Jason Reacts To Japanese Founder Pitches + Fireside Chat With Yuki Shirato

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Hey everybody, welcome to This Week in Startups. We're about to take you to Osaka, Japan for Jason's live chat with Yuki Shirato. He's the managing director of the Techstars Tokyo Accelerator. They're gonna have a fascinating deep dive on what's going on in the Japan startup scene. Then, Jason and Yuki, here's some pitches from some amazing Japanese founders. Thanks to Jetro for powering this awesome event. Enjoy the show.

Jason Calacanis (0:24)

How's everybody doing? Oh, now it's good, now it's good, okay.

This is a very beautiful room. If only it had a good view.

Wow, what a view. Incredible. It's great to be back in Japan. I have been coming every six months now. I am very lucky because Jetro asked me last year, hey, would you come to Japan and bring your founder university and bring it to Japan? And I said, oh, twist my arm. And they twisted it, oh, and I went, oh. Okay, I'll come. Because I love coming to Japan, and I've been coming for many years, maybe 25 years. And the first time I came, I stayed in Roppongi at a hotel that was $80 a night. And I got into the bed, and then I tried to figure out where to put my bag. But the bag was in enough room between the bed and the walls. So I had it like hanging off the bed, and I could touch one side of the room. I could touch the wall. And then when I leaned over at my bed, I could touch the other side. And I fell in love with Japan.

I got up at five in the morning, went to this Giji fish market, and then I ate everything. And now between my trips here, I have a bot. I have a Grok bot. And I take screenshots and articles, and I just give it to my bot. I used to write everything down in a book. Now I just give it to my bot, and I say, when I'm in Japan, make me an HTML file of all the places by neighborhood. And then I just walk around, and I get to eat, and we do something called a bang bang. Bang bang.

This is something that chefs in America came up with. When you come somewhere that's really great, you don't just want to have one breakfast. You want to have at least two.

And you don't want to have one lunch. You want to have two lunches. And for dinner, you really can't get by with less than three. And so what we do is I come with my friends, and we'll go have the pancakes at Bill's, and then the French toast at Center Bakery, and then we'll get ramen, and then we'll get Tonkatsu, and then we'll get tempura. Just, and we walk around. And everybody who's an entrepreneur, who I bring to Japan, gets very excited.

Because they can't believe that everybody in Japan is an entrepreneur. Everybody in Japan is a founder. You didn't know this. But when you go to the Tonkatsu place and you watch them work, they care, like a founder cares about their startup. Every detail, lots of focus. And Kaizen getting a little bit better each time, getting a little bit better each time. And so I told Jetro, we can do Founder University as long as it starts in January. They said, January? Why January? I said, well, I have to go to Hokkaido and ski.

So, one week in Tokyo, it's a little cold. And then I go to Hokkaido and it's very cold. But there's so much incredible snow. And then in the summer, we also have Founder University, so twice a year. And we have our second cohort.

SPEAKER_3 (4:15)

It's going very well.

Jason Calacanis (4:17)

We're getting to meet so many great entrepreneurs. And they asked me to come to Osaka. I've never been here. I've been to Miyazaki, but my first time in Osaka.

SPEAKER_3 (4:26)

This is a beautiful city.

Jason Calacanis (4:28)

How many people are from Osaka here?

SPEAKER_3 (4:30)

How many people? Okay, not too many.

Jason Calacanis (4:33)

How many people are from Tokyo? Great. How many people from the United States?

SPEAKER_3 (4:38)

Okay, great. Awesome.

Jason Calacanis (4:40)

Well, it's going to be great for us to hang out a little bit. I love meeting founders and helping them. Two of my team members are here. Ismael is maybe outside, and Lucas is here, who is the CTO for my venture firm.

And we're going to talk tonight about being an entrepreneur. And I have a great guest from Techstars, and we're going to take pitches as well, some of the Techstars companies, and then just some random companies that applied. And this is going to be a lot of fun, because this is a safe space. We're going to give very, very, very candid feedback. This is something that's not very Japanese, I learned. I'm from Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, when you do something that's stupid, everybody looks at you and says, wow, that was very stupid.