Hey Japan, What's Up With Your Startup Culture? | Hacker News Reader

Hey Japan, What's Up With Your Startup Culture?

fastcolabs.com

33 pointsdsr1224 comments

Interesting how the article explicitly tries to set up a contrast between the image of the entrepreneur in Japan ("selfish, greedy, untrustworthy") and America ("Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg"), when those adjectives accurately describe those people.

Edit to expand on that a bit: Mark Zuckerberg fights constantly to block undermine his users' privacy decisions and feed more personal information to advertisers; Steve Jobs lied to Wozniak's face to cheat him out of $2150, refused to acknowledge his own daughter for years while she grew up on welfare, and didn't allow Apple to give to charity during his life.

Japan's stagnant corporate culture needs shaking up, but Jobs and Zuckerberg are not good role models for how to do that responsibly.

> those adjectives accurately describe those people

I think there's a big difference between someone who blatantly broke the law, like Horiemon, and someone who failed to contribute as much philanthropically as people would have liked to have seen (Jobs). Moreover, we have examples of successful entrepreneurs who have given back (such as Gates).

"untrustworthy" and "lied to his cofounder's face" are usually pretty related...

"who failed to contribute as much philanthropically as people would have liked to have seen"

Given some of the stuff coming out after his death, it seems to be more of the case he didn't satisfy people's need to hear about it as opposed to doing it. And since he died very early, we will really never know what the final word would have been.

I guess I would be a horrible billionaire too, since my father taught me it is impolite and improper to brag about giving. I can see why Gates does it (publicity is needed to make his goals), but that is not always the case (and sometimes, it messes up what you try).

The part where he cheated his best friend and his daughter out of large sums of money (child support, in his daughter's case) are at least as important to my evaluation of his character as the charity thing.

I have heard that he'd become somewhat less of an asshole in his later years, and I know he reconciled with his daughter at some point. I hadn't heard about stuff coming out after his death, though. I'd like to see a source on that.

yes, there is a huge difference in humanity between someone in who simply misleads about company finances and someone who actively ignores their duty to care for their own children

You may be forgetting Bill Gates, the biggest philanthrop of all times, who are changing Africa with HIS OWN MONEY.

But that isn`t necessary. The good thing in capitalism is that even assholes who only think of themselves can change the world for good.

He was also responsible for actively attacking free and open source software, which we recently learned may be the only way to go for any piece of software that we need to trust.

Like the others, they all have their good sides and bad sides. Nobody is perfect.

Yeah, and then on the other side we have RMS.

>actively attacking free and open source software

And anti-competitive practices

It’s all in the marketing.

Is there really a controversy that Steve Jobs wasn't "selfish, greedy, and untrustworthy"?

The answer is clear.. culture. and thats not only in japan

This is neocolonialism kind of thought pure and simple.. why instead of asking why country X dont have the same cultural values of country Z (as if country Z have some sort of superior values), maybe whe should ask what county X really needs? and what is its own natural path?!

different cultures SHOULD follow different paths, and thats a good thing...

did you ask if country X has something to teach to country Z? im sure it has..

why the senior culture of japan, of respect to the older people is inferior to the arrogant youth culture that doesnt have any respect for the older and marginalize them?

The sad history of ocidental intervention to conquer and profit of the oriental japan in the 1800´s, anihilizing its milenar culture, and the crush of the samurai class by the newly born ocidental-like army has nothing to teach us?

The japanese people are more happy now than before?

its alrigth to ask about the startup culture of country X, but lets take care of the moral tone of superiority, like if some culture could be granted as superior to any other..

we should know better by now.. we need ways to make different cultures to flourish in its own way and path.. the right thing to ask is.. "what can the values of my culture do to help the culture of country X to flourish without them to loose their cultural identity?"

instead of "hey you guys why are you guys are not like us, if what we are are better?"

I agree. Maybe the respect of seniority in Japans society is actually a good thing, and perhaps their society would have been worst off with more entrepreneurs.

I always feel like one thing that is missing in the western-american culture is respect of seniority. And especially for the current 25 and less in the work force.

A foreigner, I live and work in Japan, visiting companies large and small. I agree with this sentiment in principle. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with Japan's system. Indeed it has in the past brought wealth to the whole society. Nevertheless, right now, this model is failing hard. What is needed now is for Japanese people and companies to invent the future. Instead they seem to be waiting for a new model to follow, which they assume will come from outside. Japan is capable of huge transformational change in a short time, but it prefers to wait until no alternative remains. While some other societies, tend to have their (r)evolutions one entrepreneur at a time.

I would like to hear more Japanese weigh in on this, but I have lived in Japan for more than 11 years and think this is a horrible fluff piece written by someone with little more than stereotypes & superficial knowledge of the country.

A few specifics:

- "Japanese-English" tends to take words from foreign languages and use only one specific meaning. The words "entrepreneur" & "freelancer" have negative connotations, but not the ideas behind them. We just call ourselves "founder" & "contract expert" and get along just fine

- China, India & Japan have rather large populations, in case you haven't checked wikipedia recently. There are some VERY large on-line companies here that dwarf many (most?) western companies, that you simply haven't heard of.

- "Life-long employment" & all the ideas people have about it in Japan died when the Bubble burst back in the 80's, and was crushed during the latest recession. There is still a system that makes job-hopping difficult, but most Japanese - while they may not expect to change companies during their career - no longer look at it as some sort of unmentionable thing that could never happen to them.

- There is actually a quiet boom among upper level management to leave their companies and start new companies. Years of frustration with the old-fashioned corporate culture & reaching a point where they can do so with a bit of security has done a lot for this movement

- And finally, as a personal observation - IMHO, there are few people like the Japanese for becoming so passionate about a subject that they will finally leave their jobs and start that tiny, overly-specific shop or bar or restaurant simply because "it was always their dream". The type of completely impractical thing that everyone in the US would urge them not to do - because we always look at these ideas as "will it make you a millionaire?".

Perhaps because life IS so regimented here, people have a little cornier sense of romanticism about "chasing your dream", and cut a lot of slack that they wouldn't give someone who was just chasing a get rich plan.

So, in summary - I wouldn't put a lot of effort into analyzing this article, if I were you.

Japan is a rich country, with one of the best education systems on Earth.

I'd call this -- aside from being very, very questionable -- an important missed point that might otherwise have been a cornerstone of this article.

The Japanese educational system, from preschool to college, is built to do one thing: Prepare Japanese people to pass Japanese standardized tests for the purpose of obtaining work with a Japanese company.

The author's other points aside, I don't see how this could possibly not contribute to a weak entrepreneurial culture.

This is off-topic but: >"After World War II," Ohashi said, "40 years ago, [Japanese] people took risks. But Japan is almost a developed country now," and many have grown complacent.

Interesting how a 40 years-old in Japan think that.

I thought that was quite interesting as well... But it's the CEO who's 43. Ohashi, the PR manager, his age was never mentioned, I don't think.

EDIT: They did mention this though: > Ohashi, like most of Terra's 15 employees in their mid-twenties, ditched the prospect of working for a famous company to take a risk at a job where he'd be challenged.

So I assume he's in his mid 20's like the guy who's 26 at the beginning of the article.

Oops, thanks for pointing that out.

The article quotes someone as saying: "Selfish, greedy, untrustworthy: That is the image of the entrepreneur in Japan since around 2000"...I don't think Startup culture in America avoided that image after the dotcom bubble and even with all of its success, there is still a lot of suspicion

"If you're stuck in a system that promotes by seniority, it's living a slow death, like animals on a farm. I wanted to be in a tough, competitive place."

Seems to be applicable to academia, globally.

Being risk averse isn't always bad... And while Japan doesn't have a Google, they do have a number of very successful companies. For a country with effectively no natural resources, it's amazing what Japan has accomplished...

America is different from Europe and Asia. We accept failure here. The cultural generalities in Europe and Asia do not reward try and try again. They hide failure. In America, we tend to celebrate it, just look at our gossip magazines.

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