Startups Archives - Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan

Selects: Why Japan’s Geisha are disappearing in the social media age

by Tim Romero | Aug 4, 2020 | 2

You don’t usually think of Japan’s geisha as being an industry, but it is. In fact, strictly...

DJ Selects: Why Your Startup Accelerator is Going to Disappear

by Tim Romero | Mar 31, 2020 | 0

Almost all startup accelerators are going bankrupt and going away. Hiro Maeda, the founder of two...

DJ Selects: How this Musical Shoe is Helping Hospitals

by Tim Romero | Feb 18, 2020 | 2

Most great startup ideas don’t grab your attention right away. It takes a while before the...

DJ Selects: Why Men Need Women Founders

by Tim Romero | Nov 26, 2019 | 2

Ari Horie has always had a different approach to supporting women entrepreneurs. She doesn’t talk about “empowering” women and …

DJ Selects: IoT, Japan, and the Uncertain Future of Poop

by Tim Romero | Aug 6, 2019 | 2

Startup founders claiming their company is going to “change the world” has become a cliche. But rarely do we see a product that could clearly and significantly make someone’s life better. D-Free is one of those products. However…

DJ Selects: The Myth of the Successful Startup Failure

by Tim Romero | Jun 25, 2019 | 8

Startup culture has crazy and contradictory views about failure. As founders we are told to fail fast, but also to never give up. We are told to follow our vision, but be ready to pivot. Somehow this macho-bullshit culture of “I never really fail and ‘m not afraid of failure.” has become dominant amount founders. But it’s the result of denial. Trivializing failure is a way of not thinking about it’s effects.

The truth is that failure sucks. Failure is painful. Failure …

DJ Selects: How to Sell Without Salesmen in Japan – Daisuke Sasaki

by Tim Romero | Mar 19, 2019 | 2

Corporate accounting is not usually the first thing the comes to mind when you think of disruptive technology, and for the most part, that’s a good thing. Daisuke Sasaki of Freee, however, is changing the way sales are made in Japan from the bottom up.