Disrupting Japan

Graffiti is impermanent. Normally, thats a good thing, but as the global art world has begun to recognize graffiti and street art as a legitimate art form, the short-term and public nature of street art has presented challenges around sales and ownership. The team at Totomo has found a solution. They have been working with street artists around the world and galleries across Tokyo to create a plat...

Not many startups land their tech on the moon. Dymon has designed an autonomous lunar rover that will land near the lunar south pole later this year as part of NASA's Artemis program. Today, we sit down and talk with founder Shin Nakajima who explains what it takes for a startup to become part of a NASA mission, the role YouTube had to play, what startups can contribute to space exploration, and h...

There is a lot of hate directed at Japanese UI design. To Western eyes, it's just too busy, too dense, too confusing, too outdated, and just plain wrong. And sometimes that's true, but usually there are very good, and highly profitable, reasons Japanese websites and Japanese software looks the way it does. Today I sit down and talk (and argue a bit) with Brandon Hill about how Japanese design got...

Sometimes it seems like Japan is almost invisible in global e-commerce. Despite a dynamic domestic e-commerce market and a long tradition of global exports, Japan just  doesn't seem that interested in selling to the outside world. But things are changing, and Kazuyoshi Nakazato of Zig Zag is working to make sure they change even faster. We talk about why Japan is unrepresented in global e-commerce...

This is our 200th episode, so I wanted to do something special. Everyone loves to complain about the poor quality of Japanese software, but today I’m going to explain exactly what went wrong.  You'll get the whole story, and I'll also pinpoint the specific moment Japan lost its way. By the end, I think you'll have a new perspective on Japanese software and understand why everything might be about...

Today I explain how to raise money as a new startup founder in Japan. I’m going to give you a clear and actionable plan so that: 1) You can decide which VCs you should approach 2) You can set up meetings with partners at reputable Japanese VC firms 3) You how to pitch in the most effective way possible 4) You will have some strategies to help you actually close the round, and get the money in the...

Police departments around the world are using this startup's AI to predict future crime. Mami Kajita, founder of Singular Perturbations, explains the success of their models, the public reaction to the technology, and how the physics models of glass transition lead to a crime prediction AI. We debate the future impact of crime prediction technology, and we also talk about how researchers and entre...

Today's episode is about trust; trust in technology and trust in each other. Very few startups experience what LPixel went through and far fewer survive it. Today we welcome Yuki Shimahara, founder of LPixel, back to the show. The last few years have been a roller-coster for LPixel, and despite the chaos LPixel managed to created Japan's first certified medical AI device and roll it out into hospi...

The way we get our food is changing.  Many are discussing how to make modern farming more sustainable, but this startup working to end it entirely.  Ikuo Hiraishi is a serial entrepreneur and the Japan head of Infarm Japan, an urban-farming startup growing food at supermarkets. In fact, as Ikuo explains, a lot more of your food is grown indoors than you probably imagine.  The future of food will l...

We need to get the health care revolution right. Artificial Intelligence promises to reduce bottlenecks, improve quality of care, and allow our over-stretched healthcare systems to scale to met the needs of the aging global population. But it's not going to be easy. Today we talk with Kota Kubo, founder of Ubie about the opportunities and challenges involved in the coming wave of healthcare innova...

World-changing trends can start anywhere in the world today.  Because the social media platforms evolved differently in Northeast Asia, e-commerce developed differently as well. And because of recent shifts in regulation and social attitudes, Western social media is going to start to look a lot more like it does in Aisa, and e-commerce trends will follow.  Today Masa Shimizu, founder of Zeals, exp...

You never hear the names of some of the world's best SaaS startups. Why waste money building awareness among consumers when you can quickly and steadily grow your B2B business across Japan then across Asia? Today Yu Taniguchi founder of TableCheck returns to the show and answers that question. TableCheck is rapidly expanding their table-management system business by throwing out a lot of the tradi...

Manga is one of Japan's best known exports, but it's surprisingly hard to make money here. Today we dig into exactly why this is. We sit down with Sho Ishiwatari, founder of Mantra, who explains how is company is trying to expand the global market by streamlining the translation and global marketing processes. We also talk about why manga is so much harder than books for AI to understand and a few...

Subscription boxes can be a tough business. Most of these startups shine brightly as they burn through investor capital and flame out well before becoming profitable. But there are exceptions. So today we sit down with Danny Taing, the founder of Bokksu, to learn what he and the team did differently, how they obtained substantial VC funding, and where they are going from here. We also talk about J...

There is a very good reason B2B SaaS is huge in Japan right now.  Today we sit down with Chiemi Kamakura, co-founder and CEO of Agatha, and she explains why. Agatha is a Japanese SaaS company that has been global from Day 1, but is leveraging some unique strengths developed in Japan.  We talk about how Japanese SIs have responded to SaaS, why Japan is likely to see a lot more female founders soon,...

Coming up with ideas is easy. Spotting the bad one early is a rare skill. Today we talk with Yo Shibata serial entrepreneur an investor about how you know if you really have a great startup idea. We chat about what it was like being acquired by Rakuten, and what can be done to improve M&A in Japan. Yo also talks publicly for the first time about is new startup and why the current B2B SaaS trend in...

Once the disruptors become the incumbents they are ripe for disruption. Uber, Grab and rest of the ride-sharing startups have clearly disrupted the global taxi industry, but that doesn't mean they got it right. That doesn't mean their market position, or even their business model, is secure. Today we sit down with Sota Kimura, founder of SmartRyde, a Japanese startup focused on getting airport gro...

NFTs are easy to understand if you examine their core utility.  Unfortunately, there are thousands of NFT promoters spending millions of dollars to make sure you never look at that. This episode is a departure from our standard format, but it's an important topic. I want to explain what NFTs actually are and how you can best make money with them -- if you really want to. Our Japanese founders will...

We have been dreaming about flying cars (and startups have been promising them!) for over 70 years, and it looks like we might almost be there. Orders have been placed, and delivery schedules set. Today we sit down with Tom Fukuzawa of SkyDrive, and we talk about the development of their flying car and their recent contract with the city of Osaka for air-taxi services. However, we also talk about...

As a society, as a species, we have way too much data on our hands. A decade ago, our data got too big for our local systems and so we moved it into the cloud. And now, well, our data has gotten too big for the cloud and we're moving it back on premises.  Now, I promise this will make a lot more sense in a few minutes, when we sit down with Michael Tso, co-founder of Cloudian. Cloudian makes massi...

Japanese university and government venture funds play a much larger role in Japan than in the West.  I've always considered this difference to be, on balance, neutral, today's guest makes a convincing case that these funds are actually hurting the startup ecosystem here.  Today we sit down and talk with Hiroaki Suga, co-founder of PeptiDream.  PeptiDream is now a $7 billion biotech company, but it...

It's hard to get paid to do what you love. Perhaps no one understands this better than dancers, but Taku Kodaira and his team at Mikro Entertainment are on a mission to fix that. But this conversation, and Mikro Entertainment itself, is about much more than dance. Mikro's marketplace for dance moves is just the first application of Mikro's new motion-capture technology, and things are just getting...

Disrupting Japan turns seven years old this week! Unfortunately, because of current conditions in Japan, we won't be able to sit down over a beer and talk about startups live as we usually do.  Today, I'd like to share a story in three acts. We'll talk about the podcasting industry, what Disrupting Japan really is, and the likely future of Japanese startup founders.  Please enjoy.

We speculate a lot about our future "robot servants" or "robot masters", but that whole metaphor is wrong. It's not going to happen that way. This is a very personal and rather speculative episode. No guests this time. It's just the two of us. In past episodes, you have already met some of the founders at the center of an amazing cluster of startups that have the potential to redefine the way huma...

Japan has a very different approach to robotics. Japan leads the world in industrial robots, but there is also a growing movement that is reinventing the way we share our world with machines. Kaname Hayashi was one of the creators of Softbank's Pepper robot. His latest startup, GrooveX, has raised over $100 million to develop the Lovot; a companion robot, or perhaps more accurately, a robot pet un...