Twenty years ago, we all thought that starting a startup required a special and rare kind of talent. It was something you either had or you didn't. Today, founding and running a startup is considered more of a learnable skill.

This is a rather personal episode. We have no guests this time. - It’s just you and me. - Today, rather than diving deep into a specific aspect of startups in Japan, we are going to take a hard look at both what is and what is not working within the ...

If you've ever done business in Japan, someone probably walked you through the intricacies of Japanese business card culture. - Chika Terada, the founder of Sansan, created one of Japan's most successful startups around the business card protocol.

Startups are changing how business is done in Japan, but medicine remains stubbornly resistant to innovation. - In some ways, that's good. We are literally experimenting with peoples lives, so caution is definitely warranted.

Preferred Networks is making changes in Japan. - Over the past few years, this AI startup has raised more than $130M in venture funding and grown to more than 130 people. - If you live outside of Japan, you might not have heard of this team,

Education is very hard to disrupt. - That’s both good and bad. Education is so important to both individuals and society, it should not be changed on a whim, but over time it seems that our institutions of higher education have drifted away from meeti...

The insurance industry has proven very resistant to innovation. In fact, it has not really changed much in the past 200 years. The way insurance is sold and managed has changed, of course, but from the point of view of the consumer,

Blue Innovation attracted a lot of international attention last year when they announced the  T-Frend drone system. - This dystopian drone flies around offices after hours reminding staff not to work overtime,

Have you ever been at a crowded and noisy party and heard a conversation across the room? - You catch pieces of it, and you know it is interesting, but you can’t quite make it out and you can quite push your way over to that side of the room to be a p...

Hardware is hard. - In fact, sometimes the simplest and most straightforward ideas turn out to be the hardest to implement. - Today I’d like you to meet Kyohi Kang the founder and CEO of Atmoph. Atmoph is a programmable window which can display the s...