
Can Japan reboot its startup culture? - rglovejoy
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130820-plugging-japans-start-up-gap
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adregan
In Japan, established companies are king. Nintendo claims to be 100 years old.
My buddy's company sells semiconductors, and they also claim to be 100 years
old. Of course these companies aren't truly 100 years old, but it means a lot
to work an older company. There's a lot of pride in it. Not to mention, banks
want to deal with older companies and so do landlords (the article says some
are looking for 2 years of profit).

I've certainly dealt with the pushback that comes with suggesting new ideas in
Japan. I've heard "efficiency" derided as a foreigner idea, specifically "you
Americans always want to change things to make them more efficient" in regards
to no longer grading 1000s of multiple choice entrance exams by hand.

And I don't want to get political, but while I can understand how Abe's
economic policies might help pump life into the startup scene, I don't see how
the hyper conservative social atmosphere he has charged since taking office
will help. I don't mean to be too cynical, but when I read that Abe wants to
encourage Japanese startups, I read that he wants to encourage startups of
Japanese people not startups in Japan (evidenced perhaps by all of the
articles on this subject that mention Masayoshi Son go out of their way to
tell you that he is Zainichi Korean, even though he's a Japanese citizen and
his family has been in Japan for generations).

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whatusername
I always thought Nintendo's corporate history was pretty legit? Start with
cards, move to games/entertainment, move to video games.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo)

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a_bonobo
The history of these old companies is usually legit - see Wikipedia's List of
oldest companies:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies)

Sadly Kongo Gumi, the Nr. 1, was swallowed by another company.

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seestheday
Wow, I just read the Wikipedia history of Kongo Gumi. I find it amazing that
it was also started by a Korean.

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PhantomGremlin
Fascinating article. My only quibble is when it mentioned "tiny South Korea".
That population is 50 million, while Japan's is 127 million. So, yes, Korea is
smaller, but hardly "tiny" in comparison.

And "tiny" probably doesn't refer to land area either. Much of Japan is rural
or uninhabitable. In both countries the amount of habitable non-farmland is
relatively "tiny". Quite unlike the USA.

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graeme
Thanks for for pointing that out. I had fallen for the smaller land mass =
much smaller population fallacy.

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WhoIsSatoshi
Japan is in dire conditions. Society has, just as it did in Europe, corrupted
the way of living of people into a "comfortable" reality. Except Japanese are
way better at it than Europeans. So they "trapped" themselves in this comfy
reality, which really is a slow-mo zone. Because the population is declining
and the new generation is struggling to grasp the situation (and what must be
done) they are in for a world of pain. They will be a weak nation very soon,
and I bet a certain old friend in the east will consider "helping" them...

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kmf
I've been in love with Japan since I was a anime-obsessed kid, and visiting
Tokyo in high school was the best travel experience I've ever had.

Yet at the same time, I've heard it said that the software landscape in Japan
is pretty rough -- bureaucratic, aged, and inefficient. I've found that really
upsetting, because Japan has, of course, a reputation for being a
technological wonderland.

People living in Japan -- natives or otherwise -- is this true? I've had a
dream of living in Tokyo as a web developer since the day I came back from
Tokyo, and it seems like the only way to make this happen as a non-Japanese
speaking (though very interested), non-CS major American is to come already
successful, or not come at all.

~~~
patio11
Your best bet would be getting hired by a foreign firm and then laterally
transferred to their Tokyo office. Neither not speaking Japanese nor failing
to possess a CS degree will make it impossible for you to do IT work at e.g.
the Tokyo branches of large foreign investment banks.

If one goes strictly by the published requirements, it would not be
straightforward to get you an engineering status of residence (so that you
could be hired as an engineer by a Japanese company, as opposed to being
transferred in from a foreign company), but there are ways around that. (For
example, documenting that you have 10 years of paid experience in development
would satisfy the degree requirement... that documentation will be expected
with to-the-month resolution.) Candidly, if you do not speak Japanese, getting
a professional job with a Japanese megacorp is likely to be quite difficult.
(There are a very few prominent exceptions, such as Rakuten.)

There are some Japanese startups which hire foreigners who do not speak
Japanese. Your best bet for getting hired at one is to know the decisionmakers
personally (true of getting hired at any company anywhere, but of particular
interest to you). One potential avenue for finessing this is to come to Tokyo
on a visa-waiver for a few weeks of sightseeing, meet people like it is your
job, and then get the ball rolling on employment. Fair warning: many startups
are, like the US, not exactly organizationally optimized to support your
visa/status of residence paperwork.

~~~
hudibras
Just to pile on: It's hard to overstate how large the language barrier is in
Japan. For all intents and purposes, nobody speaks English and therefore you
cannot speak, listen, write, or read anything during your interactions with
the people around you.

I don't want to scare kmf off from coming here; you should, it's a wonderful
country. Just need to manage your expectations...

~~~
sliverstorm
Eh? I found the language barrier to be about as low as can be expected for a
place where English is not the mother tongue.

You should certainly learn Japanese if you want to live there, but you'd still
be way better off than rural Russia.

~~~
ics
Well if you want to compare _rural Japan_ to rural Russia...

I see hudibras is getting downvoted but it probably is fair to say that to
native English speakers new to the country, people may expect more than they
get from ESLs in Japan. I have some pet theories as to why but I don't think
it would contribute all that much to the discussion. Unless you're coming to
Japan to be a corporate translator (may all the gods have mercy on your soul)
it really shouldn't be an issue as long as you're willing to learn a little
Japanese along the way.

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chaostheory
Until their culture changes drastically I'm going to say No, for the following
reasons:

\- It is too risk averse. Making big mistakes, especially with your career, is
looked down upon and it makes you a social pariah.

\- Japan is too brand name obsessed and it's not limited to products either.
It extends to your career, as to what company you work for and what schools
you graduated from. i.e. You need to work for already successful companies. It
also doesn't look too kindly on drop outs or anyone different either, who are
probably the very people building successful start ups.

\- While the younger generation is better, Japan still has a xenophobic
society. Most foreigners unless they are of Japanese descent still can't get
citizenship. Foreigners bring a lot of innovation and different ideas to the
start up sector that Japan misses out on it. The US isn't perfect on this
matter either, but compared to Japan it's way better.

In Japan's defense, most of the EU suffer similar problems.

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ballard
There might not be as many startups in Japan, but I can attest there are 100%
Japanese startups that hustle hard as anyone in the valley, aren't afraid to
fail in front of friends/family/cofounders and are generally all-'round
badasses. They are there.

[http://whill.jp/](http://whill.jp/) <\-- awesome

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jason_tko
As a founder of a Japan based startup catering to businesses in Japan
(MakeLeaps) and also as a co-organiser of the Hacker News Tokyo Meetups with
my co-founder Paul, I found this article to be full of defeatism, inaccurate
and generally disappointing.

A few points:

“this is accompanied by a very envious, critical and vocal audience. They
underline every possible reason that the product will fail and keep doing so
indefatigably. They attack the innovator on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc; and
they keep doing so until the innovator raises a white flag.”

What.

There's always haters and detractors. That's part of doing anything in life,
and start-ups are no exception.

Once, a Japanese guy spent 10 minutes trying to explain that our startup's
failure was guaranteed because Japanese people would never upload their
company stamp (a necessary function of official Japanese business documents)
to a web service. Even after I told him we already have a bunch of users who
are doing this, he was steadfast, so I simply crossed him off the list of
people to spend time on. Problem solved.

One of the very first things we learned when selling to businesses in Japan is
that social proof is a critical factor. So our focus changed to getting even a
single business using our software, and then trying to feature them and
promote them as much as we could.

It's pretty damn hard for people to say your product is failing when you can
show you have a lot of people using it.

The more we did this, the more businesses we could get, and we continued to
repeat this process until last month when we finally crossed 10,000 signed up
companies in Japan.

Getting to here took years of work. This is part of a startup. Understanding
your problem space and challenges, and then adapting your product and
marketing message accordingly.

"Japanese businessmen tend not to trust the younger generation."

Oh yeah? Try doing a startup and being in the younger generation, AND being
foreigners.

You have to build and earn trust over time. You're not handed a trust card as
soon as you open a new business.

"If you look at successful Japanese start-ups, they are mostly run by CEOs who
have applied the ‘foreign connection’ in some way"

This is frustratingly inaccurate, and belies a total lack of exposure and
understanding of the Japanese startup scene. There are plenty of very
successful startups that are based in Japan, and focused on Japan, that have
zero foreign elements.

"In some cases, like Mr Son, he has managed to combine all five factors."

Commentating on the Japanese startup scene using the CEO of Softbank as an
example, Softbank being a company founded in 1981 with a market cap of 43
billion dollars, makes no sense at all.

"There’s lots of venture capitalists here but they are only interested in
games and new media"

Wrong. We get weekly un-solicited contacts from Japanese VCs asking for
meetings with us.

This is a result of us hustling very hard over a long period of time, and
working very hard to establish our credibility and stability.

The Japanese startup scene definitely has areas where it can improve, but
they're at best papered over in this article.

~~~
kfk
Kudos guys. I have been following MakeLeaps for the past year and half and
it's impressive to see how fast and wisely you have been building up the
product. What I really like is that you understand the business needs very
well, which is not such a common trait here were too many are trying to
"disrupt" industries they barely know or understand.

I always wanted to ask: are you guys looking at expanding in other areas? Like
out of Japan and/or offering invoices entry services?

~~~
po
Thanks! Its always great to hear that kind of thing. :-)

I think I can speak for Jason when I say that we're always looking to expand
our offering but we want to do it smartly and in a customer-driven way. You
can certainly use our service to make english-language documents but for us a
big part of 'localization' is really sweating the details and understanding
customer needs. So far, that has meant a focused product for Japanese
businesses. The Japanese business consumer is somewhat conservative in
adopting new process and has high expectations for services so it's important
for us to do things right.

But yeah, like most startups we're always working on new things... :-)

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sgdesign
One thing the article doesn't really talk about is that Japanese companies are
very active in investing in (or sometimes outright buying) foreign startups
(for example, Recruit buying Indeed).

I think this shows that some Japanese businesses are at least conscious of the
problems depicted in the article, and are trying to learn from Silicon Valley.

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mathattack
Excel actually isn't that bad for managing projects. Does saying that make me
old, or a skeptic?

Digging deeper into this... I would like to see some data on where grads go.
Having spent time in Japan, my intuition was a disproportionate amount of top
grads from top schools want to work at old (40+ years) large companies,
relative to a similar number in the US. The ones who do go elsewhere wind up
at small family businesses. I would like to see data on this.

The larger issue is there isn't as developed a concept of "VC and Angels toss
a bunch of small piles of money at juniors and hope one or two grow into a big
pile." I suspect the data behind this is much easier to find.

Perhaps much of the push can come from outsiders? Foreigners well versed in
the local customer, with foreign money? The large companies tend to be more
reluctant to hire international workers anyway.

It's not easy, but Japan is a glorious country with a fascinating culture.
It's worth the effort.

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jolks
Samurai Incubate is like Y Combinator of Japan. Today Samurai Incubate manages
¥543 million (about $5.7 million) of investment capital spread across four
funds. Sixty start-ups have received funding to date, each typically in the
range of ¥4 million – ¥5 million (roughly $40k – $50k).
-[http://beaconreports.net/entrepreneurship-in-the-samurai-
tra...](http://beaconreports.net/entrepreneurship-in-the-samurai-tradition/)

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graup
Related, although not adding too much new: "Wake up Japan!" says Dave McClure
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5274049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5274049)
[http://fumijp.blogspot.jp/2013/02/wake-up-japan-says-dave-
mc...](http://fumijp.blogspot.jp/2013/02/wake-up-japan-says-dave-mclure.html)

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rwmj
For the benefit of UK license payers(!) can someone copy that article so we
can see it?

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Gepsens
Replace Japan with Europe, same shit.

