You hustlers, you startup founders,
look for that entry point and look at Japan. Foreign investment in Japan has continued to increase, and as of the end of 2022, totaled 46.2 trillion yen. In this interview series, we unravel the reasons behind
Japan's current allure as an investment destination, exploring the insights of experts from around the world. Caroline Winnett is the executive director of Berkeley SkyDeck, a startup accelerator originating from the University of California, Berkeley. S
he sees potential in overseas startups expanding into Japan
and collaborating with local companies. Talent. Absolutely all the talent here. There's a really high concentration of scientists,
technologists, the medical profession, deep tech especially. And you build an ecosystem most importantly based on the talent
and there's so much of it here in Japan. Certainly if you're a researcher from academia
and your young company comes from an academic background, The universities here are a great plac
e to start. They're very well connected and that's a great entryway point. For someone who's developed something that has come from an academic lab outside the US, academics like to collaborate with other academics. So we've been just overwhelmed and blown away
by how intentional the Japanese government is about nurturing the startup ecosystem. I know the Prime Minister now going on tour and bringing
founders and startups with him is an incredible statement of how important
young companies, star
tups and innovation is for the country. I would say an enduring trend that's always been there
but at the forefront is really looking into very deep technology. We kind of tend to think of the startup
world as a bunch of very fast moving software which of course is a very important part of it. But here in Japan the opportunity and the ability to create deep technology that will solve the world's problems is really what's needed. So Japan, even though it is a large economy,
is not perceived as th
e biggest economy in the world. That's of course the United States and most startups
are looking at the US primarily as their most important market. But Japan is a very large market. It's one of the world's largest economies,
and I think as startups start to understand the opportunity here and see other examples of founders coming here,
that they will see this is a good market to enter. It's going to be very much deep tech focused. There's going to be a lot of deep technology in terms of robotic
s, AI, I think we'll see some quantum computing here,
definitely quite a bit of life science and medical devices. Japan of course has a long history
of being incredibly innovative in manufacturing, and manufacturing is now using not just robots and hardware,
but of course AI is a massive impact on manufacturing, and I think we'll see a lot of opportunities for that. But I think in the future we're going to see more
companies coming here to expand, especially with the whole the government and the
culture and the society
becoming more open to young companies coming here to grow. The whole startup industry is not,
you know, a startup comes and runs to a new country and everything happens. There has to be a network of people who can help support that startup. So that's people who can give you advice, advisors,
that's attorneys and accountants who understand that startups have different needs and have different types of pricing structure
for their products and services, and of course invest
ors. So the Japanese investor network is definitely expanding and growing. It's going to take some time to develop a kind of risk-taking capital
that's needed to support these young companies. I think that there is a growing awareness of that,
and investors from outside the US who are established in Silicon Valley are starting to look at Japan
as an opportunity to bring their risk-taking capital. So Japan isn't the first country that a startup would think of
to enter as a new market, but it's a
big economy. There's a lot of companies here doing manufacturing,
doing life science, and they're looking for solutions. So I would say look to the Japanese government and all these
wonderful programs that are looking to encourage innovation, and you hustlers, you startup founders,
look for that entry point and look at Japan.
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