows every ten episodes, and that one is still coming up. This is an especially special show.  In fact we are going to break a lot of the rules for podcasting in this episode.
Let me give you the background. I’m in the middle of a personal transition right now — don’t worry Disrupting Japan is going to continue and I’ve got some ideas on making it even better. This is about me personally, and I’d like to ask your advice.
I recently decided to shut down my most recent startup ContractBeast before it really had the chance to startup. I won’t go into the details here, but the core problem was that we were not really providing enough immediate value to our users for them to pay enough for the company to make a profit.
One of the reasons I’m not going into detail here is that I wrote a medium post title Why I turned down 500K, Pissed off my investors and shut down my startup. that post explained  my decisions and everything that let up to it. That post went viral and endue up at the top of HackerNew, the top of Medium and the top of LinkedIn Pulse. It was also picked up by VentureBeat and a few other sites.
Now, because of Disrupting Japan and my presentations and other appearances I get a steady flow of emails from listers and people interested in doing business in Japan from all over the world. I enjoy those, and I’m happy to help when I can.
None of that, however, prepared me the recent assume on my inbox. I’m still digging my way out from under several thousand emails and comments, and so far it’s overwhelmingly positive and encouraging.
There is a link to the post on the website disrupting http://ift.tt/1Ut5pwJ you haven’t read it go read it it will let you know where all this is coming from.
Go ahead and read it. I’ll wait here.
All done? Good. Now that you have the background understanding of. …  No, no I know you didn’t stop the podcast. That’s OK. No one else did either. You can check the article out when you get a chance.
I thought about why this post resonated with so many people, there is certainly no shortage of articles on every aspect of startup life both from a personal or professional perspective. I think what  it came down to was a willingness to be open, I mean ridiculously open and honest about my doubts my thoughts and my decisions.
Just being human seems to be enough to stand out in today’s startup culture.
In fact, I like to think that is a big part of the appeal of Disrupting Japan. You learn about some amazing startups and cool technology, of course, but if you’re like me it’s our guests willingness to open up and share their stories and doubts and dreams that makes Disrupting Japan worthwhile. In fact, I’ve been told by more than a few guests that they would never have been able to be so direct and honest in Japanese.
So with that spirt of openness and honesty in mind, I’m asking you and the rest of the Disrupting Japan listeners to help me decide what I should do next.
To understand why this makes sense,

from Disrupting Japan http://ift.tt/1UOgO8M