Outside of the Bubble with Japan’s Startup Girls: Mone Kamishiraishi

Those of us who spend our lives working with startups live in a bubble. Whether you spend your days programming at a startup or investing in new ventures, you and I see things differently than “normal” people.

It happens to everyone to some extent. We all tend to interact with people who are like us, who care about similar things and who work in similar industries, so of course, we frequently hear the same ideas and opinions.  The startup bubble, however, is particularly strong and particularly opaque.

We founders have a bad habit of believing our own bullshit.

Well today, we step outside our bubble and sit down with Mone Kamishiraishi, the star of the new film Startup Girls. We talk about what she learned as an outsider interviewing startup founders to get ready for her role, what most Japanese find surprising about founders and startup culture, and what Japan can do to to make starting a company more mainstream and accepted.

It's a great conversation, and I think you will really enjoy it.


Show Notes

What most Japanese people think about startup founders
The similarities between startups and acting
Why family support and role models are so important in Japan right now
What’s holding entrepreneurship back in Japan
What we need to do to create a broader acceptance of startups in Japan


Links from the Founder

Check out Mone's official homepage
Follow her on Instagram
The Startup Girls official site

See the trailer
Pre-order tickets
Follow Startup Girls @startupgirlsmov
Startup Girls on Instagram



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Transcript
Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs.

I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

Today, I’ve got a very different kind of interview for you. It’s shorter than most but it’s going to be an interesting one. You and I talk a lot about innovation in Japan and how things are changing for the better here. But as many of my friends point out, I live in kind of a bubble. Not in an economic bubble but with all the startup unicorns we see prancing around these days, we’re probably living in an economic bubble too. But no, no, I mean more of a filter bubble.

Disrupting Japan is a podcast about innovation in Japan so naturally, we talk a lot of Japanese innovators. Most of my friends are startup founders and venture capitalists. So, while we are seeing all kinds of innovation and increased risk-taking in this group, maybe that’s not really reflective of Japanese society as a whole. Well, today, we’re going to step outside our bubble and see what’s there. We’ll still be talking about startups, of course, and we’ll be doing it with Mone Kamishiraishi.

Now, Mone was the star of the megahit anime, Your Name, and she is co-starring in the new film Startup Girls which focuses on startups in Japan. So, when Mone accepted the role of playing a startup founder, she had to figure out exactly what they were and how they were different from, well, let’s just say how they were different from normal people.

It’s a great discussion about how people outside of our bubble see us and Mone and I also talk about the similarities between startups and acting, the general attitude towards creativity in Japan and how to foster a greater acceptance of startups and innovation in Japan. But you know, Mone tells that story much better than I can, so let’s get right to the interview.

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Interview
Tim: You know, the idea of startups is kind of new in Japan, right?

Mone: Yeah.

Tim: So, before you started this project, before you started working on Startup Girls, what was your image of startup founders?

Mone: To be honest, I didn’t even know what the word “startup” stands for.

Tim: Really?

Mone: Yes, I could imagine very, very vaguely but, yeah, start something, I thought. But yeah, I didn’t know and also,