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How and why I built Japan Dev

japan-dev.com

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Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#51

Post by thematrixturtle »

trhoad wrote: post #6

> So we share your jobs on our site. A candidate applies. You interview them and decide to hire them. You notify us you hired them. We send you an invoice. You pay us a fee. I'm absolutely stunned that this works. > For one thing, our contract imposes a late fee for failing to notify us of a successful hire. And the fee increases every month that they don't tell us. This is a pretty good deterrent. Is it? It sounds l…

Japan is a high-trust society. I recently made a booking at a rather expensive inn (ryokan), whose T&C says there are high cancellation fees if you don't show up, but was not required to hand over credit card details or anything else than could enforce this.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#52

Post by stewx »

rtpg wrote: post #47
trhoad wrote: post #6

> So we share your jobs on our site. A candidate applies. You interview them and decide to hire them. You notify us you hired them. We send you an invoice. You pay us a fee. I'm absolutely stunned that this works. > For one thing, our contract imposes a late fee for failing to notify us of a successful hire. And the fee increases every month that they don't tell us. This is a pretty good deterrent. Is it? It sounds l…

I think a huge reason this works is that this site is essentially focused on a small niche: (mostly) Tokyo-based, (mostly) English-heavy IT companies. Everyone knows each other, it’s a high trust environment anyways, and it’s hard to recruit in the first place! And like the article says, recruiting in Tokyo is kind of insanely expensive, mainly cuz it’s scaled to salary and a big chunk. But I think the fact that this…

As of 2019, Tokyo was far cheaper in terms of monthly rent than some major American cities.

Rent in Tokyo for a 2BR apartment: $1,903/mo

Rent in NYC for a 2BR apartment: $2,909/mo

Rent in San Francisco for a 2BR apartment: $3,631/mo

Src: Deutsche Bank https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000049...

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#53

Post by polote »

trhoad wrote: post #6

> So we share your jobs on our site. A candidate applies. You interview them and decide to hire them. You notify us you hired them. We send you an invoice. You pay us a fee. I'm absolutely stunned that this works. > For one thing, our contract imposes a late fee for failing to notify us of a successful hire. And the fee increases every month that they don't tell us. This is a pretty good deterrent. Is it? It sounds l…

That's how any recruiting agency works no ? At least in France it works the same way

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#54

Post by thematrixturtle »

Thanks for helping surface these. The sad fact, though, is that Japanese IT salaries even at the "good" companies are still a fraction of the global market rate.

I was recently approached for an engineering management role at the innovation wing of $JAPANESE_MEGACORP (and I see they're one of your customers!). Alas, the top of their range was around half of what I'm getting paid in Singapore, and that's before accounting for much higher taxes etc.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#55

Post by flerchin »

This seems to have been a real passion project, and seems to nearly be retirement money if the growth continues for just a few more years. Have you considered what an exit would look like?

Such a lovely write-up. Congratulations.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#56

Post by tanto »

foepys wrote: post #11
Grimburger wrote: post #4

This was incredibly well-written and an enjoyable story. Congratulations on pushing through and getting traction. Something that resonated: > We had to put 5 million JPY (~$45k at the time) in our business bank account and leave it there. For... some reason. Living in Asia I've come across this bizarre government obsession with "money in the bank" when dealing with them: "You need $15k in a bank account to apply" "Ok…

In Germany there is a similar thing where you need to deposit at least 25,000 € as collateral to be able to create a GmbH (similar to an LLC). This is meant to pay for debts in case the GmbH goes bankrupt. But the government recognized that this was a problem so the "UG (haftungsbeschränkt)" was made possible where you are only required to deposit 1 € initially and than can deposit more each year until you can conver…

Funny thing is German even more: You can spend the 25k as soon as the company is established for Hardware.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#57

Post by mytailorisrich »

nisegami wrote: post #39
jand wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And: In order to keep the spirit of protecting the creditors of GmbH/UG - while having only to deposit 1 EUR to the UG (haftungsbeschränkt), the UG has to "warn" all potential business partners by carrying the "(haftungsbeschränkt)" (limited liability) suffix as part part of the company name in all written communication (roughly).

Is that meaningfully different from the LLC suffix in the US?

I don't think that there is a difference in terms of liability: Both UG and GmbH are limited liability companies. However, my understanding is that an UG is obligated to retain a quarter of its annual profits as reserves until it has reached the capital requirements of a GmbH, at which point it can be converted.

IMHO, UG are a fudge. They recognised that the barriers to GmbH formation are high but at the same time did not want to drop them so they created something new that allows people to start a company before being able to afford a GmbH.

This contrasts to, for instance, the UK where limited companies (Ltd) are extremely easy and cheap to create and maintain (£1 capital and about £15 cost) so that there is no need for multiple types.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#58

Post by jamil7 »

foepys wrote: post #11
Grimburger wrote: post #4

This was incredibly well-written and an enjoyable story. Congratulations on pushing through and getting traction. Something that resonated: > We had to put 5 million JPY (~$45k at the time) in our business bank account and leave it there. For... some reason. Living in Asia I've come across this bizarre government obsession with "money in the bank" when dealing with them: "You need $15k in a bank account to apply" "Ok…

In Germany there is a similar thing where you need to deposit at least 25,000 € as collateral to be able to create a GmbH (similar to an LLC). This is meant to pay for debts in case the GmbH goes bankrupt. But the government recognized that this was a problem so the "UG (haftungsbeschränkt)" was made possible where you are only required to deposit 1 € initially and than can deposit more each year until you can conver…

I always thought it was the case that the UG was riskier from a liability perspective but quickly reading over it, it's not entirely clear that's the case.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#59

Post by kartikkumar »

It's kinda funny how strategy and tactics can cross over between totally unrelated businesses.

We've taken a pretty similar approach to keeping companies honest. What we realized was that in niche markets, trust drives transactions and people are often aware that burning relationships for short-term gain has a drastic impact on lifetime value, especially if there are strong network effects.

Fortunately, we've only had to threaten to use the contractual stick a handful of times, and in each case, the mere appearance of the stick in the conversation served to recalibrate things, bringing the dialogue back to the fair center.

The cold start problem is real and one that really took us a lot of time and effort. The time spent to understand the mechanics of our marketplace manually paid itself back later on, when we realized that it helped us understand churn, and specifically how to mitigate it.

Enjoy the read!

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#60

Post by Morgawr »

stewx wrote: post #52
rtpg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a huge reason this works is that this site is essentially focused on a small niche: (mostly) Tokyo-based, (mostly) English-heavy IT companies. Everyone knows each other, it’s a high trust environment anyways, and it’s hard to recruit in the first place! And like the article says, recruiting in Tokyo is kind of insanely expensive, mainly cuz it’s scaled to salary and a big chunk. But I think the fact that this…

As of 2019, Tokyo was far cheaper in terms of monthly rent than some major American cities. Rent in Tokyo for a 2BR apartment: $1,903/mo Rent in NYC for a 2BR apartment: $2,909/mo Rent in San Francisco for a 2BR apartment: $3,631/mo Src: Deutsche Bank https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000049...

> Rent in Tokyo for a 2BR apartment: $1,903/mo

NOTE: I wouldn't trust most sources of this kind of data you see online (I can't open your link so I can't verify it) because you simply cannot compare rent prices like that "across cultures".

And I don't mean just "Japanese apartments are small" (this is mostly a myth, although they are smaller on average), I simply mean that it's pretty much impossible to define what "city center" is in Tokyo, and having a good public transportation system and multiple city centers (Tokyo is 23 cities, and more) means that it's kinda hard to find a uniform measure that is comparable to most other cities in the world.

Tokyo is incredibly cheap for such a massive world capital/megalopolis. I can't stress this enough, as someone who's moved to Tokyo from one of the most expensive (yet incredibly small) capitals of Europe as far as rent goes (Dublin). It was amazing to see the contrast.

$1900/mo in Tokyo for 2 bedroom apartment (I assume it'd be a so-called 2LDK) is actually quite overpriced if you know which neighborhoods to look at (and yes, you can still consider them "city center"). I live 20 minutes away from Shinjuku, 30 minutes away from Shibuya, 10 minutes away from Ikebukuro (all three massive city centers) and I pay the equivalent of $1300/mo for a 3LDK apartment (3 bedroom, one living/dining room, one kitchen).

Obviously, if you want to be fancy and live in cool or pricy neighborhoods like Ebisu or Daikanyama or most of Setagaya-ku you're gonna pay much more, still... Definitely waaaay less than other places like San Francisco or New York.

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