Failure is a great jumping board to success: DeNA’s Tomoko Namba

DeNA’s Tomoko Namba (right) along with Dely founder Yusuke Horie and Laife founder Tomoki Hosotani

Management graduate Yusuke Horie launched the food delivery startup Dely in Tokyo last year. It raised funding from the likes of Beenos and East Ventures, but it’s now going through troubled times. Tomoki Hosotani, another management grad, started Laife, a site where travelers can meet local people and get information. The startup secured US$150,000 in angel funding on its paper plan but later shut down.

“In a startup, everything from business model to strategy, execution, and fund capital structure can go wrong,” says Tomoko Namba, who founded gaming company DeNA.

Tomoko was speaking today alongside Horie and Tomoki at Tech in Asia Tokyo 2015, where the successful entrepreneur and businesswoman was giving advice to the audience on how founders can come back stronger from failure and push forward.

“Startups must focus on getting the right team so they can keep trying new things,” Tomoko advised. She emphasised that startups should try, fail, iterate, and repeat until successful.

Mentally tough

Tomoki shut down Laife due to his troubled relationship with the co-CEO. “We didn’t have the compatibility. I wanted to be more agile and couldn’t imagine working with a rigid partner. Failing due to a tiff with your partner is mentally tough,” says Tomoki.

“We didn’t have clarity on expectations from each founder. Since we are friends, we weren’t strict about drawing a line and I was polite,” he adds.

Tomoki’s partner was an engineer, which he thought would turn out to be an advantage as he views the psyche of engineers as better than that of MBA grads.

Not just good team

Though the team is an essential component, that’s not the only reason why startups fail. Horie hired 20 skilled professionals, paying them an average of JPY 5 million (US$42,000) per month. But Dely did not have the right product-market fit in Japan. Convenience stores are cheap and widespread, so there was no need for a food delivery startup. “There were many similar startups in the US. But Japan is different,” says Horie. “We had also made cold calls for sales which wasn’t quite helpful in getting clients on board.”

Tomoko feels that failure is a great jumping board to success that helps people tap into better opportunities. “The good news is that investors are willing to back startups that have failed,” she says.

“We folded our company a year and a half ago,” adds Tomoki. “But I would do it again with advice from business owners. It has taught me to try countless times.”

This is part of the ongoing coverage of Tech in Asia Tokyo 2015, our annual conference taking place on September 8 and 9.