Disrupting Japan

Seeking help for even minor mental health problems still carries a stigma in Japan. This is particularly unfortunate because clinical research shows that a significant portion of Japanese adults suffer from depression or other mental illnesses. Ayako Shimizu, the founder of Hikari Labs, has an innovative approach that represents a huge step forward in addressing this problem. Hikari Labs develops and distributes video games based on cognitive behavior therapy, and these games enable players to literally train their brains out of depression. Her approach bypasses both the stigma and costs involved in seeking treatment. Even in conservative Japan, she is seeing increasing and enthusiastic adoption by corporate wellness programs. But this whole project was almost shut down by the very people who should have been helping her. Ayako has a fascinating story, and I think you’ll really enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups How gaming can treat depression and reduce suicide rates Why marketing mental health games is so challenging The changing profiles of Japanese who suffer depression Why women have higher rates of depression, but lower rates of suicide How Ayako's University tried to put a stop to this project How to build a business model around mental health Why conservative corporations are on the forefront of improving mental health in Japan Links from the Founder Hikari Labs homepage Online counseling YouTube video Todai Shinbun article Follow Ayako on Twitter @Hikari_Lab_Inc Friend her on Facebook Try out SPARX SPARX for iPhone/iPad SPARX for Android Clinical Journal on SPARX [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan   Disrupting Japan, episode 85. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Now long-term listeners know that this show is not really about start-ups. Well, of course it’s about start-ups, but it’s about so much more than that. Japanese start-ups give us a unique perspective on Japanese society. Looking at the problems that need to be solved, the path people are taking to try to solve them, and seeing what challenges society throw up against them can tell us more about a country or a society than mountains of surveys and piles of longitudinal studies. Start-ups tell us the kind of future that people envision, and how the present plans on resisting the future. Nowhere is this more true than with today’s guest. Ayako Shimizu, founder of Hikari Labs. Ayako is developing and marketing video games to treat mental illness, and she has the clinical data that shows the approach has real therapeutic value. And yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, Japanese academia and the medical industry as a whole have been—Well, let’s just say less supportive of her efforts. But still she’s seen steady increases in both the number of users and growing interest from a surprising segment of corporate Japan. But you know, Ayako tells that story much better than I can. So let’s here 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 Ayako Shimizu of Hikari Labs, and thanks for sitting down with me. Ayako: Thank you, Tim, for inviting me here. Tim: Now Hikari Labs is focused on improving mental health through software, I guess. But why don’t you tell us a bit about what Hikari Labs does and what it’s mission is. Ayako: Okay, well Hikari Labs currently have two services. One is online counseling called Kokoro Works, and another one is this game application called Sparx, which was developed at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. And our mission is to help shape a society that’s the psychological care is more reachable to people. Tim: Let’s talk about each of these individually. Ayako: Yeah. Tim: And later on, we’re also going to talk about your new AI project. Ayako: Okay, okay. Tim: But the Sparx project is really interesting. It’s a role-playing game that’s based on behavioral therapy. So what exactly is cognitive behavioral therapy? Ayako: Cognitive behavioral therapy is one kind of counseling, which effect has been proven in many studies for depression and for anxiety disorders. It’s basic level. Cognitive behavioral therapy considers that thoughts, emotion, and behavior are interconnected. So it aims to change one’s emotional behavior through altering one’s thought. So for example, if you say, ‘Well, there are several bad things that happened today, and today wasn’t a good thing at all.’, which is one cognitive distortion called over-generalization. Having a few bad things that day, doesn’t make our entire bad day. It’s your cognition that makes that entire day a bad day. If that’s— Tim: No, it’s you’re focusing on the bad things that happened. Ayako: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT, tries to adjust people’s thought in a little bit more positive world or in a more realistic way. Tim: So I could see how that would work in a counseling session where you would have a therapist that would just kind of guide the patient towards the more positive things. But how does that work in the Sparx role-playing game? Ayako: Yeah, so Sparx is a role-playing game, and it’s based on CBT methodology. All of its works is very unique. So your avatar is in a fantasy would, which balance of mood was destroyed. So it’s a very negative world, and your avatar goes in the world and saves the world through learning CBT. So those negative feeling character attack you, and you have to defend yourself by giving more positive comments or realistic comments. Tim: I see. So in a sense, the game play is having the character counteract these negative thoughts and negative directions— Ayako: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tim: —and that trains the person to do the same things? Ayako: And it makes you learn different kinds of cognitive distortions. So through playing game, you learn a different kind of cognitive distortion, and in real life you kind of notice, ‘I’m feeling down, but this might be that kind of cognitive distortion I’m having. I can maybe adjust the way I feel.’ Tim: That’s a really interesting idea. Is there any clinical data or studies that back whether it’s effective or not? Ayako: Yeah, actually this was created by the medical team of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. The suicidal rate among the teen is very high in New Zealand, so it was originally a national project. The developers of Sparx found that the remission rate of depression was 43.7%, which is pretty high. And they concluded that Sparx was as effective as face-to-face therapy. Tim: So you brought this game to Japan last year in 2016, right? Ayako: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tim: So how has it been received in Japan? Ayako: Well, I haven’t been started advertisement a lot. So even though I haven’t done much advertisement, I think it’s been spreading among those people who need help. Tim: So how many users do you have? Ayako: Forgive me, it’s very small proportion. It’s around 2,000 users, but it was originally 1,000 yen. And now we changed it to 2,000 yen. But most of the applications are free these days. I think 2,000 users is pretty good without any advertisement. Tim: This is interesting. To try to market this as a game, which—in one sense it is, but the game business model doesn’t really apply as well. Ayako: Yeah, it doesn’t. No. Tim: Are you marketing this as a game? Are you marketing this as therapy, or kind of self-help? Or how do you present it? Ayako: Yeah, I’m marketing this as a self-help tool. But a lot of times, many kinds of self-help applications are ready. But then those applications seems too serious for some people. So by saying this is a self-help but still a role-playing game, then those people are a little bit still hesitant to reach some therapy, they’re more open to use. Tim: So who are you targeting with the game? Is it teens? Is it young adults? Is it the whole spectrum of everyone that plays games? Ayako: No it was—I was open to anyone, but then I found out most of the users are male aged from 30 to 50, which is very interesting because those are the age that has high rate of depression. And plus those are the age that are used to using smart phones. Tim: So in New Zealand, it was targeting teens, but in Japan you’ve seen the biggest used among 30 to 50. That’s interesting. Ayako: That is interesting, and what’s more interesting is that depression rate is much higher in female than male. But at the same time, the suicidal rate in Japan— the male rate of suicide is twice as female. Which means is that a lot of male who have depression doesn’t seek any care but decides to suicide. So what I see is since it’s a game, and it seems more lighter than all the other treatment, I think a lot of males are open to using it. If that makes since? Tim: I think that does make sense. A little later on I want to talk about kind of the social stigma about depression in Japan. But why is it that women in Japan have a higher rate of depression but the suicide rate is higher among men? Do women seek out help more? Ayako: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They do. They are more talkative. So that’s what researchers say women are more open to talk about their problems, but male are not. Even though male have a lot of friends, they don’t talk about themselves that much. Tim: Okay. That’s pretty universal? Ayako: Yeah, it is. It is a very universal thing. Tim: Okay,

Today we sit down with Dave McClure under the cherry blossoms and talk about startups, funding, failure Dave has long been involved in Japan and in the startup community here, and in this episode, we talk about the progress Japan has made in the past decade and the changes that still need to be made. We go over what Dave sees as the gaps in the Japan’s venture capital ecosystem and also dispel some of the pervasive myths that have spread throughout Silicon Vally and the entire startup world. We spend a bit of time diving into what Dave and 500 Startups consider to be a risky business model, and it may not be what you expect, but it’s great advice for anyone thinking of starting a company. It’s a great discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups Who is doing most of the investing in Japan right now Why Japan needs more angel investors What startups should be looking for in investors How to find a startup idea What Japan should learn from Silicon Valley and what it should ignore Which business models are truly unproven The one thing Japan should change to encourage startups How to really learn from failure Links from the Founder 500 Startups 500 Startups Japan Follow Dave on Twitter @davemcclure Friend him on Facebook Connect with him on LinkedIn   [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan Disrupting Japan, episode 84. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from CEOs breaking into Japan. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for listening. Japan, well most of the world really has an unhealthy obsession with Silicon Valley. I’ve been to Japanese language start-up events here in Tokyo where the phrases Silicon Valley, or San Francisco, were mentioned more than twice as often as Tokyo or Japan. And yes, I actually did keep count. And I’m sure none of my friends are the least bit surprised by that. My point is that while Japan can learn a lot from Silicon Valley, the reverse is also true. There are a lot of things going right in Japan, and many things that are developing differently here than they are in Silicon Valley. Well, today we sit down with Dave McClure, founder of 500 Startups, and we talk under the cherry blossoms about start-ups funding failure, and about some of the most pervasive myths surrounding start-ups and start-up founders. For our listeners who are not familiar with the Japanese tradition of Hanami, or cherry blossom viewing, I’ll explain it to you in both theory and practice because those two can be a bit different. In theory, Hinami is a time to reflect on the transitory nature of beauty, of our possessions, and of life itself. The cherry blossoms bloom only for a few days a year before their pedals fall. And almost everyone in Japan no matter how busy or sick will make at least a little time to go out and walk among the blossoms. The trees really are beautiful, and that beauty is made all the more precious by the fact that they can only be appreciated for such a brief period of time. In practice, people from all over Japan get together with their friends under the cherry blossom trees, get rip-roaringly drunk, sing karaoke, and have a great and boisterous time.  So when Dave and I are talking and in the background, you hear school girls laughing, drunken cheering, and people suddenly breaking into song, you’ll know what’s going on. It was a great party and a great discussion. 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. Dave: Cheers. Tim: So I’m sitting hear with the indomitable and encourageable Dave McClure. Dave: Encourageable sounds right. Tim: So thanks for sitting down. I really do appreciate your time. Dave: Yeah. Tim: You’ve had ties to Japan for a long time. Dave: Yes, probably about 20 years or more. Tim: And you’ve been actively involved in investing here for about, what, 10 years? Dave: Maybe seven. I think the first investment I made was a company called Gengo that was, I guess back in 2010. Although I met the founders a few years before that. Tim: In the past, you’ve talked a lot about how much the start-up ecosystem has changed here obviously for the better in the last 10 years. Dave: Yeah, definitely. Tim: Let’s stroll down a bit on the VC side because those same technological trends, cloud computing, the sharing even information of open source that has allowed start-ups to be started for next to nothing has allowed venture capitalists to start for next to nothing. Dave: Well, next to nothing let’s say for companies maybe for half a million to a million dollars, and for VCs maybe five to twenty-five million dollars, but that necessarily fall from trees, or from cherry blossoms, I guess I would say while we’re here. But yes, it is a lot easier to secure capital from the entrepreneurs and from investors. Tim: What’s your opinion of sort of the high level of the current state of the funding ecosystem here in Japan? So there’s a lot of seed funds, there’s a lot of traditional funds that are available for like mezzanine financing. Dave: Right. Well, there’s not a lot of angel investors. There’s not a lot of funds that are being run by operational ex-entrepreneurs. I think a lot of the capital that you see in Japan is coming from more traditional financial sectors either government related or financial services related—certainly a lot of corporate entities that are doing investments. But some of those folks are maybe less family with the risk-taking that an entrepreneur has. There are a few folks who I think have been—maybe prior to gaming companies like Gree or DeNA—They probably have a little bit better appreciation or maybe Rakuten or SoftBank. But I think still a lot of the capital sources are more traditional. And so there’s maybe a different thought process or framework around how to deploy that capital that’s more conservative. Tim: Is it hurting the ecosystem, or is it something you just is just different? Dave: Well, I don’t know if it’s hurting it necessarily any more than in the past. I would probably prefer that at least an early stage of capital come from folks who have operational experience and understand needs of entrepreneurs a little more. But capital is good. I think having some amount of capital is certainly better than none. And as you mentioned, I think there’s a lot more informed sources of capital than there may have been 5, 10, 15 years ago for sure. But there’s definitely got to be people who have an eye for what products are functional, what type of these cases are going to work. Maybe who are more grounded in what the actual problems to be solved are. I think sometimes there’s a little bit too much fascination with sexy topics just because everybody talks about robotics, or talks about AR, VR, or talks about drugs. You get a lot of capital flying at very glamourous, shall I say, types of business. Tim: Well, the trends happen all over the place. But for example, from a start-up point of view, among young Japanese entrepreneurs, there is this kind of idea that the natural first step is joining an accelerated. An accelerator—The way I see it is an accelerator—$50,000 in working capital is not really going to get you very far. And it seems like you’re— Dave: Yeah, maybe 6 to 12 months, but it probably won’t get you to a real company of any scale unless you get a little bit more capital or maybe can sell products and bootstrap your way there through cash flow. Tim: So what should start-ups be looking for? Is it that operational experience that you were talking about before? Dave: Well, I hesitate to put everything into the same bucket or category because different businesses lend themselves differently to how they grow. And I think sometimes we’re guilty of just assuming that all companies are similar, and that’s not really the case, I think. You have people running a ramen shop, and you have people running an automotive sort of business, and you have people running internet businesses, and there really are different capital needs, and different growth structures, different customer base. So I think sometimes people get too much in this glamorous kind of worship mode about start-ups, when I’d rather they really focus on who is the customer and what is the problem you’re trying to solve, and be passionate about that. Because I think we’ve—We’re at the point where not entrepreneurs are so glamorous, it’s more sexy than starting a band. I feel like people— Tim: Yeah. Dave: —do a start-up just to be cool. And turns out running a start-up is actually pretty hard, and pretty painful, and doesn’t pay very well— Tim: Yeah. Dave: —and is not for the faint of heart. Tim: Yeah, I agree. It’s astounding how the attitude has changed. I was in high school, everyone was starting a band, and now everyone’s writing an app. Tim: I guess for some folks they will find their way to success, but it’s a better structure—In my opinion it’s better when entrepreneurs start businesses because they’ve had a frustration, or a pain, or this problem that they’re trying to solve that they’ve understood for a while, or they know the customer, and what the needs of those customers are, and how they’re going to address that. As opposed to just, ‘Hey, I’m a coder, and I want to be a start-up entrepreneur. And what’s the brightest, shiny object around the corner that I can build some apps around?’ Tim: Well, at the end, it’s you’re building a business. You’re not building a product. Dave: Yeah, and I think people sometimes forget that. So there’s a giant risk in going from just a concept and idea to a functional product. And even with a functional product,

Growing our meat in a lab or factory has been a science fiction staple for decades, but much like jetpacks, it has never quite worked out in practice -- at least not at scale. Yuki Hanyu and his team at Shojinmeat, however, are changing that. Actually, scientists have been growing muscle tissue in labs for more than 100 years, but Shojinmeat has developed techniques that bring the cost down to less than one 1,000th of traditional approaches. Now, that still leaves it too expensive for most commercial applications, but Yuki explains how his team (and others) will bring the costs down into the commercial range very soon. We also talk about both why Japanese life-sciences startups have such a hard time raising money in Japan and how Shojinmeat found a way to make the system work for them. It’s a great discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups How do you grow meat in the Lab? Why cellular agriculture doesn’t get funding Is lab-grown meat kosher? Combining open research and patent protection How to bring down the cost of cultured meat Solving the taste problem How cultured meat will become available Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Shojinmeat How Integriculture is commercializing lab-grown meat Check out Yuki's blog Follow him on twitter @yukihanyu1 New Havest talks about Yuki's project [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan Disrupting Japan, episode 83. 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 the future of meat. Many would say the future of humanity, but really today we’re just going to talk about the meat. Yuki Hanyu and his team at ShojinMeat are growing meat in the lab, and they’re doing it at a tiny fraction of the cost of traditional methods. Actually, it turns out that lab-grown meat or cellular agriculture—as the discipline is actually called—is not particularly new. It’s been in active development all over the world for well over 100 years. What’s different about ShojinMeat, however is that they’ve been able to bring the cost down by an astounding three orders of magnitude. And that brings a technology within striking distance of a lot of practical uses. We dive into the actual science behind cellular agriculture. And if you can follow all of it, it means that you’re a huge biology nerd, and I love you for it. Otherwise, it would be good just to let the science wash over you. It’s a pretty amazing topic. Another thing we talk about is why Japanese life sciences start-ups have such a hard time both raising money and growing here in Japan. And how ShojinMeat meat has found a way to make the system work for them. But you know, Yuki 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: So I’m sitting here with Yuki Hanyu of ShojinMeat, and thanks for sitting down with me. Yuki: Thank you very much for inviting me to the podcast. Tim: Today we’re going to talk about meat. Yuki: Yeah, meat. Tim: And most specifically, cellular agriculture. So to get started. Why don’t you explain what what ShojinMeat is? Yuki: We are a collection of volunteer students, artists, and people of various disciplines to develop cultured meat technology. Tim: So it’s a bio-hacker community here in Tokyo, right? Yuki: Yes. Tim: So how long have you been doing this. Yuki: If you’re talking about active wet novelty work, that will be about a year and a half. Tim: Okay. Yuki: And if you’re talking about people building a team, that would be about two and a half years. Tim: Alright. Okay, well actually before we go forward in this, let’s step back a bit and talk about the process. So exactly how does the process work? What are you doing? Yuki: So the basic ideas of cultures meat is quite simple. Basically you take this animal, get a few cells from that animal—It could be chicken, beef, pork—anything. You don’t even need to kill that animal. You take the few cells and then you get this into a culture medium, and grow the cells in culture medium. And at the end you get a mass of cells, which is basically meat. Tim: Okay. Now when you say, “Any cell.” Is it really any cell or any muscle cells? Do you need stems cells or anything at all will work? Yuki: Actually, most specifically there’s a special type of cells called myosatellite cells or myoblast cells. And those cells are so called the stem cell of muscle cells. Tim: Okay. In your own work, are you working with cattle, or pork, or chicken, or what type of meat are you growing? Yuki: For experiment, we’re using mostly muscles cells, and for actual foods development work, we’re using chicken now. Tim: Chicken? Yuki: Yes. Tim: Okay. Yuki: And the beauty’s the method that we discovered for mouse is actually directly applicable to chicken cells as well, and so is it for cattle, pork, or anything. Tim: Why choose chicken? Is that simpler than beef or pork? Yuki: Because it is easier to get the cells. Tim: Okay, very practical reason. Yuki: Yes. Tim: Okay, so you grow these cells in a broth. How much time and money does it take to grow enough meat to eat? So if I wanted to grow enough for a 200-gram chicken sandwich. How much time and money would that take. Yuki: The time would be about 20 days, but the money is the very important part—because with the current technology, it costs ridiculous amounts such as 10,000, 20,000 US dollars or something. It’s very, very expensive. Tim: 10 to 20,000 dollars? Okay. Yuki: Yes. And making that cheap is the most important technological hurdle. Tim: Okay, that’s an expensive sandwich. A little later on, I want to get back to the technological hurdles, and what you’re trying to optimize to bring the costs down. But what does it taste like? Does it taste like chicken? That’s kind of a joke, but does it actually taste like chicken? Yuki: Well, when we cooked it, it tasted like fried piece of KFC. Tim: Okay, so you used like seasoning and— Yuki: Yes, because you don’t eat raw meat. Tim: Yes, that’s true. So lab grown meat, does it have a similar consistency and texture as regular meat, or is it different somehow? Yuki: At the moment with our current limited technology, it’s just aggregative muscle cells. But in the future as the technology matures, it will be a question of what sort of meat do you want. Tim: Excellent. Yuki: Yeah, so you can have any texture, even any taste really. Tim: Well, actually before we dive into the meat, I want to ask you a little bit about you. So before starting ShojinMeat, you studied at Oxford, and then at Tohoku University, and went on to as a researcher at Toshiba. And none of this had to do with cellular agriculture. So why the big change? Why leave a steady research position to start growing meat? Yuki: Well, the idea of culturing meat has been around for longer. And for me personally, I already knew the idea when I was five or eight reading science fiction manga. Tim: Really? Okay. Yuki: As well as the culture meat, I was also fascinated with all the kilometers, skyscrapers, star shapes, and those things. Well, general science fiction— Tim: Sure. Yuki: —that a lot of young boys are into. I somehow never grew from it, and just kept going. My degree in Oxford was Chemistry, and more into organic and biological. And with that speciality, I moved into battery research. It was sort of like science fiction—as a mid-twenty-first science fiction where everywhere is covered with solar panels and renewable energy and those things. Tim: So continuing this science fiction theme? Yuki: Yes. After that, I realized that I actually need to study systems engineering in addition to my specialty in chemistry, battery technology—those things. That’s why I went into Toshiba research development center, system engineering laboratory, and then I came to the position of I have to choose which science fiction dream I should pursue? Tim: Okay. Yuki: Then I thought about my topic, chemistry more so biological. And the cultured meat is what the world needs now, so I go for that. Tim: Okay, and it seems like something at least in Japan you pretty much have to do on your own. This isn’t a subject of research at any of the corporations or the large universities that I know of. Yuki: It’s actually the same with any country. The cellular agriculture is not established as a discipline yet because there’s no discipline. There’s no expert. And there’s no way to fund that sort of discipline. So we have to establish that first. Tim: Alright. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1653"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey”  ] Yuki: That’s what New Harvest, the leading NPO on this field, is doing. Tim: Okay, so I’ve heard people talk about lab grown meat in terms of sustainability and cruelty to animals, but your motivation was really—it was cool and futuristic. Yuki: Yes, and it is also—the technology it uses is actually a large scale cell culture. It has a lot more applications than cultured meat. Using the same technology, you can grow, say, kidney or liver cells. And the medical applications of that are also huge. Tim: Okay, but I can see even in the near term the medical uses might adopt this technology much sooner than just general food because if you can grow skin for grafting or, like you said, liver cells, it’s worth a lot more money than a chicken sandwich. Yuki: Yeah, Tim: So you started ShojinMeat in 2015. Yuki: Yeah. Tim: And what does the name mean? Yuki: Shojin actually means—it’s originally a Buddhist term.

Many VR startups are a solution is search of a problem, but Holoeyes is already in use at hospitals around Japan. Although the medical industry is one the most highly regulated, conservative and hard to disrupt, Holoeyes has made inroads by solving a very specific problem for surgeons. Today we sit down with Naoji Taniguchi, CEO of Holoeyes, and talk about the steps his startup had to take to sell into the medical market in Japan and to win over traditionally conservative doctors. Holoeyes builds up virtual reality models of organs from CT scans, and lets doctors analyze and discuss these matters much more directly and clearly than they could before. It’s a great interview and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups How VR can actually save hospitals money and improve outcomes Why the world needs a GitHub of surgery What Japanese startups get out of accelerator programs Why the real value in surgical VR is not what you think How Holoeyes achieves medical quality in low-spec devices How Holoeyes convinced conservative doctors and hospitals to try a new technology Advice for startups trying to sell to doctors Why more and more medical professionals will be getting involved in startups in Japan Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Holoeyes Follow Naoji on Medium Follow him on twitter @tani_yang Friend Naoji on Facebook See Holoeyes in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrYlsSldXSM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu9RU03PPho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANN64JeUjog&t=2s [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan Disrupting Japan, episode 82. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me. The medical industry is one of the world’s most highly regulated and hard to disrupt. And for the most part, that’s a good thing. But there are a number of innovative start-ups that have ways of improving things. Not disruptive change, mind you, but simple, more cautious, incremental change that will make life better for everyone. Holoeyes is one of those questions. And today we sit down with Naoji Taniguchi and we talk about how their VR solution is winning over doctors all over Japan, and changing the way surgery is done. Holoeyes builds up a virtual reality model of organs from CT scans, and let’s doctors analyze and discuss these matters much more directly and efficiently than they could before. We’ll get into the details during the interview. But one of the things that impressed me the most about Holoeyes, is that is is already in use today. So much VR tech and so many VR companies have an amazing wow factor, but only the promise of future applications. But you know, Naoji 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 Naoji Taniguchi of Holoeyes. Naoji: Yeah. Tim: This is an application that uses AR and VR for medical training, and thanks for sitting down with me. Naoji: Okay. Tim: Can you tell me a bit more about the application and how it’s used? Naoji: Holoeyes make customized model for each patient. For VR, our mixed reality, our product helps communication between doctor, surgery team members, or training senior doctors and new doctors. Tim: So let’s just walk through from start to finish how it’s used. So how do you build up this VR model? Naoji: Partially use Diacom Viewer. Diacom Viewer is viewer of CT scan image. Now we are trying to use deep learning to automate, create, make part of a model from CT scan image. Tim: Okay, so it’s laterally taking a CT scan and building up the VR image kind of slice by slice? Naoji: Yes, yes. Tim: Alright, that makes sense. And then the doctors can use this to communicate and to show the model. Naoji: Yes. Tim: Now the demo I saw was basically viewing the model and using AR to zoom in and to rotate. What is the application for that? Would that be for example, teaching— Naoji: What they call 3-D movement. I think 3-D movement is very important for surgery. Before our product, doctors have to write in tickets some procedure of surgery. So it is very complex. So using our product, doctors do surgical procedure with game controller and head-mount display this way. They record the whole procedure of surgery. Tim: So for example, the lead surgeon could run the entire operation with the surgical team before the surgery, and say, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ And then everyone will be able to see it. And then when it comes time for the surgery, everyone understands? Naoji: Yeah, so it’s like private mode and car racing game. Tim: Okay. Naoji: Do you know? Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Naoji: It’s like that. And in using VR we can see the movement at any angle. Tim: Okay, so it’s also used after the surgery to evaluate how it went— Naoji: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tim: —and if there were any problems? Okay. Naoji: We archive VR model on our crowd server. So we will be GitHub of surgery. Tim: Okay. Naoji: So GitHub has open public repository. Also GitHub has private repository to read. So if they shall want their data to be public— Tim: Well, that’s what I wasn’t asking. But there are very strong laws all over the world about sharing patient data? Naoji: Yeah. So our patients, they’re objective is cure so data is not important for them. But for doctors, it’s a treasure. Tim: Sure, yeah. It’s extremely important. So far have you found patient’s being very willing to share their data. Naoji: Nowadays the data is thought about very personal, but we use polygon. Polygon data don’t have personal information. Name, or age, or the patient’s living address. Tim: Okay, so if you reduce the model to all polygons, and take off all personal information, then it’s fine? Oh, okay. So what platform are you using for this? Both the hardware and the software side. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1652"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey”  ] Naoji: Well, hardware we are using HTC Vive using Windows PC. Tim: Okay. Naoji: And Microsoft Hololens using smart phone. Both device has good point and bad point. For HTC Vive, it’s a little bit expensive, but smartphone is very cheap and everyone have. But HTC Vive can display very detailed, how polygon model, and good personal tracking. Tim: Right, right. Naoji: But smartphone is very cheap. We use crowd server to store our data. The device download that data. Why is a high polygon called HTC Vive, and design a polygon model for a smart phone? Tim: Medical imaging is one of the most demanding and challenging areas for image processing. Naoji: Yeah. Tim: The resolution has to be much, much higher than almost any other type of application. There’s very little tolerance for the artifacts of glossy compression. So is the resolution of your VR models, is it high enough for medical use? Naoji: Some part is enough. For the liver we provide like a map. It’s not a photo. So we will use map to go 3-D. Tim: Okay, so it’s really more of a reference, and it’s not a diagnostic tool so it doesn’t have to be that accurate. Naoji: Yeah, yeah. So we will show thick veins. So if we provide all veins in liver, doctors will confuse. Tim: Alright. Okay, okay. That makes sense. A little later I want to dive deeper into the application, but for now let me ask you a bit about you and your co-founder. So your background is in physics and aeronautical engineering. Naoji: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah: Tim: And your co-founder, Sugimoto-san is a surgeon? Naoji: Yes. Tim: How did you two come together on this project? Naoji: I have a friend. He’s working as an editor. The publisher has 36 book on medical for families. The old data is digital. So he ordered me, can you create some digital service using this data. So  I thought the data in the book is like databased. During the project, I researched a lot of medical information. And I found article of Sugimoto-san. He saying modern medical needs 8K video image, so at same time I was doing a lot of interactive project. So I thought, ‘I’m interested.’ And I thought we would get on well. I found his Twitter account. Tim: Okay. Naoji: And I messaged him. And after that, we talked together at Tokyo. Tim: Oh, alright. Does he act more as an advisor, or is Sugimoto-san involved in the day-to-day operation of the company? Naoji: Yeah, day-to-day he does operation. So he use our product at hospital and looking for doctors who will use our product. Tim: So right now you’re still in the development phase. You haven’t started charging for— Naoji: Yeah. Tim: —the use of Holoeyes yet? Right? Can you tell me a bit about your users and your partners? Who’s using Holoeyes today? Naoji: Our first customer is Doctor Sugimoto and second is Bokuto Hospital in Tokyo. Some will be Sano Hospital. He’s a dentist. It is very useful for implants to see the bones. Tim: To have like a false tooth implanted. Naoji: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tim: Right. So is the main application now the planning of surgeries? Naoji: Yeah. First is planning surgery, and next is training tool or education tool for young doctor. Tim: So you were also apart of the Recruit Holding’s accelerator. Naoji: Yes. Tim: Was that valuable for you? Naoji: Yes. For medical they don’t do nothing, because Recruit is not medical company. Tim: Right. Naoji: But our business is for medical, but our business model is for internet technology company. We are using crowd server, and we will stocl our patients’ data, we make value from the data. So it’s like—

It’s often surprising to discover which problems are hard for AI. We hear stories about artificial intelligence being better than the most skilled humans at go, chess, Jeopardy, and better than many at driving a car, and we assume that computers will be as smart as we are very soon. Then we discover how hard it is for AI to fold the laundry. Shin Sakane and his team at Seven Dreamers have been working on this particular problem for 12 years, and they are now rolling out the first commercially available laundry-folding robot. They will be first to the global market and have secured a production partnership with Panasonic. Shin and I talk a lot about AI and innovation in Japan, and also cover his rather unusual corse to innovation here. Seven Dreamers is not your typical venture-backed startup, and they might just provide a blueprint for innovation that many existing Japanese firms can follow. It’s a great interview, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups Why AI can drive a car but not fold socks Why starting a company in Japan is different today Shin’s formula  for developing innovative products How to work with large Japanese companies Why the future of laundry is more disrupting than you imagine Why big data wants to hack your washing machine The need to go global quickly Can Japan once again lead the world in AI Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Laundroid Friend Shin  on Facebook Seven Dreamers Homepage Find out more about Laundroid on Facebook or Twitter Nastent website Find out more about Nastent on Facebook or Twitter The carbon-fiber golf shafts on the Web and on Facebook [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan   Disrupting Japan, episode 81. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. You know, the term artificial intelligence is thrown around far too loosely these days. Every start-up using decision trees, Bayesian algorithms, or the simplest machine learning techniques, label themselves as world leaders in AI. Now there’s no question that projects like Google’s driverless cars and IBM’s Watson have pushed the limits of what’s possible, and have introduced astounding innovations in AI over the past few years. But sometimes it’s surprising to take a look at the kinds of problems that are extremely difficult for AI. It turns out that folding laundry is one of those problems. Today we sit down with Shin Sakane, CEO of Seven Dreamers and inventor of the Laundroid. The first commercially available fully automatic laundry folding robot. We talk a lot about AI in general. And the importance and the risk of attacking the really hard problems. And what he and his firm had to go through to make Laundroid a reality. It’s also worth noting that Seven Dreamers is not your typical venture back start-up. And Shin and I talk a lot about the role that mid-size companies have to play in kick-starting the Japanese economy and returning Japan to the global leader in innovation she was in the 60s and 70s. But you know, Shin tells that story 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 Shin Sakane of Seven Dreamers, and we’ve been bumping into each other for a long time now. Shin: Right. Tim: So thanks for finally making time and sitting down with me. Shin: Thank you very much for coming. Tim: We’re here to talk a lot about the Laundroid. Now it’s a robot that folds clothes, which I guess is the simple way of explaining it, but why don’t you tell us more about what it is. Shin: Okay. We’ve been working on this project for the last 12 years almost. Tim: Wow. Shin: Yeah. We started back in 2005. This robot really folds daily life clothes and separate by categories or by family members. Tim: Oh, okay. Shin: Yeah. Tim: So it can put all the shirts in one pile, or it can put all of dad’s clothes in one pile, and mom’s in the other— Shin: Well, actually the key feature of Laundroid is that after you dry your clothing, you just put up to say around 30 clothes into insert box at the bottom. Then artificial intelligence and robotics with vision analysis technology, robot arms pick one clothing by one, and then it folds and put in the pick up box. If you choose separate by clothing category mode, then Laundroid puts towels in the towel tray, and t-shirts in the t-shirt tray. Tim: Okay, and since this is a audio podcast, I guess we have to— The Laundroid, it’s a large machine, it’s about— What, two meters tall? Shin: Yeah, about that. Tim: And about 75 centimeters squared? Shin: Right now it’s a little thinner. About 60 centimeters deep. Yes. And then 87 centimeters wide. Tim: Okay. Shin: So it’s a little thinner and wider. Tim: And it is literally a black box. Shin: Yeah. Tim: It kind of reminds me of HAL in a way. Shin: Yeah. Tim: Well, it does have— It’s this big black monolith. Shin: Right. Exactly. Tim: With a bright circle on the front of it. Shin: Right. Tim: So you simply put up to 30 articles of what clothes in the bottom? Shin: Right. Tim: And then it sorts it on the shelves in the middle? Shin: Right. Exactly. Tim: Excellent. Shin: And then if you want to separate by family members mode, in order to use this separation mode, you have to do very simple one-time registration process for each family member. If I purchase Laundroid, the first day what I do is put everything into the box. Just myself— my clothes. And then with your smart phone, register as a father, “father’s clothes”. Tim: Oh, okay. Shin: Yeah, robot arm put up one clothes by one, and then it takes so many pictures of each item. Tim: So it learns by example. Shin: Yeah, exactly. And it does automatically. It can remember the features of each clothing. Tim: The field of AI is fascinating from the inside, but it’s very interesting from the outside in that— So you guys have been working on this for 12 years— Shin: Yeah. Tim: —to get to the point where you’re ready for production? Shin: Right. Tim: Why is this a hard problem? Why does AI have trouble folding clothes? Shin: It was very hard, but not that hard to develop a robot to just fold, for example, t-shirt, towels, and pants. It took us about 3 years about to achieve that. But the condition is that we have to place say t-shirt, pants at a certain place first, then robot automatically folds. Tim: Oh, okay. Shin: That wasn’t that hard. That was hard, but that’s not that hard. The hardest part was just dump random clothing in the box, and then robot pick up one shirt or one clothing, and then reorganizes if this is t-shirt, or pants, or towels. And then reorganizes it if it’s upside down, or flipped, or something like that, and then place in a certain location in order to start folding. That’s the hardest part. Tim: Okay, it’s not the folding that’s difficult. It’s the getting ready for the folding that’s— Shin: Right, right. It’s so easy for human beings, but it’s so hard for robots and artificial intelligence. Tim: So for example, there is a group in Berkley who’s built a robot that all it does is fold towels. Shin: Yes. Tim: Towels have to be the simplest thing possible to fold. Shin: Right. Tim: They’re all the same shape. There’s no real upside down to them. And it takes about a minute and a half per towel. Shin: Right. Tim: It does seem like folding clothes is one of those difficult problems. Shin: Well, yeah it is difficult. But there are already three organizations who tried it, who achieved doing this rather than Seven Dreamers. One is as you mentioned, Berkley. Also like Berkley, one of the Berkley group achieved to also fold t-shirt just by using two industrial robot arms. But even when they do it, they have to place t-shirt in certain place first, then they start folding, right? So they achieved that, and you can see that on YouTube. And we think it’s worthless because— Tim: Right, right. By the time you take— Shin: Right, right. Tim: The time it takes to position the towel. Shin: Right, right. I might as well just fold it after for additional 5 seconds. So there’s another organization or company called Foldmate which is a US based venture start-up company I think based in Silicon Valley. Their machine— or from the CG picture— I don’t know if it’s real or not— but also customer has to place t-shirt or towel in a certain place. Tim: Yeah, I have seen that, you have to clip it in— Shin: Yes, exactly. Tim: —the machine, right? Shin: That’s what it is. Yes. So that’s another thing that we had that technology already back in 2008 and we didn’t commercialize because we thought no one is going to buy it because it’s really hard to do it. You know? Tim: Right. Shin: It’s too much trouble— hassle doing it. The third organization is the University of Tokyo. They’re the one who tried to do something similar to what we’ve done. But they could not also pick up the clothing and place from the random— Tim: Okay. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1653"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey”  ]   Shin: —so they gave up. Tim: So that’s the hard part. Shin: Yeah, that’s the hard part. Tim: And so Laundroid can fold anything? Pants, and shirts, and socks, and everything? Shin: Yeah, pretty much all the regular clothes including t-shirt, and long sleeved shirt, and pants, shorts, and towels. And there are three things Laundroid can not do. One is Laundroid can not flip clothes. Meaning that the t-shirt has to be— Tim: If it’s inside out? Shin: Right, right. Exactly.

It’s hard to make money with music apps. The competition is intense, and most people simply are not willing to pay much for music apps; either because music is something they only do casually or because if it’s something they do professionally, they probably don’t have money. Akinori Fumihara of Nana, however, is succeeding despite the odds. Nana is a collaborative music creation app, where different users upload and submit different tracks to a song, which can be edited and remixed by others to create an unlimited number of arrangements. Today Nana has a highly engaged global user-base that numbers in the millions, but it almost did not work out that way. Three months after the initial release, Nana was running out of money and was watching new installs trend towards zero. How Aki and his team managed to turn things around is an amazing story, and one I think you’ll really enjoy. Show Notes for Startups Why "casual music" is important How to develop an overseas user-base by word of mouth Why teenage girls form the heart of Nana How a YouTube video inspired an iPhone app Why it's hard to monetize a music app Why startups in Japan (outside of Tokyo) struggle The difference between Tokyo and Kansai startup founders Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Nana Friend Aki on Facebook Check out Nana on Facebook [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan   Disrupting Japan, episode 80. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for music apps. The competition in this space is intense, and almost every niche seems to be filled. So trying to differentiate a music gap calls for a lot of creativity. But it’s usually their quixotic quest for business models that is the most interesting. The problem is that people just don’t want to spend money on making music. The amateurs and the dabblers don’t spend enough time on the hobby to invest much. And the professionals, well speaking as a former professional musician myself, I can tell you that professional musicians never have money in the first place. Well today, we sit down with Akinori Fumihara of Nana, and they might have just cracked the code. Nana is a collaborative music creation app where different users upload and submit different tracks to a song. Which can be edited and remixed by others to create an unlimited number of arrangements. Now Nana has become a huge hit with its millions of users. And just like Google, the name Nana itself has become a fully conjugatable verb in Japanese. “Nananu Nanateru, Nanata.” “I use Nana. I’m using Nana. I used Nana.” Now I’ll warn that Aki’s English is not as good as some of our other guests. But the man is really excited about reaching out to foreign listeners and so he decided to make it work and come on the show. Nana is a very cool app, and Aki’s a pretty cool guy. He’s got an amazing life story, and he started a fascinating company. But you know, Aki tells that story much better than I can, so let’s hear from our sponsors and get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey"  ] [Interview]  Tim: Cheers. Akinori: Cheers. Tim: So I’m sitting here with Akinori Fumihara, the CEO and founder of Nana. Thanks for sitting down with me today. Akinori: Nice to meet you. Tim: That’s great. Now Nana is a social music platform, but can you explain what is social music? How does Nana work? Akinori: Nana is music collaboration. I’ve found and enjoyed that biggest feature is collaboration and over dubbing. For example, like the base line, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Next, with the base add drums, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So with the beat it adds piano. Tim: So each user adds a new part to the piece— Akinori: Yes, yes. Tim: And they collaborate to build the song. To build the orchestration. Do they record directly into their iPhones? Or do they upload tracks? Akinori: Yes, yes, yes. You can just use smartphone. Tim: Okay, so are there editing features within Nana, or is everything sort of recorded live to layer on top of other tracks? Akinori: User can upload and overdub. Tim: Okay, so this really is a casual music app? Akinori: Exactly. Tim: So the focus is not creating a finished work, it’s really just having fun? Akinori: Yes, exactly right. So in music is communication. Tim: Well, tell me a bit about your customers. Who uses Nana? Akinori: Okay, we have 3 million users and mostly teenagers. Tim: Mostly teenage boys, teenage girls, a mix? Akinori: Teenage girls. Tim: Mostly teenage girls? Akinori: Girls, yes. Tim: Alright. Nana’s also available in English, right? Akinori: Yes. In fact, we have 13 languages available. Tim: How many of your users are in Japan, and how many are global? Akinori: 2 million users in Japan, and 1 million is overseas. Tim: Wow, so one third of your users are overseas. What are the main countries besides Japan that people are using this? Akinori: 5 countries; Taiwan, America, Vietnam, India, and France. Tim: Okay, that seems like a strange collection of countries. So why those countries in particular? Akinori: I don’t know yet. Tim: Okay. Akinori: Because grows naturally. Yes. Tim: So just word of mouth growth? Akinori: Yes, yes. Tim: Excellent. Okay, if we say teenage girls are the biggest user base, what are they using Nana for? Are these people who want to become professional musicians? Are they people who are just having fun with their friends? Why are they using Nana? Akinori: I think everybody just want just to sing, and they’re both tweeting to their friends. And they want everyone to just listen to their songs. And they’re not wanting to be professional. Tim: Okay, so it’s more of a hobby? Akinori: Yes, hobby. Yes. Tim: But I understand a lot of your users are very engaged. They have their Nana ID on Twitter profiles and social media quite frequently. Akinori: Yes. Users who has energy engage to our app 10 hours a day. Tim: 10 hours a day? Akinori: A day. Tim: Okay, that’s some pretty heavy use. Akinori: Yes. Tim: That’s not a hobby anymore. That’s— Let’s talk a little bit about you. Akinori: Me? Okay. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1652"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey”  ] Tim: So you have a background in music, right? You used to be a professional singer. Akinori: Yes, yes, yes. I wanted to be a professional singer. And I loved Stevie Wonder, and Bree Joab— Tim: Excellent. Akinori: —and Ray Charles— Tim: That’s nice. Akinori: —and Janis Joplin. I love jazz and rhythm & blues. Tim: Was that your main motivation for starting Nana? Akinori: Yes. But also I can post the video on YouTube. This was sung by 57 amateur singers all over the world. As a Haiti earthquake relief  and I was greatly moved. It’s awesome. People are united through the song and harmony. It was so amazing. But I don’t see any Japanese here. Yes. Then I realized that that concept: music uniting the world, is rather spoken yet it isn’t realized. I’d like to create that world without loneliness by connecting people all over the world with music. Tim: Okay. Yeah, I remember that video. So it was this collaboration of people from all over the world who were creating this song— Akinori: Yes. Tim: —together. Akinori: Yes. “We are the world” for Haiti, YouTube edition. Tim: And so that was your inspiration for Nana? Akinori: Yes, yes, yes. Tim: Okay. Before starting Nana— What were you doing before Nana. Akinori: I was a mature racing driver. Tim: You were a race car driver? Akinori: Yes. Tim: Okay. Tell me about race car driving. How long were you doing that? Akinori: 5 years. 5 years. And to 2004 to 2009. Tim: Okay. From being a race car driver to starting a music start-up is a pretty big change. Why did you quit racing cars? Akinori: At that time, my dream was become a Formula 1 Driver, but it costs so much so I had to quit. Tim: You couldn’t get the sponsors? Akinori: No, I had no sponsor. Tim: Okay. So changing from race car driving to music. These are targeting things where there’s very little money. But okay, so once you got the idea and the inspiration for Nana— Akinori: Yeah. Tim: —you were a part of Movida’s early acceleration program? Akinori: Yes. It brought me a lot of benefits. It works, and they have invested me when I haven’t established a business model so it was very, very helpful for me. But they wasn’t able to bring a financial side. Tim: Oh, okay. So the amount of money they invested was very small, but I guess you were there learning how to run a company, and how to hire, and how to build the product. So you guys went live in November of 2012. How much traction did you get initially? Akinori: At first, we achieved 4 thousand downloads in the initial launch, but that then decreased to 2,000, 700, 200, 100 [laugh]. Tim: Okay, so after the big announcement and the big release, you got a lot of attention, and then it just trailed off. Akinori: Yes, yes. Tim: Okay. Well, how did you turn it around? How did you start attracting users? Akinori: It was by tuning UI/UX opposite app. And also after app store optimization grew our users’ pack. Tim: What did you change about the UI? Akinori: All. Tim: So it completely changed it. Akinori: Yes, immediate change. Tim: So it’s very unusual for simply changing the UI to cause an app to suddenly become successful. So you guys also did a lot a social media outreach, and you even had some live events, right? Akinori: The biggest reach was users sharing on SMS,

Soracom is one of those rare Japanese startups that has the potential to become a major global player and to change the way Internet of Things devices work. The real deployment bottleneck in the Internet of Things is not the hardware or the software, but the connectivity. There are still relatively few inexpensive, flexible and scalable ways that IoT devices can transmit and receive data. Cellular connectivity is expensive, and WiFi is largely limited to stationary devices in homes and offices. Today we sit down with Ken Tamagawa, CEO of Soracom, who explains his solution to this problem, and it's a good one. Soracom operates a mobile virtual network and provides widespread connectivity for IoT devices for pennies a day, and since their infrastructure runs completely on AWS their costs are significantly lower than the competition's. Soarcom is extremely well-funded, and they are quickly expanding globally. You are going to be hearing a lot about them in the future, so let’s get to know them today. I think you’ll really enjoy the interview. Show Notes for Startups What are  MVNOs and why are they important  for the Internet of Things Why replacing hardware with software drives innovation How Japan Taxi is taking advantage of the Internet of Things The most surprising thing about going global from Japan The future of the IoT in Japan Why play and serendipity remain important even as a company scales Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Soracom Follow Ken on twitter @KenTamagawa Friend him on Facebook Check out the Soracom blog Get started with the Soracom Developer Site Safecast P2P Radiation Monitoring [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan   Welcome to Disrupting Japan- straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me. One of the most important problems of the internet of things is not the internet or even the things. The problem lies in connecting those things to the internet. In fact, much of the promise of the internet of things is based on the idea of thousands of connected devices working together. It turns out that building the hardware and writing the software has proven to be much simpler than developing an affordable, scalable, and secured network that enables these devices to communicate with home base and with each other. Some applications use WiFi and that's a great solution for stationary devices that operating homes or offices, or anywhere else where you can be certain to have a connection. But, many devices are mobile or need to operate whether there may not be a WiFi connection. Some applications paired with cellphones and that works well for personal devices and wearable’s and things will carry around with us. But for things like sensors and inexpensive autonomous devices, well, having a cellphone plan for each of them is simply cost prohibitive. So, right now, connectivity is the real problem for a lot of internet of things applications. Well, Soracom has a solution and a damn good one in my opinion. Today, we sit down with Ken Tamagawa, CEO of Soracom to talk about their solution which involves slicing up mobile bandwidth and using Amazon web services as their backbone and this enables a pay as you go remote communication package for pennies a day. We also discuss Soracom's global ambitions. Soracom is one of the few Japanese start-ups to raise a round of more than 20 million dollars and a lot of that is targeted on their global expansion. Soracom has something that is truly unique and you'll be hearing more about Soracom in the years to come. But Ken tells us story much better than I can. So, let's hear from our sponsor and get straight to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1404"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey" ] [Interview] Tim:                     I'm sitting here with Ken Tamagawa of Soracom. Soracom is a communications platform for internet of things devices but you can explain it much better than I can. So, what is Soracom? Ken:                     Okay. Soracom offers IOT connectivity platform. So, basically, many IOT solutions or devices need the connectivity sending data to the cloud. I noticed, like I was working for Amazon web services before I founded Soracom, and many, many customers wanted to send data to the database cloud but there is no ideal connectivity yet. So, we built connectivity platform on top of the AWS and that is Soracom. Tim:                     Okay. You're operating which is called a mobile virtual network, right? For example, many developers will use the use of mobile phone as a connectivity device. What you guys are doing is something very different. So, on a technical level, what's happening? Ken:                     So, there's many people wondering how we provide that kind of cloud-base connectivity at the MVNO- Mobile Virtual Network Operator. So, let me talk about the mobile view of this industry fast. Telecomm operator such as the NTT Docomo and other big giant players, they usually have many, many base stations or cell towers and it's going to be, I think, maybe 100 cell towers in Japan. They need to invest a lot of money to the cell towers and also they need to have big data center to host telecomm call network system. It's usually very expensive. Tim:                     Oh sure! It's a massive capital investment. That's why almost any country are only going to have 2 or 3 cell operators. Ken:                     Obviously, we cannot do that as a start-ups, but we found a way to provide several connectivity as MVNO. There's a way called the "Layer 2 connection" to the telecomm operator. So, we contracted with the NTT Docomo and we got Layer 2 Connection. So, in that set-up, basically, we are borrowing cell towers and we are hosting our telecomm call network system by connecting those cell towers with the physical network plan to the database code. Tim:                     When you're operating virtual network, are you paying a fixed fee monthly or yearly to operate this network on top of Docomo or you're paying on like a SaaS basis or in a per packet or something like that? Ken:                     This is kind of a secret though, but actually --- Tim:                You can tell me. Ken:                It's actually opened in the website. let me talk about the secret. We are paying the bandwidth fee to the NTT Docomo based on the bandwidth per month used from us, in that way we borrow the cell tower part of the NTT Docomo. Tim:                Okay. So, that's perfectly aligned with your business models. So, your cost only go up as your users and their use go up. Ken:                Right. There are several MVNO's using that layer 2 connection. The uniqueness of us, usually MVMO player, they use a layer 2 connection and they borrow the data center and they buy the hardware appliance of a telecomm call network. They need to invest, I think, 20 million USD for that part - hardware appliance and data center. But in our way, we use AWS cloud and then we build telecomm call network in software in a AWS cloud. That's our core competency. Tim:                So, in that way, since your costs were based in usage, you can price this work on products that way to your users? Ken:                Right. Tim:                So, what does it cost for internet of things developer to get started in Soracom? Ken:                So, we try to be very open and programmable and pay as you go model, like AWS. So, we sell SIM-card in Amazon.com and also our direct web channel. Once our customer get the SIM-Card, we charge 10 Yen per day. So, basic usage fee is very cheap. So, even they continue to use for months, it's going to cost 300 Yen, it's almost $3 and also, we charge data amount. So, it's a kind of pay as you go model and every month we calculate how much data they send. Tim:                There's so much great stuff happening in IOT these days and it can be hard to really understand how a platform is used. So, let's dive in into a couple of used cases that are now taking advantage of what Soracom has to offer now. So, you're working with Japan Taxi on an ad-delivery system. Ken:                Yeah. Yeah. So, before, talking about the Japan Taxi and if you looked at our customer base within one year after our launch, we already have 5,000 customers, which include an enterprise to small and medium business and also start-ups across the industries too. So, Japan Taxi is very interesting customer. They put tablet in the backseat of the taxi and they distribute as an advertisement movie for customers. So, it was interesting. Every customer average taxi ride 18 minutes I had from the Japan Taxi. So, it's a good way to  provide the advertisement movies. Usually, those advertisement movies are updated, weekly or in two weeks, so, as I need to have a way to distribute latest advertisement movie, then they use Soracom and especially they use like a night time to distribute advertisement movie. We have like a cheaper price. Tim:                Oh, so the rates are different at different times or date. Ken:                Exactly. So, they take advantage of that time. Tim:                Okay. So, instead of having a data plan and a connectivity plan for each individual android tablet, they just connect to Soracom at less than 10th of the price and update the ads from a central location. Ken:                Right. Tim:                Excellent. And let's see, what else? Safecast is a very interesting project because they didn't start out with Soracom but they converted over last year. Ken:                Yeah.

Miwa Tanaka, CEO of Waris, is working to make things better for working women in Japan. Although things are slowly changing, most Japanese women still must leave the workforce when they have children. The Waris platform helps them get back on track, either as a freelancer or by restarting their career. We talk about her startup, of course, but we also talk about the difficulties women still face, the kinds of roles they are traditionally placed into, and the traditional employment structures and roles are changing. It’s a optimistic interview and Miwa explains why she believes that corporate Japan truly wants to change things for the better. It’s a fascinating discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups Why Japanese women leave the workforce when they have children The problem Japanese women face during negotiations How the Tohuku Earthquake changed Miwa's life path Why the Japanese government changed its opinion on freelancers What "diversity training" actually means in Japan and why it's important The importance of startups selling to each other and bootstrapping  the ecosyste Why Japanese women are attracted to entrepreneurship and  freelancing Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Waris Friend Waris on Facebook Follow Waris on Twitter @info_Waris The Waris community blog Cue for working women in Japan. Friend Miwa on Facebook [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan Welcome to Disrupting Japan, -- straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. I am Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Miwa Tanaka, the CEO of Waris is working hard to make things better for women in Japan. The changing roles of Japanese Women in both start-ups and large enterprises is something we talked about quite a bit on disrupting Japan and Miwa has a unique perspective on this subject. Waris is a platform that is helping Japanese women who've quit their jobs to have children, rejoined the work force. Now, of course, we talk about the social and business conventions that results in Japanese women having to quit their jobs to have children in the first place. But often the best solutions to these kind of social problems are small steady improvements, and that's what Miwa is trying to do. In fact, hearing Miwa explained what Waris is shows us some microcosm of women in Japanese business, --- the difficulties women face, the kind of roles they've traditionally been placed into and also how those roles and the traditional employment structure are changing but more important, perhaps, how Japanese women themselves are choosing to adapt, to work around, occasionally, walk away from those restrictions. And as Miwa explains, another sign that things are getting better here in Japan is that Waris has a steady stream of corporate customers who are asking for diversity training. I think that this is a sign, much like it was with previous guest who discussed the demand for open innovation and LGBT sensitivity training that corporate Japan wants to change. I think much of corporate Japan and the government as well, are sincere on their efforts to make things better. But as Miwa explains, sometimes those changes can painfully slowly, but Miwa tells that story much better than I can. So, let's hear from our sponsors 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 Miwa Tanaka, the co-founder and the CEO of Waris. So, thanks for sitting down with us. Miwa:                  Thank you so much for inviting me. Tim:                     Now, Waris is an online job matching service to help women continue their career after they've had children. I'm sure you can explain it much better than I  can. So, why don't you tell us about what Waris does? Miwa:                  Okay. Thank you. Waris is a job matching company for women who have professional skill sets and we connect their skill sets with Japanese companies through a flexible work schedule, like a 3 days’ work a week or working remotely. Tim:                     Is it telecommuting? Is it part time? What's the usual situation? Miwa:                  Oh well, sometimes they work at the clients and they also work at their home. Tim:                     Okay. So, it's both situations? Miwa:                  It's both situations. Tim:                     And is it usually part time work or there's some fulltime? Miwa:                  Mostly they are part time worker. As you know, almost 60% of women quit their jobs after giving birth in Japan because in most Japanese companies, we have to work so long hours and it makes women very difficult to keep working. Tim:                     Actually, a little later on, I want to get back into exploring details about this dynamic of women having to leave the workplace and trying to come back in, but for now, are these jobs permanent jobs or they're jobs that last for a few months? Miwa:                  The average is 7 months. So, it's a kind of project work by contract. They're independent contractor or people who want to be independent contractor. Tim:                     I see. So, it's kind of half way between a crowd sourcing platform and a job site. It's sort of in the middle there. Miwa:                  Yeah. That's right. We are not crowd sourcing, we're agent for such women who would like to work by contract. Tim:                     Are most of the people using Waris using it as a stepping stone to get back into the job market? Or, they're using it as a way to get part time work? Miwa:                  30% of our registrants are searching jobs and they would like to go back to workforce. Tim:                     So, does that mean that they're using Waris just a temporary step before going back fulltime? Miwa:                  Yes, that's right. Tim:                     I see. Miwa:                  And also, 20% of them are freelancers. Tim:                     And they're just using the Waris platform to get more jobs?? Miwa:                  To get more jobs and to get new client. Tim:                     Okay. Miwa:                  But then in Japan, independent contractors is still rare and it's a little bit challenging for them to work with their clients. They tend to be weaker than clients. Tim:                     They don't negotiate for as higher fees as they could? Miwa:                  Yes. That's right. Tim:                     I see. Miwa:                  Many Japanese women are not so good at negotiating. Tim:                     This is something that is very true in the United States as well. Miwa:                  Oh, really? Tim:                     Women in general tend to be weaker negotiators than men. I think it's a global phenomenon, but it probably is more extreme in Japan just because those social pressures are so much stronger here. Miwa:                  Yes. Tim:                     Let's take a step back for a minute, let me ask you a little about you. Miwa:                  Okay. Tim:                     You work in a magazine publishing before starting Waris. So, what made you leave publishing and want to start your own company? Miwa:                  Before starting Waris, I worked as a writer and editor over ten years and I belonged to magazine named Nikkei Women. This is a magazine for Japanese working women. I interviewed a lot of Japanese working women and I found how difficult for them to keep on working in Japan. Tim:                     What made it difficult for them to continue working? Miwa:                  The working long hours. It's a Japanese traditional working way. In many companies, we have to work not only 8 hours but also maybe 10 hours. Tim:                     Yes, crazy over time. Miwa:                  Yes, 12 hours. It's really common in Japan. Women have their children, they have limited hours in taking care of their children, it makes them very difficult for working as usual. Tim:                     It's a big jump from noticing a trend to leaving your job and starting up an new company. So, what made you decide to make that jump? Miwa:                  The biggest incident was earthquake of 3.11. Can can you say in English? Tim:                     The March 2011, The Fukushima earthquake. Miwa:                  It was a kind of incident to me to decide this kind of life change because at the earthquake, I stayed at Tokyo but as you know, Tokyo is not the center of the earthquake but it was a really big event. Because of the earthquake, I thought about my career, or my future and I realized that life is not everlasting. I mean, suddenly, it would be stopped by such a kind of earthquake. Life is only once, so I would like to do what I really like to. Tim:                     So, was starting a company  something you wanted to do for a long time ago? Miwa:                  No, when I was working in a publishing company, we worked with a lot of freelancers. I would have liked to be a freelancer but I didn't think about starting our business as a company. Tim:                     Okay. And why did you decide on a company to help working moms get back into the work force? Miwa:                  I thought I'd like to support women to keep on working. They thought exactly the same, we started to talk about how can we do that. Tim:                     Are any of you working mothers yourselves? Miwa:                  One of us. Her name is Fumika San. She is a mother. Tim:                     Okay. It was a problem that was really right in front of you and we understood. Miwa:                  Aha.

From the transistor radio to the Walkman to the Gameboy and the Playstation, Japan has always been both a leading force in hardware technology and a Mecca for gadget geeks. Over the past ten years, however, Japanese dominance in consumer hardware has been slipping away. The falling price of not just computing, but of manufacturing and prototyping has resulted in some amazing connected devices appearing all over the world. But while Japan’s large corporations have been falling behind, Japan’s startups have been rushing ahead. Today we sit down with Ichiro Amimori of Xenoma to talk about why he left a successful 20-year career in materials science at FujiFilm to found a company that makes a low-cost, washable motion capture shirt they call e-skin. It’s a order of magnitude cheaper than existing technology and opens up the possibility of applications in gaming, sports technology and heath and medicine. We also talk about the challenges Japanese enterprises and universities have turning fundamental research into salable products, and a few trends that might just turn that situation around. It’s a great interview and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups What is e-skin and why is it important? Why leave a 20-year career to start a risky startup How FujiFilm managed to innovate and survive How to attract developers to a new hardware platform Why most early adopters are outside Japan How Japan lost it's lead in the gaming industry How motion capture can help the elderly Why Japanese companies have trouble in new markets The future of open innovation in Japan Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Xenoma A deeper dive on e-skin Ichiro's personal blog (in Japanese) Follow Ichiro on twitter @ichiroamimori Friend him on Facebook [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan Welcome to Disrupting Japan- straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me. You know, Japan has always been the land of cool hardware, from the Zoom recorder I’m talking into to the Gameboy, to the Play Station, to the Walkman, to the transistor radio. Japan has always been a mecca to gadget geeks. Of course, things have changed in recent years, the falling price of not just computing, but of manufacturing and prototyping has resulted in some amazing connected devices appearing all over the world. And Japan, if we’re being honest with ourselves here, is falling a bit behind. Ichiro Amimori is a small part of the solution to this. He left a 20-year career in material science to found a company that produces what they call e-skin. It’s a tight fitting shirt that can sense the movements of its wearer and act as an inexpensive, accurate, motion capture device. It’s price and durability is something you might find a little bit surprising. Of course, with a cool hardware available now, attracting developers to your new platform, no matter how cool, is something of a challenge these days. Even Google is having problems in this area. Ichiro and I dive into some detail about how Xenoma is solving this. We also talk about the challenges that Japanese enterprises and universities have turning fundamental research into real products. And the steps that they’re taking to solve them. But you know, Ichiro tells that story much better than I can, 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: I’m sitting here with Ichiro Amimori of Xenoma. You guys make e-skin. It’s like clothing, it’s motion capture, it’s just a shirt, really, but thanks for sitting down with us. Ichiro: Nice meeting you. Tim: Tell us more about what Xenoma is, and what this shirt really does. Ichiro: So we are a startup company from the University of Tokyo, and we established a company November 2015. What we are making is the e-skin, which is a smart apparel. We are not saying it is wearable, because shirts are obviously wearable. As you can see here, this is just a shirt. Stretchable shirt. Tim: Right, and it’s an audio podcast, so it’s kind of hard to explain. But it just looks like normal, stretchable, workout wear with kind of a Tron design to it. Ichiro: Right, everybody says that. Actually, so this Tron design, you see the silver stuff, is the electric circuit, which is stretchable. So in here, there is wiring and sensors, you can touch. Tim: We’ll put pictures on the website, so everyone can know what it looks like. But, the circuits don’t seem to be wires. They’re printed on here and, are they printed? Stitched? Ichiro: We are not saying the manufacturing process in detail, but we are using many kinds of manufacturing process which is conventional. The point is that… you see this silver stuff, so many people say, “Is this conductive?” Actually, the silver stuff is not conductive. All the conductive part is in the silver stuff, because when you sweat, you may have an electric shock due to the water. Then all the electronics is well-insulated on both sides. This silver stuff is one insulation layer. Tim: So the silver stuff is really just to make it look like Tron. Ichiro: Yes, it is just a design. We could make it black, but why don’t we make it like Tron? Tim: So the sensors really work by the stretching of the fabric. Ichiro: Yes. We are saying that this is a motion capture shirt, without using camera. What we are doing is not just capturing motion, but we are measuring the deformation of the shirt caused by motion. For instance, when we bend our elbow, the elbow part is stretched. Then we see that the shirt, the elbow is bent. So that is the principle that we are doing. Tim: That makes sense. Is it washable as well? Ichiro: Yes of course. Right now, you are not seeing this part, we call it hub, which is a controller. And when we are using it, we need to attach on the shirt like this. Tim: For the listeners, this is a small barbell shaped device that you attach across the chest of the shirt. Ichiro: Yeah and this part is not machine washable. But we can take it off and then all the rest of the shirt is machine washable. Tim: By the way, how do you determine machine washable? Is there a standard for this? Ichiro: That is a very good question. I did not know that, but there is an ISO standard that is for machine washable. ISO A, and ISO B, and ISO C. Tim: So three levels of machine washable. Ichiro: They also have ASTM, American style test. What we chose was ISO C, which is closer to ASTM. What we did was, we washed in 40 degree hot water for a hundred times. Tim: A hundred times? They have got standards for everything. That must have taken a while. Ichiro: That actually took two and a half months. Why we stopped at 100 times is not from breaking, but just the time. Tim: Traditional motion capture equipment has wires connecting the user back to the computer. But obviously, there are no wires, it’s all wireless. So the snap on controller obviously has a wireless transmitter in the device. Are there other sensors in there? Ichiro: Actually in this controller, we named it the hub, there is an accelerometer and gyro in here to measure the moving of the center of the body. Tim: Things that wouldn’t stretch this shirt. Ichiro: Also, in here, there is a battery and a [UNCLEAR] (8:06) computer and Bluetooth as their transmitter. This is kind of the CPU of this system, and once we take it off, we can wash everything. This is the most important part of that. Tim: Looking at it, can this also be used to monitor breathing or heart rate? Ichiro: We can measure breathing, respiration. Because when we are breathing, our chest is moving and then we can measure respiration. Unfortunately, we cannot measure heart rate. I can say that, at this year’s [UNCLEAR] (8:48) in Las Vegas in January, we demonstrated the baby monitoring system. We named it the e-skin cool, which contains the temperature sensor, which is a digital sensor. Once we can plug in the digital sensor on the shirts, we can change to anything. For example, heart rate sensor, SPO2 pulse sensor, or even motion sensor can be embedded in our shirts. Tim: So the baby device, it’s just a little wearable shirt to let parents know their baby is still moving around. I want to drill down into the different uses of this later. But right now, let’s back up a bit. I want to ask a couple questions about you. You seem like a pretty non-typical startup founder. You got a degree from Todai, you got a PhD in material science from Brown, you were at Fujifilm for 20 years. What made you decide to leave a successful career at Fujifilm and start this crazy startup? Ichiro: It might be crazy, I agree. Actually, when I was in Fujifilm, I had been working on making new businesses for 18 years. When I joined Fujifilm and started my career, the photography film business was nearly gone. I had a chance to start a new business in Fujifilm. So for me, making new businesses in big company or making new businesses in a startup is almost the same. What I felt when I left Fujifilm was, since I had been working for a long, long time. I was too tired of using a long, long time for decision making by someone else. I thought that I could make it by myself. I think it was a good time for me to start by my own power. Then I left Fujifilm. Tim: So Fujifilm is not involved in this startup at all. It’s completely… [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1653" info_text="Sponsored by" font_color="grey” ] Ichiro: Recently, actually, they’re a good company for innovation. They’re starting pharmaceutical businesses and healthcare businesses. Tim: Actually, Fujifilm is a very interesting company in terms of innovation. If we back up 20 years,

There are no shortage of startup accelerators, innovation spaces and startup community hubs, and sometimes it can be difficult to put your finger on what makes one a success and another a failure. Today, Tim Rowe the CEO of the Cambridge Innovation Center walks us through what he believes will make or break a startup community. The CIC started as a small co-working space for a handful of startups, and now is the biggest facility of its kind on the world. They’ve expanded to several locations and are now int he process of setting up their Tokyo facility. Tim lived in Japan for a few years in the 1990’s and he understands that Japan is different, and that’s a good thing. It’s an interesting interview and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups What makes one startup space succeed and others fail When you need to turn down the money to support the  mission How NGOs and governments can sponsor innovation A blueprint for a successful innovation space What approaches to innovation might be particularly effective in Japan What three things all innovation communities need to succeed What Japanese universities can do to foster innovation Links from the Founder The Cambridge Innovation Center Follow Tim on twitter @rowe WCVB-TV's video on Kendall Square and CIC [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan Welcome to Disrupting Japan- straight talk from the CEO’s breaking into Japan. You know, I’ve always been a bit skeptical about co-working spaces, innovation centers, and startup community hubs. Some of them are well intended, but too often, the organizations that put these facilities together have a bit of a field of dreams mindset, where, if they just build the office space, the innovative entrepreneurs will come, and then the organizers will find themselves at the center of a thriving ecosystem. Sometimes that actually happens, but usually not. But when it works, when all the pieces really do come together, amazing things happen. And a community develops that is far greater than the sum of its parts. So what’s the real difference between the innovation spaces that flourish compared to those that stagnate? Well, today we get a chance to sit down and talk to Tim Rowe, CEO of Cambridge Innovation Center, or CIC, the largest innovation center in the world. And we have a conversation about what’s really involved in building an entrepreneurial community, and the CIC's progress on building a very large-scale innovation center right here in Tokyo. It’s a truly insightful conversation, so let’s hear from our sponsors and get right to our interview.     [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey"  ] [Interview] Romero: So I’m sitting here with Tim Rowe, CEO of the Cambridge Innovation Center. This is a pretty incredible space that you have been running for 15 years now. So rather than having me explain it, can you tell us a bit about what CIC is and how it came to be? Rowe: Sure. CIC is the world’s largest space for startups, that is our Cambridge Space, specifically. We’re also in Boston, Miami, St. Louis, Rotterdam Netherlands, at the moment and we’ve got some more in the works. We call ourselves a community of startups. So we’re not an accelerator where we’re telling people how to build their business or investing in them. We have brought 15 venture capital funds into our location in Cambridge and some of our other locations, so there is access to money, but it’s more of an open platform. Romero: So the VCs actually have offices there? Rowe: Their entire firm is there. Romero: In terms of business, though, it’s a real estate business. You’re renting office space. You don’t make money by making investments or… Rowe: Yea. So we don’t think about it that way. You could argue that a university is mostly made up of real estate, but that’s not its purpose. It makes it’s money by charging people to live there and go to classes, but, it’s in the same way our mission is to make the world better through innovation. The space that we curate is like a little city of innovation. Yes, people have to pay to use space in that city. A lot of things we do are free and open to the public. A lot of things we do are non-profit. Our wet laboratories and our robotics laboratories are actually non-profits. So we’re a mission driven business that happens to use real estate as a means of getting innovators together. Romero: Let’s dig down on that, because, certainly over the last ten years or so, there has been an explosion of co-working spaces and non-financial accelerators, that are frankly, often run by real estate businesses. You have got over 500 companies in this space now. Rowe: Over 1400 companies in total now. In several different buildings. Romero: I guess I’m saying, what are you doing different? What do companies see in the Cambridge innovation Center that they don’t see in these dozens of other accelerators? Rowe: So there’s a lot of ways to answer that. First of all, there is a spectrum between mission-driven and money-driven spaces just as there is a spectrum between, on the one hand you have something like a university, on the other hand you have something like a hotel. They both have space, places people sleep, but they have different purposes for that. Even within the hotel business, you have everything from sort of non-profit youth hostels up to premium four seasons kind of experiences. This world is growing, obviously, quickly. There are a lot of different models that people are presenting to the world. Just as in those other industries, you have everything from community college to MIT. Even in universities there is a wide range. That range will continue. I think, where we sit, is just our own little space. We are a warm, mission-driven community of serious entrepreneurs trying to change the world. We do it at a scale that nobody else does. So we’re more city like than a space. We call ourselves an innovation campus. When you visit one, you’ll feel more like you’re at a university and the scale of that than that you’re in somebody’s shared space. Romero: Just to contrast the mission driven approach to the real-estate or landlord driven approach. Can you think of a time where you made a decision a certain way because you were mission driven rather than… Rowe: A good example is wet laboratories. The people in Boston were telling us, you guys really need to have the wet laboratory infrastructure that we need to build our companies. We said, sure. We did the math, and we found that it loses money. But we could not make that math work for a number of reasons. Romero: So wet labs are for life sciences? Rowe: Wet labs are for wet life sciences. So you have everything from petri dishes to electron microscopes and DNA sequencing devices. And those things cost tens of millions of dollars. And startups aren’t necessarily able to pay for them. Although they need them, they just don’t have the kind of capital that would support it. So we looked at that and said, this is still needed. So we went and turned it into a non-profit. We have worked on this for years. We built it. It’s very successful. Haven’t made a dime on it. Romero: Did the non-profits have corporate sponsors? Or are they just structured as a non-profit… Rowe: No typically governmental sponsors. We also have some corporate sponsors, but for the most part, these initiatives are underwritten by the public sector as an economic development initiative. So we try to think, what do innovators need? What should the world look like? Then we figure out the way to make that happen, regardless of whether that makes us money or doesn’t make us money. Romero: I’ve noticed that the community doesn’t usually happen for co-working spaces. This is something that has interested me, when we were speaking earlier today, you mentioned the importance of proximity. What is it that you think is missing from most co-working spaces or what do you think that they could do better to increase collaboration or to build that community around them. Rowe: I’m sorry about the space that you’re referring to that don’t have much community. I think good shared spaces always have community, so it may be that those places need to make their mistakes and learn how to build their community. Certainly, it’s taken us a long time for us to figure that out. It’s not easy. There are a number of factors that go into building any strong community. You need a shared purpose. You need to have ground rules for behavior and respect. You need to have leadership, so you can’t just say here you are. Somebody needs to say, this is where we’re going. You need to have access to the right kinds of ongoing nurturing resources. Whether it’s more bright people, more startups, more technologies and so forth. You need to feed them. You need to feed them economically with investment so they grow. You need to take all those things that you would think about to what makes a healthy city and apply that to one of these. You’d find the same kinds of answers. Romero: It sounds like it’s very much not a passive endeavor. It’s not a matter of just getting the right components in the same place. It’s a lot of hands on, active management to create that. Rowe: Yea. A friend of mine is a city counselor in the City of Cambridge. And I think a lot of the things that he focuses on and that we focus on are very similar. Romero: Excellent. Let’s talk about your plans for Japan, and CIC in Japan. It’s actually astounding how far Japan has come in the last 15 years in terms of being startup friendly. So when I started my first company here, it was next to impossible to rent an office. Landlords would require twelve-months of security deposit, personal guarantees on leases.