{"id":9974,"date":"2010-08-30T22:06:34","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T13:06:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/?p=9974"},"modified":"2010-08-30T22:06:34","modified_gmt":"2010-08-30T13:06:34","slug":"wish2010-event-report-panel-discussion-by-heads-of-gree-mixi-and-twitters-japan-operation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/wish2010-event-report-panel-discussion-by-heads-of-gree-mixi-and-twitters-japan-operation\/","title":{"rendered":"WISH2010 Event Report \u2013 Panel Discussion by Heads Of Gree, Mixi And Twitter’s Japan Operation"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nAgile Media Network<\/a>, a Tokyo-based marketing company using blog and word-of-mouth media and led by A-list blogger Motohiko Tokuriki<\/a> who also serves an adviser for Asiajin, held the second edition of annual tech and social media conference WISH in Roppongi this weekend.\u00a0 550 attendees joined.
\nThe event started with a panel discussion titled “How Japanese web services can stand in the international arena?” and welcomed Gree[J]<\/a> Founder\/CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka, Mixi[J]<\/a> COO Akinori Harada and DG Incubation[J]<\/a>‘s Manager Hiroki Eda who manages Twitter’s operation in Japan.<\/p>\n

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\nFrom Left to right: Moderator Motohiko Tokuriki (Agile Media Network), Yoshikazu Tanaka (Gree), Akinori Harada (Mixi) and Hiroki Eda (DG Incubation)
\nModerator Tokuriki (M):<\/strong> Let me start with Eda-san, you know overseas well, what is the most different between Japanese market and the world?
\nEda (E):<\/strong> The biggest one is language.\u00a0\u00a0 But I think Japanese users tend to dive in novel web services compared to the rest of the world.\u00a0 When we look at the characteristic of web service users in the world, Japanese users are mostly categorized in the early adaptors.
\nM:<\/strong> Gree and Mixi have overseas services.\u00a0 Do they have any difference from your domestic service?
\nHarada (H):<\/strong> We have an operation in Mainland China.\u00a0 But I’ve been in charge of it for the last two months.\u00a0\u00a0 Mobile handset specs, line speed – these are different from Japan.\u00a0\u00a0 Flat-rate data subscriptions also required to spread out the service, but China does not have it.\u00a0\u00a0 That’s why Internet Messenger services are still popular.
\nE:<\/strong> Twitter got a sensation in Japan despite there was no Japanese edition.
\nM:<\/strong> Wondering if Japanese are too much conscious about national borders.\u00a0 For example, Gremz[J]<\/a>, a blog widget service that allows you to virtually grow a sprout by your blog postings, got a popularity among Taiwanese users as unforeseen.\u00a0\u00a0 If the service is highly evaluated, it may break the language barriers.
\nE:<\/strong> When we deploy the service in our market, “mobile-enabled” is an essential option, that is totally different from the rest of the world.\u00a0\u00a0 I mean feature phones.
\nTanaka (T):<\/strong> PCs are still usual for using web services in the overseas.\u00a0 But transition from PCs to mobile were so rapid in this country, that’s why we can’t see how the world trend will become from now.\u00a0 Mobile culture is well-matured in this country, but its technology is neither.
\nM:<\/strong> How about the difference of the start-up environment?
\nE:<\/strong> Conditions are different for each case.\u00a0 Aiming at Japanese market or the world?\u00a0 That’s it.
\nT:<\/strong> The world market has ten times potentiality.\u00a0 But so is the number of your rivals if you go to the world. \u00a0 I think unless the service may succeed even in Japanese market, that can’t make it in the international market, neither.
\nH:<\/strong> There’s a time gap when we look at the difference.\u00a0 US-based start-ups are usually launched in the West Coast, moved to the East Coast, and then go to non-English countries.\u00a0 It is very important to foresee that process when launching.
\nM:<\/strong> If there’s no flat-rate subscription in Japanese mobile services, we all find out we’ve run up a fortune by web access mobile, which is “Pake-Shi (packet death)”.
\nH:<\/strong> We should keep our eyes on the trends which are different country by country.\u00a0\u00a0 The iPhone is now so popular in Japan, and we can’t bring Flash-based services from other countries.
\nM:<\/strong> Had we better aim at succeeding in Japanese market?\u00a0 Otherwise, should we aim at a specific region that a service suit for?
\nT:<\/strong> If your service has proved a success here, there’s another country where you can make it.
\nM:<\/strong> Can we work in Japan with aiming at other countries?
\nE:<\/strong> We have an incubation program called Open Network Lab[J]<\/a> that encourages potential entrepreneurs to develop international services.\u00a0\u00a0 If the service has a sound business model, that can be launched anywhere in the world.
\nH:<\/strong> I think going abroad without testing at the domestic market tends to fail.\u00a0\u00a0 There’s no case that Silicon Valley-based company chooses Japan as their first market.\u00a0\u00a0 Neither is it for us.\u00a0\u00a0 We live here, we know the core values of our mobile community.\u00a0\u00a0 That’s why we’d better start with our country, then go abroad.
\nT:<\/strong> If you plan to launch an extraordinary service, you don’t need to do it in Japan.\u00a0 I think you’d better succeed something in Japan and then leverage it outside the country.
\nM:<\/strong> Japanese start-ups are criticized for not seeing foreign markets.\u00a0 But you just need to launch a business in Japan, first.
\nH: <\/strong>We should aim at foreign markets from the first stage.
\nT: <\/strong>In order to manage a big operation by a number of persons, we should do it in Japan, first.\u00a0 I’m not confident to manage such a number of employees in English.
\nM: <\/strong>Tanaka-san, you’re encouraging your employees to learn English, aren’t you?
\nT: <\/strong>Not so much.\u00a0 I’ve been often asked if we develop a new service targeting elderly people which has two million population in the next.\u00a0\u00a0 But we will develop what everyone can use and enjoy.\u00a0\u00a0 Regardless of nationality or religion, that’s our first priority.\u00a0\u00a0 Japanese market is not so huge that we can’t focus on a specific segment as a target of our service.
\nM: <\/strong>Tanaka-san, you were previously working with Rakuten<\/a>. If you had been working there, how would you feel about that?
\nT:<\/strong> They have a bunch of servers.\u00a0\u00a0 They have a number of engineering guys to maintain them.\u00a0 I became keenly aware of that.\u00a0 They have 20 million users.\u00a0\u00a0 When they think of services targeting 700 million users in the world, they need more workforce for maintaining servers.
\nM: <\/strong>Here now we have the second topic.\u00a0\u00a0 We need a bunch of cost for adding servers and facilities when users increase rapidly.\u00a0\u00a0 But you need a long time to get to the monetization period.\u00a0\u00a0 How can we make a living between two timings?\u00a0\u00a0 It’s very short in the case of Japanese start-ups.
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\nT: <\/strong>I’ve been unable to mention this, but I’d been throwing cash advance money to server purchase for my own service (before founding his company Gree).\u00a0 For covering it by my bonus payment to come.\u00a0\u00a0 Then I enjoyed it.\u00a0\u00a0 I used to be an office worker who has built a virtual town of 70,000 citizens…\u00a0\u00a0 But when I first saw Evernote<\/a>, Dropbox<\/a> and LinkedIn<\/a>, we can’t launch such services requiring a long-term period to make results in this country.
\nM: <\/strong>I remember Mixi has been showing a loss, there was a conference where users came together to talk about the issue (for preventing it from being terminated).
\nH: <\/strong>Yep, then I was working with NTT DoCoMo, and in charge of lending them a room for that.\u00a0 I remember.
\nM:<\/strong> The user growth rate of Twitter, Mixi and Gree are all quadratic.\u00a0 How could you make it grown at such a pace?
\nH:<\/strong> If you have a\u00a0 sufficient number of users, investors will definitely come.\u00a0\u00a0 But we should depend on not only Japanese VC firms.\u00a0 Mixi used to be in the red.\u00a0 Then we added non-free membership and ads.\u00a0\u00a0 Yet we may not\u00a0 have established a sound business model.\u00a0 A rocket start allows no money period.\u00a0\u00a0 But the service requiring a long-range view needs a sufficient amount of money.<\/strong>
\nM:<\/strong> Some people are running their services individually.\u00a0 Tanaka-san could corporate it, but most people have no idea on how they can make it.
\nE:<\/strong> When we look at the people participating in Open Network Lab, mostly they’ve developed prototypes.\u00a0\u00a0 Some people say, “We have not used money but engaged 150 core users.\u00a0 That’s why we’re ready (for corporating and fundraising).”\u00a0\u00a0 They’re very confident. They’re going to fundraise in a very steady way.
\nT:<\/strong> When I founded my company, I was claimed it’s like killing myself.\u00a0 That was the time when Mixi overtook us, then I just quit my previous company (Rakuten) to launch a company.
\nM:<\/strong> In Japan, there are a number of services being maintained by individual developers as part of their hobbies.\u00a0 The services may be easily terminated when the developers get busy for their main jobs.\u00a0\u00a0 They have no way to handle it for stepping forward.
\nE:<\/strong> I used to be running Gree alone.\u00a0 Mixi had 30 employees at that time.\u00a0\u00a0 If I had said I would stop that, I would be terminated (by users). I just founded the company to avoid it.
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\nH:<\/strong> We’re forced to make up our minds to found a company in these days.\u00a0 It used to be much easier 50 or 60 years ago.\u00a0\u00a0 My grandfather retired from the police and launched his business. (Civil servants don’t like to quit their jobs because of income stability.)\u00a0 In the US, those who can earn above-average salaries at sound companies launch their own business.\u00a0 I think they think of founding a start-up as a sort of game in the country.\u00a0 But most of those killing themselves in Japan are owners of medium-sized companies.\u00a0 Less Japanese companies have bankrupted than those of the US.\u00a0\u00a0 We need an environment where people who can work with top-ranked companies are motivated to launch their business.
\nH:<\/strong> It may be stemmed from the issues of fundraising.\u00a0\u00a0 Tanaka-san and my boss Kasahara (Mixi’s CEO) need to invest in start-ups more aggressively.\u00a0 Both guys don’t use money enough. (big laugh by audience)\u00a0\u00a0 In Japan, there’s an atomosphere in which only some famous people can launch their business.\u00a0\u00a0 We just have to change our society and build an entrepreneurial ecosystem.\u00a0 Tanaka’s cash-advance story (for server purchase) is a typical example of bad cases.
\nE:<\/strong> I wonder if we can have a system to bring start-ups the money from those who have made success in their business.
\nM:<\/strong> How can entrepreneurs protect themselves from bankruptcy?
\nT:<\/strong> We can get finance from the US now.\u00a0\u00a0 No worries.\u00a0\u00a0 Don’t worry about it, just do your business, that’s what I can say.
\nH:<\/strong> In Japan, if we’ve not made your mind for launching a business, we keep being an office worker and never launch it.\u00a0 We need to remove the difficulties in launching a start-up.
\nM:<\/strong> Bill Gates quit the university and started his business.\u00a0\u00a0 That means, in a way, we need start it during our school days.\u00a0 It’s not a good answer for attendees who are mostly office workers.\u00a0 Could we have any good advice?
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\nE: <\/strong>At Open Network Lab, we’ve been aiming at bringing feedback from successful entrepreneurs to potential entrepreneurs.\u00a0 That can shorten the time to learn experiences for business (including how to avoid failures and recover from it).\u00a0 Then it makes results in a shorter time.
\nH:<\/strong> There are two options, found a company first, develop a product in the next.\u00a0 Otherwise, develop a product first, and found a company in the next.\u00a0 I think Japanese tend to take the latter option.\u00a0\u00a0 I recommend entrepreneurs to fundraise without thinking it so seriously.\u00a0\u00a0 This is the right time.\u00a0\u00a0 Then they should start with Asia as well as Ameba Pico<\/a> (refer to this Akky’s story<\/a>).
\nT:<\/strong> If you can’t dominate Asia with the service, you can’t do so in the world, neither.
\nM:<\/strong> Thank you so much.
\n(Applause by audience)
\nSee Also:<\/strong><\/p>\n