Disrupting Japan is two years old and ready to party.  To celebrate, we gathered the leaders of Tokyo's venture capital community together in front of a live audience of made up of the thought leaders of Japan's startup community. We all had a few drinks and talked about fundraising in Japan, the future of venture capital here, and how startups can best get in touch with and impress VCs.

Our panel included some of the top VC investors in Japan, which naturally led to an amazing discussion.

Shinji Asada (@asada23) - Japan Head, Salesforce Ventures

Hiro Maeda (@djtokyo) - Partner at BEENEXT

James Riney (@james_riney ) - Head of 500 Startups Japan

We discuss the challenges or fundraising in Japan, growing a Japanese company as a foreigner, what Japanese VCs can learn from their foreign counterparts, and what kind of of pitch mistakes will ruin your funding chances.

On a personal note, it's hard to believe that two years have gone by already. Disrupting Japan has grown larger, faster, and with a more engaged and passionate community than I ever imagined it could.

Today, thousands of people from all over the world listen to each episode, and we are featured regularly in English-language and Japanese-language news and podcasts from all over the world.

And to keep things fresh, I have some big surprises coming up in the next few months, so stay tuned.

I want to offer a sincere thank you to everyone who has pitched in to help make Disrupting Japan a success. There is no way I could have built this by myself.  I'm lucky. I have great subject matter to work with. Japanese startups and Japanese startup founders are far more innovative and far more interesting than most in the West give them credit for. I look forward to continuing to bring you their stories.

Thanks for listening!

 

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Transcript from Japan

Welcome to Disrupting Japan - straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for coming out tonight. You guys are awesome.

All right, to our listeners at home, or wherever you might be in podcast land, we’ve got a special show for you tonight. We are broadcasting live from Super Deluxe in Roppongi with the most creative and dynamic group of people in the world, which is Tokyo’s start-up community. All right, and we’ve got an astounding panel discussion for you, and before we get to that and our kampai, I’ve got to call out three members of the start-up community who really helped put this together. There is absolutely no way I could have done it without them. They are start-ups themselves and you should know a little bit about them.

So, first is Justa.io and I think Elena is here from Justa. Where are you Elena? Everyone wave at Elena. So, Justa is Japan’s, really, best start-up job board. If you’re an engineer or a programmer looking to work at a start-up, or if you’re a start-up looking to hire engineers or programmers, you want to talk to Elena. Second, I want to introduce Creww, with two W’s. And what Creww, with two W’s, does, is they run open innovation programs for Toyota, and Panasonic, and JTV. And these big companies really want to work with start-ups, but they’re bad at it. So that’s where Creww comes in to help out. They also have a start-up kit, which is a bundle of goodies from IBM and Microsoft and a bunch of big companies, that they give away for free. And Kozue is here from Creww. Kozue, where isKozue? Way in the back over there. Now,Kozue will pretend she doesn’t speak English but her English is really good so don’t be shy. And last, and certainly not least, is Digital Hub. You will see these guys running around with cameras and microphones, documenting this event for all posterity. And you want to talk to Steve, who is over there. So, these guys also do great commercial work. You can see it on the website or you can see it right now. They’re going to be producing this, you might be watching this on YouTube right no...