Disrupting Japan

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 explain these trends in detail. Nao runs a recruiting platform called GaijinBank that deals exclusively with blue-color, foreign labor, and he'll show you not only that Japan's has opened up far more than most people acknowledge, but that this trend will likely accelerate over the next 20 years.

It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.

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 style.

You see when an organization launches a satellite, they also build a ground station to communicate with it. The problem is, that as the satellite obits the Earthy, it’s only in communication range of the ground station for less than an hour a day. The rest of the time the ground station just sits there.

By renting out that unused time ground-station operators earn extra income, and the satellite operators are able to communicate with their satellites as often as they need.

It’s a great interview and I think you’ll enjoy it.

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.

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 about how tourism is changing Japan, the best way to build a two-sided marketplace, the only way forward for most e-commerce platforms, the future of e-payments in Japan and the history of women's lingerie in China. 

It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.

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 running a Chinese company that IPOed in New York.

The conventional wisdom is that traditional Japanese companies can't innovate.

And traditionally, that's been true.  Hosoo, however, is 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 and working with not only fashion brands like Dior and Chanel, but companies like Panasonic to develop user interfaces that involve textiles rather than simple lights and buttons.

We also talk about a possible innovation blueprint that Japan's other small businesses can follow.

It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.

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

I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

Twice a month, you and I will sit down meet the founders of some of Japan’s most innovate startups. We'll talk a bit about their companies, of course, but most of the time we talk about how Japan is changing, what it's like to try to sell to large companies as a small startup, new emerging Japanese technology, and a lot of the social and personal issues founders here face.

Disrupting Japan is really about what it’s like to be an innovator in a culture that prizes conformity.

And yeah, since most of my guests are speaking English as a second language, there is alcohol involved in more than a few of these interviews.

So if you are interested in Japan and in innovation, let me introduce you to some of the most amazing and creative people in the world.

Come join me in Disrupting Japan.

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 Wahl (@caseydai2asa9sa ) - CEO, Wahl & Case

We talk about strategies for growth, how to leverage your "foreignness" to your advantage, how to best manage multi-cultural teams, and what the future looks like for foreigners in Japan.

It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.

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 dive into the very real political and financing challenges that have prevented this problem from being solved.

In many ways, the removal of space debris of a classic Tragedy of the Commons problem. Everyone agrees that it is an important problem that should be solved, but no one wants to spend their own money to solve it.

Well, Nobu and his team have developed a business model that they believe will be able to address this problem.  It's an innovative and important approach. And yes, we also talk about dancing satellites.

It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.

Show Notes

What is this Kessler Syndrome and why do we need to worry about it

Why dreams of being an astronaut did not work out

Why aerospace startups need their own manufacturing facilities

How to bring down a satellite

The trigger leading world governments to finally get serious about space clean up

What are your options when your satellite fails to launch

The single biggest risk in the space debris removal business

Why there are so many aerospace startups in Japan recently

There are relatively few biotech startups in Japan.

Few investors are willing to write the multi-million dollar checks and have the decades-long patience that is required to really succeed investing in this industry.

But startups find a way, and an innovative biotech ecosystem has started to develop in Japan despite the lack of traditional funding. In fact, we might be seeing a new, uniquely Japanese, model of innovation that we'll call "the innovation supply chain".

Today, we get a first-hand look at how this innovation supply chain functions, as we sit down with Yuki Shimahara the CEO and founder of LPixel.  LPixel uses AI image analysis to detect potential problems in patients MRI and CT scans.

The technology itself is fascinating, but Yuki and I also talk about how medical research and medical innovation might be taking a very different path in Japan than it is in the West.

It's a great conversation, and I think you'll really enjoy it.

Show Notes

The real problem with using AI for medical diagnosis

AI's deep roots in medicine

How safe is medical AI, both in theory and in practice

Are we about to see an App Store for medical devices?

Why doctors have mixed feeling about AI in medicine

How to maintain a competitive advantage in a crowded AI marketplace