Brandon Hill, the CEO/founder of San Francisco-based web consultancy btrax, gave us an invitation to potential presenters and attendees at a must-join tech start-up demo event that will take place next month.
As of this writing, four start-ups of Kayac, Chatwork, J-Grab, and Conyac have passed the first screening. Entries to present are acceptable until May 20.
Here’s some of what we have covered the previous event. (including Ustream video)
- Live: Six Japanese Tech Start-ups Present At SF NewTech Japan Night
- Event Report: San Francisco Japanese Tech Entrepreneur Night
Who’s Brandon Hill:
Born in Hokkaido, Japan. He has a Japanese mother and a American father. Prior to founding web consultancy btrax in San Francisco in 2004, he was attending San Francisco State University where he started his carrier as a designer and programmer.
SF New Tech:
It is literally a tech start-up’s demo and presentation event that takes place monthly at a nightclub in San Francisco. The event celebrated its 5th anniversary last month. Some events in a year feature start-ups from outside the US., which are titled like Belgian Night and Japan Night. btrax is deeply involved with organizing Japan Night.
In light of the Japan’s worst disaster, web tech startups are giving the nation of Japan some hope for normalcy and economic recovery with their efforts to go global. In fact, the entry point for web tech globalization seems to be San Francisco. In a local SF article, San Francisco was named as the second-fastest growing city in high-tech employment, with 65 percent growth over a five-year period. The whole region which includes San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco supports over $48 Billion in payroll.
Last year we wrote about a first of a kind tech event featuring Japanese start-up web tech companies called SF Japan Night. This year, the organizer, btrax, Inc. a multicultural Web agency, is going to hold the event again this year.
Last year’s SF Japan Night event was the capstone of a week of Japanese tech events and was a huge success. Over 500 people attended the week long event with over 300 people just showing up for SF Japan Night alone. One of the presenters, myGengo received seed funding after the event from the Dave McClure’s incubator program 500 Startups.
This year’s event hopes to be even better with many start-up companies from Japan showing great interest including a company including Kayac. Kayac Inc. is a Japanese digital agency with a strength on developing games and apps and plans to go public within the next year.
In partnership with SF New Tech, btrax hopes to continue the theme of helping Japanese web start-ups go global. Brandon K. Hill, president/CEO of btrax, said “We are again excited to help organize this event and with the great interest in sponsorships we hope to defer the web start-up expenses.” In fact, Mr. Hill told us that the event just received a sponsorship from NTT Investment Partners deferring a portion of the event’s costs.
This is one of the better platforms for Japanese web start-ups to begin their global journey. btrax works on coaching the start-ups in various aspects of the event, from developing a presentation style to coaching on how to answer business model questions that the SF Tech community audience typically asks. This gives Japanese start-ups an opportunity to interact with the SF Tech scene which is debated to be the hottest tech venues in the world. The btrax team helps the applying companies by providing a free feedback report on their services and if selected the presenting companies will get a more comprehensive feedback from the event’s audience.
Mr. Hill is also planning to hold “International Startup Night” in 2011, and a couple popular companies from SF Japan Night could get a chance to present and compete with other global start-up from around the world.
If you are willing to sponsor please contact them at sfjapannight@btrax.com and if you are willing to apply for demonstration please do so from here.
Masaru IKEDA