Have you ever been at a crowded and noisy party and heard a conversation across the room?

You catch pieces of it, and you know it is interesting, but you can’t quite make it out and you can quite push your way over to that side of the room to be a part of it.

Well, that was the situation a lot of our guests found themselves in a few weeks ago, so today we are going to set things right.

Last month 500 Startups and Disrupting Japan held a joint event that focused on how Japanese and foreign staff can work best together at startups. As the event, I had a great discussion with three startup founders who are leading multi-cultural teams.  They candidly shared their stories and advice and even told us about some of their biggest mistakes.

It was a great discussion, the event was a huge success, and we’ll definitely be doing it again very soon. But in a way, the event was too successful. Way more people showed up than we expected and the place was packed. Everyone had a good time, but the room was so packed and noisy that only the people close to the front got a chance to hear some amazingly good advice and life experiences.

So I thought I would release the entire conversation as a special in-between episode of Disrupting Japan. There are no show notes for this one and it's not transcribed, but it is a great conversation with three experts on how startups can recruit, retain and get the very best out of multi-lingual, multi-cultural staff.

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