Disrupting Japan

There are a lot of passionate opinions about Japanese design. From the beauty and subtlety of the best Japanese anime to the design horrors of most corporate Powerpoint presentations, Japanese design covers a huge range.

Things are changing though, and today we sit down and talk with Naofumi Tsuchiya, the founder and CEO of Goodpatch, one of Japan’s leading, and most richly valued, UI/UX design startups. We talk about how Japanese design is evolving and why we might be seeing (for better or worse) a more global design standard and sensibility.

Goodpatch is one of the new breed of Japanese design firms, and they’ve been able to raise substantial venture funding. Nao and I also talk about how that venture money has forced his startup to move in very specific strategic directions.

It’s a fascinating discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it.

Video is taking over the internet, but in many ways, it has not changed significantly in the past 40 years. The way we discover and pay for video content has changed significantly, of course, but we still consume video in a continuous, linear sequence, and that’s about to change.

Sandeep Casi and his team at Videogram are using deep learning to change the way you and I discover and watch video. They’ve already had success in the enterprise realm, and they are now bringing the technology to consumers.

Interestingly, Videogram was not founded the way most startups are, and Sandeep’s approach to leveraging the intellectual property locked up inside Japan’s large corporations might represent a unique and important avenue for innovation here in Japan.

One that might become every bit as important as traditional seed-funded startups.

We also dive into the paradox of enterprise innovation, and Sandeep explains a few things that all startups need to understand about corporate accelerators before joining.

It’s an interesting discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it.

Today I have a special in-between episode for you. At this year's big Tech In Asia Tokyo event I moderated a panel on artificial intelligence with some of the leaders in the field in Asia.

We talked about how to separate the AI hype from reality, where companies can and are finding competitive advantage in AI, and whether in the decades to come artificial intelligence will be serving us in the future or whether we will be answering to our robot overlords.

Joining me on the main Tech in Asia stage were:

- Alexis Zheng - Product Lead, Uber

- Toshitada Nagumo - CEO, Fenox Japan

- Takahiro Shoji - Venture Partner, Zeroth.ai

It was an interesting conversation, and I thought I would package it up and bring it to you exactly as it happened.

There is far more to startups in Japan than SaaS software and IoT hardware companies.

Biotech startups are beginning to make a mark here.

Today we sit down and talk with biotech pioneer Mitsuru Izumo and talk about his ground-breaking work at Euglena. In many ways, the team at Euglena succeeded where even NASA failed. They have developed a process to cultivate this microorganism, also called Euglena, affordably and at industrial scale.

And Mitsuru and his team use using Euglena to create everything from inexpensive nutritional supplements to biological jet-fuel.

Mitsuru tells an amazing story of how he took his startup from inspiration to proof of concept, to IPO, and how the real innovation is just getting started.

I think you’ll really enjoy this one

There’s a very good reason most Japanese hardware startups fail.

Today we sit down with Takuro Yoshida CEO and founder of Logbar, and we dive into the reasons and also go over Logbar’s strategy for avoiding the mistakes that have killed off so many other Japanese IoT startups.

Takuro is the creator of one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns and two of the most successful IoT projects in Japan, the Ring Zero, which is VR controller in wearable ring form and the ili automatic translator, which is just starting to gain real traction.

Of course, we dive into how he managed to create and bring these products to market, and we also talk in detail about Takuro’s unusual journey from professional bartender to successful startup CEO.

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

Disrupting Japan is three 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 startup CEOs talk about what it takes for Japanese startups to succeed globally.

Our panel included the CEOs of some of the most innovative startups in Japan.

- Ken Tamagawa - CEO, Soracom

- Takuma Iwasa - CEO, Cerevo

- Shin Sakane - CEO, Seven Dreamers

We talk about strategies for global growth, how to best manage multi-cultural teams, and the likely future of hardware and IoT startups in Japan.

In fact, we talk a lot about the challenges hardware startups are facing in Japan today. Japanese hardware startups are at a crossroads. The old model of hardware innovation is failing, but there is a new model, unique to Japan, that might just take its place. But, as our guests explain, things are far from certain.

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

On a personal note, thank you for reading and listening and for being a part of Disrupting Japan. When I started this project three years ago, I never imagined how big it would become, or how large, passionate, and global the interest in Japanese truly is.

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 have access to a bottomless well of innovative and genuinely interesting Japanese startup founders, and I look forward to continuing to introduce them to you and to bring you their stories.

Thanks for listening!

Corporate Japan is about to go through a major transition in its approach to computer security. In the past, Japan-only payment systems and the Japanese language itself provided a barrier that kept international fraud and attacks at a very low level.

All that is changing now. With payment systems becoming increasingly global, and free, instant translation available to anyone with a browser, fraud is on the rise in Japan.

Today we sit down with Atsuyoshi Shimazu of Caulis, and he’s going to both explain the new threats and explain exactly what he plans to do about them. He’ll also explain why Japan’s current approach to the internet of things means that things might get worse before they get better.

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

Welcome to our 100th show.

If you are new, welcome to Disrupting Japan. If you are a long-time follower, thank you for being part of the community and helping to make Disrupting Japan what it is today.

This is a special, and rather short, episode.

Today I'm going to tell you a very personal story of startup failure, and let you in on what's coming next. Both for me, and for the show.

Thank you for listening, and I think you'll enjoy this one.

Fewer than 1% of Japanese consumers have ever purchased a product or service from a sharing economy platform.

It's actually quite puzzling. Social and economic factors all seem to indicate that Japanese cities would be ideal for sharing economy businesses, but for a number of reasons sharing economy startups have not really taken off here.

Today we unravel a bit of this mystery as we sit down with Chika Tsunada, founder of Anytimes and the Director of the Sharing Economy Association Japan.

Anytimes is a P2P sharing economy startup with a unique and participatory business model. Chika explains why she chose that model and the challenges it presents. Even under ideal circumstances, building a P2P marketplace is hard. It's one of the most challenging business models to execute, and to succeed today requires doing something truly unique.

Chika has chosen an unusual path both for herself and for her business. It's a great discussion, and I think you'll enjoy it.

The financial services industry in Japan is pretty unsophisticated. There are relatively few options for brokerages and mutual funds, and what options there are tend to be expensive. Furthermore, since pensions and taxes are generally handled by the employer there is not much reason for the average Japanese to think much about investments.

Jin Nakamura of  Money Design is trying to change that with a very interesting strategy.

In a market that is dominated by price competition, Money Design has set out to create a premium lifestyle brand that has nothing to do with finance.

And it’s working.

Money Design has become the largest robo-advisor service in Japan and is partnering with some of the largest banks here.

It’s a fascinating story, and I think you'll really enjoy it.