
"Wake up Japan!" says Dave McClure - hunvreus
http://fumijp.blogspot.jp/2013/02/wake-up-japan-says-dave-mclure.html
======
coldtea
> _The speaker was Dave McLure, and he told the Japanese people to wake up,
> it's no longer the time for the Japanese to be sitting in the comfort zone,
> because this country is on fire. He tells people to become the nail that
> sticks out, move fast and break things, and don't be afraid to fail, because
> key factor to innovation is creativity, failure and iteration._

I hope this was part of a stand up comedy show.

Else this is cliche-country 101.

You hear better stuff in high school graduation speeches.

~~~
toddmorey
I do think there is a cultural component to innovation. My fascination is
India. There is so much software development talent there. I know a lot of
developers from India who participate in the success of international firms
like Adobe, Google, and Microsoft, but I'm surprised that we've yet to see
that sort of company, a real, international powerhouse of software, emerge
from India.

~~~
coldtea
> _I do think there is a cultural component to innovation. My fascination is
> India. There is so much software development talent there._

Yes, but also so many mediocre, I-cant-believe-those-people-are-paid-
programmers too.

Maybe the problem is that the most talented Indian programmers tend to go
working outside India.

> _I know a lot of developers from India who participate in the success of
> international firms like Adobe, Google, and Microsoft, but I'm surprised
> that we've yet to see that sort of company, a real, international powerhouse
> of software, emerge from India._

Dunno. Do we even see some "real international powerhouses of software" emerge
from the US that often? You mention Adobe, Google and MS, but all three are
over 12 years old, and Adobe and MS are actually more like 22 and 30 years
old.

Not to mention that while MS and Adobe are "software powerhouses", Google is
much less so. It might have a lot of talent nowadays, but 95% of its success
lays in its initial foray into the search engine market, which was the work of
a very small team, and owned much to network effects, ability to get funding
and infrastructure etc, and much less to raw programming chops. And modern
success stories like Twitter and Facebook are even less "software powerhouses"
-- more like glorified web services, where most of the problems are related to
scaling and administration of a large server base.

------
LefterisJP
I have been living in Japan for the last 3 years and there is also another
Japanese saying. "出る釘は打たれる". Very well known in the West as "The nail that
sticks out gets hammered down". This is a culture of uniformity and always
taking the safe route and making sure to never lose face. It's not easy for
someone to go the start-up way here.

At the same time the Japanese are really hard working and there are some
Japanese companies out there which are trying to change the norm and I do
sincerely hope they succeed.

To the question if start-ups can grow in Japan I believe so yes. But not in
the same way and context as in the west and in the silicon valley. The culture
is just too different and as a result so will the start-ups.

I have met some really bright people here and I have also come across many
social barriers and rules that don't make sense (to my way of thinking). For
the sake of the Japanese economy I hope that the culture slowly but steadily
becomes more accepting of start-ups and entrepreneurship and encourages these
bright people to create instead of smothering them.

~~~
toddmorey
When I was living in Japan, my mother would use the game Clue to teach
English. The interesting cultural component we noticed was the Japanese
players had a really hard time not sharing their cards with the other players.
Clue, played cooperatively, doesn't really work that well!

I can't help but think that the American tradition of rugged individualism,
though it brings other baggage, has helped create a good climate for startups
and innovation.

------
pshin45
_There is a famous saying in Japanese "七転び八起き" which means even if you fall 7
times, get up 8 times and move forward. But at the same time, the Japanese
wants to do things well and organized, the citizens does not like failure,
it's a country that fears shame._

I've been working in Korea for the past 4+ years, and they suffer from the
same exact issues - the extreme shame of failure and unwillingness to "lose
face."

Korea and Japan produce a lot of engineers and have amazing tech
infrastructures even compared to the West, but they'll never be able to become
a thriving startup ecosystem because the culture is just too different from
that of Silicon Valley. You can relocate or attract new mentors and investors
to a given place, but culture is one of those things that just does not change
easily, if at all.

~~~
kintamanimatt
As a Brit, I've seen this cultural phenomenon in the UK too. Maybe I've just
not been exposed to the right people, but "failure" is still a dirty word and
it's rarely seen as a stepping stone to success.

Although I'm not all the way through it, I have a feeling this presentation
was probably quite a shock to its live audience, and probably perceived as
being quite tactless and impolite. I wonder what they actually thought of it
and whether it effected any change in mindset.

Edit: I'm cringing all the way through this video. I'm not sure if it's a
cringeworthy video or whether it's exposing my own fear of being embarrassed!

~~~
gsharm
Londoner here. I think we're closer to Silicon Valley than we are to Japan.
I've been working on/around my startups for almost a year now, and despite
having not having anything substantial to show yet, get a lot of interest in
my work, as well as being pursued all the time to go back into lucrative
software contracts.

------
gtt
The OP and this thread (except for a few comments) could be summarized as
follows:

[barely testable social theory or hypotheses] [supported by a cliché or
historical anecdote].

In my humble and down-to-earth opinion the main takeaway from any talk about
"cultures" or "societies" or any other similar human-like concepts (did you
notice that we often talk about "cultures" like they are living people?) is
the idea that certain traits (fear of failure in this case) could impact my
own performance. The next logical step is to modify something relevant in my
live to test the effects and adjust behaviour based on this information if
needed. Repeat this or just walk by if there are no effects present.

------
jeffehobbs
McClure continued: "You're simply the best. Better than all the rest. Better
than anyone -- anyone I've ever met." _standing ovation_

------
aaron695
I'm not sure I've learned anything from this video or comments. Nothing is
really backed up.

Even the speaker admits they are a VC who's not rich.

Yes westerners all think the Japanese have a culture with problems, but of
course we do, I really need some sort proof or a speaker who has proven
themselves.

------
lucianomt
You may or may not like DML's antics, but you can't say the guy doesn't have
some balls.

------
wyclif
_McClure_

------
michaelochurch
_There is a famous saying in Japanese "七転び八起き" which means even if you fall 7
times, get up 8 times and move forward. But at the same time, the Japanese
wants to do things well and organized, the citizens does not like failure,
it's a country that fears shame._

Are we really that different? In the US, we seem to have this sense of
superiority on this issue, but I think our tolerance of risk is paper-thin.
It's superficial.

To get deeper into it, I find VC-istan to be especially hypocritical, because
while it takes what seems to be a progressive attitude toward business
failure, it's also a world in which, if you're not a C*O by 35 and an investor
(read: rich and semi-retired) of some sort by 42, you're written off entirely
as a useless human being. How, exactly, is this supposed to encourage
resilience? If anything, that's the exact mentality that created the stodgy
risk-aversion of these blue-chip corporations VC-istan considers itself ready
to replace.

VC-istan is a postmodern corporation in which "tech companies" are disposable,
because they're mere sub-projects of the meta-company. "Founders" are
nominally independent project managers and investors are the real executives.
What seems like a tolerant attitude toward business failure is actually the
(probably beneficial, but cutthroat) willingness of this meta-company's
executives (investors) to cancel projects for a variety of reasons.

Getting people to "wake up" isn't about changing one culture. The problem is
that human nature is to pick leaders based on apparent success, and to
ostracize failures. That works well in groups of 20 individuals that are
barely surviving-- that is, our evolutionary frame-- but is not what you need
in order to design or encourage a rational technological economy.

~~~
Surio
>>In the US, we seem to have this sense of superiority on this issue, but I
think our tolerance of risk is paper-thin. It's superficial.

Hmmm... Judging by the overall comments so far, it seems every culture seems
to has an acute (and accurate) sense of its own thin-skinnedness that another
cultures' perception of them. Most of the points you make is validated by
another article making rounds in the first page here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5270460> From the article linked to that
thread:

 _When I was raising my first round, it fell apart because an A-list investor
who had given us a verbal commitment backed out. He did this because he had
heard from his friend, who I had went out for beers with, said that we were
struggling and unsure of what we were doing._

>> The problem is that human nature is to pick leaders based on apparent
success, and to ostracise failures.

Given that you've framed it like so, that nails it then? Status quo as it is
now, is not going to change anytime soon! Let's stop wasting our time and get
on with the rest of our lives, doing whatever it is that we are currently
doing, eh? :-| [wry smiley]

P.S: Not being sarcastic, or picking on you in my reply. Hope that comes out
clear :-/

~~~
michaelochurch
These problems are easy to diagnose and hard to solve.

The problem with VC-istan is collusion. As a group, they decide who's hot,
who's credible, and who's a loser. Rather than competing with each other, VCs
communicate in all sorts of inappropriate ways and make these decisions as a
herd. This means there isn't a fair market. The powerful people on one side
have found it more advantageous to be in each others' good graces than to
compete with each other, which would favor people they don't care about.

One thing I've learned having studied history is that the best thing for smart
people is to create a cleavage within the elite. The Protestant Reformation
was a time of high social mobility for intelligent people as the elites of
Europe lost cohesion due to the Catholic/Protestant division. Henry VIII was
detested by other nobles in large part because he promoted intelligent
commoners (social mobility) to high offices who could assist him in his break
from the Church.

Then, there's the Cold War. Just think of how much scientific progress exists
because of this hairline fracture in the world's ruling class.

Powerful people want to glom together and form a clique at the top. The best
thing that can happen for smart people is for one half of the powerful people
to have a mortal hatred for the other half, so this can't happen. As the
elites destroy each other, they'll hire smart people from without and that
generates social mobility and a resource transfer away from the entrenched
elite and toward talented people.

If you want to save VC-istan, here's how to do it. Randomly assign all of the
top 500 players to Red and Blue Teams. Team identity follows a person, not a
firm. It's inflexible. Whichever team makes more money in the next 15 years
owns all the _personal_ financial assets (houses, bank accounts) of the other
team. Even if Blue only wins slightly, it means the Reds lose all their
financial assets. I don't make this as a serious suggestion, but _that_ will
get some genuine technology made.

~~~
stanfordkid
What you say is hardly the case. Top 8 VC firms compete with each other
incredibly hard for the best deals. The top-8 as a group make up 80% of all
venture capital returns so maybe that should tell you something about their
decision making criteria.

The best VC firms _do_ pick and choose what to invest in, and this is based
only on what they think will make them the most money. Perhaps that isn't
equivalent to "technological progress" but one can hardly call it collusion.

~~~
Surio
You should really read some of the replies from the other HN thread I placed
in my reply above. It does a good job of removing the halo effect around VCs
and their "decision making criteria"

>> The top-8 as a group make up 80% of all venture capital returns so maybe
that should tell you something about their decision making criteria.

Perhaps, this is one possible explanation to that?
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5271839>

_The problem is there is so much 'dumb' money out there 'smart' money is just
noise. If you have 50 million to invest then investing 200k in 250 company's
at random is a perfectly reasonable choice. And 50 million is a tiny slice of
a ridiculously big pie, people spend close to that doing due diligence on
really big deals._

