Why Your New Smart-Home Won’t Really Belong to You

We've been talking about smart homes and smart cities for a long time.

However, it turns out that we are not willing to pay very much for simple convenience, so the technology is coming into our homes bundled with different agendas.

We've seen this happen with the success of Alexa and Google Home, and we are now seeing it here in Japan with Nature Remo.

Today we sit down and talk with Haruumi Shiode, the founder and CEO of Nature, and we discuss not only what the future of home automation will look like, but who will be paying for it.

It's an enlightening conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.


Show Notes

The real motivation behind smart home purchases
How hardware entrepreneurship went mainstream
The one way in which crowdfunding is still relevant
Why Nature decided to launch English-first
How to outsource hardware production without going bankrupt
Nature's real business model for the future
The importance of demand-response in Japan
The growing significance of corporate alumni networks in Japan
Why Kyoto might be Japan's next innovation center


Links from the Founder

Everything you wanted to know about Nature Remo
Friend Haruumi on Facebook
Follow him on Twitter @haruumi524
Read about Haruumi's transformational sailing journey. It's a pretty cool story.

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.

Smart homes and smart speakers have not really changed our lives in the way that was predicted. I mean, it’s not that they have not sold well. Amazon has sold over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices and the technology is a really amazing, but voice assistance remain a novelty rather than a real step forward, and here in Japan, even with Japanese language support, the adoption rate has been low.

I think a big part of that is the lack of conductivity, and by conductivity, I don’t mean the ability to connect to a computer or interact with other programs. I mean, smart speakers don’t connect us to each other in new ways. In the end, they are just an input device. They don’t provide something that we don’t already have in our lives. Well, today, I’d like you to meet Haruumi Shiode, the founder and CEO of Nature’s created a new smartphone device, the Nature Remo.

Now, the Nature Remo provides some immediate utility: the ability to control your life and your air conditioner from your smart phones or based on rules that you set up, but the real reason that Nature is so interesting is what comes next. It’s a lot more than just turning your lights on and off; it’s a new way of connecting with each other and a new way for power companies to manage the power grid during times of peak load.

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

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Interview
Tim: So, I’m sitting here with Haruumi Shiode of Nature, so thanks for sitting down with me.

Haruumi: Thanks for inviting me for this podcast.

Tim: No, I’ve been looking forward to it. So, Nature makes the Nature Remo which is a really interesting device that you can probably explain a lot better than I can, so what is the Remo and how does it work?

Haruumi: Nature Remo is basically a very small tiny device that can turn your AC or TV, or lighting through smart device. It communicates with those appliances through the infrared and they connect to Wi-Fi, so that you can control from your smart phone or smart speakers.

Tim: Okay, so infrared means it’s sort of – it’s emulating the remote control for your TV or your air conditioning?

Haruumi: Yes.

Tim: Ah, okay, cool. So, if it’s infrared, and so if I wanted to outfit my apartment with these and control or my air-conditioning units and my TV, so would I need one Remo in each room?

Haruumi: Yeah,