Startups not status: Japan's top grads rethink success | Hacker News Reader

Startups not status: Japan's top grads rethink success

asia.nikkei.com

156 pointsraleighm27 comments

While I think this trend is growing (and moving at a snail's pace, like most things that aren't engrained in japanese culture), I want to point out that students from the University of Tokyo (colloquially "toudai") are the most likely to attract funding/find the connections to be funded as startups.

Toudai has a reputation as a school full of eccentric people (quite often literally called the equivalent of "weirdos"), likely because of the high percentage of "smart"/obssessive types who go there (this is probably some equal percentage stereotype, truth, and self-fulfilling prophecy). This is also probably a big contributing factor to the fact that the percentage of people doing startups instead of other options.

I think Japan could be a really huge place for startups to be honest -- the ~4 years of undergrad in college here are actually really really lax, and could have so much potential as a time to try ideas. The right school, with the right hacker-space and the right supporting generalist classes could produce an amazing set of entrepreneurs, but no one's doing it yet.

Purely annecdote, but... Many engineers I've met in the US and Europe were at least business curious. Like "would be cool to start my own company/site" even if their idea is sometimes not feasible.

Almost all of the "raised in Japan" Japanese engineers I talk to end up being very tech focused, to a fault. Like really focused on the tech and almost never looking at the business end of things. Some even don't think about product dynamics (usability) and are basically one step away from researchers in terms of awareness about what "matters" in a business environment.

Meanwhile you have these people taking business classes being very "oh I would really like to start a block chain business", which... I mean I get it but why do you think any customer cares about the block chain-ness of your business???

You have technical people uninterested in business and business people who don't show real passion in product, just in the idea of running a business. There's probably an opportunity to bridge the gap but so far in Tokyo I've only seen stuff on the business end of things.

Engineering talent here seems rarely prodded to know their own worth or to explore the business end of things. Instead you have a lot of things for the business types to talk to other business types. The gap needs to be bridged and no one is doing it despite all the money in "startup incubation"

I feel in general people who have this thought process of "it would be cool to start my own company/site" are generally the ones that don't succeed. A business or startup should always come from a thriving problem that you, or someone else has. Or a passion for something you truly care about [if its in a competitive space]. Not having a business model from the get-go is destined for failure

Business needs should always drive the demand for new software innovation, not the other way around. Unless the "WHY" (the core issue) is specified the "HOW" (comp sci knowledge) and "WHAT" (fullstack you will be using) is pretty much pointless.

Do you have any experience starting businesses? Building businesses takes a set of skills that can be learned and practiced.

Your argument could also be turned around to say that you can’t be a successful programmer if you’re the kind of person who goes out and says “I want to build an app”

That's not true. You just need more examples of leaders who are engineering focused but can also get business stuff done.

Unfortunately, the US has been taking Japanese talent to big companies and startups over here. Hopefully some of that talent stays there to BUILD and sell stuff.

Fwiw Kyoto university has an even stronger reputation of genius weirdos (and is often chosen over Todai for aspiring research scientists). Todai folks are a little more pragmatic. Keio students are way off in the other direction towards businesses success and networking, and even the administration is unapologetic about preferentially accepting business heirs.

Fwiw I know a decent number of Todai engineers who started businesses while they were a student (including my former teammates). Our CEO actually intentionally took 7 years to graduate because it qualified him for subsidized housing and kept him in an environment full of stimulating peers, while mainly spending his time running a company.

What kind of businesses do they start? Have they made any consumer products or mainly business-to-business?

The ones I know tend to be b2b technology, or some kind of backend thing. I vaguely know that there are people doing consumer stuff but I don't care about consumer so I forget the details.

Here's one of the more prominent folks I know. http://www2.technologyreview.com/tr35/profile.aspx?TRID=381

https://github.com/kazuho

the ~4 years of undergrad in college here are actually really really lax

Is this because undergrad does not prepare you for a career and the bulk of the "useful" learning happens later on the job?

If you get into Tokyo University in Japan, as long as you don't flunk out and get kicked out before graduating, you're pretty much set for life, because unlike the U.S. or some European countries where there are multiple top grade schools, each famous for certain major, Tokyo University is the ABSOLUTE top in Japan (as in there is ONLY one absolute #1 school), and literally everyone sees you differently if you say you went to Tokyo University.

This is on a completely different level than say if you told your American neighbor you went to MIT. Basically, in the US if you're an engineer, you could go to Caltech, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, UIUC, etc. and all of them are considered top, so the "genius" factor is a bit spread out therefore the scarcity is not as high (relative to how Japanese people see Tokyo University) Tokyo University is absolute #1. Period. There are some exceptions but I think that's the biggest difference.

What about if you said you went to MIT, while in Japan.

It depends who you ask, but generally when we're talking about uber-famous colleges like MIT or Harvard, I think the brand would generally work in Japan too.

But not all Japanese are aware of MIT or Harvard, and not all of them are aware of how concretely hard it is to get into those. All they know is through what they heard from others, and based on how the media portrays those colleges.

For most ordinary Japanese people, if you say you went to Caltech or UIUC, etc. they will have no idea what the status is (the only credibility you will enjoy is from other academics), because there has not been a TV show or movie about UIUC and Caltech students.

Compare that to Tokyo University, 100% of Japanese people know exactly how hard it is to get in, because they all have gone through high school and they are completely aware of how many of their peers went to Tokyo University.

I'm sure in the U.S., regardless of where you live--midwest, alaska, or wherever--you probably have seen at least a few friends who went to any of the above colleges, because there are multiple of them. However in Japan, many high schools never see any of their graduates enter Tokyo University at all, which means for some people a "Tokyo University student" will almost feel like a mythical unicorn.

This is not unique to Japan and I am aware of at least a couple of other rich countries where the social structure works this way. U.S. is a special case because it's such a large country and the entire nation is built on the premise of diversity, but in many countries around the world there is a very clear and absolute pyramid structure in university "rankings".

Good question, I feel like there's a lot of prestige attached to that, too. Anecdotally, I've seen groups of "school tourists" from Japan come to my decently large local university, and people were surprised when they learned that I went to that school.

The big difference is that the status of your school matters A LOT more in Japan than it does in North America. Overseas schools that are large enough for people to recognize in Japan will provide status.

Went to japan for undergrad 2011-2015 Japanese school system is quite different from western one in the way that people don't do as much to prepare for career directly. Tech companies here plan to train the students on-site.(My friend who went to top graduate school in robotics now work on automobile. And another worked on speakers.) On the other hand, soft skills such as teamwork are valued much more. All this make engineering major in japan much less instance than those in the states. Students join baseball clubs and such to practice the soft skills. Hence, his statement about the potential of startup coming out of Japanese universities is on point. Feel free to ask if you have more questions.

From what I hear, it's also because high school is so hard for college-bound students they're a) in pretty good shape academically already, and b) are burned out and need some downtime.

Yes, college is a vacation for them, because all of the work was done before it. Just by making it in, they've qualified, and college is their rest period before going into full-on career life.

> f the "useful" learning happens later on the job?

Companies in Japan have zero expectations that students know anything and will train them from scratch anyway. The rely on the university to make the selection to ensure they don't hire just anybody, but college in Japan is mostly a waste of time (necessary to get the paper) in terms of skills you get compared to any good college in Europe or the US.

It's about damn time the Japanese get back into entrepreneurialism.

I walked around Tokyo seeing waves of people going to work and thinking, "there's way too much group think here" which I later learned is part of asian culture.

It's about time they get back into building solutions instead of slaving away as salarymen.

> slaving away as salarymen.

They work long hours, but it's not that they are working super hard. Of course, it's a general statement, but definitely true when it comes to large corporations that constitute a large chunk of employers in Japan, especially for college students.

Funny, because people who grew up in post war Japan where they had nothing to lose and everything to gain, are some of the most driven and fearless entrepreneurs I've met.

Once the country prospered, not taking risks became the logical choice, and I'd there's anything that characterizes modern Japan, it's rationalism.

At which point in history was japan ever a huge entrepreneurial society? The business success that I hear about most from japanese companies is often taking an idea and making it better, not necessarily being the first to innovate.

Though I guess I'm conflating being enterprising with being innovative, when the vast majority of enterprises aren't neccesarily innovative.

Also, while I somewhat agree with the sentiment that japan should do more to spur people to innovate, I don't think that many other countries are much different, people just drive to work at the random job that doesn't really mean anything to them, rather than walk/ride trains. Also not sure that every single asian culture demonstrates this strong group think...

What does "Startups not status" mean?

I'd guess that instead of going for the Big Co career path you choose to start a business instead. And a startup might not carry the same status in Japan as in the West?

I found the title weird when I read the article. Startups is nothing but status in my book. People work almost for free as long as they can tag themselves as startup people. Must be a cultural difference.

"I am a cofounder" is the new "I play in a band"

I guess Japanese society values stable trajectories in life more than money, whereas in the US the common trope is "you work for someone — you never get rich" and since getting rich is the only definition of success we have this hustle culture.

haha absolutely.

I even noticed this with a black and white picture of some AI startup group picture google bought. It looked exactly like a band picture from the 90s. Everyone all serious looking, different fashions, the lead singer/ceo a little bit more forward and center in the photos.

Another amusing cultural thing is I remember the saying like "even CEOs of big business want to be in the music industry".

Now it is the opposite and even the biggest music artists in the world want to be CEOs.

> People work almost for free as long as they can tag themselves as startup people.

I guess for most people, startup equates with potential.

My personal gripe with startups is that most think of themselves as "high-tech" startups, when all they have is some CRUD website, or some stylized game, or even a deep learning classifier, which just uses a standard library under the hood.

I would also add advertising companies to that list.

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