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Comment by mikekchar | Hacker News Reader

I'm not so sure about that. Being CEO of a startup is not as glamorous as it is in the west, but money is available here for startups. After I finished my contract teaching English in Japan, I was torn between going back to programming or opening a brewery. Money would have been no problem on the brewery side. Even just casually exploring the situation, I had more interest than I knew what to do with. I was even offered a building to house my brewery.

As some other people have mentioned, I suspect SoftBank has a specific goal in mind and is buying up companies that give them particular capabilities. They're not just investing with the goal of getting a return. What their ultimate goal is, I'm not really sure, though.

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Everything I've read and everyone I've talked to about it have told me that there's a perception of startups being perceived as crazy, crazy risky with real life implications (finding housing without a salaried job is supposedly difficult). And the money being available is primarily available to older, less risky-seeming business owners with safe business plans, not younger ones doing interesting things.

YMMV, though, as I've only read and discussed the topic and not experienced it myself.

Well... I'm definitely older and had a safe business plan :-) I don't see that as being hostile to startups, though. I suppose if we remove the pejorative language, then I can understand better. There is definitely a different set of values, so different kinds of startups will be built here.

Interestingly, one of the reasons I decided not to open a brewery is similar to frustrations I've heard about in the west. You can't (or couldn't -- I think these laws are in the process of being changed) build a really small brewery legally. You had to produce at least 600 hl a year. I couldn't self-finance that kind of operation (I might be able to brew that quantity, but there is no way I would have time to sell it). I would have no trouble raising up to $1M but nobody willing to fund that is looking for a modest return. They want to see expansion plans right off the bat. So this means having plans to build a large factory in the next 10 years. I like brewing beer. I don't want to organise a large industrial factory :-)

Probably the same reason I'm still a programmer and not running my own startup...

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