Entrepreneur Stories Japan

We spoke to Ryuji Ikoma, CEO of Clear Inc., a company with the vision of "Creating the Future of Sake."

August 22, 2024

IVS 2024 KYOTO / IVS Crypto 2024 KYOTO, Japan's largest startup conference for entrepreneurs and investors, was held for three days from July 4 to 6, 2024, at Kyoto Pulse Plaza.

July 17, 2024

Japan's Venture Academy (JVA) is an organization managed mainly with a focus on Tokyo students, with support from Shibuya City, aiming to cultivate entrepreneurship through a student-oriented 3-month fellowship. We spoke with core members Kento Akiyama and Egor Sheverev about why they launched JVA and the details of their activities.

June 27, 2024

Kobe City in Hyogo Prefecture has been on the front foot in its efforts to support startups in Japan. We invited Ms. Shiori Fukuda, an innovation specialist at the Life-Tech KOBE, a regional startup ecosystem who has been supporting local startups aiming to expand their business overseas as well as startups from other countries interested in developing their business in Japan, to talk about her background and the initiatives of Kobe City.

May 22, 2024

“Takeoff Tokyo” Event was held for the second time on Aprle 10-11, 2024, with the aim of fostering a generation of startups that aspire to be the best in the world, not just in Japan. Blackbox was a media partner of the event and reports on the venue and the pitch contest in this article.

April 22, 2024

Erika and Allen, who run "Sollective," a platform that brings together fully vetted professional talent and companies, talk about the background of their entrepreneurship and offer advice to entrepreneurs.

April 18, 2024

We spoke to President Koichi Fujita, who has taken over the world-famous Fugetsudo Japanese sweets shop in Hitachi City, Ibaraki Prefecture. He discusses the reasons for inheriting the business from the parents, the challenges he has faced and the potentials for overseas markets.

April 11, 2024

Takeoff Tokyo is not just a single conference, but an ecosystem of related events happening over the course of several weeks. One of these is the Builders Weekend, a 48-hour hackathon. This year it hosted over 70 participants at the Golden Egg in Shibuya, Tokyo.

April 9, 2024

The CEO of SOLIT, an inclusive design solution company combining sustainability with D&I in its bid to “democratize fashion” by making brands and clothing something that people choose rather than have chosen for them, spoke with us about the company’s characteristics such as inclusive design and the differences and common issues between the fashion industry in Japan and overseas.

April 1, 2024

It is said that there are many Japanese businesses in traditional industries facing insolvency due to liquidity issues and being unable to find a successor. We spoke with Hironari Okayama, an entrepreneur who took over a sake brewery, about the struggles, challenges, and fun of taking over a business not as a family member or a former employee, but as a third party.

March 22, 2024

Antti Sonninen, who organizes and manages the startup conference Takeoff Tokyo, talked about the issues related to the startup scene in Japan and the uniqueness of his event.

March 21, 2024

Go Hiyama, Representative of sound design company ECHOES BREATH, talks about the features of AISO, an internally developed automatic BGM generation system, the differences in awareness of sound design in Japan, and other topics.

January 25, 2024