10 ways Japanese entrepreneurs are different from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs (#StartupAsia)

At Startup Asia Tokyo today, we had three big names on stage talking about the potential of Asia: Hiro Maeda, managing partner at Beenos, Taizo Son, CEO at Movida Japan, Kevin Hale, partner at Y Combinator, and Dave McClure, founding partner at 500 Startups. Hale and McClure provided their Silicon Valley perspective on the differences between Japanese entrepreneurs and those in Silicon Valley. Son believes that “in terms of Asia, we’re catching up to Silicon Valley.” For Hale and McClure, although they have taken a look at Asia, they concede haven’t had as much exposure as they would like.

1. Turds versus sparkling gold products

According to Hale, Japanese founders are very sensitive about sharing their products. No doubt, this is a result of Japanese perfectionist culture. But this also affects the approach to iteration. By contrast, Silicon Valley founders are willing to share a product even it’s just half-done. In fact, they’re proud of a half-done product. This is likely influenced by the Valley’s exposure to lean startup methodology. Hale adds:

Japanese founders hold their products under lock and key, whereas Silicon Valley guys are very proud to show off a turd, and Japanese founders won’t show off their products unless they’re sparkling gold.

2. Dominance of social media and online games

McClure and Hale both made the point that, when looking at ecosystems outside of Japan, it is heavily influenced by online games and social media. McClure explains:

There’s an extreme fascination with online games and social media. Probably because there’s so much success with folks like DeNA and GREE, so startups want to follow.

3. Not enough B2B startups

When McClure compared Japan specifically to Germany he saw a lack of business-to-business (B2B) startups. It’s likely that investors are eager to invest in this category, but he notes that there aren’t enough success stories despite there being a huge opportunity.

There’s more SaaS in Germany than in Japan. – Dave McClure

Would love to see more B2B startups out here – Kevin Hale

4. Not lazy enough

As some have noted, laziness is invaluable. It’s oftentimes the seed for new ideas and it creates a lack of tolerance for inefficiencies. After all, a lazy person is more likely to find an easier way to do something so he/she can go back to being lazy. Hale notes that this is certainly not in the Japanese culture. Japanese are perfectionists that work very hard.

5. Going local first, global later

6. Scale of vision is too small

7. Investors are the bottleneck

8. The big guys would rather enter the market than acquire new guys

9. Treatment of employees

10. Starting up still has a stigma