Silicon Valley has Chatbots all Wrong. Here’s How They Really Make Money.

A few years ago, shiny new startups were using their marketing dollars to tell the world that chatbots were going to change everything.

Those marketing dollars have now been spent and most of those startups are no more. But for the past few years, one company has been quietly making chatbots useful, and they are now starting to make some noise.

Today we sit down with Akemi Tsunagawa, founder of Bespoke and creator of the Bebot chatbot.

In several important ways, Bespoke is one of the most successful chatbot companies in the world, and you'll be hearing a lot about them in the years to come.

Today, however, Akemi explains how she and the team managed to succeed where so many better-funded companies failed, and she gives some great advice about how to get consumers to try out new technologies. We also talk about why you should absolutely never build your business around Facebook or WeChat.

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


Show Notes

Why most travel websites are doomed to failure
Founding a technical startup without technical co-founders
How to get people to tell chatbot what they really think
Where chatbots excel and where they should not try
Things you should never use a chatbot for
Why you should not build a chatbot on Facebook or WeChat
Why Japanese don't want to use chatbots
Bespoke's plans to go global

How to speed up decision making inside Japanese companies


Links from the Founder

Everything you wanted to know about Bespoke
Friend Akemi on Facebook
Connect with her on LinkedIn

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

I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

I think the peak of the chat bot hype cycle came in 2017. If we cast our minds back into the midst of that distant age, perhaps we can recall that chatbots were going to change the way we work, the way we shop, the way we bank, the way we talk to our customers, and even the way we find love and raise our children. Yeah, that didn’t happen, and startup founders, start of investors, and start of media all moved on to focus on some newer, shinier object – blockchain, probably.

But, you know something, sometimes, all that media type and investor attention can actually make it really hard to build something worthwhile. A lot of times, the best ideas and the best use of technology come from trying to solve a simple problem without investors telling you you need to be a unicorn or a journalist demanding to know exactly how you plan on changing the world by the end of the year, and so it is with chat bots.

Today, we’re going to sit down with Akemi Tsunagawa, the founder and CEO of Bespoke, the creator of the Bebot chatbot. Now, Akemi will tell you exactly how Bebot works in just a second, but to really appreciate what that important story Bespoke is, you need to understand that outside of marketing and some trivial customer support apps, you’ve got to realize, there is almost no chatbot success stories. Bebot is one of the very few chatbots in the entire world that provides enough genuine utility that people not only willingly interact with it but start to rely on it.

Bespoke’s business model does not rely on novelty or cost-cutting, no. Bespoke is solving an actual problem. This is a great example of how the needs of one industry can push technology forward for other sectors, and Akemi and I also talk about why she didn’t even realize they were running a chatbot company at first.

She gives some great advice on how to get consumers to try out, not just chatbots but any new technology, and we chat about why you should never – and I mean never -- build your business around Facebook or WeChat.

But you know, Akemi tells that story much better than I can, so let’s get right into the interview.

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Interview