Disrupting Japan

Two of the most persistent and damaging myths about Japan are that it is hard to start a company here and that it is hard to do business as a foreigner.  Well, those are not complete myths. Both of those things are indeed difficult, but no harder than they are in any other country. Today Marty Roberts explains not only how he started and rapidly grew a successful startup here in Japan, but how he got the Japanese government to pay for it. To contain health care costs, the Japanese government is pushing doctors to prescribe more generic drugs, and that is forcing the pharmaceutical industry to change they way they do business or to go out of business. Marty saw an opportunity in this shift, and his company has quickly grown to be the leader in its space. Marty also offers some very practical advice for anyone thinking of leaving a senior management role to start a startup. It’s a great discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes How pharma sales is broken in Japan Why work is about to get a lot harder for Japan’s Doctors How Japan plans on cutting medical costs in the future Why enTouch needed services to sell software How to negotiate non-compete agreements with your current employer Getting funding from the Japanese government Why you don't want to invest in technology early How enTouch will survive the next phase of market distortion What needs to change about childcare in Japan Links from the Founder Find out more about enTouch Follow them on Facebook or LinkedIn Friend Marty on Facebook Connect with him on LinkedIn [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript Disrupting Japan Episode 95. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Work is about to get a whole lot harder for doctors in Japan. Japan’s rapidly aging population combined with a pressure to decrease costs in the National Health Insurance program means that doctors and well, all parts of Japan’s health care industry are going to have to do a lot more with a lot less. Of course disruptive innovation in health care is rare and frankly, that’s a good thing. Most advances in health care are steady if unpredictable incremental innovation, and we’re going to be looking at one of those today. Japan’s pharmaceutical companies are under pressure not just from the drugs going off patent but the Japanese government’s plans to drastically increase the percentage of generic drugs being prescribed by Japanese doctors. This means a lot less money flowing to pharma and Japanese pharma companies are scrambling to cut cost and remain competitive. Marty Roberts saw a startup opportunity here and he founded enTouch which provides what the industry calls remote detailing services. Now, this basically means explaining drugs to doctors online rather than face-to-face meetings but as you might expect, there’s a lot more to it than that and Marty soon discovered that it required a very specific Japanese twist to make this technology work here in Japan. Marty also provides some very sober advice for you if you are thinking of leaving a large company position to start your own startup. But you know, Marty tells this story much better than I can. So let’s hear from our sponsor and get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1404" info_text="Sponsored by" font_color="grey" ] [Interview] Tim: So I’m sitting here with Marty Roberts of enTouch. A company that lets pharma reps more efficiently connect with doctors. I know that’s a really broad description, so can you explain a bit better what enTouch does? Marty: You did a pretty good job there, Tim. EnTouch is focused on helping pharmaceutical companies communicate better with doctors so that doctors know about newest medicines, newest trends in health care so that they can treat their patients better. Pharmaceutical companies spend huge amount of money, like $20 billion a year promoting drugs to doctors in Japan and they do it with these really high price sales reps or they’re called MRs, medical reps. They’re always trying to catch the doctors in the hallway in the hospital and explaining to them the new medicine and we try to flip it around and let the doctor request online for more explanation. Tim: You were describing it to me earlier and it sounded like this unbelievably inefficient process where these reps would just basically camp out in the hospital hoping to catch a doctor as he passes by. Marty: Yes. And that’s exactly what it is. If you take a large pharma company in Japan, they tend to hire anywhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 or 1,500 or even 2,000 MRs to no fault of their own but they spend, I would say, the vast majority of their time waiting. The problem is that doctors don’t have time so the traditional pharma model has been we’ll just keep pushing the information and we’re going to get some time with you in the hallway for two minutes. But even when they catch the doctor, even if they get them for that two minutes, the doctor is already thinking about his next patient, he didn’t really request that information. Tim: True. He’s distracted. It’s a horrible system for everyone. Marty: In Japan, there’s about 29 sales people for every 100 doctors; whereas in America, if I recall, there’s about 9 sales people for every 100 doctors. In the UK, only 2 sales people, 2 MRs covering 100 doctors. The ratio of MRs to doctors in Japan is nuts. Tim: EnTouch fundamentally is replacing that one-on-one camping out and the hospital interaction with a web-based interaction the doctor schedules in advance? Marty: I wouldn’t use the word replacing. I would use the word augmenting. Tim: Okay. Augmenting. Marty: Because there’s some really large forces going on right now. You have a super aging population which is putting more and more pressure on doctors because the number of doctors isn’t rising in response to that. They have a higher case load, more chronic diseases, less time to talk with a sales person. At the same time, the pharma companies, right now generics, generics are non-branded medications, they make up about 60% of prescribing right now and the government has targeted at 80% by the year 2020. Tim: Is that as a cost-saving measure? Marty: As a cost-saving metric, because with the aging population, we need to save cost as a society. One way they can do that is basically encourage the prescriptions of generics and push down the branded medicines. In response to that, the pharma companies are trying to find ways to reduce their sales and marketing cost which is mainly their sales force. Tim: Are the doctors enTouch’s customers or are they the pharma’s customers? Marty: No. We have our own team of ex-MRs. We call the medical partners but they’re all licensed accredited MRs. I mentioned before that pharmas basically offering early retirement packages so I reached out to some recruiters I knew who helped me at my old company and said, “Hey, can you find some of these guys so I can interview them or ask them these questions?” Basically, what we ended up finding was that the people taking early retirement packages, there was two groups, there was the guys very close to retirement age anyways so they get two to three years salary to walk away. I would do it too. Those guys are awesome because they know all the doctors, they know all the secretaries, they know everyone’s schedule. And then the other group were the late 20s, early to mid-30s females who left MRs, who left to have a child. Given the way that the culture of working as a MR in Japan, it’s very difficult for those female MRs to return back full-time because they have child care considerations, et cetera. That’s really who we targeted to bring in. Tim: Actually, listen, before we dig too much into the details of the company and the market, let’s back up a bit and talk about you a little bit. So you’ve actually got quite a bit of history in this industry. You’ve got a PhD in clinical psychology and you were president and representative director of Cegedim here in Japan. That company did market research and relationship management for pharma as well, right? Marty: Right. It’s actually a bit of a strange story. When I was finishing my doctorate, I started working at Forest Laboratories, a pharma company, in their marketing market research division and I was quickly headhunted away by a French company called Cegedim to build their patient data business in the United States. To take patient data records and build intelligence out of it that could help pharmaceutical companies better target their drugs. It was a French company so the boss would be flying in from Paris. I lived in Brooklyn. He would be staying in Manhattan. Our office was in New Jersey so I would drive in my little car and pick him up every morning when he was in the U.S., take him to the office and drop him back up. We became really good friends, talked a lot about video games. At one point he’s just like, “What do you want to do?” I’ve been living in New York City then for 12 years and I was like, “I just want to get the hell out of New York.” Tim: Really? I love New York City. Marty: It’s a great place but man, after a while, I have to go try something new. Tim: Okay. I could see that. Marty: So he says, “What do you want to do?” I said, “I don’t know. I want to move?” He says, “Where?” I said, “I don’t know.” I gave him a list of countries. I was like, “I’ll go to France. I’ll go to Germany. I’ll go to India. I’ll go to Japan.” He was like, “Japan,” and that was basically settled. Tim: I need someone in Japan, you’re going. Marty: He was like, “I need someone in Japan. You’ll go.” So I sold everything and took two bags and got in the plane to come to Japan. And then at the Japan office,

Japan has a long history of small shopping streets and tiny markets. In fact, despite the population density, American-style mall culture never took off here. The back streets of even the most crowded downtown office districts are filled with little specialty stores and vegetable stands. Akiko Nishiura, the CEO and founder of Nokisaki, wants to see that culture spread even further in Japan, and her company is helping small merchants find physical spaces for pop-up shops, vegetable stands and food trucks. Nokisaki is connecting these small merchants, who need just a little bit of space, with commercial landlords who have a little bit of free space and are looking for some additional foot-traffic. It’s an interesting business model, and Akiko and I discuss how it will work outside of Japan or even outside of Japan's big cities. She also explains how Nokisaki survived a crisis that would have bankrupted almost any other startup — at least any other startup outside Japan. It’s a great discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes Why parking is different (and difficult) in Japan How a new alliance is developing between big-brand stores and tiny retailers Why it's so difficult for Japanese moms to return to work after having kids How the Japanese market reacts to new challenges How a security risk shut down her company How Japanese retail culture differs from the West How Nokisaki will out-maneuver her much better-funded competitors Links from the Founder The Nokisaki Homepage Nokisaki Parking Nokisaki Business Nokisaki Parking on Facebook Nokisaki Business on Facebook Friend Akiko on Facebook   [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript Disrupting Japan, episode 94. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Napoleon supposedly once called England a nation of shop keepers. And while the comment was undoubtedly meant as an insult in the context it was offered, there’s something to be said in favor of being a nation of shop keepers particularly in this age of e-commerce, Rakuten, Amazon stores, and drop shipping. In fact, Japan, more so than the U.S. has a culture of tiny little neighborhood shops that have never been pushed out completely by big box stores, shopping malls, and chain stores even in the big cities. Well, today we’re going to sit down and talk with someone who’s accelerating that trend by making it easier for small shop keepers to pop up all over Tokyo. Akiko Nishiura, CEO of Nokisaki, connects commercial landlords with just a little extra space to small merchants who are looking for, well, just a little space. And in their spare time, the company is also trying to solve Japan’s horrible parking problems. The discussion of the company in the market alone would make this episode worth listening to. Akiko also shares a story of something that would have forced almost any Western startup into bankruptcy but due to the unique and frankly somewhat extreme notion of Japanese customer loyalty, it resulted in only a minor interruption of Nokisaki’s rapid growth. But you know, Akiko tells that story much better than I can. So let’s hear from our sponsor and get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey"  ] [Interview] Tim: I’m sitting here with Akiko Nishiura, the founder and CEO of Nokisaki. Akiko: Yes. Tim: Thanks for sitting down with us. Akiko: Thank you, Tim. Tim: Now, Nokisaki is a parking space sharing and space sharing startup but I think you can explain it much better than I can. So tell me a bit about what Nokisaki is. Akiko: Okay. Tim, have you ever heard the word “nokisaki” and do you know the exact meaning of nokisaki? Tim: I have to admit I didn’t know it until I looked it up. Akiko: Right. But Nokisaki means tiny space under the roof like when you hide from the rain, for example, just a small space. We do business using that space. We are doing some special in-service but we are dealing with for example some unused space or space which are not being dealt in a traditional real estate market. We are offering a marketplace for a landlord of such spaces and those who want to use such spaces. Tim: Okay. Spaces is a very general term. Specifically, Nokisaki focuses on parking on the one hand and on pop-up stores on the other hand? Akiko: Right, pop-up stores. Yes. Tim: Tell me about your customers. Let’s do parking first. About how many spaces do you have in the system? How many users every month? Akiko: Currently, we have 4,000 parking lot listed in our website and the number of registered users is more than 130,000. Tim: I guess we should explain for our foreign listeners that parking in Tokyo is really different than it is in the rest of the world. Before you buy a car in Tokyo, you have to prove that you have a place to park it. Akiko: Exactly. Is it unique in Japan -- I mean, worldwide? Tim: I’ve never heard of it in the U.S. Akiko: No? Tim: Even in crowded places like New York or San Francisco. In Japan, that leads to this interesting situation where there is -- I mean parking is hard to find in Tokyo but there is a lot of unused space here because everyone has to buy parking. Akiko: In Japan, the most popular parking service is called Coined Operated Parking Lot. Tim: Just parking meters, basically? Akiko: Yes, parking meters. But the problem that the other drivers facing is that you don’t know whether you can park your car until you get there. You don’t know if it’s vacant or not. You have to spend 30 minutes or an hour to find a vacant parking lot. Our service is solving such problems that the drivers are facing. You can book a parking lot before you arrive. Tim: Is the reservation for an entire day or can you pull out a phone when you get there and say, “Okay. What parking is available right now?” Akiko: You can book parking lot via our website and you can use it per day. Tim: On the other side, the pop-up store site, what kind of people are using Nokisaki to create pop-up stores? Akiko: Our major uses are business users. I mean they are selling these or they are promoting some services. Tim: in the U.S. for example, pop-up stores are usually major brands taking advantage of a space that’s going to be available for only a few months and using it as more of a marketing than a sales promotion. In Japan, is it the same? Akiko: One of our users are such kind of major brands but most of our users are kind of individual merchants or small to mid-sized companies and they are for example, selling vegetables or selling clothes or shoes. Tim: Okay. So it’s not big brands using it. It’s individual merchants or individual people out selling, farmers selling their own crops, people selling their own handmade goods and things like that? Akiko: Exactly. Tim: Looking at the website, I notice that there is space available inside some very large retail stores here. Akiko: Yes. Tim: Tsutaya & BookOff, how does that work? Why are they leasing out little parts of their store? Akiko: Yes. Very interesting because for example, Tsutaya or a drugstore chain, the customers visiting that stores are huge like more than 1,000 customers come in and so it’s very attractive space for those who want to showcase their products. So they list their unused space in our website. They can attract new customers, for example, one of our clients selling vegetables in the storefront of drugstore. Someone who see that they are selling vegetables on the street and they come in remind that, “Oh, I have to buy a shampoo,” then they get in the shop, buy some products. They can earn some extra money through renting their unused space but at the same time, they can attract new customers through our business, through our service. Tim: In the example of say, Tsutaya, which is a large video rental chain, what kind of tenants are they using Nokisaki to attract? Akiko: Food trucks mainly. Tim: Food trucks? Akiko: Yes, because many customers of Tsutaya are 20s or 30s, young people. So the food trucks will fit to the needs of those customers. Tim: That’s really interesting and that does make a lot of sense for building up traffic and building up almost kind of a sense of community and a place to hang out. How did that deal come about? Did you approach Tsutaya with the idea of, “Hey, maybe we can get some new foot traffic in?” Did you approach them with the idea of food trucks or did they come to you? How did that happen? Akiko: We are doing many ways. We knock the door of those major clients. We do presentation to convince them but at the same time they receive some request from those individual food truck owners but usually they reject those request because it’s really hard for them to deal with small retailers directly. Tim: Well, I’d also imagine though that large retail chains in any country are very, very conscious and careful about their space. Not only internal shelf space, what goes where but the areas in front of their stores. How did you convince them to open it up like this? [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1652"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey”  ] Akiko: Well, for example, a national chain store that the legal issues were so complicated so it took more than one year to close the contract between us but nowadays, it takes less. Tim: That makes sense. The first one was the difficult sale and after that you had a reference? Akiko: Yes, yes. Exactly. Tim: Now, I want to talk about the overall sharing economy here in Japan a bit later. But before we do that, I want to ask you a bit about you. Akiko: Yes. Okay. Tim: You had a very successful career going at Sony,

Platform as a Service (PaaS) has been a difficult startup business model in the US, but Wayland Zheng, founder and CEO of Mobingi, has found a way to make it work in Japan. His approach involves a combination of leveraging both a unique feature set and some unique aspects of Japanese technical buyers. Wayland also shares his story of what is probably a record for the fastest time to startup launch for any foreigner in Japan. Within two months of landing in Tokyo, and unable to speak the language, he had settled on a startup idea, found a Japanese co-founder, and been accepted into one of the most competitive startup accelerators in Japan. Three years later, Mobingi has an impressive and growing list of clients and investors. We talk about how he made all this happen, the importance of accelerators, and how you need to tailor your startup not just to a rational business model, but to the business culture of the market. It’s a great discussion and I think you will really enjoy it. Show Notes How Mobingi saves it's customers 80% on AWS services Why DevOps disciple has been slow to develop at Japanese companies The important difference between security and compliance Why cloud sales in Japan requires face-to-face meetings How to start a company after only two months in Japan The important differences between Japnese and American startup accelerators Why China is a better expansion market than the US What is the future of PaaS and middleware Why simple honesty is sometimes surprising among founders Links from the Founder The Mobingi Homepage Mobingi Facebook page The Mobingi Blog Mobingi on Instagram Friend Wayland on Facebook Check out his blog Join a Mobingi Meetup [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript Disrupting Japan, episode 93. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. You know, I get asked a lot about the difficulty of starting a company in Japan as a foreigner. I always have trouble answering that question because although I’ve started a number of companies in Japan as a foreigner, I have nothing to compare it to. I mean, I’ve never started a company in Japan as a Japanese person so I only have my own experiences to base a judgment on. Well, I’ve got good news. All foreigners who are griping about how hard it is to start a company in Japan can now officially stop complaining. I’ve got a pretty amazing guest and a pretty amazing story to tell today. I’ve got a pretty amazing guest and a pretty amazing story to tell today. Wayland Zheng started Mobingi only two months after arriving in Japan and he’s made a success of it. He attracted a co-founder, joined an accelerator, on-boarded customers, and raised funds all without speaking Japanese. Of course it wasn’t exactly easy. As you’ll see during the interview, it’s not even fair to say that he made it look easy. It was hard. But Wayland explains how he managed to overcome the language barrier and well, several other barriers as well. We’ll also dive pretty deep into startup accelerators, how they differ between Japan and the U.S. and what founders should reasonably expect out of them, because Wayland’s been to a few and sometimes, they did not work out as planned. But you know, Wayland tells that story much better than I can. So let’s hear from our sponsor and get right to the interview.   [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1404"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey" ]   [Interview] Tim: I’m sitting here with Wayland Zheng of Mobingi. Mobingi is a platform as a service company but I know it’s so much more than that. Why don’t you tell us a bit more about what Mobingi is? Wayland: Okay. First, thanks for visiting my company. Mobingi is a software as a service. It’s a solution for helping companies to manage their application on the cloud. So basically, what it does is it helps engineers to automate their cloud applications workflow when they’re trying to deploy some applications to clouds or with like AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud then instead of maybe we configure the resources, they can log into the console and just use their mouse and click and make the deployment automatically happens. Tim: Okay. Both Amazon and Microsoft already have tools that they say manage the application life cycle and can help automate these processes. What does Mobingi do that’s different? Wayland: Yes. A very good question. They’re trying to make the cloud computing more easier, like provide console is very cool. Cloud computing itself is very complicated. We have to face what is virtual machines -- how to configure storage, security groups. Those technologies require deep knowledge to manage. Like take an example of AWS, it has a lot of service, more than 30 services. If you really want to try to use AWS dashboard to automate everything, it’s almost nearly impossible. You have to configure a lot of stuff by yourself, by arranging your team. Mobingi is trying to solve the problem from a -- we see a high level solution that’s more easier for less-experienced programmers. Tim: So the users can use the Mobingi platform to do the basic life cycle management and then if they have to do something really complicated, they can dive into AWS or Azure? Wayland: Yes. Right. For some customers, they want to use AWS but AWS has a learning curve. They can use Mobingi. They just provide their Wordpress blog or website code and directly deploy their application on AWS. They don’t even touch the servers. Tim: Okay. Before we started today, we were talking a bit about how you came up with the name for Mobingi. Wayland: Oh, yes. Yes, the name actually has no meaning. It was made by my previous friend. He said “Mobi” is for mobility, “ingi” is some maybe Italian word or European word. So combined together is a general development tool or something. Tim: So you were just looking for a domain name that was available? Wayland: Yes. And it sounds like cool in Japanese, Mobingi. By the way, we do have a meaning after we made the name. MOBINGI short for Machine Obsessed Because Infrastructure Never Gets Intelligent, which means we wanted to try to make it intelligent. Tim: Excellent. Wayland: Thanks. Tim: Tell me a bit about your customers. What’s the core selling point of Mobingi? Is it just that ease of use, how quickly customers can use cloud services? What is it? Wayland: Firs of all, our current target is in Japan only. Most of our customers, they found by using Mobingi can help them to save the time and some human resource cost and also another advantage is we help them to save cost, not human resource cost, meaning server cost. For example, many of our customers, they deploy their applications to AWS. They’re spending more than hyaku man (百万). Hyaku man is $10,000 per month, which is a lot for a startup. AWS, they have on-demand instance, means normal instance. They also have like reserve instance and spot instance. Spot instance usually 70%-80% cheaper than on-demand instance. But these instances are like a bid model marketplace. If some other people bid this, either this can shut down anytime, so not very popular. Tim: So by using this platform, it automatically bids and can reduce the cost by about 20%? Wayland: By 70%-80%. Tim: 70%-80%? Wayland: Yes. But the system, not only bidding for them, we also help them to ship application to the instance. If instance being shut down by AWS, we are able to re-deploy this application to a new instance before starting up. Tim: Okay. And that alone would probably more than pay for the cost of Mobingi, right? Wayland: Yes, exactly. We are charging 15% out of the savings. Tim: That’s a really interesting pricing model. You charge based on the savings not the installed base or -- Wayland: No, not base. It’s the savings. A hard point about this, because we are shipping applications to Docker Containers at the moment, that’s why it’s super-fast. We can re-deploy the application to a new instance before starting up, probably within two minutes. But since Docker Containers is not very popular in Japan yet, there’s a huge selling hurdle to customers which we require them to use Docker. We have to provide them some support even consulting to help them to ship to container, container writes their application. Tim: Okay. The core selling point, not to be too cynical about it, but it seems to me that the core selling point is not so much ease of use or the transparency or the multi-cloud. It’s simply that at the end of the day, Mobingi saves the clients a lot of money on their hosting. Wayland: Yes. Actually, it sounds like that but we did a lot of work on simplify the cloud deployment. We do help a lot like easy deploy. This is one selling point. The huge benefit, probably, yes, as you said is cloud savings. Tim: Do you have a lot of customers who are not using that particular feature? Wayland: Yes, we do have because they cannot ship their application to a container yet. Tim: Are most of your customers enterprise, small medium businesses, startups, who’s your typical user? Wayland: We are a pure B2B business. Most users are startups who raised the money already and some medium-sized enterprise. Fujitsu is one of our largest customer so far. Majority of the customers are like with a team about 50 people deploy application to the cloud like spending more than $10,000 per month. Tim: Yes. That makes sense. If you’re just running two instances, you’re going to worry about saving a few dollars a month. Wayland: Right. Tim: Excellent. Let’s talk a bit about the whole culture of DevOps and container technology in Japan. From four-five years ago, this has just really taken over the way software is deployed in the U.S.

It’s rare for a Japanese startup to challenge NTT and come out ahead. But that’s exactly what Takehiro Ogita and his team at TownWiFi have accomplished. TownWiFi is a mobile app that automatically detects and logins into available WiFi hotspots. Since TownWiFi was very modestly funded, Takehiro and his team relied on a better user experience and word of mouth to get the word out. Today we sit down with Takehiro and dive into that story, but we also look at the company's existing overseas userbase and his plans for global expansion on a shoestring. There is so much changing among Japanese startups right now, and Takehiro explains some of the social forces working for and working against new Japanese startups. It’s a great discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes The universal problem with free WiFi What allowed TownWiFi to gather a userbase so quickly Why Rakuten produces so many startup founders Why Takehiro had to hide his startup from his family How TownWiFi managed to beat NTT in direct competition A common sense plan for global expansion How pivoting from a C2C to a B2B model saved this startup Links from the Founder The TownWiFi Homepage Takehiro's Blog  Friend Takehiro on Facebook And, of course, download the TownWiFi app [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript   Disrupting Japan, episode 92. Welcome to Disrupting Japan. Straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Takehiro Ogita started TownWiFi as a simple way to allow Wi-Fi hotspots to be accessed and shared to mobile phones or mobile device users in general. There are a number of free Wi-Fi finding apps out there today but there are a few particularly interesting things about TownWiFi. First, unlike almost all their competitors, TownWiFi has found a way to monetize this app. And while they’re not yet profitable, they are earning revenue. Second, and I love this for so many reasons, the dominant player in this space, when TownWiFi launched their product was NTT and little TownWiFi has absolutely crushed NTT in the marketplace. Don’t get me wrong. I like NTT. I have friends at NTT. NTT is actually doing a lot of positive things in the area of corporate development and open innovation. The reason TownWiFi’s story is so inspiring is that it would have been absolutely impossible 10 years ago. Back then, NTT DoCoMo was not only the dominant mobile carrier but strictly controlled which apps would be allowed to be featured on their platform and sold to their subscribers. This may sound vaguely like the way Apple runs the App Store but it’s not. At that time, Japanese carriers would select one or two apps in each category, usually from closely associated companies and then lock everyone else out. Apps did not really compete with each other and there is no way that a serious challenger to the carrier’s own app let alone one made by an independent upstart would have been allowed inside their walled garden. Things are changing for startups in Japan, and when tiny little startups begin to beat NTT at their own game, it means great things are on the way. But you know, Takehiro tells that story much better than I can. So let’s hear from our sponsor and get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey"  ] [Interview] Tim: So I’m sitting here with Takehiro Ogita of TownWiFi. Thanks for sitting down with us today. Takehiro: Thanks for having me. Tim: TownWiFi is an app that helps you find free Wi-Fi hotspots but I know it’s more than that, and you can explain it better than I can. So why don’t you tell us what TownWiFi is? Takehiro: We are providing app which can auto-connect and authenticate to the public Wi-Fi. Our biggest point is that we are auto-authenticate, and auto-login, and auto-register to very public Wi-Fi of the world. Tim: So that means that the user can just kind of keep this app running in the background -- Takehiro: Exactly. Tim: -- and the phone will just automatically connect to publicly available Wi-Fi when it can? Takehiro: Yeah. There’s many public Wi-Fi spot in Japan, in Korea, and all over. The UXO using Wi-Fi is not good at all, the WiFi Mark at the iPhone. You cannot connect after that. You have to open up the Safari, it will redirect you to registration pages of each Wi-Fi. Tim: Right, right. Takehiro: It’s super annoying. Tim: You’ve got to go through at least three or four different pages and forms. Takehiro: Exactly. Exactly. Tim: Okay. So the real selling point is all this happens in the background. Takehiro: Exactly, yeah. Tim: Excellent. Tell me a bit about your users. Who is using this? How many hotspots do you have registered? How many companies? How many subscribers? Takehiro: We have 1.5 million Wi-Fi spot all over the world. Tim: Wow. That’s a lot of spots. So how many of those are in Japan versus global? Takehiro: In Japan, we have 300K. Tim: Okay. So most of the spots are overseas? Takehiro: U.S., the most. Tim: How did you register all these spots? How did you find the location? Takehiro: We are not talking with each Wi-Fi provider. That’s super tough negotiation for an app which is not famous at all like us. What we do is that we just support the registration flow of the users. So contract is based on users and Wi-Fi provider, like users and Tokyo Metro or users and Starbucks. Tim: But how do you support that? If you’re here in Japan and you’ve got Bob’s coffee shop in Central Missouri, how do you know what steps you need to take to register and log in there? Takehiro: We have two different way to do that. One is to just go there. Just go to Starbucks at San Francisco. Tim: Something tells me, with 1.5 million hotspots, that’s not really a practical approach. Takehiro: Well, it is actually. Because if I went to Starbucks at San Francisco then connect to the Starbucks Wi-Fi, we will just build the same interaction into our apps. What user have to do, just set up the first sign and if we handle one Starbucks Wi-Fi, the authentication is same. We’re not sure about where exactly the Wi-Fi spot is but our app will connect when there is Wi-Fi around them. And next, we will analyze the log data of users. Where did they fail, if user tried to access the public Wi-Fi which we don’t know. The log will come, this SSID and this kind of registration pages. By analyzing that, we will make that Wi-Fi into our TownWiFi. Tim: I get it. So the first time a user visits a location, they manually go through the process then it’s in the system and everyone can use it after that? Takehiro: Exactly. Tim: I guess similarly, if a location changes the protocol used to log in, the first person logging in after that has to go through it and then everyone else is updated. Takehiro: Kind of that, yeah. Tim: All right. Takehiro: We are tracking the Wi-Fi success ratio. If the Wi-Fi manager change the registration flow, we can detect it and fix and reuse it. Tim: On the user side, the subscriber side, how many people are using TownWiFi? Takehiro: We have more than 2 million users and one million are active. Tim: That’s also global or mostly Japan? Takehiro: Well, sad to say it’s mostly Japan. We’re trying to expand global and we are handling Korea and U.S. Wi-Fi. It’s growing but not so fast as we expected. Tim: Okay. What is TownWiFi’s business model? How do you make money from this? Takehiro: We have two business models. One is making user pay and another is utilize Wi-Fi data. The first one is very simple. We will handle the paid Wi-Fi. If you pay ¥‎300, you can access this certain Wi-Fi. There exist all over the world and we are talking to that Wi-Fi provider. We will sell at ¥‎300. They will wholesale to us like ‎‎¥‎400. Tim: So in those cases where there is no free Wi-Fi available, the phone would default onto the paid Wi-Fi? Takehiro: Yeah. We will let user know, “Hey, there is a paid Wi-Fi but how about using it?” It is more targeting to travelers. Especially in China, the China Telecom Wi-Fi is all over China. Tim: Right. And on the Wi-Fi provider side, what kind of data are you selling? Takehiro: We are selling two data. One is Wi-Fi request data. User are saying that, “Hey, I want Wi-Fi at this shop.” And we are selling that data to Wi-Fi sales company and they will call shops that these people are wanting Wi-Fi at their shop. How about making it? Tim: How do you get that data if the application is running in the background? Takehiro: User have to do it manually. There is a request pages or request tab at our app. Tim: Okay. I see. So it would be maybe there is a coffee shop in the middle of an area with no Wi-Fi and this would be a good way to get more people into the shop. Is Wi-Fi still an effective way to draw customers into a shop? [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1652"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey”  ] Takehiro: Wi-Fi is not needed to all the shops. It basically depends on what kind of users are going there. So we are just creating the list based on user needs. So if there are more than five people requested it, there is a need for your shop for creating Wi-Fi. Especially young generations or people who change to cheaper telecom services, they will reduce the cost but also reduce the amount of data volumes. Another is that we are providing Wi-Fi dashboard to each Wi-Fi providers. They don’t know who are using their Wi-Fis when it’s used or is that repeater or a new user? We are providing that in dashboard. On top of that, Wi-Fi provider can contact users when they connect to Wi-Fi. Tim: I can see the value in contacting users when they connect,

This is a rather personal episode. We have no guests this time. It’s just you and me. We talk a lot about Japanese startups on this show and the role they will play in shaping Japan's economic future. Well, today we are going to look at this from a different angle; one that puts the hype aside and looks at some cold hard numbers. The result is sobering, surprising and,  believe it or not, kind of inspiring So let's get right to it. [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript Disrupting Japan Episode 91 Welcome to Disrupting Japan straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for listening  Once again, I’ve got a special show for you today. There will be no guests, no beer, no playful banter with someone speaking English as a second language. Today it’s just you and me. For the next 20 minutes, I’ll be whispering in your ear about something I consider very important, but that not enough people are talking about. It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these solo shows. They tend to among my most popular episodes, I get a lot of requests for them and I love doing them. I would like to do more, but you might be surprised at the amount of research and revisions that go into these solo shows. Not to mention the times when I get two-thirds of the way putting one together only to realize the primary thrust of my argument is flawed and the whole thing needs to be reworked. Unfortunately, I’m not really smart enough to just turn on the microphone and talk for 20 minutes.  It’s so much easier sitting down and talking to amazingly creative Japanese startup founders and innovators who are doing and saying crazy things.  Well, today, I’d like to share something with you that first occurred to me about a year ago. And the more I research it, and the more people I speak with, the more I become convinced it’s right.  I’ve haven’t talked about it a lot before, because well, frankly, it’s something that a lot of people in the startup community here will disagree with — and some will disagree in very strong terms. But it’s important, so let’s strap in and get right to it.     [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1404"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey" ] Over the next twenty years, startups are not going to revive the Japanese economy, nor are they are they going to be the primary driver of innovation in this country. Don’t misunderstand, startups have a role to play, a very important role to play, but they will not be the primary drivers of change. No. Japan’s mid-sized companies will be the primary drivers of both large-scale innovation and economic growth over the next ten years. For this to make sense, we are going to look at the role that mid-sized companies play in the Japanese economy today, we’ll then step back in time both to see how things get this way and to understand why Japan is at such a pivotal juncture today, and then look at how thing are likely to shake out over the next 15 years or so. Now, to the average podcast listener, this would sound like a dry topic, but you as a DJ listener are a special breed, and you’ll be rewarded for coming with me deep, deep into the weeds. If you come along, I promise that in twenty minutes you will have a new way of looking at mid-sized companies in Japan, and perhaps a new way of looking at Japanese startups as well. You see medium-sized enterprises are the middle child in Japan’s corporate family. The large companies, the brands you know Toyota, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Mitsui. For the most part are the remnants of the once incredibly powerful keiretsu groups.  These companies are the oldest child. Everyone knows who they are. They are in the news. They have influence. They work closely with the Japanese government, both the legislators and the bureaucracy, to ensure that the needs of Japan’s large corporations are reflected in national policy and international trade agreements. And of course, the vast majority of government grant money, primary contracts, and economic stimulus programs are directed at these large corporations. Japanese startups are the little brother. Startup companies have captured Japan’s hearts and imagination not because of their economic impact, but because they are new.  They say, do and build crazy things and the country loves them for it. Startups get fawning press attention from the smallest of achievements. “Oh wow! You shipped a product!  That’s awesome. We’re so proud of you. Here. Have $1million.” Japan’s medium enterprises, however, have been stuck in the middle. For the past fifty years. they have quietly and reliably formed the backbone of the large companies’ supply chains, employing most of the workers and often thanklessly providing a steady stream of innovation. Doing the bulk of the work and getting almost none of the attention. And, you know, every time Japan faces economic problems it’s the medium enterprises that bear the brunt of the sacrifices. They lack the connections needed to arrange government bailouts, and when the large enterprises are hurting, they relentlessly squeeze their medium enterprise suppliers. A bit later on we’ll talk about why they’ve traditionally been able to get away with that, and how this power dynamic is about to change. But first, let’s look at the simple reason why the economic future of Japan depends much more on the medium enterprises than on the large enterprises or startups.  OK, so let's nail down what exactly we mean when we talk about large, medium and small enterprises. For today’s discussion, I’m going to use METI definitions because, well because they’re METI and they are the ones that decide on how these things are defined. For manufacturing companies, METI defines a medium enterprise as one with between 20 and 300 employees. Firms with less than 20 employees are small enterprises and those with more than 300 are considered large enterprises. For non-manufacturing industries, medium enterprises are those with between 5 and 100 employees. So medium enterprises are defined as a bit smaller in Japan than they are in much of Europe or the United States. Now, with the definitions out of the way, the most important thing to understand about the influence of medium enterprises on the Japanese economy is that medium enterprises are the Japanese economy. They employ 54% of the Japanese workforce, so more than large and small enterprises put together, and they account for 48% of all corporate revenues in Japan. So, with medium enterprises responsible for so much economic impact, what explains their lack of influence over economic policy and their lack of bargaining power with their customers? Well, we need to step back a few decades to understand how Japanese medium enterprises got themselves into this mess before we examine how they are going to get themselves (and the rest of Japan) out of it. It goes back to the keiretsu, or I suppose the zaibatsu if you really want to go way back. Basically, after the war, Japanese industry was organized into competing corporate groups called keiretsu. Each keiretsu had it’s own major bank, trading company, real estate company, heavy manufacturer, etc. The major firms in the keiretsu were bound together by cross-shareholding and interlocking directorships. And these large firms were supported by a vast array of lesser-known large and medium enterprises that made up their supply chain. These supply chains were tightly controlled and, with only a handful of well-known exceptions, a medium enterprise that was part of one keiretsu’s supply chain would not sell outside of it’s keiretsu group. The fortunes of these companies were inextricably linked to those of the keiretsu itself. Now, this arrangement sounds terrible for the supplier, but it was not as bad as it sounds. Particularly in the early days. The large keiretsu companies took an almost paternal interest in the medium enterprises that formed their supply chains.     [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1653"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey”  ] The large firms would provide technology transfer and training. They would often partially fund research and development at these firms, and best of all, they would guarantee them a certain level of sales and revenues. The owners and employees of these firms did not become wealthy, but their business was simple. They were protected from most market forces and never needed to develop sales or marketing functions, so they could focus on product development and production. This arrangement worked well for everyone, particularly the large companies. As long as the economy was expanding rapidly, There was always enough money to go around. But things began to change in the 90s. The yen become stronger, and that pushed up the price of Japanese goods overseas, and the large Japanese firms were no longer innovating the way the had been in the 60s and 70s.  With money tight, the big keiretsu firms began to squeeze their supply chains. They made other cuts as well, but these mid-sized companies bore the brunt of the suffering within the keiretsu groups. Not only were these firms pressured to relentlessly cut costs, but the dominant firms looked to these mid-sized companies as a way to solve their new staffing problem. You see, the large Japanese corporations had basically promised their entire workforce lifetime employment. Now this made sense when labor was in demand. Since no large firms accepted mid-career transfers, it kept salaries low and employees loyal. Sure, there was always some deadwood who couldn’t pull their weight, but since there never seemed to be enough staff, you could always find something for them to do. All that changed when sales started slumping, these unproductive employees became a real problem both in terms of morale and productivity. Well, the leaders of the keiretsu came up with a perfect solution.

Most great startup ideas don’t grab your attention right away. It takes a while before the founder’s vision becomes obvious to the rest of us. On the other hand, the startups that immediately grab all the press attention often go out of business shortly after shipping their first product. Reality never seems to live up the to promise. And then there are products like Orphe. This LED-emblazoned, WiFi-connected, social-network enabled dancing shoe seems made for fluffy, flashy Facebook sharing, but only when you really dig into it, do you understand what it really is and the potential it has in the marketplace. Today we sit down with Yuya Kikukawa, founder of No New Folk Studio and the creator of the Orphe, and we talk about music, hardware financing, and why this amazing little shoe is finding early adopters in places from game designers to hospitals. It’s a great conversation, and I think you’ll really enjoy it. Show Notes The inspiration for musical shoes Why Yuya's first musical instrument attempt was a failure The biggest challenge in moving from prototype to production Orphe's technical specs How Orphe is being used in hospitals and other healthcare applications How small Japanese startups can achieve global distribution Where the next big startup opportunities in Japan will be Why most hardware startups fail Links from the Founder No New Folk Studio Hompage See Orphe in action Check out Yuya's blog Follow Yuya on Facebook Check out PocoPoco on YouTube [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript Disrupting Japan, episode 90. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me. You know, most good startups are obvious. I don’t mean that I could have had the idea before the founders did. By obvious, I mean that right away you can understand the problem the company is solving for their customers and how they’re doing it. Naturally, that makes it easier for the customers to buy. Most non-obvious startups are in reality still struggling to find the product market fit and are probably not long for this world. And then there are products like Orphe, an LED-emblazoned WiFi-connected social sharing enabled dancing shoe. Yeah, it sounds like something you would find on Indiegogo and that one time not too long ago, it was. But when I sat down with Yuya Kikukawa, founder of No New Folk Studio and the creator of the Orphe, it became clear that this was not some quirky side project or some overfunded crazy hardware startup. This was something really different. We talked about the original inspiration for the shoe and what does and does not qualify as a musical instrument and how Orphe is being used by the artistic community in Japan. But we also dive into the technology inside it, and that, well, that’s something special. That’s why this quirky little blinking shoe is starting to get used by game and UI designers, as well as hospitals and sports trainers in Japan. It’s a fascinating discussion but you know, Yuya tells the story much better than I can. So let’s hear from our sponsor and get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey"  ] [Interview] Tim: I’m sitting here with Yuya Kikukawa of No New Folk Studio. Thank you for sitting down with me. Yuya: Thank you for inviting. Tim: Now, you guys make Orphe which is an LED dance shoe but it’s so much more than that. Can you describe what Orphe is exactly? Yuya: Yeah. Orphe is kind of world’s first smart LED shoes. Smart means it has a computer inside of the sole, at the same time there are about 100 full color LEDs. The computer can control each pixel. So the user can change the color through the smartphone application. Tim: Okay. It’s always so hard to describe dance and visual effects on an audio podcast. Yuya: Okay. Tim: So it’s basically a dance shoe with an array of LED lights around the sole that are controlled interactively both from the cellphone and from motion sensors in the shoes, right? Yuya: Yes. Tim: Okay. On a high level, the idea of putting lights in shoes isn’t new. I remember back in the ‘90s, there was a company, LA Gear or something, that made a shoe that lit up. Was that an inspiration or is what you’re doing completely different? Yuya: To be honest, I don’t think it’s completely different because the inspiration was actually come from the LED shoes itself. My idea is combine instrument function and LED shoes. I combined the two ideas. Tim: So your inspiration was really viewing the shoe as a musical instrument? Yuya: Mm-hmm. Tim: Well, actually when you think about it, there are some cases where the shoe is a musical instrument, right? Yuya: Flamenco, tap dance. Tim: So like tap dancing or lots of folk music. So yes, okay, that’s not so strange at all. Do you have global competition now? Are there companies doing what you do or is this truly unique for the moment? Yuya: In the genre of smart shoes, there are some startups. For example, Under Armor is making smart running shoes. It has sensor in the sole. There are some competitors. Tim: Okay. But they seem to be going after a very different market. Nike also released a product that had fitness tracking. But you seem to be more targeted at performance art, at least for the moment. Yuya: Mm-hmm. Tim: All right. Actually, tell me a bit about your customers. Other than having cool blinking lights on your feet, how are people using Orphe? Yuya: Our main target is -- so dancer and performers. Orphe can react with performance motion. For example, the steps. There are already some users before Orphe, wearing LED shoes and dancing but it can’t react with motion and music. Tim: So for example when the dancer takes a step, the impact sensor could trigger lights in the background or sound effects? Yuya: Our shoes can send the information in a step. For example, background lights can be controlled by the step. Tim: Right. That’s what I was thinking. Once it’s connected to the smartphone, it’s just data input? Yuya: Mm-hmm. Tim: Actually, we’ll talk about that a little later because I think that’s one of the most exciting things about this shoe. Yuya: Okay. Tim: For the moment, it’s dancers and performance art? Yuya: Mm-hmm. Tim: Okay. Another thing I find interesting is, you mentioned there’s also a social sharing component. So people can share their color patterns, their pre-programmed dance performances. Are people doing that now? Yuya: The user can download the lighting pattern from the cloud but the motion sharing is not open yet. Tim: Okay. So it’s just people sharing the lighting patterns? Yuya: Yeah. It is important idea because now we are more open platform for the shoes. We are now developing the system to share the sensor data, for example. Tim: Well, actually, before we talk about that, I want to take a step back and let’s talk about you for a minute. Yuya: Okay. Tim: How did you get into this? Because you originally wanted to make musical instruments, right? Yuya: Yes, yes. Tim: Tell me about that. Actually, you did create a different musical instrument, PocoPoco, right? Yuya: In graduate school, I was major in Industrial Art Design and I studied designing musical interface in a laboratory. At that time, I came across the idea of mixing light and sound in one musical interface. So PocoPoco is one example. Now, PocoPoco is an instrument. It is black box shape and it is a kind of sequencer to make loop music. Just by pushing the buttons, it makes some loop sounds and not just sound, it light up at the same time it has a haptic interaction. Haptic means it has a solenoid magnetic power actuator. Tim: So it gives a touch feedback as well? Yuya: Yes, yes. Exactly. Tim: It sounds like a really interesting project. What happened with it? Did you try to commercialize it? Yuya: After the prototyping, we made video in a laboratory and it has big feedback from all over the world. So after that, I thought about commercialize the product but problem of design. It is very costful. Tim: So it’s too expensive to produce? Yuya: Mm-hmm. For business, it is not good. Tim: Okay. All right. So a great project, lousy business? Yuya: Mm-hmm. Tim: I’ve had a few of those. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1652"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey”  ] Yuya: So after that, I thought about what product is good for merchandise. Tim: Just thinking about it, it’s very difficult to introduce a new musical instrument. Even something like the invention of the guitar took about 200 years to become popular or even the piano for that matter. It took over a century before it really became widespread. It’s hard to get people to make music on something new. Yuya: I think there are two ways to solve the problem. Now, one is design; more intuitive, interaction designing. For example, the shoe, all the people know how to walk wearing shoes, so the gesture is already learned by the user. It is one idea of me. I used the gestures people already know. Tim: Okay. So in other words, in the same way that synthesizers were new instrument -- Yuya: Exactly. Tim: -- that were keyboards. It was kind of co-opting the piano. The Orphe shoes are basically kind of synthesizers or new instrument that’s co-opting tap and folk dancing and flamenco, and things like that? Yuya: Yes. Tim: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Yuya: Another way is using IOT. My lab idea was collecting the sensor data from the interfaces, I can improve the interactions for the musical instrument. Tim: What do you mean? Do you mean like you would use the data to create music algorithmically?

After the March 2011 earthquake and the explosions at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, TEPCO and the Japanese government tried to assure us that everything was just fine. The repeatedly insisted that there was no serious danger posed by the radiation. Not very many people believed them. Reliable data from fallout areas was sparse at best, and many Japan residents doubted that the government was telling the truth in the first place. It was in that environment that Pieter Franken and his team created Safecast. Safecast began as a small group in Japan with home-made Geiger counters making their reading available to everyone. They have now grown into an international movement involving private citizens, universities, non-profit organizations and government agencies. Pieter also explains why environmental science will look very different ten years from now. It’s a fascinating discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups Why Japan's disaster preparation failed Why you need high-resolution and high-density radiation monitoring Why citizens do not,  and perhaps should not, trust their governments The advantages of creating a DYI kit rather than a product How to maintain data integrity for crowdsourced efforts Why both pro-nuke and anti-nuke activists opposed Safecast How governments have reacted to alternative data sources Safecast's plan to win over the scientific community The future of citizen science Links from the Founder Everything you wanted to know about Safecast Safecast's radiation maps Safecast's radiation report Connect with Pieter on LinkedIn Follow him on Twitter @noktonlux [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan   Disrupting Japan, episode 89. Welcome to Disrupting Japan. Straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. You know, crowdfunding and crowdsourcing in Japan largely gained in its popularity in projects related to the massive March 2011 earthquake, and ensuing tsunami, and the release of radiation at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. In fact, longtime listeners have heard the founders of some of Japan’s largest crowdfunding and crowdsourcing companies explain that breaking away from this image of crowdfunding as a social good was something that they had to overcome before their startups became truly successful. Well, today we’re going to sit down with Pieter Franken of Safecast, one of the earliest examples of widespread crowdsourcing in Japan. And we talk about how they’ve grown from a Japanese patchwork solution to the leader of a global movement. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, people throughout Japan were worried about radiation. TEPCO, who operated the facilities and the Japanese government assured everyone that things were under control and that everyone was perfectly safe. As you might imagine, however, most people were highly skeptical of these claims. The radiation data just wasn’t there or it wasn’t being shared with the public or it wasn’t believed when it was shared with the public. Pieter and his team started Safecast to make sure that lack of information and lack of transparency would never happen again and they began building low-cost Geiger counters that people around the country and then around the world could use to measure their local area and then have all that data uploaded into the cloud and made available for anyone. It’s an amazing story and it’s one that Pieter tells much better than I do. So let’s hear from our sponsors and get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1404"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey" ] [Interview] Tim: So I’m sitting here with Pieter Franken of Safecast. You guys make an open environmental data collection system for everyone but I think you can explain much better than I can what it is. Pieter: To explain what we’re doing, best thing is just to go back in time a little bit. Exactly six years ago in March 2011, we all witnessed the big earthquake and as part of that, the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. And it’s really where Safecast started. It started from the need to know what was happening in terms of radiation exposure in Japan. Also, the folks that were here will remember very well there was lots of a concern about that but also the biggest problem was there was no data available. Whatever the authorities said was very sparse and most of it was not useful, nothing was really from Fukushima itself. We tried to solve that problem. Tim: Also as I recall that there was a lot of people that just simply didn’t believe what the government was telling them. Pieter: Yeah. Lots of people didn’t trust TEPCO’s own assessment. But the real problem I think in retrospect was there was very little information available. Whatever was available was not disclosed. By the sheer fact that information was not available, that created even a bigger distrust. That was really the space where we decided to start Safecast. We said, “We must know what is happening in the environment.” Radiation at that time was the critical driver. We said, “How can we make this as open and transparent as possible?” We did all kind of things in the beginning. We didn’t start with the soldering iron and building things. We actually thought that information would be available yet it was just hard to find or not easy to digest. So we started to look around on the internet hoping to find all that information and then put it on a website and share that; however, that didn’t really fan out. We didn’t find information. Most of it was from some universities that all were in Tokyo or measuring something that wasn’t relevant. Our MEP was very empty after looking around for two weeks, so started to rethink. Tim: Did the Japanese government have a unified national data collection system for radiation? Pieter: Yes and no. They actually had a system. The system was called ‘Speedy.’ That system was originally designed to predict where the plume would go after a nuclear disaster. So it had sensors and it had a huge mainframe with a huge piece of software on it. Then we’d read all the sensor data and then churn out, project the trajectory of the plume. The key thing is that system was there. It did operate but it is not a publicly accessible system. It’s not that you’re going online and see what is happening here. So the information was exclusively available to Japanese government only. And for all kind of reasons, they decided to ignore that information. So this is one of the big parts of the whole accident that went horribly wrong. So they didn’t look at that information and they started to improvise from that point onwards. To answer your question, yes, there was a system not publicly available and effectively was not used. Today, that system has been decommissioned. Today, Japan doesn’t have that system anymore. So we actually have less than what we had before the accident. Tim: Well, hopefully with Safecast we’ve got a more thorough data than we had before. Pieter: Right. So we realized that information wasn’t available. We couldn’t put on a website so we said, “Okay. Maybe we can crowdsource the data.” The initial idea was to buy Geiger counters and give them to folks so that they could collect the data and tell us so that we could publish that. We did try to do that but shortly after the accident, all Geiger counters worldwide sold out because everybody in Japan needed one. But what we didn’t realize was that they would be sold out for 6 to 12 months because the supply chain for this is not – they’re not iPhones or something where millions can be produced on demand. Tim: Yeah. I’m sure there’s been a slow steady demand for them. Pieter: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So the factories that are churning them out were not going to scale up and were not very easy to scale up because the actual sensors are not so easy to manufacture. So the net-net was there’s no Geiger counters. We had actually run a kickstarted campaign by that time. So we got some money and then we started to rethink. We don’t have Geiger counters. What do we do next? So we had a few Geiger counters that we had. By that time we had maybe 10 or so. The idea was born that maybe we can do what Google does, kind of a street map view of radiation by driving around. That kind of started into something that we thought we could execute. We did a trial. We had a truck driver go up, David Kell. He was one of the volunteers going out by truck. We gave him a Geiger counter and an iPhone and we said, “Whenever you stop, just take a measurement and after you have taken a measurement just upload it.” As he was travelling up north, he kept on sending these pictures up and we could see what was happening. So it was kind of the real first version but it was just to see that you know, would this work? The second version of this was a group of Keio University students, and we were more structured. They were driving up and we said, “Every 5 minutes, take a picture of the Geiger counter.” They kind of duct taped the Geiger counter onto the car on the outside and they were sitting inside. So they could see the screen of the Geiger counter and every 5 minutes they snapped a picture. Tim: Yeah. In principle, that’s still kind of what you’re doing. Pieter: That’s what we’re doing. The only thing we did is we automated the process. We had a bunch of people that were at Tokyo Hackerspace. We all got together and we started to say, “How can we make this thing with Arduinos and make it more automated?” So we put the whole thing together. We chose a box to put it all in which looked kind of a bento box. We hooked up a computer and that was kind of the real kind of the first thing we got going. Tim: So you basically designed a do-it-yourself Geiger counter kit. Pieter: Right.

Selling innovative software to conservative Japanese businesses is never easy, but it’s particularly challenging in the cutthroat and low-margin restaurant industry. Today, we sit down with Masao “TJ” Tejima and talk about how he brought OpenTable into Japan, and why it took him much longer than he had originally hoped. It’s a wide-ranging and deep-diving discussion on how to identify which companies are most suitable for Japan market entry and TJ’s rather extreme approach to maintaining a consistent corporate culture between Japan and corporate headquarters. We also take a look at some of the biggest mistakes Western companies make when hiring a Japan Country Manager and a few simple ways those mistakes can be avoided. It’s a fascinating discussion, and I think you’ll really enjoy it Show Notes Why leave a  company after a successful market entry? How to build a product around a human network Why you need to run market entry like a startup OpenTable's real business model and how is was adapted for Japan How to sell new technology to traditional low-margin businesses The danger of over-localization Why the Japanese fast followers ran into problems How to build a global culture at a Japanese subsidiary The one type of Japanese General Manager foreign companies need to beware of Links Masao's official bio Sports for Life is Masao's latest project is running the Asia Pacific Corporate Games [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript   Disrupting Japan, episode 88. Welcome to Disrupting Japan. Straight talk from the CEOs breaking into Japan. I am Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Today, we’re going to be sitting down with Masao Tejima or "TJ" as his friends call him and I have to admit, that this interview did not exactly goes as planned. A few days beforehand, TJ and I agreed to sit down and talk about how he brought Open Table to Japan. And he used that experience as a jumping off point to give advice about how to bring in innovative software company to Japan and then sell to very conservative Japanese companies - and we did that. And then in the next forty minutes, you’re going to be hearing all about it. However, Open Table was not TJ’s first Japan market entry. He also brought in Macomedia and before that all this. And our simple talk, meandered him into ninety minutes history of desktop publishing in Japan and how he had to forge strategic alliances and corporate standards that allowed the technology to take route. I walked away with the makings of two amazing stories on tape. So, here’s what we’re going to do. Today, we’re going to tell you the much more recent story of how Open Table entered the Japanese market. And a bit later, we’ll have TJ on again to give us the blueprint of the right technology can let you disrupt an entire industry in only a few years, even in Japan. Today, we’re going to learn about how to identify what companies are most suitable for Japan market entry and talk about TJ’s rather extreme approach to maintaining a consistent corporate culture between Japan and corporate headquarters. We’ll talk about effective techniques for selling innovative software to conservative Japanese businesses and we’ll look at some of the biggest mistakes companies make in hiring their Japan Country Managers. But you know, TJ tells that story much better than I can. So, let’s hear from our sponsor and get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey"  ] [Interview] Tim: So I am sitting here with TJ Tejima of well formerly, Japan CEO of Open Table. So, thanks for sitting down with me. TJ: Thank you very much. Tim: So before we get started with the history of this market entry and what went right and what went wrong, can you give us a brief explanation of what Open Table’s business model is? TJ: It was 2000 or 2002, I was a General Manager of Macomedia which has Aldus, Adobe. I have to be in San Francisco because headquarter is in San Francisco. I have to have a lunch, I have to have a dinner, but I try to make a reservation so sometime, Japanese restos not completely made then I found the system so-called Open Table Reservation System, in the website. And oh, it is great so I tried to use this type of system in Japan in the future and this was a first impression about this service, as a diner. Tim: Okay, so you approached the Open Table team and said I want to bring this company to Japan? TJ: I searched executive member of Open Table, fortunately, there are two people whom I know. Tim: Okay. TJ: And I send an email to them and I would like to have a meeting with you guys, I’d like to know the back ground of Open Table. It was 2004 and I already left Macomedia. So I would like to find a new type of a technology business after I designed Macomedia and I did several investment and they establish several business. Tim: Why did you leave both Aldus and Macomedia? TJ: So I think, it took maybe three years plus two short, but the six years is too long. The technology and marketing innovation is my hobby. Tim: So, was it, you were feeling that you needed a new challenge or just there’s a bigger opportunity with another technology? TJ: Everything, everything. I do not want boring so many smart people in the market as a human resource. Very smart people can manage company very well and can grow the company very well. I don’t have this type of capability at all. I established a business, I created the human network first then product has come next – this is what I did. So, I always establish start-up company first then three to six years, I have to find another option. Tim: I think this is really interesting because I’ve always thought, market entry companies follow the same path as start-up companies. And oftentimes, the person to grow a start-up from zero people to thirty people is very different from the person you want to grow it with thirty to three hundred. And with market entry, it’s very much the same I think. TJ: Yes, totally agree with you. Especially the first people who must open the door for the market, these people has to have a somewhere clear vision because these people can write the regulation of this market.  But after some market is bigger, so many people can write additional writing the regulation or change the regulation, quickly. Tim: So by regulation, you didn’t mean like government regulation, you mean more of the industry standard, the way things are done in the industry? TJ: The industry standard of a technology like a baseline, How to consider baseline, How to Write the license, How to Use Ruby and how to transfer the Beta Technology from server to computer or Samson back then. Tim: But now getting back to OpenTable, it seems to me that now from OpenTables’ perspective, I’m sure they were very happy to be contacted, you could just say, “Look, I brought in Aldus and that was a success, I brought in Macomedia, that was a success.” But from your point of view, it seems OpenTable is a very different kind of company. It was focused on particular service rather than a new technology trend that was going to change the market. So, what attracted you to Open Table? Did you just think it was a fantastic service that you wanted to introduce or what was it? TJ: In terms of diners, open to provide internet reservation system to the diners – I thought like that. But actually, I understood open to provide reservation taking technology to the customer. Customer management technology to the reservation, they combined these two technologies together, parked in the wrong computer, two provider (to) these to the restaurants. Also, the knowledge of hospitality by (the) technology. This is totally similar to the DTP, totally similar internet. Tim: Okay. Yeah I see. So, you were viewing it as modernization of restaurants which is another paper-based business. TJ: That’s right, that’s right. So, OpenTable system for the restaurant is totally same as a Illustrator or Photoshop for designers. Tim: That makes sense. So, why was OpenTable interested in Japan? Was it they kind of met you and you convinced them that Japan was important or was Japan part of their global strategy before that? TJ: Well, I contacted OpenTable guy to in 2004. They didn’t consider that they extend their market to Japan at all because the market of a restaurant reservation in US was still enough for them. So, they have to invest a lot of money. So, they thought the timing to be global company must be two years later or three years later. It is the reason why actual establishment of OpenTable Japan was in 2006. It took two years to convince them. Tim: And when they came into Japan, was it a only on subsidiary? Was it a JV? TJ: Only subsidiary. Tim: What did the initial team look like? You’ve been working with them for two years, so you obviously had a good relationship with the founders. In 2006, what kind of team did you put together on the ground? TJ: I hired the best Product Manager who used to work with me in the Adobe and I picked several guys from them and also I picked the General Manager of restaurant, whom I know very much. Tim: Okay. TJ: And also the establishment of a hotel. Tim: So, very small team – four or five people? TJ: Yes, four or five people which was in the T&T office like an incubational office in as fast, two years. Tim: So, what was your approach to the market? ‘Cause the US market and the Japanese market is quite different in this respect. A lot of Japanese restaurants don’t take reservations, it’s not a common thing. What was your approach to getting customers? Did you just start with the high-run more expensive restaurants or did you try to convince people that this type of assistance will be better for them?

Education is one of the hardest sectors to disrupt -- or even improve upon -- and most EdTech startups struggle. Today we sit down with Go Arai and we talk about how his company, Arcterus, is taking a bottom-up approach to improving education. Arcterus has developed a service called Clear, which profits by helping students help each other study. Clear is basically a study-notebook sharing platform, and now Go and his team are building it out into something much more than that. We talk about Arcterus’ recent Asian expansion and why some seemingly small cultural differences made their product unviable in certain countries. We also explore why it's sometimes hard for Japanese startups to pivot and the effects of the company and the team when a radical change in direction is needed. It’s a fascinating discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups Why notebook sharing works in Japan but not in America How lessons from a corporate  turnaround were applied to a startup How a terrible skiing accident ended up launching a startup Why it took the team five pivots to find product-market fit What makes pivoting hard in Japan How to use Twitter to drive business Why other Asian countries are ahead of Japan in EdTech What today's textbooks will evolve into Links from the Founder Arcterus Homepage Everything you ever wanted to know about Clear Friend Go on Facebook [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan   Disrupting Japan, episode 87. Welcome to Disrupting Japan. Straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. You know, for a few very good reasons and many very bad reasons, education is particularly hard to disrupt. I think a big part of this is that the goal of public education is far more than imparting a set of skills onto the students. Although my libertarian friends might disagree, public schooling provides not only the hard skills that students need to function in the society, but universal education provides us with a shared experience and shared frame of reference that helps us define society. It’s something that binds us together. Now, different countries have different approaches to creating this shared experience. In Japan, the Ministry of Education defines precisely what every child in the countries learning, in any given week. In America, there are no national requirements at all, and tremendous latitude is given to the states and to the individual school boards. One approach is not necessarily better than the other but startups that try to disrupt the way we impart skills to our children at the expense of that shared experience, are likely to fail. Or worse, succeed and do long term harm to our society. Well today, we’re going to sit down and talk with Go Arai, CEO of Arcterus, a EdTech startup that is trying to help students learn more effectively but also contribute, just a little bit, to that shared experience. Arcterus is a platform that allows students that share their study notebooks with other students and then profit from that sharing. We also talk about Arcterus’ recent Asian expansion. You know, we in the west often make the mistake of thinking about "Asian" culture. But there really is no such thing as Asian culture. Asian countries have an incredible diversity of cultures and Arcterus ran straight into that as they discovered that very specific cultural traits determine whether they will succeed or fail in a specific country. But you know Go tells that story better much I can. So, let’s hear from our sponsor and then get right into the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1404"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey" ] (Interview) Tim: So we’re sitting here with Go Arai of Arcterus it’s a social learning app based on notebook sharing, but you can probably explain it much better than I can, so why don’t you tell us a bit about Arcterus and about your products? Go: The main product that we have is called Clear. It’s a platform for the students to share their study notebooks like Youtube users can publish their notebook, others users can see it and use them as textbook to solve their study problems and if you are very popular user, you can sell your notebook in the platform. Globally, we call it “Youtube of Study Notebooks”. In Japan, we call it a “Cookpad of Study Notebooks” Tim: Cookpad being a really popular sharing recipe site here in Japan. Go: Yes, yes. It’s very popular in Japan. Tim: Tell me about your customers. Who are your main users? The high school, or junior highschool, college or crams schools? Go: The users are mainly middle school students and highschool students. We also have university students and also primary school students. They use it mainly for preparing for school exams and entrance exams. So, when they difficulties solving the mathematic problems, they look into the notebooks in Clear. Tim: I can see why in Japan it’s easier to market a product like that because the curriculum is very standardized throughout Japan. The National Government has pretty much established the curriculum you know, every tenth grader in Japan is learning the same part in history this week as every other tenth grader? Go: Yes, exactly. So that is something, that’s something that might be a little different from the case in the States as you say, the learning and the studying of standardized across the country and that makes it easier and more sense for the users to publish their notebook. Tim: About how many active users do you have now? Go: Accumulated users is almost one point five million (1.5M) users globally. Tim: Before we dig into the company in detail and into your marketing strategies, I want to talk a bit about you. Go: Okay, yeah. Tim: So, you seem kind of an unlikely entrepreneur. Your background was management consulting and you worked in the management of hospitality industry for a number of years. So, why start an Ed Tech company? Go: Yes, so right before starting out there I was CEO of turnaround business between Hoshino Resort and a private equity fund and that was about almost ten years ago. I had this business plan regarding education and I proposed this to Mr. Hoshino, to the joint venture with me and Mr. Hoshino agreed to do this business with me. But after I did this feasability study, I find that this business won't make money. When I told that to Mr. Hoshino, he told me that, he said that the thing I am lacking here is management experience and he offered this position to manage a new business that they are studying in Hoshino Resort and that was the ski resort turn around business Tim: You went into the path of your career strictly to learn how to manage people or learn how to manage companies? Go: Learn how to manage company, learn how to do marketing and make money, and yeah manage the team. Tim: It’s always interesting to when I talk to people who used to work at Oracle, Mitsubishi who are now running companies about how little they have learned applies to start-ups, but coming from a mid-sized company and one where you are expected to turn things around. Was you experience the same? Did you find that what you have learned there apply to start-ups or did you have to learn everything all over again once you started your company? Go: Similar I think between turnaround business and start-up business is that both are in chaotic situation of strong leadership and strong will of their management is the key. What I learn in that situation from Mr. Hoshino can be applied to a lot to what I’m doing right now. So, yeah start-up is a, I would call it a series of pivots. Every single time of pivoting, you need to lead your team members with strong will with strong will. Tim: So was the Ed Tech start-up you had in your mind this whole time you were doing the turnaround business? Go: The basic concept is very similar. We call it ‘adaptive learning’. A lot of people use this term for adapting the contents and the way they learn, to study. Our product is based on that concept and I always had that concept in my mind even before joining management consulting. Tim: Okay, so what was the final trigger that made you decide to take the plunge and to start the company? Go: There were two triggers: one is that my very good friend from business school decided to join me he had a very good experience in start-ups, he decided to join me. Another trigger is very interesting so when I was working in a ski resort, and I was skiing outside of the course with my team members, I had an incident with a tree. I bumped into a tree and I broke my three of m rib bones and two of them stick into my lung and the lungs was exploded Tim: Wow. That’s pretty serious.   Go: Yeah, that was pretty serious actually. So I couldn’t move and all my team members went down to the course. I was along in a ski resort outside of the course, injured. I thought I was going to die and luckily someone in my team found out that I was lost and I came back and called the rescue team and I luckily I got rescued and sent to a hospital. During that time waiting for my team, waiting for rescue if I can live through it and get back to Tokyo, I have to restart my career as entrepreneur and education. Tim: I can see an experience like that and being in the hospital just makes you stop and think about a lot of things in your life but what exactly about that experience made you change? What was it? Go: When I though I was going to die, I didn’t want to die before finishing what I was going to do, what I wanted to do and what I wanted do when I started my career as a management in the turnaround business, is provide a new education service to the world. Tim: Now,

The translation and localization industry has seen some impressive innovations over the past decade, but in many ways, it has remained stubbornly resistant to change. Today we sit down and talk with Jeff Sandford co-founder of Wovn.io. The Wovn team has developed a way to take the pain out of web localization and translation. They promise to do it all with a single line of code. We talk a bit about the mechanics of web-site localization and state of the industry as a whole, and we also discuss some important but surprising differences between with makes compelling UI/UX design for Japanese and for Western users, and what kinds of tasks machine translation can really be trusted with. Jeff also explains why he decided to start a company with someone he had never meet. It’s a great discussion, and I think you’ll really enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups Why website translation is important but often overlooked Why Jeff chose to start a company with someone he had never met  How to combat Japan's "Design by Committee" problem Why you should not trust machine translation for e-commerce When you need to change from a bottom-up to top-down sales strategy The challenges of working with Japanese enterprise customers as a startup Advice for foreign engineers and founders who want to come to Japan Why Japan needs to get uncomfortable Links from the Founder Wovn.io homepage Wovn.io on Twitter Wovn.io on Facebook [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan Disrupting Japan, episode 86. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Today we’re going to talk about something that you and I, and probably everyone else listening right now has struggled with. Translation and localization. It’s been an industry that has both seen some impressive innovations over the past decade, but is also somehow quite resistant to change. Localization is a part of business that almost every firm has to deal with, but almost no one looks forward to. It’s a lot like dealing with lawyers in that way, I suppose. Well, today we sit down with Jeff Sandford, cofounder of Wovn.io who say they’ve developed a one line of code method for taking the pain out of localization and translation. We talk a bit about the mechanics of website localization and the state of the industry as a whole, of course. We also talk about the important and surprising differences between what makes great UI/UX with Japanese and western users. And what kind of tasks machine translation can really be trusted with. And Jeff shares a story of what made him decide to start a company with a cofounder who he’d never even met before. But you know, Jeff tells that story much better than I can. So let’s hear from our sponsor, and get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey"  ] [Interview] Tim: Cheers. Jeff: Cheers. Tim: So I’m sitting with Jeff, cofounder of Minimal Technologies and the creator of Wovn.io. And thanks for sitting down with me today. Jeff: Thank you very much. Good to be here. Tim: Wovn.io at a high level is simply localization for a website. But it’s more than that. It’s more interesting than that so why don’t you tell us a bit about what it is. Jeff: So often people when you tell them you do website localization, they think translation, which it actually isn’t. Translation is a very integral part of it, but what we focus on is the system of localizing a website. So let’s say you have an English website, and you’ll like to create a Chinese version or Spanish version of that website, we handle all of the details of actually creating those versions, and also managing them and serving them to users. Tim: Now there’s a lot of companies that are doing that, but you guys have a particularly interesting approach to it. The Wovn.io promise, as it were, is the ultimate in simplicity, right? Jeff: Right. Tim: It’s a single line of code copied into your webpage. Jeff: Exactly. Yes. In the simplest case, you can really take a website, even a relatively large website, and have the entire thing translated within minutes. That’s the promise. That’s the goal. Right? Tim: You get little pieces out of JavaScript code. You sign up a Wovn.io. You get your API key. You put that code in your website, and suddenly the whole website is Wovn.io enabled? Jeff: Yes, that’s it. Tim: And how do you localize? How do you translate? How do you actually get the Chinese and the Japanese onto the page? Jeff: Okay, okay. So the next step is actually creating those translations and putting them in place. So what a lot of people do, especially larger websites or people who have websites that constantly change, is they use our automatic translation features and automatic page creation features. So you turn those on, and we will automatically add all the pages on your website. We’ll automatically translate all of your content and publish it for users to see. Now if you don’t want to do it automatically, you can also all the pages added for you, and then go and translate everything yourself. A very common use case is to do the automatic translation, and then go back and edit, and modify it, and improve it yourself. Tim: Well, that would make a lot of sense. But actually tell me a bit about the use cases. Tell me about your customers. Who’s using Wovn? Jeff: A lot of our customers tend to be surprisingly ecommerce sort of sites and larger websites here in Japan. Surprisingly enough, Japanese companies haven’t quite gotten on board with localization yet on their websites. And specifically it’s the Tokyo Lymbix, which is coming up. It has really lit a fire under them to start working on this. Tim: Well ecommerce makes sense because that way someone puts up a new product, it’s automatically translated into two or three additional languages, and they can go back and refine that later. Jeff: Exactly, and you can see right then the cost benefit of it as well. Tim: Right. And so who else it? Like a travel industry site or is it a— Jeff: That’s another one. Travel industry, tourism in general, and then also restaurants or things that have a lot have a lot of foot traffic from tourists and things like that is also pretty common. Hotels is another one. Tim: And about how many clients do you have now? How many sites are being translated or being localized by Wovn.io? Jeff: Alright, so this changes all the time, but I think right now— Tim: Hopefully it’s going up. Jeff: It is going up. I think currently it’s about 8,000. Tim: Alright. Jeff: So yeah, 8,000 websites. Tim: Okay, and of those 8,000 sites, how many are paying and how many are on the free tier? Jeff: Good question. So right now the paid ones are definitely on the smaller side of it. Tim: They always are. Jeff: Well, definitely. It’s that most of our paid users are Japanese right now. Tim: I want to dig down into that a little bit later, and talk about your overall sales and marketing strategy. But before we do, let me back up a bit and let’s talk a little bit about you. Jeff: Sure. Tim: You cofounded this company in 2014 with Hayashi-san? Jeff: Yes. Tim: Well, let’s back up a bit. What brought you to Japan the first time? Jeff: Good question. This is the question you always get as a foreigner in Japan. Tim: It’s obligatory. Jeff: Initially, I just really wanted the experience to live outside of my home country. I had a computer science degree, so I could have been a developer. But I had this fear that if I jumped into a career in English, I would never learn Japanese. I did not want to get stuck in an English bubble, which a lot of people do here. Tim: It’s easy to do here. Jeff: Especially with the internet these days. It’s so easy to live in your own world in Japan. Because of that, I decided to do something I knew I really wouldn’t enjoy that much to force myself to learn Japanese so that I can work in a Japanese company or in a company that I could speak Japanese. So I started out by being an English teacher. I did it for about two and a half years. Had enough of that. Tim: Yeah, two years is a pretty— Jeff: Yeah. Tim: Yeah, it’s a tough job. Jeff: I don’t hate it, but it’s definitely not what is going to be my career, and I definitely knew it wasn’t going to be so I wanted to move forward. But definitely I think teaching is much more difficult than people give it credit for. Tim: It’s a tough, tough job. Jeff: I’ve always done some freelance for development and things so after that, I continued to kind of work full-time. I lived in Japan for a little bit doing freelance web development, actually. And then I had some awesome weddings back in the States. So I’m back from some weddings, actually. So when I was back in the States for that, that’s when I got connected with Takuharu Hayashi. We actually had a few Skype meetings, and decided over Skype to do it. One of my good friends here, a guy from New Zealand is the one who said, “Hey, Jeff, there’s this guy who is looking to cofound with somebody. He’s looking for somebody who speaks English, or someone who’s foreign, who has experience globally. So what do you thing?” So I connected with him. We decided to do it before even seeing each other. We decided over Skype. I came to Japan to work, to cofound with this person, and I never met this person. Tim: Okay, and the company you two have built is a very multinational team, right? Jeff: Yes. Tim: Usually when I see start-ups in Japan that have a good multicultural team to them, it’s usually foreign engineers and Japanese support and sales. And it’s that kind of how it’s worked out for you guys? Jeff: It is similar, actually.