Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can Japan reboot its startup culture?

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–59 of 59 posts

Re: Can Japan reboot its startup culture?

#51

Post by jolks »

smagch wrote: post #43
kmf wrote: post #2

I've been in love with Japan since I was a anime-obsessed kid, and visiting Tokyo in high school was the best travel experience I've ever had. Yet at the same time, I've heard it said that the software landscape in Japan is pretty rough -- bureaucratic, aged, and inefficient. I've found that really upsetting, because Japan has, of course, a reputation for being a technological wonderland. People living in Japan -- na…

I heard that a startup which I don't know hired Chinese when I was working in a startup in Tokyo. I also found some non-Japanese speaking people were working in OpenSource cafe. http://www.osscafe.net/en/ I'm going to give you some links that would be useful. Tokyo based Seed Accelerator: http://onlab.jp/ Social Hiring platform: https://www.wantedly.com/ Japanese AngelList-like service: http://creww.me/

Another famous one: http://www.samurai-incubate.asia/english/

Re: Can Japan reboot its startup culture?

#52

Post by jolks »

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

Re: Can Japan reboot its startup culture?

#53

Post by hudibras »

jason_tko wrote: post #50
MichaelGG wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Google Translate totally useless? I've found it does a great job of providing audio in and out, as well as romanization so you can do a hack job from zero. Google Translate even seems to offer a limited IME so you can type roman or kana and it'll guess the kanji. Shopping in Korean, I can just set it to OCR mode and sorta read labels I don't understand. (Of course, Hangul's probably a lot easier to OCR than kana+k…

No, Google Translate is not totally useless for an amusing conversation about cats at say, a cafe. For a job interview or a more formal business environment though, you're going to start at a considerable disadvantage if you don't speak Japanese in Japan. It's possible (I did it), but it's really, really hard.

Or even filling out the job application.

I always say that the true test of being fluent in Japanese is not being able to read the newspaper or have a conversation. It's being able to read and fill out a government form while people are waiting in line behind you and a bureaucrat is waiting patiently in front of you.

Re: Can Japan reboot its startup culture?

#54

Post by seestheday »

a_bonobo wrote: post #27
whatusername wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The history of these old companies is usually legit - see Wikipedia's List of oldest companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies Sadly Kongo Gumi, the Nr. 1, was swallowed by another company.

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

Re: Can Japan reboot its startup culture?

#55

Post by mathattack »

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

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

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

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

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

Re: Can Japan reboot its startup culture?

#56

Post by MichaelGG »

jason_tko wrote: post #50
MichaelGG wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Google Translate totally useless? I've found it does a great job of providing audio in and out, as well as romanization so you can do a hack job from zero. Google Translate even seems to offer a limited IME so you can type roman or kana and it'll guess the kanji. Shopping in Korean, I can just set it to OCR mode and sorta read labels I don't understand. (Of course, Hangul's probably a lot easier to OCR than kana+k…

No, Google Translate is not totally useless for an amusing conversation about cats at say, a cafe. For a job interview or a more formal business environment though, you're going to start at a considerable disadvantage if you don't speak Japanese in Japan. It's possible (I did it), but it's really, really hard.

I meant just as a tourist for a few weeks; you could at least figure out basic stuff, right? It's not like you'd be totally stranded and unable to communicate at all.

Re: Can Japan reboot its startup culture?

#57

Post by Kenzo99 »

kmf wrote: post #2

I've been in love with Japan since I was a anime-obsessed kid, and visiting Tokyo in high school was the best travel experience I've ever had. Yet at the same time, I've heard it said that the software landscape in Japan is pretty rough -- bureaucratic, aged, and inefficient. I've found that really upsetting, because Japan has, of course, a reputation for being a technological wonderland. People living in Japan -- na…

I came to Japan a little over ten years ago with a non-CS degree, an English teaching job, and a desire to do web development here. It took me two years of learning the language and building my portfolio of pro-bono/super cheap sites, but after that I started scoring freelance gigs. I would do anything: servers, design, programming, translation, whatever would pay to get me out of teaching. As time went by I could focus more on what I'm good at, server admin and programming. I've worked for foreign firms, Japanese firms, Japanese firms founded by foreigners in Japan and I've set up two of my own companies here. It absolutely can be done.

That said, you will run into bureaucratic nightmares. I could go on for pages about firms that won't allow developers FTP access, ones that won't allow you to set up WordPress (they're not an official vendor), firms that want people to sign up for their email newsletter, but by phone because they think the Internet is scary and they don't want personal information put into their website, and other stuff that to this day I still sort of don't believe.

But you'll learn how to be patient, get through those situations, and build either a client base or find a job somewhere that makes sense. Because there are great clients and good companies to work for here. It takes time, but if you learn the language and have solutions to problems people have and can show some examples of those solutions in a portfolio, you'll start finding work. Webdevs are a dime a dozen, but good webdevs who can seamlessly work in English and Japanese will always have work here.

Re: Can Japan reboot its startup culture?

#58

Post by atgm »

jason_tko wrote: post #35

As a founder of a Japan based startup catering to businesses in Japan (MakeLeaps) and also as a co-organiser of the Hacker News Tokyo Meetups with my co-founder Paul, I found this article to be full of defeatism, inaccurate and generally disappointing. A few points: “this is accompanied by a very envious, critical and vocal audience. They underline every possible reason that the product will fail and keep doing so in…

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

This is probably one of the most important cultural leaps for foreigners to make in Japan in general -- social proof can and often will override other qualifications.

We've done some marketing on the product I've been working on, but the majority of our marketing is focused on getting big, recognizable names to use our product so we can use them as a social springboard for other companies. Once we got one or two big names, lots of other people who were on the edge started falling in line immediately.

Re: Can Japan reboot its startup culture?

#59

Post by jason_tko »

MichaelGG wrote: post #56
jason_tko wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Google Translate is not totally useless for an amusing conversation about cats at say, a cafe. For a job interview or a more formal business environment though, you're going to start at a considerable disadvantage if you don't speak Japanese in Japan. It's possible (I did it), but it's really, really hard.

I meant just as a tourist for a few weeks; you could at least figure out basic stuff, right? It's not like you'd be totally stranded and unable to communicate at all.

As a tourist for a few weeks - sure, no problem. You'll be fine.
Post reply on HN