The promise of AI is easily understood by anyone with an imagination, and for 40 years, venture capitalists have been enthusiastically investing in that promise. However, it's been significantly harder for founders to turn that investment into sustainable business models. Today we are going to look at why that is, and go over what might be a blueprint for startups to create business models around artificial intelligence. Tatsuo Nakamura founded Valuenex in 2006 with the goal of using artificial ...
Oct 14, 2019•42 min
Education is very hard to disrupt. That’s both good and bad. Education is so important to both individuals and society, it should not be changed on a whim, but over time it seems that our institutions of higher education have drifted away from meeting students real needs. Yoshito Hori, founder and CEO of Globis, is making radical changes. He turned a small training school into Japan's first independent and fully accredited business school with an MBA. Less than ten years later, Globis became Jap...
Sep 30, 2019•40 min•Season 1Ep. 150
Ad-fraud is one of the most profitable activities for organized crime today. The scammers are sophisticated, disciplined, and numerous, and they might be using your IoT devices to rip people off. Over the past decade, there has been relatively little of this kind of cybercrime in Japan, but that's changing as the ad-fraud crime networks go global. Japan has to catch up and catch up fast. Unfortunately, Japan defenses have been rather poor. Today we sit down and talk with someone who is fixing th...
Sep 16, 2019•36 min•Season 1Ep. 150
The robotics ecosystem in Japan is amazing. And confusing. It's a collection of crazy ideas, odd creations, and true breakthroughs. And despite the combination of fawning prise and snide skepticism that Japanese robotics evoke in the international press, only time can really separate the true breakthroughs from the dead ends. Today, we sit down with Tez Sawanobori, the founder of Connected Robotics, and we talk about how robots are being adopted in the restaurant industry here in Japan. Connecte...
Sep 02, 2019•32 min•Season 1Ep. 149
Those of us who spend our lives working with startups live in a bubble. Whether you spend your days programming at a startup or investing in new ventures, you and I see things differently than “normal” people. It happens to everyone to some extent. We all tend to interact with people who are like us, who care about similar things and who work in similar industries, so of course, we frequently hear the same ideas and opinions. The startup bubble, however, is particularly strong and particularly o...
Aug 19, 2019•24 min•Season 1Ep. 148
I’ve got a special bonus episode for you this week. Last month I was part of a panel discussion hosted by Stanford University and the Japan Society of Northern California. It was part of this year’s Japan-US Innovation Awards, and it was a great conversation, so I thought I would share it with you. The panel was moderated by Dr. Richard Dasher and was a discussion between me and Allison Baum who is an investor and a prolific writer about startups and innovation. We talk about a surprising source...
Aug 12, 2019•27 min•Season 1Ep. 147
Startup founders claiming their company is going to “change the world” has become a cliche. But rarely do we see a product that could clearly and significantly make someone’s life better. D-Free is one of those products. However...
Aug 05, 2019•31 min•Season 1Ep. 147
Japanese university and government venture funds play a much larger role in Japan than in the West. I've always considered this difference to be, on balance, neutral, today's guest makes a convincing case that these funds are actually hurting the startup ecosystem here. Today we sit down and talk with Hiroaki Suga, co-founder of PeptiDream. PeptiDream is now a $7 billion biotech company, but it started out as a couple of university faculty members funding operations out of their own pockets. Pep...
Jul 22, 2019•40 min•Season 1Ep. 146
Startups and venture capital work differently in Japan. The rounds are smaller, the priorities distinct, and while the same terms are used, people quickly discover that the definitions are often subtly different. The game is played differently in Japan. Today we get a chance to clear up a lot of the confusion as we sit down with James Riney, founder of Coral Capital and head of 500 startups Japan. We talk about some of the most significant changes that Japanese venture capital has seen over the ...
Jul 08, 2019•53 min•Season 1Ep. 145
Startup culture has crazy and contradictory views about failure. As founders we are told to fail fast, but also to never give up. We are told to follow our vision, but be ready to pivot. Somehow this macho-bullshit culture of “I never really fail and ‘m not afraid of failure.” has become dominant amount founders. But it’s the result of denial. Trivializing failure is a way of not thinking about it’s effects. The truth is that failure sucks. Failure is painful. Failure ...
Jun 24, 2019•42 min•Season 1Ep. 144
I’ve got a special bonus episode for you today. Last month, I moderated a panel discussion at Coral Capital’s “Bilingual’s and Gaijin in Startups” event.' Our panel focused on what foreigners should expect when working at Japanese startups and what Japanese startups should start doing to better support their international employees. It was a great conversation with four amazing people from four of Japan’s most interesting startups. Tetsuya Sawanobori of Connected Robotics Jordan Fisher of Zehito...
Jun 17, 2019•53 min•Season 1Ep. 144
The idea of computers capable of reading our emotions and responding to them is both fascinating and terrifying. Will this technology serve us or manipulate us? Well, the speculation is ending because the technology not only exists, but it is being rolled out commercially. Today I'd like you to meet Hazumu Yamazaki, co-founder of Empath. Empath is a web-based API that detects human emotion from audio data, and its initial use in call-centers has shown a significant increase in sales. But as Hazu...
Jun 10, 2019•42 min•Season 1Ep. 143
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 l...
May 27, 2019•38 min•Season 1Ep. 142
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 coun...
May 13, 2019•56 min•Season 1Ep. 141
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 behi...
Apr 29, 2019•26 min•Season 1Ep. 141
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 ...
Apr 15, 2019•39 min•Season 1Ep. 140
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 educ...
Apr 01, 2019•33 min•Season 1Ep. 139
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.
Mar 18, 2019•37 min•Season 1Ep. 138
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 succes...
Mar 04, 2019•44 min•Season 1Ep. 138
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...
Feb 18, 2019•39 min•Ep. 137
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...
Feb 04, 2019•32 min
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 firs...
Jan 21, 2019•40 min•Season 1Ep. 136
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 ...
Jan 07, 2019•30 min•Season 1Ep. 135
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 styl...
Dec 24, 2018•31 min
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 slee...
Dec 10, 2018•33 min
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 abo...
Nov 19, 2018•43 min•Season 1Ep. 133
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 runni...
Oct 29, 2018•37 min
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 a...
Oct 15, 2018•37 min•Season 1Ep. 131
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 Wa...
Oct 01, 2018•30 min•Season 1Ep. 130
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...
Sep 17, 2018•41 min•Season 1Ep. 129
