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Comment by neya | Hacker News Reader

Just curious, anyone knows what's the advantage of starting up in Japan over say, Singapore? I know Singapore is predominantly English-speaking, you get all kinds of food and the laws are friendly to startups as well.

If I'm an English speaker in Japan, there is a huge language barrier, on top of which there are also other minor nuances to be paid attention to such as: high rent (depends on your area), finding Non-Japanese food and so forth.

Anyone with insights into the contrasts between both these countries, would love to hear :)

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The biggest pro is of course the easier access to the Japanese market. This market is much bigger than the Singaporean market (of course both pale in comparison to global markets) and although gdp PPP/capita is higher in Singapore, Japan has a lower gini coefficient, so the consumers are about as well off. On the B2B side, Japanese companies make tons of products, so if your startup is a B2B solution for a specific product, it's more likely to be needed in Japan than in Singapore. Additionally, Japanese businesses can be absolutely massive, so you might have less sales overheard.

Japan is also of course known for their electronics, so if you're doing something electronics-heavy (e.g. making a phone or working with transportation systems) the demand of your product as well as the supply of workers with the skill to work on that product will be higher in Japan.

Been coming to singapore for the last 2 years, had one customer, came to Japan in equivalent amount of time and Japan won. I had 3x the customers coming from Japan, it might have been a better network upon landing, but in general the reception I had was better.

I now live in Japan full time.

I'll echo other replies and say more mature market and it's what I like to call a source of money rather than an aggregator.

Singapore's main benefit is being a "hub". If you have access to the direct sources of money though, it's a hard justification (By that I mean more mature markets in east asia that might not speak english)

I just came back from Singapore a few days ago and my assessment of the market is still the same. I talked to enough companies there to see it still doesn't make sense for us to be there yet. In general, I also feel like I can make more of a difference in Japan than SG (everyone speaks english but there aren't as many resources and companies are really conservative when it comes to buying software)

I have lived and created startups in Japan and Singapore. Japan is the much larger mature market compared to Singapore. If you can penetrate it you have good business for decades. But the barriers of entry are really really high. Both markets are expensive to live, but Singapore still has a huge influx on really cheap labor (~500 SGD per month) and cheaper corporate services (legal, accounting, shared co-working, etc)

Slightly off topic, what about startup, business and market in Malaysia?

I am from Malaysia, but now studying in Japan. Not sure if it worth it to struggle starting a business or working in Japan after graduating.

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