Disrupting Japan

Crowdfunding is at a crossroads. The inherent conflict of interest in the business model is forcing US firms to either limit their growth or become the online equivalent of late-night infomercials. In Japan, however, crowdfunding has grown more ...

Last week I published a article on Medium about why I was shutting down my current startup. If you haven't read it yet, you can find out Why I turned down $500K, Pissed off my investors, and Shut down my startup. The post went viral and I've received several thousand emails in the last few days. ...

Pocket Supernova has pivoted through three countries and three completely different products before they hit their stride with their current video editing platform for mobile, and they now seem ready to move a generation of video content creators out from behind their desktops and onto their mobile phones.

We are about to start seeing more cars but fewer drivers on the road. Self-driving vehicles are already moving out of the labs and onto the roads world-wide, and Yuki Saji thinks Japan has a unique competitive advantage in the space. Yuki is CEO of SB Drive, Softbank’s...

Japan could be, and perhaps should be, a BioTech startup powerhouse. The size of the market, the aging population and the depth and quality of the fundamental research being done here should make Japan a global player. But something is holding her back.

Everyone talks about the importance of international markets and how startups need to think globally from day one. Few companies, however, build that goal into their DNA as completely as Miku Hirano’s Cinnamon. Cinnamon’s core product, Tuya is a micro-video sharing platform...

Japanese banking is one of the most conservative industries in one of the most conservative countries in the world. That’s what makes it both so difficult and so profitable to disrupt. Today, Paul Chapman talks to us about the founding and growth of Moneytree, a personal finance app that is quickly growing into something much bigger and more important.

Over the last 25 years, both Zest and Yuki Ito have been through several different incarnations. Interestingly, these incarnations perfectly mirror the changes we have seen in Japan’s startup scene in that time. Today Zest makes cloud-based, field-service software, which ...

Overall trends are going pretty well for startups in Japan, but things could be a lot better. One strange thing seems to be that almost everyone asking how to improve things for startup in Japan are either government officials, academics or venture capitalists. It's fantastic that they are interested, and their interest in sincere, but there is only so much they can do. What needs to happen ...

Koki Hayashi of Letibee is walking a difficult path by combining a startup business with social activism, but he just might pull it off. Japan is very rapidly becoming more accepting of those who are openly gay, and 2015 was a year of extremely rapid progress for gay rights. Letibee has plans to capitalize on this movement...