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 indefatigably. They attack the innovator on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc; and they keep doing so until the innovator raises a white flag.”
What.
There's always haters and detractors. That's part of doing anything in life, and start-ups are no exception.
Once, a Japanese guy spent 10 minutes trying to explain that our startup's failure was guaranteed because Japanese people would never upload their company stamp (a necessary function of official Japanese business documents) to a web service. Even after I told him we already have a bunch of users who are doing this, he was steadfast, so I simply crossed him off the list of people to spend time on. Problem solved.
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.
It's pretty damn hard for people to say your product is failing when you can show you have a lot of people using it.
The more we did this, the more businesses we could get, and we continued to repeat this process until last month when we finally crossed 10,000 signed up companies in Japan.
Getting to here took years of work. This is part of a startup. Understanding your problem space and challenges, and then adapting your product and marketing message accordingly.
"Japanese businessmen tend not to trust the younger generation."
Oh yeah? Try doing a startup and being in the younger generation, AND being foreigners.
You have to build and earn trust over time. You're not handed a trust card as soon as you open a new business.
"If you look at successful Japanese start-ups, they are mostly run by CEOs who have applied the ‘foreign connection’ in some way"
This is frustratingly inaccurate, and belies a total lack of exposure and understanding of the Japanese startup scene. There are plenty of very successful startups that are based in Japan, and focused on Japan, that have zero foreign elements.
"In some cases, like Mr Son, he has managed to combine all five factors."
Commentating on the Japanese startup scene using the CEO of Softbank as an example, Softbank being a company founded in 1981 with a market cap of 43 billion dollars, makes no sense at all.
"There’s lots of venture capitalists here but they are only interested in games and new media"
Wrong. We get weekly un-solicited contacts from Japanese VCs asking for meetings with us.
This is a result of us hustling very hard over a long period of time, and working very hard to establish our credibility and stability.
The Japanese startup scene definitely has areas where it can improve, but they're at best papered over in this article.
Regarding startup life in Tokyo, these are the guys to listen to (jason_tko and po). They are actually here and doing it and really hustle hard for it. Their success is truly deserved.
Also Jason briefly mentioned the HN Tokyo meetups they also organise. There is one next month ( http://hntokyo.doorkeeper.jp/events/5489?utm_campaign=event_... ) on the 11th. If you are in any way tech inclined and in the area, it is a great event with lots of cool people.
Kudos guys. I have been following MakeLeaps for the past year and half and it's impressive to see how fast and wisely you have been building up the product. What I really like is that you understand the business needs very well, which is not such a common trait here were too many are trying to "disrupt" industries they barely know or understand.
I always wanted to ask: are you guys looking at expanding in other areas? Like out of Japan and/or offering invoices entry services?
Thanks! Its always great to hear that kind of thing. :-)
I think I can speak for Jason when I say that we're always looking to expand our offering but we want to do it smartly and in a customer-driven way. You can certainly use our service to make english-language documents but for us a big part of 'localization' is really sweating the details and understanding customer needs. So far, that has meant a focused product for Japanese businesses. The Japanese business consumer is somewhat conservative in adopting new process and has high expectations for services so it's important for us to do things right.
But yeah, like most startups we're always working on new things... :-)
I agree with Paul. We're pretty ambitious on the spaces we want to go after, and we have a lot of room to grow inside Japan first. As Paul mentions, Japanese businesses have very high expectations for service quality, so we want to nail each new feature we put out.
After Japan, we're keen to go after Asia, and then the world. <strokes black cat>
> 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.
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 indefatigably. They attack the innovator on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc; and they keep doing so until the innovator raises a white flag.”
What.
There's always haters and detractors. That's part of doing anything in life, and start-ups are no exception.
Once, a Japanese guy spent 10 minutes trying to explain that our startup's failure was guaranteed because Japanese people would never upload their company stamp (a necessary function of official Japanese business documents) to a web service. Even after I told him we already have a bunch of users who are doing this, he was steadfast, so I simply crossed him off the list of people to spend time on. Problem solved.
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.
It's pretty damn hard for people to say your product is failing when you can show you have a lot of people using it.
The more we did this, the more businesses we could get, and we continued to repeat this process until last month when we finally crossed 10,000 signed up companies in Japan.
Getting to here took years of work. This is part of a startup. Understanding your problem space and challenges, and then adapting your product and marketing message accordingly.
"Japanese businessmen tend not to trust the younger generation."
Oh yeah? Try doing a startup and being in the younger generation, AND being foreigners.
You have to build and earn trust over time. You're not handed a trust card as soon as you open a new business.
"If you look at successful Japanese start-ups, they are mostly run by CEOs who have applied the ‘foreign connection’ in some way"
This is frustratingly inaccurate, and belies a total lack of exposure and understanding of the Japanese startup scene. There are plenty of very successful startups that are based in Japan, and focused on Japan, that have zero foreign elements.
"In some cases, like Mr Son, he has managed to combine all five factors."
Commentating on the Japanese startup scene using the CEO of Softbank as an example, Softbank being a company founded in 1981 with a market cap of 43 billion dollars, makes no sense at all.
"There’s lots of venture capitalists here but they are only interested in games and new media"
Wrong. We get weekly un-solicited contacts from Japanese VCs asking for meetings with us.
This is a result of us hustling very hard over a long period of time, and working very hard to establish our credibility and stability.
The Japanese startup scene definitely has areas where it can improve, but they're at best papered over in this article.