Interesting startup challenges
These past few months in Tokyo have been interesting to say the least. To start I’ve had to deal with a number of interesting challenges that are unique to starting a company in a foreign country.
- 1) Language: My business Japanese is horrible. My conversational Japanese isn’t all that bad, but as a entrepreneur I need to speak with a nuance and passion that I can only do in English. So I rely on bi-lingual staff to get my point across. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The need for bi-lingual staff means that things move slower than I’m used to.
- 2) Culture: A interesting experience. For example, my bi-lingual staff are young. I realized relationships with other companies and groups were not moving smoothly when I wasn’t around because my staff weren’t of sufficient “rank” to negotiate for me. As a American I think anyone qualified to clearly express the point being made is qualified to speak up. Not so in Japan. Lucky for me I don’t care about such cultural norms. I eat lollipops at meetings and I make my staff sit in the “important” seats. Breaking some of the old cultural norms are needed to make progress, but they still slow things down.
- 3) Lack of support: I haven’t found the type of entrepreneurial talent pool that most people are used to having in San Francisco or even New York. I know they are in Tokyo, but my Japanese isn’t at the level where I can communicate in the same nuanced conversational debates I could expect from peers in the USA.
If you can deal with these challenges I think there is a lot of opportunity for you as a international entrepreneur. The longer I stay the better my Japanese will become, the larger my entrepreneurial circle will grow and the less I will care about breaking cultural norms. In the meantime I spent my Thanksgiving in Japan dealing with artist concerns. That presents entirely new cultural issues.
Later this week I’ll make a announcement of some new cultural and business norms OtoRevo will be breaking. I think this announcement will be significant.
November 24th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Regarding the Japanese culture, there are so many things that I’ve felt is over the top from my experience. By meaning “the important seat”, I assume you’re talking about the kamiza/shimoza system that applies almost everywhere in the Japanese business scene (where to stand in the elevator, where to sit at a dinner table, taxi, meeting room etc etc). Things that doesn’t contribute to improving efficiency/productivity doesn’t make sense in my head but I guess its just the way it is in Japan and I respect this (btw, I hear there are even more troublesome customs in the Korean business scene).
Expressing ourselves in Japanese the way we express ourselves in English (even when we act formally) really doesn’t seem to work the way we intend either… I’ve learned to get around this problem but the English part of my brain seems to not want to accept it.
I hear your inner frustration
November 24th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
The problem with following certain customs is that once people see that you understand the strangest of customs, they expect you to follow even the ones that are anti-productive. Some customs don’t add to progress, but the worst of them halt progress.