He’s built 17 startups in Japan in the last 30 years. Here are his insights

Terrie Lloyd, CEO and founder of Japan travel

This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with Disrupting Japan where we publish the revised transcripts from the show’s podcast interviews with Japanese entrepreneurs. This is heavily revised from the original transcripts. For the full interview, go here.

Terrie Lloyd has started 17 companies in Japan, hiring hundreds of people over the past 30 years. We’ve known each other for a long time now, and in this interview, we talked about his latest startup, Japan Travel, and how foreigners should run a business in Japan.

I will warn you in advance that our conversation lacks most of the startup hype and pep talk most founders exude. But you’re about to learn some fantastic real-world advice and insights.

How did you find the idea for Japan Travel?

Originally, I created a piece of software called ACQ2, which is a community management platform. I tried to get funding for it, but nobody really understood what I was trying to do.

I realized I had to make something more solid that people could identify with. I then started a dog website called Doglovers.jp. Then, the earthquake happened in 2011. I had a dream so powerful that it woke me up. I furiously wrote down what I remembered and decided to do something to contribute to Japan.

So, Japan Travel started off as a portal. I’ve been interested in media for a long time, so I wanted to create a community-driven media brand. The impetus for making Japan Travel is to help with disaster, so I wasn’t really thinking too hard about turning it into a business per se. I’ve always been a firm believer that money follows quality, so if we did a good job, maybe we could turn it into a business.

How does the platform work?

I’ve always been in the publishing business where we are very concerned about quality. But at the same time, we had all these constraints, one of which is having to hire people to create content. So, I decided I would try to do something more community-based by building an entire quality control method.

At the first stage, I ran around and emailed friends, my network, and foreigners living in Japan. I must have contacted about 500 people. I received great response, so we started building this community. We ran it on the platform and today, the community comprises of about 30,000 people.

There were some people, mostly travel journalists, who initially signed up to create original content for the platform. Then, we had people above that who were editors, fact-checkers, translators, etc. looking into each article before they get published.

What brings these people onto the platform?

We have this points and rewards system. And as people become skilled and their reputation on the platform goes up, we ask them to do commercial work requested by regional governments, large corporations, advertising companies, travel agencies, etc.

Have you thought about making the points and rewards system crypto-based?

Yes, I actually have. The thing about tokens and cryptocurrencies is that you need to make it liquid. If it’s not liquid, then people won’t buy it. Well, they may buy it if I do an ICO in the next six weeks, but I’m not going in that direction.

Frankly speaking, it needs to be a fairly broad and liquid market before people can really justify jumping in. And I don’t see 30,000 people as a liquid market.

It’s extremely similar with the point system. But the difference is that the point system is very easy to manage and not technically complicated at all. With tokens, we are talking about spending up to nearly half a million dollars (or JPY 30 million to JPY 50 million) on software development to implement the system. For us, it’s probably only one of the six systems we run in the company.

The travel industry is one of the few growth industries in Japan. But why do you think there seems to be little investments into the space?

So, did you feel like your experience and knowledge actually worked against you?

Why does it seem like a lot of Japanese travel agencies aren’t anxious to engage with foreign companies?

Why haven’t we seen disruption in the travel industry?

What has been your approach to recruiting staff as a foreign entrepreneur?

How do you attract them when a lot of other startups are targeting the same demographic?

What would you change in Japan to make it a better place for startups?