Disrupting Japan

Things don't always go as planned. In fact, they usually don't. Four years ago, femtech was both a rapidly-growing product category and a nationwide movement vocally championed by politicians, industry, and the media. As the market began to grow, however, Japan's incumbents took note and took action. The femtech social movement began to decouple from the products. Today we talk with Amina Sugimoto about the future of femtech in Japan, the fragile nature of public promises in the face of corporat

Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most innovative founders and VCs. This is our 250th episode, and I wanted to give you something special; something I have been thinking about more and more as my career in startups and venture capital has developed. Leave a comment Today we are going to talk about a group of people who are perhaps the most reviled and maligned by technologists and innovators worldwide. People who stand in opposition to everything innovators hold dear. Today

I have a short in-between edition for you today. Last month at Venture Cafe's big global gathering in Tokyo, I had a chance to sit down on stage with two old friends of the podcast, and we talked about where physical AI is heading in Japan. This conversation is with Chiamin Lai, general partner of First Light Capital, and Kaname Hayashi, founder and CEO of GrooveX, the makers of the absolutely adorable Lovet robot. Chiamin is one of the most savvy physical AI investors in Japan, and Kaname has b

New technology is always introduced with the promise of the good it can do for humanity. Most of the time the promised good never come to be. This is largely a structural problem ib how startups are funded, and some founders are creating a better way. Today we talk with Yosuke Kaneko, founder of Sora Technology, who is using drones to fight malaria in Africa. The technology is a perfect fit, but it was hard to address this problem as a startup. We talk about the challenges of using technology to

You might think that large Japanese companies have trouble innovating. Unfortunately if you believe that, you would be correct. Recently, however, there are a few reasons for hope. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, and Japan Inc. now largely understands that their traditional R&D methods are broken, and are looking to startups for help and inspiration. Corporate venturing (spinning out internal projects as startups) is one such approach. But it's not an easy one. Today

It's tough to be a vegetarian in a world full of carnivores. It's even tougher to be a startup selling a vegan egg-substitute into a world full of carnivore-dominated market, but that's exactly what Umami United is doing. Umami United founder Hiro Yamazaki explains that the real diver for vegan-food adoption is not ethics or sustainability, but simple economics. The startup's market traction seems to show that he and the team are on the right track. We talk about the importance of keeping an ope