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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 terrible skiing accident ended up launching a startup
Why it took the team five pivots to find product-market fit
What makes pivoting hard in Japan
How to use Twitter to drive business
Why other Asian countries are ahead of Japan in EdTech
What today’s textbooks will evolve into

Links from the Founder

Arcterus Homepage
Everything you ever wanted to know about Clear
Friend Go on Facebook

 Leave a comment

Transcript from Japan
 

Disrupting Japan, episode 87.

Welcome to Disrupting Japan. Straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

You know, for a few very good reasons and many very bad reasons, education is particularly hard to disrupt. I think a big part of this is that the goal of public education is far more than imparting a set of skills onto the students. Although my libertarian friends might disagree, public schooling provides not only the hard skills that students need to function in the society, but universal education provides us with a shared experience and shared frame of reference that helps us define society. It’s something that binds us together.

Now, different countries have different approaches to creating this shared experience. In Japan, the Ministry of Education defines precisely what every child in the countries learning, in any given week. In America, there are no national requirements at all, and tremendous latitude is given to the states and to the individual school boards. One approach is not necessarily better than the other but startups that try to disrupt the way we impart skills to our children at the expense of that shared experience, are likely to fail. Or worse, succeed and do long term harm to our society.

Well today, we’re going to sit down and talk with Go Arai, CEO of Arcterus, a EdTech startup that is trying to help students learn more effectively but also contribute, just a little bit, to that shared experience.

Arcterus is a platform that allows students that share their study notebooks with other students and then profit from that sharing. We also talk about Arcterus’ recent Asian expansion. You know, we in the west often make the mistake of thinking about “Asian” culture. But there really is no such thing as Asian culture. Asian countries have an incredible diversity of cultures and Arcterus ran straight into that as they discovered that very specific cultural traits determine whether they will succeed or fail in a specific country.

But you know Go tells that story better much I can. So, let’s hear from our sponsor and then get right into the interview.

(Interview)

Tim: So we’re sitting here with Go Arai of Arcterus it’s a social learning app based on notebook sharing, but you can probably explain it much better than I can, so why don’t you tell us a bit about Arcterus and about your products?

from Disrupting Japan http://ift.tt/2qIdkgY

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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 “Design by Committee” problem
Why you should not trust machine translation for e-commerce
When you need to change from a bottom-up to top-down sales strategy
The challenges of working with Japanese enterprise customers as a startup
Advice for foreign engineers and founders who want to come to Japan
Why Japan needs to get uncomfortable

Links from the Founder

Wovn.io homepage
Wovn.io on Twitter
Wovn.io on Facebook

 Leave a comment

Transcript from Japan
Disrupting Japan, episode 86.

Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

Today we’re going to talk about something that you and I, and probably everyone else listening right now has struggled with. Translation and localization. It’s been an industry that has both seen some impressive innovations over the past decade, but is also somehow quite resistant to change. Localization is a part of business that almost every firm has to deal with, but almost no one looks forward to. It’s a lot like dealing with lawyers in that way, I suppose.

Well, today we sit down with Jeff Sandford, cofounder of Wovn.io who say they’ve developed a one line of code method for taking the pain out of localization and translation. We talk a bit about the mechanics of website localization and the state of the industry as a whole, of course. We also talk about the important and surprising differences between what makes great UI/UX with Japanese and western users. And what kind of tasks machine translation can really be trusted with. And Jeff shares a story of what made him decide to start a company with a cofounder who he’d never even met before.

But you know, Jeff tells that story much better than I can. So let’s hear from our sponsor, and get right to the interview.

[Interview]

Tim: Cheers.

Jeff: Cheers.

Tim: So I’m sitting with Jeff, cofounder of Minimal Technologies and the creator of Wovn.io. And thanks for sitting down with me today.

Jeff: Thank you very much. Good to be here.

Tim: Wovn.io at a high level is simply localization for a website. But it’s more than that. It’s more interesting than that so why don’t you tell us a bit about what it is.

Jeff: So often people when you tell them you do website localization, they think translation, which it actually isn’t. Translation is a very integral part of it, but what we focus on is the system of localizing a website. So let’s say you have an English website, and you’ll like to create a Chinese version or Spanish version of that website, we handle all of the details of actually creating those versions, and also managing them and serving them to users.

Tim: Now there’s a lot of companies that are doing that, but you guys have a particularly interesting approach to it. The Wovn.io promise, as it were, is the ultimate in simplicity, right?

Jeff: Right.

from Disrupting Japan http://ift.tt/2rjby3z

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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 games is so challenging
The changing profiles of Japanese who suffer depression
Why women have higher rates of depression, but lower rates of suicide
How Ayako’s University tried to put a stop to this project
How to build a business model around mental health
Why conservative corporations are on the forefront of improving mental health in Japan

Links from the Founder

Hikari Labs homepage

Online counseling
YouTube video
Todai Shinbun article

Follow Ayako on Twitter @Hikari_Lab_Inc
Friend her on Facebook
Connect with him on LinkedIn
Try out SPARX

SPARX for iPhone/iPad
SPARX for Android
Clinical Journal on SPARX

 Leave a comment

Transcript from Japan
 

Disrupting Japan, episode 85. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

Now long-term listeners know that this show is not really about start-ups. Well, of course it’s about start-ups, but it’s about so much more than that. Japanese start-ups give us a unique perspective on Japanese society. Looking at the problems that need to be solved, the path people are taking to try to solve them, and seeing what challenges society throw up against them can tell us more about a country or a society than mountains of surveys and piles of longitudinal studies.

Start-ups tell us the kind of future that people envision, and how the present plans on resisting the future. Nowhere is this more true than with today’s guest. Ayako Shimizu, founder of Hikari Labs. Ayako is developing and marketing video games to treat mental illness, and she has the clinical data that shows the approach has real therapeutic value. And yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, Japanese academia and the medical industry as a whole have been—Well, let’s just say less supportive of her efforts. But still she’s seen steady increases in both the number of users and growing interest from a surprising segment of corporate Japan. But you know, Ayako tells that story much better than I can. So let’s here from our sponsor and get right to the interview.

 [Interview]

Tim: So I’m sitting here with Ayako Shimizu of Hikari Labs, and thanks for sitting down with me.

Ayako: Thank you, Tim, for inviting me here.

Tim: Now Hikari Labs is focused on improving mental health through software, I guess. But why don’t you tell us a bit about what Hikari Labs does and what it’s mission is.

Ayako: Okay, well Hikari Labs currently have two services. One is online counseling called Kokoro Works, and another one is this game application called Sparx, which was developed at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. And our mission is to help shape a society that’s the psychological care is more reachable to people.

from Disrupting Japan http://ift.tt/2qj4SGc

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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 ignore
Which business models are truly unproven
The one thing Japan should change to encourage startups
How to really learn from failure

Links from the Founder

500 Startups
500 Startups Japan
Follow Dave on Twitter @davemcclure
Friend him on Facebook
Connect with him on LinkedIn

 Leave a comment

Transcript from Japan
Disrupting Japan, episode 84.

Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from CEOs breaking into Japan. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for listening.

Japan, well most of the world really has an unhealthy obsession with Silicon Valley. I’ve been to Japanese language start-up events here in Tokyo where the phrases Silicon Valley, or San Francisco, were mentioned more than twice as often as Tokyo or Japan. And yes, I actually did keep count. And I’m sure none of my friends are the least bit surprised by that. My point is that while Japan can learn a lot from Silicon Valley, the reverse is also true. There are a lot of things going right in Japan, and many things that are developing differently here than they are in Silicon Valley.

Well, today we sit down with Dave McClure, founder of 500 Startups, and we talk under the cherry blossoms about start-ups funding failure, and about some of the most pervasive myths surrounding start-ups and start-up founders. For our listeners who are not familiar with the Japanese tradition of Hanami, or cherry blossom viewing, I’ll explain it to you in both theory and practice because those two can be a bit different. In theory, Hinami is a time to reflect on the transitory nature of beauty, of our possessions, and of life itself. The cherry blossoms bloom only for a few days a year before their pedals fall. And almost everyone in Japan no matter how busy or sick will make at least a little time to go out and walk among the blossoms. The trees really are beautiful, and that beauty is made all the more precious by the fact that they can only be appreciated for such a brief period of time.

In practice, people from all over Japan get together with their friends under the cherry blossom trees, get rip-roaringly drunk, sing karaoke, and have a great and boisterous time.  So when Dave and I are talking and in the background, you hear school girls laughing, drunken cheering, and people suddenly breaking into song, you’ll know what’s going on. It was a great party and a great discussion.

So let’s hear from our sponsor and get right to the interview.

[Interview]

Tim: Cheers.

Dave: Cheers.

Tim: So I’m sitting hear with the indomitable and encourageable Dave McClure.

Dave: Encourageable sounds right.

Tim: So thanks for sitting down. I really do appreciate your time.

Dave: Yeah.

Tim: You’ve had ties to Japan for a long time.

Dave: Yes, probably about 20 years or more.

Tim: And you’ve been actively involved in investing here for about, what, 10 years?

Dave: Maybe seven.

from Disrupting Japan http://ift.tt/2oYQNsm

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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 patent protection
How to bring down the cost of cultured meat
Solving the taste problem
How cultured meat will become available

Links from the Founder

Everything you ever wanted to know about Shojinmeat
How Integriculture is commercializing lab-grown meat
Check out Yuki’s blog
Follow him on twitter @yukihanyu1
New Havest talks about Yuki’s project

 Leave a comment

Transcript from Japan
Disrupting Japan, episode 83.

Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

Today we’re going to talk about the future of meat. Many would say the future of humanity, but really today we’re just going to talk about the meat. Yuki Hanyu and his team at ShojinMeat are growing meat in the lab, and they’re doing it at a tiny fraction of the cost of traditional methods. Actually, it turns out that lab-grown meat or cellular agriculture—as the discipline is actually called—is not particularly new. It’s been in active development all over the world for well over 100 years. What’s different about ShojinMeat, however is that they’ve been able to bring the cost down by an astounding three orders of magnitude. And that brings a technology within striking distance of a lot of practical uses. We dive into the actual science behind cellular agriculture. And if you can follow all of it, it means that you’re a huge biology nerd, and I love you for it. Otherwise, it would be good just to let the science wash over you. It’s a pretty amazing topic.

Another thing we talk about is why Japanese life sciences start-ups have such a hard time both raising money and growing here in Japan. And how ShojinMeat meat has found a way to make the system work for them. But you know, Yuki tells that story much better than I can so let’s hear from our sponsor, and get right to the interview.

[Interview]

Tim: So I’m sitting here with Yuki Hanyu of ShojinMeat, and thanks for sitting down with me.

Yuki: Thank you very much for inviting me to the podcast.

Tim: Today we’re going to talk about meat.

Yuki: Yeah, meat.

Tim: And most specifically, cellular agriculture. So to get started. Why don’t you explain what what ShojinMeat is?

Yuki: We are a collection of volunteer students, artists, and people of various disciplines to develop cultured meat technology.

Tim: So it’s a bio-hacker community here in Tokyo, right?

Yuki: Yes.

Tim: So how long have you been doing this.

Yuki: If you’re talking about active wet novelty work, that will be about a year and a half.

Tim: Okay.

Yuki: And if you’re talking about people building a team, that would be about two and a half years.

Tim: Alright. Okay, well actually before we go forward in this, let’s step back a bit and talk about the process. So exactly how does the process work? What are you doing?

from Disrupting Japan http://ift.tt/2pXPlIh

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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
How Holoeyes convinced conservative doctors and hospitals to try a new technology
Advice for startups trying to sell to doctors
Why more and more medical professionals will be getting involved in startups in Japan

Links from the Founder

Everything you ever wanted to know about Holoeyes
Follow Naoji on Medium
Follow him on twitter @tani_yang
Friend Naoji on Facebook
See Holoeyes in action

 Leave a comment

Transcript from Japan
Disrupting Japan, episode 82.

Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me.

The medical industry is one of the world’s most highly regulated and hard to disrupt. And for the most part, that’s a good thing. But there are a number of innovative start-ups that have ways of improving things. Not disruptive change, mind you, but simple, more cautious, incremental change that will make life better for everyone. Holoeyes is one of those questions. And today we sit down with Naoji Taniguchi and we talk about how their VR solution is winning over doctors all over Japan, and changing the way surgery is done.

Holoeyes builds up a virtual reality model of organs from CT scans, and let’s doctors analyze and discuss these matters much more directly and efficiently than they could before. We’ll get into the details during the interview. But one of the things that impressed me the most about Holoeyes, is that is is already in use today. So much VR tech and so many VR companies have an amazing wow factor, but only the promise of future applications.

But you know, Naoji tells that story much better than I can. So let’s hear from our sponsor and get right to the interview.

[Interview]

Tim: So I’m sitting here with Naoji Taniguchi of Holoeyes.

Naoji: Yeah.

Tim: This is an application that uses AR and VR for medical training, and thanks for sitting down with me.

Naoji: Okay.

Tim: Can you tell me a bit more about the application and how it’s used?

Naoji: Holoeyes make customized model for each patient. For VR, our mixed reality, our product helps communication between doctor, surgery team members, or training senior doctors and new doctors.

Tim: So let’s just walk through from start to finish how it’s used. So how do you build up this VR model?

Naoji: Partially use Diacom Viewer. Diacom Viewer is viewer of CT scan image. Now we are trying to use deep learning to automate, create, make part of a model from CT scan image.

Tim: Okay, so it’s laterally taking a CT scan and building up the VR image kind of slice by slice?

Naoji: Yes, yes.

Tim: Alright, that makes sense. And then the doctors can use this to communicate and to show the model.

Naoji: Yes.

from Disrupting Japan http://ift.tt/2pKudEp

//

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 fold socks
Why starting a company in Japan is different today
Shin’s formula  for developing innovative products
How to work with large Japanese companies
Why the future of laundry is more disrupting than you imagine
Why big data wants to hack your washing machine
The need to go global quickly
Can Japan once again lead the world in AI

Links from the Founder

Everything you ever wanted to know about Laundroid
Friend Shin  on Facebook
Seven Dreamers Homepage
Find out more about Laundroid on Facebook or Twitter
Nastent website
Find out more about Nastent on Facebook or Twitter
The carbon-fiber golf shafts on the Web and on Facebook

 Leave a comment

Transcript from Japan
 

Disrupting Japan, episode 81.

Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

You know, the term artificial intelligence is thrown around far too loosely these days. Every start-up using decision trees, Bayesian algorithms, or the simplest machine learning techniques, label themselves as world leaders in AI. Now there’s no question that projects like Google’s driverless cars and IBM’s Watson have pushed the limits of what’s possible, and have introduced astounding innovations in AI over the past few years. But sometimes it’s surprising to take a look at the kinds of problems that are extremely difficult for AI. It turns out that folding laundry is one of those problems.

Today we sit down with Shin Sakane, CEO of Seven Dreamers and inventor of the Laundroid. The first commercially available fully automatic laundry folding robot. We talk a lot about AI in general. And the importance and the risk of attacking the really hard problems. And what he and his firm had to go through to make Laundroid a reality. It’s also worth noting that Seven Dreamers is not your typical venture back start-up. And Shin and I talk a lot about the role that mid-size companies have to play in kick-starting the Japanese economy and returning Japan to the global leader in innovation she was in the 60s and 70s. But you know, Shin tells that story better than I can. So let’s hear from our sponsor and get right to the interview.

[Interview]

Tim: So I’m sitting here with Shin Sakane of Seven Dreamers, and we’ve been bumping into each other for a long time now.

Shin: Right.

Tim: So thanks for finally making time and sitting down with me.

Shin: Thank you very much for coming.

Tim: We’re here to talk a lot about the Laundroid. Now it’s a robot that folds clothes, which I guess is the simple way of explaining it, but why don’t you tell us more about what it is.

Shin: Okay. We’ve been working on this project for the last 12 years almost.

Tim: Wow.

Shin: Yeah. We started back in 2005. This robot really folds daily life clothes and separate by categories or by family members.

Tim: Oh, okay.

from Disrupting Japan http://ift.tt/2nyGob0

//

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 teenage girls form the heart of Nana
How a YouTube video inspired an iPhone app
Why it’s hard to monetize a music app
Why startups in Japan (outside of Tokyo) struggle
The difference between Tokyo and Kansai startup founders

Links from the Founder

Everything you ever wanted to know about Nana
Friend Aki on Facebook
Check out Nana on Facebook

 Leave a comment

Transcript from Japan
 

Disrupting Japan, episode 80.

Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for music apps. The competition in this space is intense, and almost every niche seems to be filled. So trying to differentiate a music gap calls for a lot of creativity. But it’s usually their quixotic quest for business models that is the most interesting. The problem is that people just don’t want to spend money on making music. The amateurs and the dabblers don’t spend enough time on the hobby to invest much. And the professionals, well speaking as a former professional musician myself, I can tell you that professional musicians never have money in the first place.

Well today, we sit down with Akinori Fumihara of Nana, and they might have just cracked the code. 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. Now Nana has become a huge hit with its millions of users. And just like Google, the name Nana itself has become a fully conjugatable verb in Japanese. “Nananu Nanateru, Nanata.” “I use Nana. I’m using Nana. I used Nana.”

Now I’ll warn that Aki’s English is not as good as some of our other guests. But the man is really excited about reaching out to foreign listeners and so he decided to make it work and come on the show. Nana is a very cool app, and Aki’s a pretty cool guy. He’s got an amazing life story, and he started a fascinating company. But you know, Aki tells that story much better than I can, so let’s hear from our sponsors and get right to the interview.

[Interview]

 Tim: Cheers.

Akinori: Cheers.

Tim: So I’m sitting here with Akinori Fumihara, the CEO and founder of Nana. Thanks for sitting down with me today.

Akinori: Nice to meet you.

Tim: That’s great. Now Nana is a social music platform, but can you explain what is social music? How does Nana work?

Akinori: Nana is music collaboration. I’ve found and enjoyed that biggest feature is collaboration and over dubbing. For example, like the base line, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Next, with the base add drums, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So with the beat it adds piano.

Tim: So each user adds a new part to the piece—

Akinori: Yes, yes.

Tim: And they collaborate to build the song. To build the orchestration.

from Disrupting Japan http://ift.tt/2n5biYf

//

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 you’ll really enjoy the interview.

Show Notes for Startups

What are  MVNOs and why are they important  for the Internet of Things
Why replacing hardware with software drives innovation
How Japan Taxi is taking advantage of the Internet of Things
The most surprising thing about going global from Japan
The future of the IoT in Japan
Why play and serendipity remain important even as a company scales

Links from the Founder

Everything you ever wanted to know about Soracom
Follow Ken on twitter @KenTamagawa
Friend him on Facebook
Check out the Soracom blog
Get started with the Soracom Developer Site
Safecast P2P Radiation Monitoring

 Leave a comment

Transcript from Japan
 

Welcome to Disrupting Japan- straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me.

One of the most important problems of the internet of things is not the internet or even the things. The problem lies in connecting those things to the internet. In fact, much of the promise of the internet of things is based on the idea of thousands of connected devices working together. It turns out that building the hardware and writing the software has proven to be much simpler than developing an affordable, scalable, and secured network that enables these devices to communicate with home base and with each other.

Some applications use WiFi and that’s a great solution for stationary devices that operating homes or offices, or anywhere else where you can be certain to have a connection. But, many devices are mobile or need to operate whether there may not be a WiFi connection. Some applications paired with cellphones and that works well for personal devices and wearable’s and things will carry around with us. But for things like sensors and inexpensive autonomous devices, well, having a cellphone plan for each of them is simply cost prohibitive. So, right now, connectivity is the real problem for a lot of internet of things applications.

Well, Soracom has a solution and a damn good one in my opinion.

Today, we sit down with Ken Tamagawa, CEO of Soracom to talk about their solution which involves slicing up mobile bandwidth and using Amazon web services as their backbone and this enables a pay as you go remote communication package for pennies a day.

We also discuss Soracom’s global ambitions. Soracom is one of the few Japanese start-ups to raise a round of more than 20 million dollars and a lot of that is targeted on their global expansion. Soracom has something that is truly unique and you’ll be hearing more about Soracom in the years to come.

But Ken tells us story much better than I can. So, let’s hear from our sponsor and get straight to the interview.

[Interview]

Tim:                     I’m sitting here with Ken Tamagawa of Soracom. Soracom is a communications platform for internet of things devices but you can expl…

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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 Japan and why it’s important
The importance of startups selling to each other and bootstrapping  the ecosyste
Why Japanese women are attracted to entrepreneurship and  freelancing

Links from the Founder

Everything you ever wanted to know about Waris
Friend Waris on Facebook
Follow Waris on Twitter @info_Waris
The Waris community blog Cue for working women in Japan.
Friend Miwa on Facebook

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Transcript from Japan
Welcome to Disrupting Japan, — straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs.

I am Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

Miwa Tanaka, the CEO of Waris is working hard to make things better for women in Japan. The changing roles of Japanese Women in both start-ups and large enterprises is something we talked about quite a bit on disrupting Japan and Miwa has a unique perspective on this subject.

Waris is a platform that is helping Japanese women who’ve quit their jobs to have children, rejoined the work force. Now, of course, we talk about the social and business conventions that results in Japanese women having to quit their jobs to have children in the first place. But often the best solutions to these kind of social problems are small steady improvements, and that’s what Miwa is trying to do. In fact, hearing Miwa explained what Waris is shows us some microcosm of women in Japanese business, — the difficulties women face, the kind of roles they’ve traditionally been placed into and also how those roles and the traditional employment structure are changing but more important, perhaps, how Japanese women themselves are choosing to adapt, to work around, occasionally, walk away from those restrictions.

And as Miwa explains, another sign that things are getting better here in Japan is that Waris has a steady stream of corporate customers who are asking for diversity training. I think that this is a sign, much like it was with previous guest who discussed the demand for open innovation and LGBT sensitivity training that corporate Japan wants to change.

I think much of corporate Japan and the government as well, are sincere on their efforts to make things better. But as Miwa explains, sometimes those changes can painfully slowly, but Miwa tells that story much better than I can. So, let’s hear from our sponsors and get right to the interview.

[Interview]

Tim:                     So, I’m sitting here with Miwa Tanaka, the co-founder and the CEO of Waris. So, thanks for sitting down with us.

Miwa:                  Thank you so much for inviting me.

Tim:                     Now, Waris is an online job matching service to help women continue their career after they’ve had children. I’m sure you can explain it much better than I  can. So, why don’t you tell us about what Waris does?

Miwa:                  Okay. Thank you. Waris is a job matching company for women who have professional skill sets and w…

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