Investors were skeptical that combining traditional face-to-face learning with a P2P web platform would work. Over the past three years, startup founder Takashi Fujimoto of StreetAcademy has been proving them wrong. Takashi is showing Japan that the new does not have to replace the old. Sometimes the new just makes the old things even better.

StreetAcademy matches those who want to teach with those who want to learn. Local courses are offered in everything from cooking, to yoga, to foreign languages to how to best use Excel to generate a startup business plan, and three years in StreetAcademy is only just getting started.

EdTech is one of the hottest sectors for Japanese startups today, and the Japanese education system is ripe for disruption. However, there are also formidable barriers to change, and very few startup founders are willing to throw themselves against the problem head on.

On the podcast, Takashi and I discuss a possible third way forward. One that is blends the old and the new to achieve improvement in a productive, harmonious, and very Japanese way.

Show Notes for Startups

Why Yoga and Excel were the natural early adopters
How to merge traditional culture and modern learning techniques
How Facebook was the key to overcoming the fear of face-to-face meetings
Simple words from Steve Jobs that changed his life
Why negotiating with your wife can be harder than negotiating with investors
How the speed of innovation takes many Japanese startup founders by surprise
How EdTech will change Japan and the way we learn
How modern EdTech and traditional Japanese eduction will coexist
The challenges of finding early customers

Links from the Founder

Street Academy
Takashi's Personal Blog
Follow Takashi on Twitter @TacosFajitas
Friend him on Facebook

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Transcript from Japan
[INTRO]

Tim: Welcome to Disrupting Japan straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. I am Tim Romero and thanks for joining us. Today we sit down with Takashi Fujimoto of Street Academy. A peer-to-peer learning platform that matches teachers with thos eager to learn.

Now, education technology or Ed-Tech is going to be one of the most active start-up investment areas in Japan in 2015. In the last few months there has been a real spike in the amount of time VC's seem to be talking about it. And, we will be talking a lot more about Ed-Tech in future podcasts as well.

Education in general is an area that really needs to be changed. The entire foundation of the world's education systems were built with the goal of training a workforce for a hierarchical systematic repetitive task based occupations. Whether in factories or in offices.

Now, over the past century technology not rising incomes, but technology has rendered our educational systems and our educational goals hopelessly obsolete. Even in developing economies technology and automation has regulated repetitive task based occupations to the lowest paying jobs.

Ed-Tech is a fascinating and dynamic space that is full of both companies with innovative ideas on how to improve learning. And, companies who sole desire is to siphon off public funds.

It's an area of both government officials who want to find better ways to help students learn. And, also those who want nothing more than to protect their current power.

In the end, the goals are complex. Each nation needs to strike a balance that provides its population with not only the skills they need to find a job. But, the information the need to be informed, responsible citizens in that society. After all, a society that overly values disruption will soon cease to exist.

So, how do we strike that balance? Well, I will let Takashi explain it during our interview.

[Start of Interview]

Tim: Great. We are sitting down with Takashi Fujimoto of Street Academy. And, it is unusual, it's the middle of the day. So,