Category Archives: Entrepreneurship

Tokyo’s ‘Silicon Valley’ Startup – Gengo

When they first thought about launching an Internet startup in Japan, Matt Romaine was close to moving back to Silicon Valley. The startup scene in Tokyo was, well, close to nonexistent. Then he and his partner, Robert Laing, came up … Continue reading

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Kentaro’s Home Run

This is the story of a clear-headed young man who suffered physical paralysis. Notwithstanding becoming quadriplegic at an early age, he was decisively free from the more common ailment known as “decision paralysis”, a neck-up condition that leaves those afflicted … Continue reading

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TEDxTokyo Co-Founder Patrick Newell Explains, “What’s TED?”

As the Bob Dylan song goes − “You know something is happening, but you don’t know what it is….” Most of us have heard about TED. Do we really understand it? Beacon Reports met with thought leader and TEDxTokyo co-founder … Continue reading

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MISSION: POSSIBLE

Learning activist and TEDxTokyo co-founder Patrick Newell is a man with a mission. He believes that many societies, including Japan’s, have raised people with 20th century skills not wholly applicable for the 21st century. Having learned by rote memorization in … Continue reading

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It’s “Easy Fishing” for Japan’s Internet Startups

Launching an Internet startup in Japan today has never been easier. There are a host of reasons: Rapid technological change, declining startup costs, fewer good career opportunities for Japan’s graduates and lumbering competition are to name but a few. Beacon … Continue reading

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Language Startup Rises to Cloud Nine

Widespread availability of Internet broadband and software innovation are transforming the once stodgy business of language education. Leading the charge in Japan are two Japanese-American brothers, John Hideyoshi Martyn and Billy Kosuke Martyn. The brothers want to reduce the many … Continue reading

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How A Little Known Japanese Internet Startup Is Shaking Up The Global Music Industry

Six years after graduating from Imperial College London in 2006, British born Malek Nasser was with a friend in a Tokyo bar discussing Internet startup ideas. Malek had recently sold his first Internet business to Double Click and was looking … Continue reading

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How to Build & Sell an Internet Startup to Japan’s Biggest Web Merchant, Rakuten

James Chen is a serial entrepreneur who built and sold two Internet start-ups by age 32. The first venture he started and sold while attending MIT. As for the second venture, James joined an early stage start-up. Within one year … Continue reading

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How a New Generation of Entrepreneur is Forging the Face of New Japan

The FT’s David Pilling refers to them as a pack of rebels – Japanese entrepreneurs that have shaken up business practices in Japan. “Confident, internationally minded, brash, even flash, they have founded enterprises and wielded business techniques – the hostile … Continue reading

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Photovoltaics: One Bright Idea

While at the Swiss patent office in Bern in the summer of 1905, Albert Einstein wrote several transformative papers. In one, he explained that energy was interchangeable with matter according to the formula e=mc2. In another, he hypothesized the existence … Continue reading

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