Hi #smartcommunity friends! In this episode of the Smart Community podcast I have a lovely conversation with Miho Tanaka. Miho is the Startup Visa Lead & Director of Startup Welcome Service in Shibuya, Japan. Miho starts by telling us about her background and her passion for helping startups in Japan. She then tells us about the growth of investment in Japan, what a Smart Community is to her, a bit about the work she does with Startup Welcome Service, before she discusses the focus on Smart Cities in Japan. Miho then shares with us the post Covid shift for communities and what that looks like in Japan as well as the key considerations startups need to know to enter the Japanese market. We finish our chat discussing the emerging trends of silver tech for the ageing society in Japan. As always, we hope you enjoyed this episode as much as we enjoyed making it! 

Listen here: 

What we cover in this episode:

• Miho’s background and passion for welcoming international startups into Japan
• The key challenges international startups face when entering the Japanese market 
• The growth of investment in Japan 
• What a Smart Community is to Miho
• A bit about the work Miho does with Startup Welcome Service 
• The focus on Smart Cities in Japan 
• The post Covid shift for communities in Japan and the increase in remote working
• The key considerations startups need to know to enter the Japanese market 
• The emerging trends of silver tech for the ageing society 

Quotes: 

“A Smart Community is the community that everybody can just pursue what they want to do, regardless of their background, nationality or gender.”

“The total amount of investment is growing in Japan. And most of the investment, I think, goes to SAS and AI and also fintech. And in terms of the startup business, Shibuya, Tokyo, Tokyo government is specifically targeting our FinTech industry.”

“[Start Up Welcome Service] is only a six months old project, we received over 400 inquiries from all over the world. So [we are] not only guiding the new founders through the process, we also separate our founders, who are already based in Japan. And we are still trying to figure out which corporation to collaborate with.”

“Before COVID, everybody had to go to the office every single day in the morning, in a packed train. After Covid, we all know that we can no longer go to the office every day and we have to find an efficient way to remotely work for the company. So I think that technology is growing.”

“I think many people start thinking about the benefit of working from home, especially if they have family, it’s easier for them to take care of their family members, like kids or maybe elderly [family] members.”

“As long as [start ups] can tap into the Japanese market as a kind of first comer to the industry, then it’s very easy to actually find the synergy with different corporations, and it’s going to be easier to make partnerships.”

“The market is quite big, because [the] Japanese population is about 120 million in total right now, in adults almost 30% is over 65 years old. So basically, they can target like 36 million [dollars] in sales in the law tech industry. So that’s a good market.”

“Japan is facing an ageing society, as everybody knows. So we really need to deploy new technologies to face these kinds of challenges.”

Links: 

Startup Welcome Service 

Connect:

Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community 

Connect with Miho via LinkedIn

Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community  

Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube

The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital