Description: A woman with short hair in a black shirt(appears on the screen).
Caroline: You hustlers, you startup founders, look for that entry point and look at Japan.
Caption: Caroline Winnett, Berkeley SkyDeck, Executive Director
Caption: white background, black letter, INVESTING IN JAPAN, big red letter, EXPERT PERSPECTIVES
Description: The caption disappears. Tokyo skyscrapers on a fine day. Clouds are floating from front to back.
Caption: white letter 46.2 trillion yen
Narrator: 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.
Description: Several young multiethnic people are giving the high fives, smiling. A man with a tablet is shaking hands with his meeting counterpart. Several men at a business meeting table stands up and shake hands.
Caption: Caroline Winnett, Berkeley SkyDeck, Executive Director
Description: Caroline is lecturing, standing, holding a microphone in one hand.
Narrator: Caroline Winnett is the executive director of Berkeley SkyDeck, a startup accelerator originating from the University of California, Berkeley. She sees potential in overseas startups expanding into Japan and collaborating with local companies.
Description: Caroline is answering students’ questions. She is walking in the building with glasses on her head. She is sitting at the table having a discussion with several students using body language. Close up the profile of Caroline, smiling and nodding. Large red horizontal chevron arrows move from left to right for a scene change.
Caption on the top left: Japan’s Attractiveness
Description: Caroline is talking, sitting by the window with indoor plants. She is lecturing, standing. She is calling on students to share their opinions. She is listening to the student, nodding.
Caroline: 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.
Description: Large red horizontal chevron arrows move from left to right for a scene change.
Caption on the top left: Collaboration in Japan
Description: Caroline is talking, sitting by the window with indoor plants. She is standing by a big screen and lecturing using body language. Profiles of several students listening to the lecture earnestly.
Caroline: Certainly if you're a researcher from academia and your young company comes from an academic background, the universities here are a great place 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.
Description: Large red horizontal chevron arrows move from left to right for a scene change.
Caption on the top left: Government Support for Startups
Description: Caroline is talking, sitting by the window with indoor plants. She is lecturing in front of a screen, sitting at the table,
smiling.
Caroline: 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, startups and innovation is for the country.
Description: Large red horizontal chevron arrows move from left to right for a scene change.
Caption on the top left: Deep Technology in Japan
Description: Caroline is talking, sitting by the window with indoor plants. She is standing by a big screen and lecturing using body language.
Caroline: 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.
Description: Large red horizontal chevron arrows move from left to right for a scene change.
Caption on the top left: Japan's Market
Description: Caroline is talking, sitting by the window with indoor plants. Profile of Caroline using hand gestures.
Caroline: So Japan, even though it is a large economy, is not perceived as the 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.
Description: Large red horizontal chevron arrows move from left to right for a scene change.
Caption on the top left: Future of Startup Ecosystem in Japan
Description: Caroline is talking, sitting by the window with indoor plants. She is standing by a big screen and lecturing using body language.
Caroline: It's going to be very much deep tech focused.
There's going to be a lot of deep technology in terms of robotics, 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. Large red horizontal chevron arrows move from left to right for a scene change.
Caption on the top left: Support for Non-Japanese Startups
Description: Caroline is talking, sitting by the window with indoor plants. Profile of Caroline holding a microphone using hand gestures. She is sitting at the table having a discussion with several students using body language.
Caroline: 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. Large red horizontal chevron arrows move from left to right for a scene change.
Description: Close up of Caroline. She is talking to the camera.
Caroline: 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 investors. 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.
Description: The INVEST JAPAN logo with a cherry blossom flower appears on the left and the JETRO logo on the right.
