#Asia #Japan The Japanese Trap of the Glorious Failure

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Japanese businessmen famously fear failure.

But that understanding is horribly incomplete. In fact, there is one type of failure that is admired, almost sought after, in Japan. Today we take a look at the trap of the Japanese glorious failure, see how it’s hurting startups, and examine our options on fixing it.

Show Notes

Life lessons from Mark the Dog
When and why failure is feared in Japan
What is a Glorious Failure, and why it is admired
How the Glorious Failure is hurting Japanese startups
What is (probably) the only way to fix this

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

I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

I’m recording this episode for release on April 28, 2020. I usually try to make all Disrupting Japan content evergreen. Most of the insights you hear on Disrupting Japan about starting companies in Japan, or building a customer base, market testing, or doing business here will probably be just as valid in ten years as the day it was recorded.

And in some ways, this episode is no exception. The common wisdom is that Japanese. and Japanese founders in particular, are too risk-averse and have too great a fear of failure. Well today, we are going to turn that view on its head.

I’m going to explain that, in truth, Japanese founders don’t fear failure enough, and that’s hurting Japanese startups here.

You know, actually, maybe I am being too pessimistic. Maybe ten years from now, you and I will listen back on this episode and laugh at how things used to be and smile when we think of how much has improved.

Well, maybe.

But before we start talking about why Japanese founders need to fear failure more, I want to say something about the coronavirus situation, at least as it stands in late April 2020. The world might have changed a lot since then.

Tokyo is currently on official, but actually unofficial, lockdown. There are clusters of idiots in the parks, but most people seem to be taking things seriously. If you go outside, the police won’t arrest you, but they might ask you where you are going, and ask you to consider if you really need to be out. There is no real punishment or anything, but they make you feel kind of guilty, and that seems to be enough to keep most people indoors.

The operations of the Disrupting Japan Studios remain largely unaffected by the shutdown, but that mostly because, Disrupting Japan Studios broadcasts from inside of my wife’s walk-in closet. The acoustics are great in here, but it can get a bit cramped.

So for the past six weeks or so, I’ve been staying in the house with my wife Ami and my dog Mark. And you know, Mark the dog has taught me perhaps the most important lesson about how to deal with the corona crisis and the lockdown.

Mark the dog, he doesn’t really know what’s going on. All he knows is that my wife and I are home all the time, and he’s never alone. There is always someone to lean up against, or play with, or give him some attention.

Mark the dog, doesn’t worry about what might happen tomorrow, and I don’t think he really remembers what happened yesterday. But right now, at this particular moment, he knows he is with the people he loves and who care about him. And for right now, that’s pretty awesome. And believe me, Mark the dog is the happiest, most contented creature you could possibly imagine.

So day-by-day, right. At this particular moment, I hope you are OK and with people you love.

Anyway, let’s put Mark the dog out of the studio. We’re going to talk about why Japanese founders need to fear failure more.
The Failure that is Feared
You’ll often hear that Japanese founders, and Japanese society in general or overly afraid of failure. And in some ways that is true.

Attitudes have shifted for the better over the past few decades, but most kinds of failure here in Japan do cary a certain stigma.

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#Asia #Japan DJ Selects: Why Your Startup Accelerator is Going to Die – Hiro Maeda

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Almost all startup accelerators are going bankrupt and going away.

Hiro Maeda, the founder of two of Japan’s most successful, and most different startup incubators explains both the brief past and precarious future of startup incubators and accelerators. We talk not only about the mechanics and challenges of what it takes to make an incubator successful, but Hiro has some practical advice on when founders should consider joining an accelerator and how they can avoid the 99% of them that provide no real value.

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#Asia #Japan One important lesson startups will forget after the panic

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Innovation drives society forward, but everyday competence keeps it on the road.

Over the past five years, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about the importance of disruptive innovation, but today I’d like to talk about the framework that allows disruptive innovation to be a net positive to society.

The coronavirus pandemic has some people looking for innovation and others for stability. However, examining how Japan and the rest of the world are getting though it shows us something very important about innovation. Something that is almost always overlooked.

Show Notes

Life in Tokyo during the pandemic
Why you don’t want to cough in Singapore
Why we probably can’t innovate our way out of this pandemic
The very real dark side of disruptive innovation
Why innovation depends on everyday competence

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

I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

Things are not normal in Japan right now.

Japan is one of the countries that is being been hit the hardest by the coronavirus. And the rest of the world is watching Japan because it has a modern health-care system, an active response to the virus, and a government that can be trusted to release .. reasonably accurate information about infection and mortality rates.

How things play out for Japan over the next few months is quite likely how they will play out for the rest of the world over the next year.

So yeah, everybody is watching Japan; as they should be.

People are nervous in Japan, but things are calm and orderly. Of course, Japan tends to do calm and orderly really well. Public gatherings like graduations, business conferences, and sporting events have been canceled. As I record this, no decision has been made about the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but it seems likely they’ll be postponed.

Two weeks ago Sunday, I was walking back home through nearly deserted streets around Ark Hills and saw a young couple doing their wedding photography in the atrium there. Masks nervously being taken off and put back on between shots. It’s got to be a frustrating time to have had a wedding scheduled.

On the business side, most large companies including Dentsu, Panasonic, Mitsubishi and of course Google as well, are either requiring or encouraging their employees to work from home. Which is good. Almost all business travel is canceled, and that’s for the best.

In fact, three weeks ago when I was returning to Japan from Singapore, I coughed while walking through the airport on the way to my gate. Not like a big, sick, hacking cough, but just like a, I mean I’m a human being, and sometimes we just cough, right?

A few seconds later, someone from security wearing a mask walked up to me with a heat sensor to take my temperature. He was very polite about the whole thing, and I was fine of course. It’s good to know that Singapore is taking things seriously, but FYI, don’t cough in the Singapore airport.

In terms of Disrupting Japan, well, I have not been scheduling interviews for the obvious reasons, and honestly, right now most founders are focused on coronavirus countermeasures. If the situation continues, I may try video-conference interviews again, or I may do more commentary episodes. The feedback I received on my last few was overwhelmingly positive, so maybe.

Today, however, I want to talk about the nature of innovation itself. You see, the coronavirus has the potential to teach us a valuable lesson about innovation. No, no. It’s not the one you think it is. It’s not the standard fare about innovation and ingenuity will get us through even humanity’s worst problems.

No, it’s something a bit less on-message. But it’s an insight that is for more important, and in a way, far more reassuring than the standard trope about innovating our way out of a bad situation.

Unfortunately, it’s also a lesson that I think all us innovators …

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#Asia #Japan Why boring startups are actually the most interesting

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Some of the most important startups are ones you never hear about.

Some industries are so complex and arcane that its hard for people on the outside to understand the problems that startups are solving or the long-term gain of solving them.

Freight forwarding is one of those industries.

Today we talk with Taka Sato of Shippio, a startup trying to change the way freight forwarding works in Japan.  We talk about the challenges involved in trying to disrupt a low-tech, low-margin industry and also the potential rewards if Shippio succeeds.

We also cover some of the bight spots in Japanese entrepreneurship and talk about how one large company, in particular, has had to change their hiring practices to respond to the fact that so many of their best young employees are leaving to found startups.

It’s a great discussion, and I think you will really enjoy it.

Show Notes

What is freight forwarding and why is it important?
The biggest advantage of moving from corporate life to startups
Why so many startups are coming out of Mitsui
The challenges of building a platform in a low-margin industry
How to decide between a service-based or SaaS-based business model
Why there is finally enough pain in Japan to drive change
How the logistics industry reacts to new technology
Why the global logistics industry is a myth
The paradox of Japanese logistics quality

Links from the Founder

Everything you ever wanted to know about Shippio
Connect with Taka on LinkedIn

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

You know, there is nothing more interesting than startups in boring industries. They are the ones that are taking on entrenched interests and business convention, and because so few outside of their industry really understand what they do and the problems that they solve, they tend to get a lot less funding and a lot less media attention than consumer-facing startups.

No, the startups in boring industrial B2B spaces are old school startups. They may not have the party atmosphere or the easy customer adoption, but the truth is that on average, they have the best chance of success.

Today, we sit down with Taka Sato, the co-founder of Shippio, a Japanese startup trying to change the nature of the freight forwarding business in Japan, and if you’re not exactly sure what freight forwarding is, don’t worry, Taka explains it simply and really well at the start of our conversation.

We also talk about the challenges of pivoting in a B2B space in Japan and how to balance the very real trade-offs between the scalability of offering B2B SaaS products with the stability of offering a service direct to the customer.

And if you’re interested in the freight forwarding industry, and by the end of this interview, I think you will be, we also talk about how the global market is likely to play out. Freight forwarding might seem like a winner take all marketplace, but Taka explains that this is probably not going to happen.

Oh, the industry is going to be disrupted — that’s already happening, but it’s not going to play out quite the way that Silicon Valley thinks it will.

But you know, Taka tells that story much better than I can, so let’s get right to the interview.

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Interview
Tim: So, I’m sitting here with Taka Sato of Shippio. Thanks for sitting down with me.

Taka: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me today.

Tim: No, it’s been great. We’ve been trying to make this happen for a long time now.

Taka: Yeah, I know, I know.

Tim: I’m glad you’re finally here. So, Shippio is a digital freight forwarder, but for the audience, let’s explain what freight forwarding is, so let’s say for example, I’ve got some construction equipment sitting in a factory in China,

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#Asia #Japan DJ Selects: How this Musical Shoe is Helping Hospitals

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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 to the 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 was a failure

The biggest challenge in moving from prototype to production
Orphe’s technical specs
How Orphe is being used in hospitals and other healthcare applications
How small Japanese startups can achieve global distribution
Where the next big startup opportunities in Japan will be
Why most hardware startups fail

Links from the Founder

No New Folk Studio Hompage
See Orphe in action
Check out Yuya’s blog
Follow Yuya on Facebook
Check out PocoPoco on YouTube

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

I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me.

As expected, my new Google duties are taking a lot of my time and taking me out of Japan quite a bit. Things will be returning to normal soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to bring you a special selects show with a really interesting update.

Yuya Kikukawa first sat down together a few years ago to talk about shoes, but if you listened to the last episode of Disrupting Japan you know that when you are talking about shoes you are never really talking about shoes.

In this case, the shoes in question are the Orphe, and they are a combination musical instrument and social network, and yeah that will make a lot more sense when you listen to the interview. And we also talk about what defines a musical instrument, the unique challenges of Japanese hardware startups, and the nature of innovation.

Oh, and I also have some news. In our conversation, Yuya and I debated a strategic decision that all hardware startups face, and just last month we finally got our answer.  I’ll tell you about it in the update after the show.

Intro
You know, most good startups are obvious. I don’t mean that I could have had the idea before the founders did. By obvious, I mean that right away you can understand the problem the company is solving for their customers and how they’re doing it. Naturally, that makes it easier for the customers to buy.

Most non-obvious startups are in reality still struggling to find the product market fit and are probably not long for this world. And then there are products like Orphe, an LED-emblazoned WiFi-connected social sharing enabled dancing shoe. Yeah, it sounds like something you would find on Indiegogo and that one time not too long ago, it was. But when I sat down with Yuya Kikukawa, founder of No New Folk Studio and the creator of the Orphe, it became clear that this was not some quirky side project or some overfunded crazy hardware startup.

This was something really different.

We talked about the original inspiration for the shoe and what does and does not qualify as a musical instrument and how Orphe is being used by the artistic community in Japan. But we also dive into the technology inside it, and that, well, that’s something special.

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#Asia #Japan Why Japan’s #KuToo is Not Really About Shoes

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Today I am going to correct two big mistakes; one of my own and one of society’s.

I lot of listeners emailed me about the comments I made regarding how Japanese companies treat their employees and customers while they are pregnant. I got it wrong, so I would like to set the record straight.

I also explain what I see as the obvious answer to the current #KuToo controversy. I realize that this puts me at serious risk of having to publish another retraction, but I think it’s an important way of looking at this problem.

Please enjoy, and let me know what you think.

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Transcript
Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs.
I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me.
As expected, my crazy Google travel schedule has caused me reschedule some of my interviews, but I promise that I’ll get back to talking with some of Japan’s most amazing startup founders really soon.
Today, however, I want to talk about the feedback I received from my recent discussion with Miku Hirano about how pregnant women are treated at work in Japan, and specifically, about my comments in the outro of that episode.
Hey, when I screw up, I have no problem admitting that I screwed up, and boy did I step in it this time.   
So today, I want to set the record straight on what it’s like for women working at startups and at large enterprises here in Japan. Oh yes, and we are also going to tak about shoes.
And yeah, I totally understand how strange it is for a white guy to stand behind a microphone and talk about the situation women face in Japan. I’ll get to that in a minute, but first, let me explain what I got wrong, and let me set the record straight.
In our conversation, Miku told the story of how supportive her clients and prospective clients had been while she was pregnant. Doing things like adjusting their schedules and coming to her office for meetings, where Japanese business protocol would require that she visit them.
Both Miku and I were surprised and delighted that so many Japanese salarymen, who have a reputation for being rather sexist, voluntarily went out of their way to accommodate her and to make things just a little bit easier for her while she was expecting.
In the outtro, I speculated that this outpouring of support might be because she was a startup CEO, and many of the traditional rules of Japanese business etiquette don’t seem to apply to startups, and I mused that her experience might have been very different if she had worked at a more traditional Japanese company.
Well, I was wrong. I was really wrong. And in fact, I have to say that I’m pretty happy that I was wrong about this. Let me explain what happened….
After that episode aired, I received a lot of email from female listeners working at large Japanese companies who explained that both their clients and their companies made exactly the same kinds of accommodations for them when they were pregnant.
And I also heard from a few senior managers and HR professionals telling me that I got it wrong. They gave me examples of how they had made a point of traveling to visit a vendor who was pregnant or broke up long meetings into multiple short ones to make things more manageable for pregnant employees or visitors.
So I got it wrong. And that’s awesome!
But I can’t just leave it there.  I probably should, but I mean something still doesn’t fit. There is a great deal of gender discrimination in Japan. Both international organizations and Japanese NGOs consistantly rank Japan very poorly in this regard. In fact, the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report ranked Japan 110th out of 149 countries.
And then there are things like Tokyo Medical University marking down girl’s scores on the entrance exams to ensure “enough” boys would get in.
So how do we reconcile this seeming contradiction?  The independent research showing that discrimination exists is consistent and respected,

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#Asia #Japan Big News for Disrupting Japan! – Japan Startup News

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There is big news for Tim and for Disrupting Japan this week.

It’s a very short episode, and I have no special links or show notes this time around. Please give the show a listen for the big reveal, and please accept my sincere thanks for all your support over the years.

Disrupting Japan is just getting started. The best is yet to come.

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Transcript
— vintage news sounds —
This is a Disrupting Japan news flash.
We are broadcasting live from Tokyo, Japan to bring you today’s breaking news.
In just a few minutes from now, we will be witness to ….
Hold on. Let me turn this thing off.
OK. That’s better.
So, this is the first episode of Disrupting Japan ever that has not been released early on a Tuesday morning Japan time, so as you might expect, something big is going on.
In fact, this evening we’re announcing it at a press conference. Tomorrow you may be reading about it in news articles or blogs, but I wanted you to hear it from me first.
Because you, the Disrupting Japan listeners, are a big part of what has led to this, and as you’ll see, I think that you are going to be a big part of what’s to come.
Some of you are new fans, and that’s great. The podcast keeps growing steadily every month.
And some of you have been with me since the very beginning and you were with me as my ContractBeast startup went under. You were part of my Crowd-Sourcing-My-Career project. You were part of my journey to becoming Japan’s first professional podcaster, and with me when I decided to take the show non-commercial in order to work with energy startups at TEPCO.
So it’s only fair that I let you know what’s coming next.
I’m joining Google as the new Head of Google for Startups Japan.
So what exactly does Google for Startups do?  Officially, it’s “Google’s initiative to help startups thrive across every corner of the world. Bringing together the best of Google’s products, connections, and best practices to enable startups to build something better.”
And that’s, admittedly, pretty cool.
In practice, however, what Google for Startups Japan will become is largely up to us. Google for Startups has different programs in different countries, and this is an amazing chance to create something unique for Japan and to make a real impact for Japanese startups.
I have a lot of ideas, but I want to hear from you are well. If you are out there growing your startup in Japan, let me know what are some of the biggest challenges that you could use some help with. Or if you’ve already overcome those challenges, let me know what kind of resources and advice you wish you had access to back then.
I’ll need your help to really make this work.
So, what does all this mean for Disrupting Japan? Well, good things mostly. Google is being very supportive of the show, and with the audience as large and engaged as it is now, I don’t think I could stop even if I wanted to.
However, my travel schedule for the next few months is absolutely crazy — even by my standards, so interviews will be hard to arrange. But we’ll make it work.
I might be able to squeeze in interviews on the few days I’m in town and edit them on airplanes. Or maybe I’ll get a chance to interview Japanese founders in the countries I’ll be visiting. Or maybe I’ll bring my microphones with me, make a little pillow-fort studio in my hotel room and record some shorter solo shows on the road.
I don’t know, but I’ll make it work. I haven’t missed an episode in the five and a half years since I started Disrupting Japan and I’m not going to miss one now.  Format-wise,  content-wise, things will return to normal in a few months.
So I’m incredibly excited about this new opportunity. I mean its a chance for me to work full time with Japan’s startup founders to further develop Japan’s startup community. And that’s pretty much a dream job for me.
But there is something else here, and it’s something that I don’t think anyone looking at Japan’s startups fr…

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#Asia #Japan The Ultimate Guide to Raising Money in Japan

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There has never been a better time to raising money in Japan than right now.

Founders ask me about fundraising more than any other topic, so this guide is long overdue. There are links that cover the basics in the Show Notes, and I will be keeping this page updated as new information becomes available and members of the community create new resources.

Calling something “The Ultime Guide” to anything is a pretty big claim, and I’ll do my best to make sure this page lives up to it.

Please enjoy.

Show Notes

Results of the “Why Meet a Founder?” survey
Directories of Japanese VC firms

Japan Venture Capital Membership
Crunchbase’s list of Japanese VCs
The Bridge: not a directory, but a good source of Japanese funding announcements

How to pitch like a Pro

Dave McClure’s original guide to pitching VCs – Very much substance over style

The same information in a more readable format
Dave’s deck redesigned by people who do care about style

What you need to put in your pitch deck – an infographic
Design advice for pitch decks  – more geared towards pitch contents

Advice from Japanese VCs

James Riney talks about the VC business model and gives pitching advice
Disrupting Japan’s live show on fundraising in Japan
Hiro Maeda on fundraising in Japan
Ikuo Hirasishi provides an overview of Japan’s VC landscape
More from James Riney back when he was with 500 startups

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

I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.
Today, I am going to answer the question that everyone seems to be asking. Or at least the question that everyone seems to be asking me.
I am going to explain how to raise money as a new startup founder in Japan.
You know, it’s funny how things work out. I originally planned to write this episode a few months ago as a short-take on a focused topic while I fished up my episode about the history of software engineering in Japan, but the topic kind of got away from me.
My first draft and notes for the show came in at over 24,000 words, which by the time I fleshed it all out would have ended up as a four -hour podcast, and even I can’t stand to listen to me for four hours.
So I’ve had to make some cuts, some painful ones. This episode should be under an hour, but it requires that I speak in generalities and make a few over-broad statements. There are a few really important topics that I will just mention briefly before moving on.
So, if while you are listening to this episode, particularly my VC listeners, and you find yourself thinking that I would explain a particular point in more detail and with more nuance, or wishing that I would dive deeper into specific strategies and scenarios …   Yeah. Me too. But we’ll save that for another podcast or maybe a conversation over a beer.
Now, there are a few very important questions you need to ask before you even decide to seek VC money. Things like “How do you plan on using those funds?” and “Are you sure you understand the growth-driven management style you are signing up for here?”
But, from my experience, relatively few founders really want to dive into those topics. No, what founders in Japan really want to know is how to raise money. So that’s what we are going to talk about.
I’m going to give you a clear and actionable plan so that:

You can decide which VCs you should approach
You can set up meetings with partners at reputable Japanese VC firms
You how to pitch in the most effective way possible
You will have some strategies to help you actually close the round, and get the money in the bank.

And you’ll be able to do it all in a reasonable amount of time without going absolutely crazy
Now, I’ll warn you. Each of these steps is significantly harder than the one before, but you’ll be building up your skills as you move through the process.

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#Asia #Japan How Japan’s forgotten past can stop IoT’s dystopian future

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Technology is global, but ideas are local.

The same IoT technology is being deployed all over the world, but a small Japanese startup might be who helps us make sense of it all.

There is amazing work being done in user experience design, but most designers are operating with the contract of keeping users engaged. This is a fundamental shift from the traditional user-centered and functional design approaches.

Today we sit down with Kaz Oki, founder of Mui Labs, and we talk about user design can actually improve our lives and help us disengage.

We also talk about the challenges of getting VCs to invest in hardware startups, why Kyoto might be Japan’s next innovation hub, and what it takes for a startup to successfully spin out of a Japanese company

It’s a great discussion, and I think you will really enjoy it.

Show Notes

How Japanese design philosophy informs user interface design
How UI design got so bad

Who are the early technology adopters in Japan
Why VCs hesitate to invest in hardware companies
How to pitch corporate management to let you spin out a startup
Why you should run a Kickstarter even when you have corporate backing
Why a major manufacturer decided to outsource innovative manufacturing
The secret to making corporate spinouts work in Japan
How to convince Japanese employees to join a spinout
How to get middle-management on-board with corporate spinouts
What changed in Kyoto to make it one of Japan’s best startup hubs

Links from the Founder

Everything you ever wanted to know about Mui Labs
Check out the Mui Kickstarter
Keep up-to-date on the Mui Blog
Check them out on Facebook
Follow Kaz on Twitter @mui_labo

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

I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

If you’re a fan of Disrupting Japan, you know that I have a strong dislike for attempts to make Japan sound too exotic and this goes in both directions. On one side, we have consultants who claim that Japanese business practices are so unique, arcane, and confusing that the only way westerners can possibly understand them is by paying large sums of money to consultants such as themselves.

And on the other side, of course, we have people insisting that foreigners can’t really understand Japanese anime without a thorough and nuanced knowledge of Japanese language and history.

It’s all utter nonsense. I mean, there are differences, of course, and those differences should be acknowledged and respected, but whether an idea is coming from Japan or America, or Germany, one true measure of the value of that idea is its universality. The most important achievements might emerge out of cultural biases or sensitivities but they address something universally true, something deeply human.

Today, we sit down with Kaz Oki of Mui Labs and we’re going to talk about Mui’s radical rethinking of how we should interact with computers and the different contexts for that interaction. The Mui itself is a tactile and visual user interface that literally fades into the furniture when you’re not using it.

Now, this interface is clearly informed by Japanese aesthetics. In fact, some of the deeper issues Kaz and I talked about kept bubbling up in my mind in the week following the interview, and Kaz and I are going to do a follow-up later over a couple of beers in Kyoto, but there’s nothing about the Mui design that looks particularly Japanese. It’s tapping into a deeper and more human design sense, and that’s far more interesting.

Oh, and Mui Labs also represents a very rare kind of startup, a creature far, far more rare than unicorns. Mui Labs is an innovative and successful Japanese corporate spin-out. We talk about how Kaz made that work, his valiant battles against multiple layers of middle management, and how he managed to recruit top startup talent into that company,

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#Asia #Japan Japan leads the world in this one important brach of AI

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Technology develops differently in Japan.

While US tech giants have been grabbing artificial intelligence headlines, a business AI sector has been quietly maturing in Japan, and it is now making inroads into America.

Today we sit down again with Miku Hirano, CEO of Cinnamon, and we talk about how exactly this happened.

Interestingly, Cinnamon did not start out as an AI company. In fact, when Miku first came on the show, the company had just launched an innovative video-sharing service. Today, we talk about what lead to the pivot to AI and why even a great idea and a great team is no guarantee of success.

We also talk about some of the changing attitudes towards startups and women in Japan, the kinds of business practices AI will never change, and Miku give some practical advice for startups going into foreign markets.

It’s a great discussion, and I think you will really enjoy it.

Show Notes

How Miku invented TikTok before TickTok and why it didn’t work
How you know when  its time to pivot a startup
Why companies will never go digital and will always use paper
Who will benefit most from AI
The four categories of AI
How AI will change the legal profession
How japan is actually ahead of US and China in some kinds of AI
What’s really driving business innovation in Japan
Can AI actually reduce overtime?
How enterprise clients treat women founders

Links from the Founder

Everything you ever wanted to know about Cinnamon
Follow Miku on Twitter @mikuhirano
Friend her on Facebook
More about Cinnamon

Miku’s original Disrupting Japan interview
Eliminating Repetitive Office Work through Disruptive AI
Miku on the John Batchelor Show – Part I
Miku on the John Batchelor Show – Part II

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Transcript
 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 sit down and talk about artificial intelligence with Miku Hirano of Cinnamon. Now, Cinnamon is actually a great example of a successful Japanese startup pivot. When we first sat down with Miku four years ago, she had an innovative micro-video sharing company called Tuya and really, you should go back and listen to that episode. I’ve put a link on the show notes and it was really a good one.

Anyway, Miku basically started TikTok a few years before TikTok and we talk about why things didn’t work out, why even with the same idea, one startup will become a multi-billion dollar brand and the other will pivot. Of course, the pivot to AI and the rebranding to Cinnamon has led this to their current success in using AI to read and to understand common business forms.

In fact, for reasons that Miku will explain during the interview, Japan is actually ahead of the US and China in the area of business AI. We’ll also talk about how attitudes towards women are changing here and how Japanese men at traditional companies treat women founders, particularly women founders with children, and I think it might surprise you. I mean, it surprised me and it surprised Miku as well,

But you know, Miku tells that story much better than I can, so let’s get right to the interview.

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Interview
Tim: So, I’m sitting here with Miku Hirano of Cinnamon and it’s great to have you back on the show again.

Miku: Yeah, thank you so much for having me here again.

Tim: Well, so much has changed since — it was three years ago, right?

Miku: Yeah, yeah, and I had a totally different business at the time.

Tim: Well, not only a totally different business but you’ve gotten married and you’ve had two kids.

Miku: Yeah, yeah, and at the time, I think I was living in Taiwan and now, my business is in Tokyo, so everything has changed.

Tim: And so, we’re not even going to cove what we talked about last time even though in the in…

from Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan https://ift.tt/2Rww3dr