Tech Culture Podcast - Conversations With Successful Founders In Japan

Tech Culture Podcast
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Entrepreneurship

Tech Culture Podcast, hosted by Kaustubh Hiware and Prashant Anand, brings you conversations with top startup founders in Japan running successful businesses. We cover a wide range of topics, including deep-diving into the founders' lives, learnings, and successes and failures. Join us for actionable insights from the founders who have been there and faced the same challenges as you, providing what you need to build your own successful business. If you enjoy the IndieHackers podcast or Startups for the Rest of Us, you'll enjoy our show.

  1. 04/15/2022

    Building an AI product for 3100 customers in 50 countries with Hazumu Yamazaki

    Kaustubh (@_ofkaus) and Prashant (@primaprashant) sit down with Hazumu Yamazaki (@HazumuY), co-founder and co-CEO of Empath, to talk about challenges in building an AI product - from getting initial users to serving 3100 customers in 50 countries, from starting with zero data of their own to creating their data supply chain, and more. --- Do you love our content and want to help us grow? Leave a review on our website. Want to be among the first to hear from us? Follow us on Twitter @techculturepod. --- Topics: 00:00 - Intro 01:17 - What's Empath all about? 02:31 - How Hazumu's PhD research led to Empath 04:37 - Market research and validation for emotion recognition API 07:47 - Getting initial users and longer B2B sales cycle 09:55 - Founding team 11:11 - Becoming sustainable 12:16 - Improving productivity of online meetings with JamRoll 16:55 - Interesting feature requests like lie detection 18:15 - Problems with emotion recognition in videos 21:48 - Collecting data for a new AI startup 23:47 - Adding labels to the collected data 24:45 - Recognizing emotions in different languages 26:05 - Sarcasm and hidden contexts in conversations 27:49 - What distinguishes Empath from publicly available models 30:06 - Tech stack at Empath 32:02 - Adoption of AI Japan 33:40 - Advice for the initial stages of building an AI product 35:11 - Organizations that support AI startups in Japan 37:10 - Going global 38:54 - How to make a great pitch 41:23 - Funding rounds 42:00 - Biggest challenge in reaching the next milestone 43:46 - Long term vision for Empath ---

  2. 02/15/2022

    #12 - Bootstrapping a B2B SaaS to 150+ Million Yen ARR with Iqbal Abdullah of Xoxzo

    Kaustubh (@_ofkaus) and Prashant (@primaprashant) sit down with Iqbal Abdullah (@iqbalabd), founder of Xoxzo Inc., and LaLoka Labs, to talk about: bootstrapping Xoxzo to >150M JPY ARR, uniqueness in B2B sales in Japan, selling 67% stake in Xoxzo, advice for people who want to build their own business in Japan, and more. --- Do you love our content and want to help us grow? Leave a review on our website. Want to be among the first to hear from us? Follow us on Twitter @techculturepod. --- Topics: 00:00 - Intro 01:28 - Xoxzo's pronunciation and history 05:05 - Beginnings of Xoxzo 08:25 - Evolving use-cases of Xoxzo 13:27 - Continuous improvement in the long-term 16:56 - B2B sales in Japan 21:30 - Selling majority stake in Xoxzo 25:15 - Bootstrapping Xoxzo 27:02 - Open-source grants 29:25 - Contribution to Python community 33:01 - Adventures at Laloka Labs 38:12 - Book recommendations 42:30 - Advice to build your own business in Japan ---

  3. 01/04/2022

    #11 - Going Full-Time on Side Business with Eric Turner of JapanDev

    Kaustubh (@_ofkaus) and Prashant (@primaprashant) sit down with Eric Turner (@_etdev), founder of Japan Dev, and VCList.jp, to talk about his transition to an IndieHacker role, common business mistakes made by engineers, getting customer feedback, sharing progress, and more. --- Do you love our content and want to help us grow? Leave a review on our website. Want to be among the first to hear from us? Follow us on Twitter @techculturepod. --- Topics: 00:32 - Intro 01:09 - Working full-time on JapanDev and being accountable 06:16 - Tasks with high ROI and impact 07:38 - Job market in Japan 15:00 - Building features that customers want 18:43 - How JapanDev started and early mistakes 26:11 - Managing side-business along with a full-time job 31:01 - Eric’s long term plans 34:20 - The technology for which Eric is most optimistic?

  4. 12/07/2021

    #10 - Newsletters and E-mail Marketing

    We love the smell of newsletters in the morning. Learn all about newsletters and e-mail marketing. Topics: 00:00 - Developing new habits (hint: habit stacking). 02:57 - Introduction to newsletters and e-mail marketing. 06:27 - Starting your own newsletter. 09:14 - Metrics to keep track of for your newsletter. 19:35 - Stats about B2B and B2C email-marketing. 21:08 - Successful newsletter stories. 22:42 - Newsletter recommendations. Sources for stats: HubSopt Backlinko MailChimp Subscribe to us on twitter and instagram if you haven't already! We'd love to hear your feedback for this episode! You can provide us feedback using this form.

  5. 11/05/2021

    #9 - LinkedIn Top Indian Startups 2021

    Discover exciting startups from the LinkedIn Top Indian Startups 2021 list. Topics: 00:00 - Personal updates for last few months. 03:04 - Introduction to LinkedIn Top Indian Startups 2021 list. 03:44 - Fampay is India’s first neobank for teenagers. It allows minors to do UPI, P2P and card payments without the need to set up a bank account. Fampay YC page. 07:21 - ShareChat is India’s #1 social media app, with more than 160 million monthly active users. 10:27 - NoBroker is a real-estate platform that makes it possible to buy/sell/rent a house without paying any brokerage. 14:00 - Trell is the largest lifestyle social commerce platform in Indian languages. Subscribe to us on twitter and instagram if you haven't already! We'd love to hear your feedback for this episode! You can provide us feedback using this form.

  6. 08/04/2021

    #8 - Industrials, Developer Tools and More - YC W21

    Discover interesting products from industrials, developer tools, wellness, and food industries from the YCombinator Winter 2021 Batch. Topics: 00:00 - Introduction. YC winter 2021 batch stats. 00:57 - Alba Orbital makes satellites to image everywhere on Earth, every 15 minutes. They can see events within minutes such as wild fires in real time and have signed $41m of LOIs. To date they have launched 6 satellites into orbit. Alba Orbital YC page. 03:49 - Enode provides API for electric vehicles and other energy consumer products. Interesting use cases of Enode API. Enode YC page. 06:11 - Dendron - Notion for Developers. It is an scalable note taking tool that grows as you do, built on top of markdown, git, and VSCode, Dendron helps you reference all your information in seconds, regardless of how much of it you have. Dendron YC page. 08:43 - Chorus provides online group meditation classes led by live instructors. Chorus YC page. 10:20 - Mezli is building "auto-kitchens", fully autonomous shipping-container  restaurants that serve great, affordable meals for takeout and delivery. Mezli YC page. Subscribe to us on twitter and instagram if you haven't already! We'd love to hear your feedback for this episode! You can provide us feedback using this form.

  7. 07/17/2021

    #7 - Niche E-Commerce and SaaS B2B - YC W21

    Discover interesting niche e-commerce and SaaS B2B products from the YCombinator Winter 2021 Batch. Topics: 00:00 - Introduction. YC winter 2021 batch stats. 00:54 - Thryft - Shopify for Instagram sellers. Thryft turns a seller's Instagram page into a website in 1 minute. Thryft YC page. 03:15 - UPchieve - Connecting low-income HS students with free, 24/7 online tutoring. UPchieve is an edtech nonprofit that provides free, 24/7 online tutoring to low-income HS students. UPchieve YC page. 07:25 - MagicBell - The notification inbox for web/mobile applications. It offers a beautifully designed notification inbox that apps can embed  in their products in minutes. It does all the heavy lifting related to real-time delivery & syncing, web & mobile push notifications, email notifications, and even notification preference management. MagicBell YC page. Slack notification flowchart. 10:32 - Infracost helps engineers know cloud costs before they buy resources via infrastructure as code. They do this by mapping costs to their code directly in pull requests. Infracost YC page. 13:48 - Taloflow - Buying insights platform for the tech stack. They help CTOs at digital native companies pick the best cloud infrastructure and API products for their specific use case. Taloflow YC page. Golden hammer and functional fixedness. 16:48 - Version Story - Git for lawyers. A document comparison and version management tool for lawyers. It enables lawyers to view their document history as a visual map with  lines connecting versions that, when clicked, display a redline comparison of the changes made. Version Story YC page. Version Story demo video. We have more new YC companies deep dive coming soon. Subscribe to us on twitter and instagram if you haven't already! We'd love to hear your feedback for this episode! You can provide us feedback using this form.

  8. 06/25/2021

    #6 - 2 Marketplaces 2 Consumers

    Discover interesting marketplaces and consumer products from the YCombinator Winter 2021 Batch. Topics: 00:00 - Use Newzip to get neighborhood advice from local experts. You can you connect with local experts to answer questions like what  neighborhood should I live in or what school should I send my kids to. Newzip YC page. 03:56 - Introduction. YC winter 2021 batch stats. 04:29 - Pangea.app is a platform for hiring college freelancers. It enables you to work with college freelancers who have the potential to join your full-time team and provides access to freelancers from 600+ campuses across the US. Growth stats. Pangea.app YC page. 09:27 - Outfit sells DIY home renovations in a box. They format their architect-designed templates to a customer's space. And then buy all the materials needed on customer's behalf, and ship it to their door for them to build. They also provide support by an app that guides from  start-to-completion of the project. Outfit YC page. 11:36 - Popl is the next generation business card. Business people put our NFC sticker on their phones to instantly share contact info with potential clients. Popl YC page. Popl tiktok account. We have more new YC companies deep dive coming soon. Subscribe to us on twitter and instagram if you haven't already! We'd love to hear your feedback for this episode! You can provide us feedback using this form.

See All (14)

Trailer

About

Tech Culture Podcast, hosted by Kaustubh Hiware and Prashant Anand, brings you conversations with top startup founders in Japan running successful businesses. We cover a wide range of topics, including deep-diving into the founders' lives, learnings, and successes and failures. Join us for actionable insights from the founders who have been there and faced the same challenges as you, providing what you need to build your own successful business. If you enjoy the IndieHackers podcast or Startups for the Rest of Us, you'll enjoy our show.

Information