Disrupting Japan

Hiking, back-country skiing and mountain climbing are not usually the first things associated with Japan. Japan, however, has some stunning natural beauty and Yoshihio Haruyama of Yamap is trying to get more and more people to appreciate that.

Yamap is a mobile app that allows hikers, back-country skiers and other outdoorsmen to know exactly where they are even when they are well outside of areas cell-phone reception, and the platform is also providing Japan’s outdoor enthusiasts with a way of connecting to each other.

Yoshi also explains how relatively young Yamap managed to negotiate OEM deals with both Casio and Kyosera, and give practical advice for other startups hoping to partner up with large Japanese firms.

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

More than a few people dream of coming to Japan, starting an online business that gives you financial freedom and leaves you with enough free time to study the language travel and just enjoy Japan.

I know that sounds like the opening to some terrible multi-level marketing pitch, but today we site down and talk with someone who has done exactly that — twice.

Patrick McKenzie came to Japan more than 15 years ago and after enduring the soul-crushing boredom that is the life of a Japanese programer, he took maters into his own hands, left his job and began developing software products that he sold and supported all over the world the world from his home in the Japanese countryside.

It turns our that life was not as idillic or as simple as it seems, but there are some important lessons learned and a great story to be told.

I think you’ll enjoy this one.

More than a few people dream of coming to Japan, starting an online business that gives you financial freedom and leaves you with enough free time to study the language travel and just enjoy Japan.

I know that sounds like the opening to some terrible multi-level marketing pitch, but today we site down and talk with someone who has done exactly that — twice.

Patrick McKenzie came to Japan more than 15 years ago and after enduring the soul-crushing boredom that is the life of a Japanese programer, he took maters into his own hands, left his job and began developing software products that he sold and supported all over the world the world from his home in the Japanese countryside.

It turns our that life was not as idillic or as simple as it seems, but there are some important lessons learned and a great story to be told.

I think you’ll enjoy this one.

Gaming is very different in Japan than it is in America, but PowerCore is introducing technology that could lead to major changes in both of them.

Toys to Life technology blurs the distinction between the analog and digital worlds by having digital gameplay react to the presence of physical toys. For example, after buying a figuring, that character would appear in the game.

The first generation of this technology is already being used by powerhouses such as Disney and Nintendo, but the real change is yet to come.

Today Jia Shen explains what the future holds for Toys to Life, and why he decided to start his company in Japan.

It seems that the boundary between analog and digital is about to become a lot less clear.

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

Gaming is very different in Japan than it is in America, but PowerCore is introducing technology that could lead to major changes in both of them.

Toys to Life technology blurs the distinction between the analog and digital worlds by having digital gameplay react to the presence of physical toys. For example, after buying a figuring, that character would appear in the game.

The first generation of this technology is already being used by powerhouses such as Disney and Nintendo, but the real change is yet to come.

Today Jia Shen explains what the future holds for Toys to Life, and why he decided to start his company in Japan.

It seems that the boundary between analog and digital is about to become a lot less clear.

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

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 countries.

We talk about hiring strategies and techniques he used to get his initial customers and some of the most common mistakes that western companies make with their senior leadership in Japan.

It’s basically a blueprint for how to grow a services company from nothing to thousands of people in Japan, and I think you’ll enjoy it.

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 countries.

We talk about hiring strategies and techniques he used to get his initial customers and some of the most common mistakes that western companies make with their senior leadership in Japan.

It’s basically a blueprint for how to grow a services company from nothing to thousands of people in Japan, and I think you’ll enjoy it.

Today we are going low-tech. Sledgehammers and paint brushes low tech.

Keigo Fukugaki has started his own hotel brand, BnA, which stands for Bed & Art. It’s not a platform. It’s not an online marketplace. There isn’t (yet) even a meaningful e-commerce component. BnA is a new kind of hotel that places travelers not only in hotel rooms with interesting decor, but plugs them into the local artistic community.

It’s an incredibly ambitious project, but Keigo and his team have three small prototype hotels up and running, and they are in the process of building a full scale facility in Japan and already in talks about international expansion.

With SaaS companies and digital marketplaces dominating the news, sometimes it's nice to know that some startups are running businesses based on concrete and lumber.

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

Today we are going low-tech. Sledgehammers and paint brushes low tech.

Keigo Fukugaki has started his own hotel brand, BnA, which stands for Bed & Art. It’s not a platform. It’s not an online marketplace. There isn’t (yet) even a meaningful e-commerce component. BnA is a new kind of hotel that places travelers not only in hotel rooms with interesting decor, but plugs them into the local artistic community.

It’s an incredibly ambitious project, but Keigo and his team have three small prototype hotels up and running, and they are in the process of building a full scale facility in Japan and already in talks about international expansion.

With SaaS companies and digital marketplaces  dominating the news, sometimes it's nice to know that some startups are running businesses based on concrete and lumber.

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

Show Notes for Startups

Why old office buildings make ideal art spaces

The dangers of standardization in Japan and global the hotel industry

Why Bed&Art is the anti-Airbnb

Why crowdfunding should never be about the money any more

Why Keigo left San Francisco to start his startup in Japan

The very real danger of stretching yourself too thin

Why the differences between Japanese and American programmers are real and important

Links from the Founder

Learn more about Bed and Art

Follow Keigo on twitter @makeshiftjp

Friend him on Facebook

Checkout Keigo's design firm Makeshift

Honey Wedding

The BnA prototype as Airbnb in Ikebukuro

Their successful crowdfunding campaign

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Transcript from Japan

Disrupting Japan, episode 71.

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

You know, more than anything else, Disrupting Japan is about introducing you to the people who are changing business in Japan. I mean, really introducing you to them. Not the banal book tour interviews you hear everywhere else, but to let you get to know the real people starting things up in Japan. People you would love to sit down and have a beer with and with whom I’m lucky enough to do just that. It’s letting you know the people behind the startups. And although Disrupting Japan is a business podcast, business is personal.

Hiding behind every great startup with impressive numbers, there is an interesting story about how it got started. And hiding behind that interesting story is the story of what really happened and the real goals, and the real successes, and real disappointments. And what I love about podcasting is that it makes it so easy for you to hear when someone is telling a PR approved origin story and when someone is really speaking from the heart, when they are telling you about something that really matters to them.

Well, I’ve got a great story for you today and listeners have commented that I’ve been a bit tech heavy recently, so today, we’re going to meet someone who is decidedly low tech, as in paint brushes and hammers low tech. Keigo Fukugaki has started his own hotel brand, Bed & Art, in which he tries to merge travel with supporting the local artistic community. It’s an ambitious project to be sure and as the interview progressed, I went from thinking, “This won’t work,” to, “Nah, this is way too much of a long shot to really work,” to “You know, this is just crazy and quirky enough that is just might work.”

In this age of SAS, Airbnb, and middleware, sometimes it’s refreshing to find a startup that deals in concrete. But, you know, Keigo tell that story much better than I can. So let’s hear from our sponsors and get right to the interview.

    

[Interview]

Tim: So cheers. We’re sitting here with Keigo Fukugaki of Bed & Art, which is sort of a distributed hotel art space, but you’re going to be able to explain it much better than me, so what is Bed & Art?

Keigo: Basically,

Sales is different in Japan.

When Fastly entered the Japanese market, they quickly discovered that they had change their technology-driven bottom up sales approach to fit Japan’s top-down enterprise market.

Today we sit down with Doug Chuchro, the Japan head of Fastly who explains how he had to chance both the sales strategy and the corporate culture from that of the US, which a highly knowledgeable user base who understood the workings of their technology as well as the sales team to Japan, where they frequently found themselves educating potential customers about what a content deliver network is and how they are used.

We also explore the importance of partners in the Japanese market, and how those relationships can be very much a two-edged sword.

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