Event Report | Red Herring Japan
+8* Events JapanPublished August 2, 2007 at 7:04 am Comments OffA small island in the Pacific
Very little of what happens in Japan – saved a bit of sensational media reporting to alternatively entertain or puzzle – filters outside.
- Who knows which are the current billion-dollar-companies in Japan’s IT and mobile spaces? And what about the future billion-dollar ones?
- Can you name 5 VC funds in Japan? Or perhaps 5 Web 2.0 companies and their CEO?
It would be A-OK if Japan was not the world’s second largest economy, a leader in broadband Internet (among the world’s fastest and cheapest) and a definite leader in mobile usage and technology (over 50% of 3G users, who actually USE mobile services). Alright, you see the issue.
Of course, there are numerous IT-related events in Japan, in Japanese, but the number of foreign correspondents – especially specialized ones – limits what filters outside. In a way, that is good for consulting ^_^ but at the same time, raising awareness is probably even more important to create a need for information.
Bridging the gap
To bridge this gap, Red Herring put special effort in bringing together Japanese and foreign ventures and venture capital at their first-ever Japan event. Kyoto was also a nice choice – with everyone far from the office and no way to go back, it really promoted strong networking.
Here are some ideas we took back from the event – we were already very familiar with many companies so it is likely other participants took away more than us and were surprised by more things. Anyhow, here is our take:
From Japanese entrepreneurs abroad
- Japanese companies have trouble going abroad as highly regarded sales points in a Japanese context are often not as powerful in overseas market.
- Japan has an extremely strong Mobile Literacy, and high Internet literacy.
- Japan lacks role models in entrepreneurship, as a result wannabes lack confidence and have little idea on how to get started
- Japanese still try to speak perfect English vs. SPEAK
- Heterogeneous teams are a great source of creativity, and too few Japanese companies hire foreign staff
- The US have been good at making the rules for globalization, giving them a clear edge while other countries follow. One panelist illustrated this by saying that there are Japanese soccer players, but not referees.
- The interest of young people is shifting from a guaranteed salary towards making interesting things
Overall, the panel had a very positive atmosphere, and all entrepreneurs abroad seem to totally enjoy themselves doing whatever they were up to.
Foreign entrepreneurs in Japan
Another very nice panel, with Japan long-timers, all quite upbeat.
- Naviblog’s CEO pointed the fact that they wasted a lot of time trying to raise money, and one day decided to shift all their attention to improve the product and get clients instead – illustrating the old saying “your clients are your best investors”. They now feel much better, all without VC money.
- Terrie Llyod from Linc Media mentioned the impact of Japan’s feudal mind + socialism + capitalism, and how the conflicts and damage it results for companies and people.
Content panel
- Toru Sano from Nippon Television did a fantastic job at illustrating how mobile TV is great for all, as it combines TV’s push + mass media strengths with mobile’s pull + personal media advantages.
- Ishikawa-san, CEO of animation company GDH said that it is actually quite difficult to understand what is the core of the content, to expand it and monetize it better. Pikachu took five years to understand, and Afro Samurai (an animation series they developed first for the US) took 3 years to understand that the key was “SL Jackson + the character itself + the series name”. Very interesting, especially coming from a super-successful studio like GDH.
- Attention of users is going down for advertising, the issue is now more about users who want to save time, and value quality and convenience (iTunes again, for instance…).
Comment: We heard again the old story “people don’t want to pay for content”. I think this is total nonsense, and it is enough to mention iTunes to show how wrong this idea is. For mobile, people DO pay already for low-quality content such as ringtones and games. Problem lies within payment systems and innovation (offering interesting things). Also, the short-term and fragmented view of operators who do service-by-service P&L is not helping them get the big picture
Web 2.0 panel & launchpad
Beautifully prepared and moderated by Akio Tanaka, Director for Adobe’s Investments in emerging markets.
- Web 1.0 companies are like dinosaurs, while Web 2.0 are cute and nimble startups, with strange new weapons (picture of a hedgehog)
- Power of community (Knowledge, SNS) & power of connectivity (mashup, API), combined with distributed revenue (micro-payment)
- What Web 2.0 services do panelists use personally: EditGrid (live spreadsheets – very nice), Taggy, Tabelog (restaurant listing worldwide, 120,000 entries and 200,000 reviews), Netvibes (usual suspect), Flickr, Thinkfree (browser-based office apps with 1GB of storage)
- The meaning of “citizen” & “netizen” is different according to the country. Somehow related to our piece on “SNS are not all created equal“.
- Monotaro: company specializing in industrial products procurement “social computing company selling industrial products”, defining itself as “Industrial Amazon.com” and exploring the industrial long tail. Accumulated data are used for upsale, downsale and cross-sale.
- Thinkfree: company offering user-generated office documents
- EditGrid: web-based powerful spreadsheet from Hong Kong. Their attitude was really can-do: “if we succeed we kick Microsoft, if we don’t, we open source everything and kick Microsoft”.
- Takram: they are “design engineers” and come up with concept and product innovations. Their approach to creative processes and productization was very interesting.
Keynote: Kiyoshi Kurokawa, Chairman, Japanese Cabinet Office Innovation 25 Initiative
Very complete keynote by a cultured and practical man.
- Mention of “Ozumonization” (from ‘sumo’): 9% of entry-level sumos are foreigners, but the top ranking one (Yokozuna) is 100% foreigner! If sumo can retain its identity while welcoming foreigners, why not in other sectors, and especially universities and large companies?
- Mention of ‘phronesis‘: aspiration for true value, just and common good. Thus, driven with passion, courage and tenacity. Thus, often regarded as disruptive and destructive.
- Human capital vs. Human resource
Keynote: Sachio Senmoto, CEO, eMobile
Uber-energetic 62y.o. entrepreneur.
- Started building businesses at age 39.
- After disrupting the game for long-distance calls with KDD, for Internet connection with eAccess’s ADSL, he is now fighting the giants’ legacy with eMobile. And he says he still has one more company to go.
- Poked a bit of fun at Takeshi Natsuno, inventor of i-mode from NTT DoCoMo, asking him why he was wasting his time in an old-school company and not starting his own ^_^;
Overall, RH Japan was great and the people definitely made the place. As a side note, late-night karaoke did not favor long sleep, which in turn prevented Ryoanji rock garden enlightenment.
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