Jason Reacts To Japanese Founder Pitches + Fireside Chat With Yuki Shirato

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Lightfield: https://lightfield.app/ Rippling: https://Rippling.ai/twist Upwork: http://upwork.com Today’s show: AssetHub built an AI agent that recreates licensed characters in 3D while respecting copyright rules... But Jason says he needs to think BIGGER. 11 founders pitched their companies to Jason and Yuki Shirato of Techstars Tokyo at our Osaka event this week, and neither investor held back. Find out why Jason says Seekr feels more like a vitamin than a painkiller, and needs to ditch the press mentions from their deck. Plus, a vital lesson for founders: if everyone already knows about the problem you're solving, investors expect a tight solution and business plan. Truly novel business ideas get more leeway. Japan's startup community is booming, with many recent grads bailing on lifelong gigs at major corporations to start companies. But here's why Yuki says the fear of failure is still holding back progress. Guests: Yuki Shirato on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuki-shirato Techstars Tokyo: https://www.techstars.com/accelerators/tokyo Founder Pitches: Seekr: https://seekrai.global/product Arabat: https://arabat.it/ AssetHub: https://assethub.io/ CRAZIA: https://crazia.co/ JuJuJuu: https://jujujuu.com/ JAPANMEDIA: https://lp.japanmedia.ai/ Tsuin AI: https://www.tsuin.ai Rumi Light: https://www.rumilight.jp/ GENCHI: https://www.toraru.me/en TattvaSilicon: https://tattvasilicon.com/ Mimi AI: https://nihongo-chat-ruby.vercel.app/onboarding Relevant Links: Founder University Japan, Jason's pre-accelerator program with JETRO → https://japan.founder.university/ Techstars Tokyo announces its Class of 2026 → https://www.techstars.com/newsroom/techstars-tokyo-accelerator-announces-class-of-2026 Yuki Shirato on why Japan should be on every founder's radar (Techstars) → https://www.techstars.com/blog/insights-and-trends/should-japan-be-on-your-radar-as-a-founder How Techstars Tokyo is helping make Japan a global startup hub (The Japan Times) → https://www.japantimes.co.jp/2025/12/25/special-supplements/accelerating-business-ambitions-global-scale-techstars-tokyo/ VidiLabs, maker of the Seekr indoor positioning platform → https://seekrai.global/ Density, the people-counting sensor company Jason has backed for a decade → https://www.density.io Arabat, recovering critical minerals from batteries with citrus and farm waste → https://arabat.it/ AssetHub raises a $2M seed for its AI 3D platform (The Bridge) → https://thebridge.jp/en/2025/08/aix3d-production-platform-assethub-raises-approximately-¥300-million-in-seed-funding Seedance 2.0, the ByteDance AI video model Jason says fans are using to make Marvel shorts → https://seed.bytedance.com/en/blog/seedance-2-0-official-launch Bending Spoons, the company Jason cites for buying apps and running them with tiny AI-powered teams (TechCrunch) → https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/31/what-is-bending-spoons-everything-to-know-about-aols-acquirer/ Burning Chrome by William Gibson, the source of “the street finds its own uses for things” → https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ICMWZH4/ Timestamps: 0:00 Jason's first trip to Japan and the food crawl 3:07 Why everyone in Japan acts like a founder 3:42 Founder University comes to Japan 8:44 Techstars Tokyo and Japan's push for global founders 10:28 Why Japanese startups stay on the island 12:44 Parents, lifetime jobs, and the fear of failure 15:13 How Japan mastered product market fit 18:43 Lightfield: Name one person who's ever enjoyed updating a CRM. Exactly. Lightfield's AI agent does it for you - it even prospects and books your meetings. Used by thousands of startups. Free at https://lightfield.app/ 20:10 The white lab coat and the man who named his daughter Cinnamon 25:05 Seekr: centimeter-precise indoor navigation 27:38 Why investors want the business case, not the press 28:21 Rippling: Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://Rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business. 34:54 Arabat: recovering rare earths with orange peels 38:26 Getting from free pilots to paid pilots 38:38 Upwork: Upwork helps businesses find highly skilled freelance professionals for specialized work. Post your job for free at http://upwork.com 43:57 AssetHub: AI 3D models for anime and game IP 52:40 Come for the tool, stay for the marketplace 54:35 CRAZIA: turning customer conversations into growth 56:42 JuJuJuu: giving alternative protein the structure of steak 59:02 JAPANMEDIA: AI manga and anime at a fifth of the cost 1:01:24 Tsuin AI: AI twins that think and act like you 1:03:15 Picking the layup and the wild card 1:09:29 Rumi Light: faster data paths inside AI servers 1:11:40 GENCHI: a local avatar that shops Japan for you 1:13:51 TattvaSilicon: analog circuit design in a day 1:15:36 Mimi AI: learning to actually speak Japanese 1:17:51 Why a live shopping avatar is Jason's wild card Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey everybody, welcome to This Week in Startups. We're about to take you to Osaka, Japan, for Jason's live chat with Yuki Shirato. He's the Managing Director of the Techstars Tokyo Accelerator. They're gonna have a fascinating deep dive on what's going on in the Japan startup scene. Then, Jason and Yuki hear some pitches from some amazing Japanese founders. Thanks to Jetro for powering this awesome event. Enjoy the show.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  How's everybody doing? Oh, now it's good. Now it's good. Okay. This is a very beautiful room. If only it had a good view. Wow, what a view. Incredible. It's great to be back in Japan. I have been coming every six months now. I am very lucky because

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Jetro asked me last year, "Hey, would you come to Japan and bring your Founder University? And bring it to Japan?" And I said,

• 1:04Speaker 01

  "Twist my arm."

• 1:07Speaker 01

  And they twisted it. And I went, "Oh, okay, I'll come." Because I love coming to Japan. I've been coming for many years, maybe 25 years. And the first time I came, I stayed in Roppongi at a hotel that was $80 a night.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  And I got into the bed, and then I tried to figure out where to put my bag, but

• 1:32Speaker 01

  the bag wasn't enough room between the bed and the walls. So I had it like hanging off the bed. And I could touch one side of the room. I could touch the wall. And then when I leaned over at my bed, I could touch the other side. And I fell in love with Japan. I got up at 5:00 in the morning and went to the Sugeji Fish Market. And then I ate everything. And now, between my trips here, I have a bot. I have a Grok bot. And I take screenshots and articles, and I just give it to my bot. I used to write everything down in a book. Now I just give it to my bot. And I say, "When I'm in Japan,

• 2:17Speaker 01

  make me an HTML file of all the places by neighborhood. And then I just walk around.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  And I get to eat. And we do something called the Bang Bang. Bang Bang."

• 2:32Speaker 01

  This is something that chefs in America came up with. When you come somewhere that's really great, you don't just want to have one breakfast. You want to have at least two.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  And you don't want to have one lunch. You want to have two lunches. And for dinner, you really can't get by with less than three. And so what we do is I come with my friends and we'll go have the pancakes at Bill's, and then the French toast at Center Bakery, and then we'll get ramen, and then we'll get tonkatsu, then we'll get tempura. And we walk around. And everybody who's an entrepreneur, who I bring to Japan, gets very excited.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Because they can't believe that everybody in Japan is an entrepreneur. Everybody in Japan is a founder. You didn't know this, but when you go to the tonkatsu place and you watch them work, they care like a founder cares about their startup. Every detail. Lots of focus. And kaizen, getting a little bit better each time. Getting a little bit better each time. And so I told Jetro, "We can do Founder University as long as it starts in January." They said, "January? Why January?" I said, "Well, I have to go to Hokkaido and ski."

• 3:58Speaker 01

  So, one week in Tokyo, it's a little cold. And then I go to Hokkaido, and it's very cold. But there's so much incredible snow. And then, in the summer, we also have Founder University. So twice a year. And we have our second cohort. It's going very well. We're getting to meet so many great entrepreneurs. And they asked me to come to Osaka. I've never been here. I've been to Miyazaki, but my first time in Osaka. This is a beautiful city. How many people are from Osaka here? How many people? Okay, not too many. How many people are from Tokyo? Great. How many people from the United States? Okay, great. Awesome. Well, it's gonna be great for us to hang out a little bit.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  I love meeting founders and helping them. Two of my team members are here. Ismail is maybe outside, and Lukas is here, who's the CTO for my venture firm.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  And we're going to talk tonight about being an entrepreneur. And I have a great guest from Techstars, and we're gonna take pitches as well. Some of the Techstars companies, and then just some random companies that applied. And this is gonna be a lot of fun, because this is a safe space. We're gonna give very, very, very candid feedback.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  This is something that's not very Japanese, I learned. I'm from Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, when you do something that's stupid, everybody looks at you and said, "Wow, that was very stupid." "You're extremely dumb. Why do you keep doing so many stupid things, Jason?" And then I'd say, "I don't know. That was really stupid. I'll never do that again. Thank you." In Japan, they say, "Hmm."

• 5:58Speaker 01

  And if you do something really bad, I had to explain this, they say,

• 6:05Speaker 01

  "I understand that this is an extremely dramatic way to say, 'Why are you so stupid?

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Is it correct? This means you're an idiot. You're doing something that everybody else understands you should not do." And I said, "Well, how would I know? I'm not supposed to walk across this beautiful grass lawn." And they said, "The sign? That says do not walk across it." This happened to me. I was in a park, and it happened. Okay. So, I'll just tell you briefly about Founder University. We had an incredible experience.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Our venture capital firm launch, we make 100 investments a year. We have 20 people. And we found out that when we would get well over 10,000 applications for funding a year, half of them were not yet incorporated. And we keep seeing this trend in the age of AI especially. The company has not incorporated. There's two or three people, but they have a finished product. And it's awesome. And they don't need money. And they might even have a customer or two, or people using the product. And I say, "Well, how do you take their money?" And they're, "Oh, we're not charging yet." Or, "I put it on my personal Stripe account from another thing. I was in another project I was doing." And so, we saw all that energy.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  And we had our accelerator, and there's Techstars, and Y Combinator, and many other great programs. So we said, "What if we created something for before the accelerator, Founder University, 12 weeks, twice a week, tactical and practical talks? Tactical, how to get things done. Practical, easy to apply." And so, we started this program. We've now done it 12 times in the United States. Right now, we're doing our second cohort in Japan. And in January, we start the third one. Japan.founder.university. If you want to apply, it's gonna start in January. I don't know why January. It's such a random month. We started in January again?

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Wow, that's crazy. That's the best month for skiing in Hokkaido. What a coincidence.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  So you should all apply for that. Okay, so, let me bring up Yuki Shirato. Yuki, come on up. Let's give him a big round of applause.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  And as is the tradition, you and I are going to do a karaoke duet. You've picked the song?

• 8:43Speaker 02

  I will pick a song, yes.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  No, I'm joking. You're not going to do a song. Maybe later. You never know.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Are you going to sit?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, relax. Tell everybody how long has Techstars been in Japan? And tell us about the program here and when you joined.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Techstars Tokyo started in 2024, three years ago. So I've been the Managing Director since the inception. So sort of like inaugural MD. And then we are currently running the third program. And then we accept 12 companies a year, six from Japan and six from non, outside Japan, actually. And then also, when I say Japan, doesn't have to be Japanese founders in Japan. So some of them are actually founded by foreigners in Japan, with Japanese founders who live abroad and then start a company, mostly in California and the United States.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Bringing people to Japan is a big focus of the government today. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how that's changed over time. It used to be a little bit hard 20 years ago to come here as an American.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Right, that's absolutely right. So we have two goals. And then Techstars Tokyo is sponsored by JetRO, as well as Japanese government in general, Cabinet Office, Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Industry, and then Tokyo Motobaton Government. And their two goals are, one, Japanese startups going global. So you help the Japanese startups going global. And then the other goal is to entice the foreign founders coming to Japan. So Japan market entry and foreign direct investment.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  They don't need to speak Japanese?

• 10:22Speaker 02

  No, my program is English.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  They can learn.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  There's some very important words you need to learn.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  My favorite is "swimasan",

• 10:35Speaker 01

  which I say increasingly as I have beers, even more gruff.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Is my favorite word. Excuse me.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Is my favorite word.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Only because I like the sound of it. So I think one of the key things we should talk about is the Japanese entrepreneur and how they look at starting a company in Japan, which is an amazing market, 100 million customers. Customers have a lot of money. They're very tech savvy. They want to try new things. They're excited. They're enthusiastic. And for many years, a lot of Japanese companies have been content with staying on the island. But that's something I think we want to see change a little bit. So maybe talk a little bit about the mindset of Japanese entrepreneurs

• 11:31Speaker 01

  and how you work with them to maybe start thinking about America, Europe, Middle East, et cetera.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  I think the cultural shift in entrepreneurship in Japan is hard to change, but gradually changing, as you mentioned. I think we need like a hero as a role models who have been successful as entrepreneurs and become serial entrepreneurs or very publicly speaking about their experiences. So I think things are generally gradual, unfortunately. I think the entrepreneurship spirit amongst Japanese people are still pretty low as compared in the United States. The Tokyo or Japan, you know, there are a lot of rankings of entrepreneurship and startups.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  And Japan is always around like between 10th and 15th spot, which is great. It used to be like 30 or 40, so it's going up and up. But I think there is a huge sort of like, you know,

• 12:38Speaker 02

  the hurdle to overcome to get to San Fran, New York and London. So yeah, I'm seeing a lot of Japanese top talent becoming entrepreneurs because mostly kind of they lost hope on the like lifetime employment or, you know, the illusion of, you know, the corporations just being forever. But I think it is still a challenge.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  And that concept of working at a big company forever still exists in Japan. But parents are now maybe thinking a little differently about what they wish for their sons and daughters, yeah? They used to, maybe when I first started coming here 25 or 30 years ago, the idea that you would skip working for a big company to start your own company was very scary. It was considered a bad idea.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  But here we are in 2026. I think many parents would rather see their son or daughter start a company first, give it a shot, knowing, well, the big company will still be there. Am I correct in my view of this?

• 13:56Speaker 02

  I think.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  It's okay if I'm not. My perception is a bit biased, but I've been talking to folks and I don't know if it's everyone, but it does seem to be changing a bit.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Yes, it is. It's definitely changing. I agree. But I think relatively speaking, I'm still pretty conservative. So for example, if you fail as an entrepreneur and then you spend like, I don't know, five years and then you're, I don't know, mid to late 20s, where would you go? So there are a lot of Japanese corporates who take the mid-career people now. And then they are more tolerant of, you know, failed entrepreneurs or whoever, you know, challenged themselves to do something else and then trying to come back. But I think there are still a little bit of conservatives amongst corporate people who prefer to have someone right after undergrad

• 14:51Speaker 02

  and then, you know, stay with the company for a long time. And then there are some very successful Japanese companies, of course, right? Like Sony, Hitachi, and then Mitsubishi. And then so it is not, yeah, unreasonable for parents to think that, you know, they should work for the big corporations either.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  It's reasonable, but now in pop culture, they're starting to see examples of what's possible. And the skills and the craftsmanship here, even if folks maybe don't believe they're entrepreneurs, when we come from America, we go, wow, you understand as a culture, product market fit, PMF, the hardest thing in the world feels like it is one of the core tenants, one of the core skill sets of the Japanese people is product market fit.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  It's inherent in almost every interaction I have here. So maybe talk a little bit about where that starts in school with parents. How does product market fit become such a deep and important part of the Japanese culture?

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Wow, that's a difficult question. But I think it comes down to education, especially for young children. I think they learn in a young age, like the rules of society. And then they behave in a certain way to kind of create a harmony. And I think it's just comes down to like how you educate children. I think there is no right or wrong curriculum for any school. And then, I don't know, I think that's, that's a very difficult question.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  I have some ideas about why.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  I think if you see people taking pride in their work

• 16:57Speaker 01

  from a very young age, and you assume that's what's expected, that if you were going to make the coffee, you would do it as best you can. And if you were going to do any other job, the expectation is, even if nobody's watching, to do it well, to do it to the best of your ability and to take some amount of pride in it. I think it's just embedded in how, what you see, right? And in other cultures, you might see people not caring as much. And if somebody were to throw some litter on the floor in America, people just walk by.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Here, if you were to do that, you would be a big conversation, yeah?

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Yep, yep. Yeah, they definitely take pride in their work. Like, you know, from, I don't know, the conductor of train to the garbage collector, to primary school teacher, to, yeah, the ceramic artist. It's like everyone cares about, like, their attention to detail is a certain amount, I think. So that's, that's for sure. How they are nurtured that way is a very difficult question. I don't know why.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Well, and then I think maybe the counter is maybe an intolerance for failure. And maybe a little bit of shame if you don't do it well, which then might lead people to take a little less risk on the margins.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  As opposed to in America, where if I said fake it till you make it, you know, just believe that you're the CEO of a big corporation and people will treat you like one. People go, yeah, that's a good advice.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Maybe not so much here. I'm here with Keith Piris, the founder of Lightfield. They are an AI-native CRM that builds and updates itself in real time from your email, your calendar, your Slack, your meeting notes, all those things that you keep misplacing. Welcome to the program, Keith.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  Great to be here.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  What novel use cases have you seen your customers use with Lightfield? Because some of them are obvious. Hey, I'm selling SaaS software. Hey, I'm selling a product or service into corporate America. And it's pretty. You know, standard process at this point in 2026. But once you introduce AI into this, you can get really creative. So what creative uses have people found inside of Light Field?

• 19:19Speaker 03

  I'll start with finding new customers. The first thing is we found that it's so easy to build these automations in Light Field, where you are scraping different websites and looking at different data sources, then giving it to, you know, a high parameter model to reason through, that you can find new customers in ways that you couldn't using traditional data sources. So we have folks that are scraping clinical trials, websites, you know, or scraping firms that have active litigation matters, you know, from government websites.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Holy cow.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  And then using Light Field enrichment to connect those people to companies, or companies to people, and then send in highly tailored personalized emails.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Everybody go check out lightfield.app.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's right. I think I heard analogy that everyone wears a lab coat in Japan. So it's like a white coat that if you make a mistake, you get tainted, you know, get like a little bit of, you know, red ink or, you know, blue ink or whatever. And then you don't want to get a lot of, like, you know, stains throughout your life. So if you die and then with a clean white lab coat, your life is like, you know, impeccable. As opposed to, you know, you get a lot of failures.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Completely backwards. Each of those blotches tells a story.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  That's actually...

• 20:48Speaker 02

  That's how Americans, yeah, would think.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  You would look at the, if you were a cowboy and you saw the boots, and the boots had some cuts in them.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  If the leather jacket was rough and had a hole, or your jeans were ripped, that's a story.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  That's a great moment where you learn something, right?

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  So...

• 21:07Speaker 02

  That's actually a very good point, because Japanese people are really bad at storytelling. So they have a lot of stories, right? But they never tell their stories. So this is completely different from startups, but if I may. So I was helping this Japanese client of mine, and long story, but he was deposed because they were allegedly stealing some patent from another US company. But he actually went, you know, up to podium, like the stand, and then spoke about it. And then he was like naturally answering the, you know,

• 21:50Speaker 02

  the opposing counsel's cross examination. And then it was about the cinnamon. So there was a very special molecular, like, you know, element in the cinnamon that he found. And then they created this, like, you know, interesting product. But, you know, this US company sued them, right? And then he went up to the stand and then cross examination. He naturally said, like, you know, I'm very confident. I developed this. I discovered this. This is my product. This is my work. You know, this is my life work. I've been working this 30 years. How can you even, like, you know, doubt me?

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  And whatever, right? And then how can you say that is like, oh, I have a daughter, like 18-year-old. I named her Cinnamon, because, you know, I, this, like, dedicating my life to this. So I even named my daughter Cinnamon. So like, it was just like, kind of, an across examiner, like opposing counsel just was like...

• 22:44Speaker 01

  It's like a movie.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, shocked.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, so...

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Case closed.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  Exactly. So I think that some Japanese people just take years and decades of one thing, and then make it really perfect, so.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  And so how are the applications going? Are you getting a good number of applications? And then when they come in, what do they need help with in the program? What are the things where they just don't know what to do? And they don't have exposure to it?

• 23:12Speaker 02

  So the vast majority of applications actually come from outside Japan,

• 23:18Speaker 02

  which says something. But yeah, we are getting thousands of applications, which is, which is great. A lot of non-Japanese people want to move to Japan and try out to get some Japanese capital or work with Japanese businesses, or even hire top talent. But again, I think the challenge is the Japanese side, the Japanese entrepreneurs and whatnot. But I think the government is doing a great job in supporting the community and ecosystem. And then I think you're doing a great service to Japan. Like, you know, Founder University is amazing. I think they are a great catalyst.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  I think some of ours have applied and maybe even gotten into Techstars.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Yes, that's right.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Which is great. We're a feeder for you guys.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  Yes. And then actually, and also the, you know, vice versa. I think Techstars graduates went to launch.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Oh, fantastic. Yes, we did have...

• 24:07Speaker 02

  So yeah, thank you so much.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  So I think you're doing, because you've done so much for Secombi, and, you know, like startup ecosystem around the world, right, globally? And then you being like in Japan and coming to Japan and helping the Japanese founders and ecosystem is a really boost, a huge boost to the community itself, so.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  And you have a gift for me, I understand. He's, he didn't tell everybody, but he's brought my passport. So I have a Japanese passport now? Have I earned it yet? Maybe a little more work.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Yes, maybe five more years.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  A little more, five more years, I get that Japanese passport. I have a long-term goal. Very hard for an American to get that Japanese passport. But who knows? Maybe if I help with a unicorn, then I will earn it.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Okay. Speaking of helping founders, we're going to start taking some pitches.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Okay. So these are some of your companies. And I'm going to see them for the first time, I believe. And so let's bring up our first company.

• 25:05Speaker 04

  Hi, everyone. My name is Lamia, and I'm the co-founder of VD Labs, where we've built Seeker. Seeker is a spatial intelligence layer for complex indoor spaces. So with Seeker, we can find your exact position just by your phone's camera. Its accuracy is down to the centimeter level. No hardware installation required, and we work best where there's no GPS. Precise positioning is still a challenge, especially for industries such as indoor wayfinding, last mile deliveries, and also physical AI bots. GPS will help you find the building, but it can't tell you which floor you're on. So this is how Seeker works. We come in, we take a 3D scan of the place.

• 25:48Speaker 04

  Our algorithm turns that scan into a precise map. And then we go live, where visitors get the live navigation, and venue operators get the live movement data.

• 26:00Speaker 04

  We build maps six times faster and in real time. And we do this with LiDAR, or just photos, or even just videos of the space. And what we do is clearly like something that engineers don't have to manually annotate, because our visual positioning system makes sure and takes care of repeated structures, closed loops, and also narrow spaces. So we're live at the Hong Kong International Airport, where it took us two weeks to go from scanning to deployment. We're also covering the Plug and Play Silicon Valley Summit, where 4,000 exhibition goers will be using Seeker to navigate the three-day conference.

• 26:43Speaker 04

  Our technology is so precise that even a blind user can navigate just by our audio and haptic feedback. And, you know, operators, like venue operators, get real-time data such as visitor flow, dwell time, and also dynamic rerouting options. So the indoor navigation space is a $31 billion opportunity, and we are positioned to capture 1,800 venues that opens up revenue of about $500 million.

• 27:12Speaker 04

  So we built Seeker because we've got family members that are visually impaired, and we wanted them to navigate indoor spaces independently. But what we've built is one map that both people and machines can read. We've won Forbes and CES for our innovation. We were also featured in CNN just last month. So we are Seeker, where GPS stops, Seeker starts. Thank you so much.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  And it's Lamia?

• 27:40Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Lamia. Okay. Do you want candid, super candid, or JCal candid?

• 27:47Speaker 04

  I will go for JCal candid.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Okay, so I'm gonna...

• 27:50Speaker 04

  I'm scared. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  I mean, but I could go up and down. I always like, since we're all founders here, I'll tell you all the good and the bad.

• 27:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, please.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  So this pitch, we've seen over the years as a known problem. So everybody knows this is a problem. We all experience this problem. But what investors are thinking about, we have one here. Where's the investor? He ran. Oh, no, he's here. So he's still here. He's thinking, oh, this is interesting technology. There's no business here. It happens to every business at some point. You're nearing the end of the month, or maybe it's the quarter, and your sales team is at risk of missing their quota. You could waste days pulling together data from across the entire organization, or you could just ask Rippling AI. Rippling's already built on your real-time people and business data, obviously.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  So Rippling AI can pull metrics from both Rippling and your CRM into a meeting-ready dashboard. See exactly how close you are to hitting that quota. Break down your revenue by region, or sales rep, or more, all in just seconds with Rippling AI. Look, you're running a company, you're busy. You have critical questions that you need immediate answers to. And you can't just pile a ticket and wait a week for your team to get around to sending you a report. And you don't want to sit around waiting for reports. So you need an actionable insight right now. So if you're ready to rule your business, head to rippling.ai/twist to get the only AI built to give you full visibility and let you take complex actions across your startup. And you reinforced that unintentionally,

• 29:26Speaker 01

  because you didn't address the business case here. What is the business case for this? How are you going to make that $500 million? And then there were things that, when you talk about press, CNN, Forbes, that's a soft, like, metric.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Take that out, talk about a customer if you have a limited amount of time. And so that's really just the focus of the presentation. Then you had the charming story, hey, somebody in the family is blind or impaired. Okay, that's fine as like a starting point, but again, without the business being in there. Now, some investors, like he's pretty hardcore. He's thinking, oh, these people want to save the world. That's amazing, but I would never invest in somebody who wants to save the world. I want somebody who wants to build a unicorn and get to 100 million in revenue as quick as possible. So I think I'll give you a shot at it right now. The $31 billion, the TAM is like a top-down TAM number.

• 30:30Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  We don't like those. What we train people in Founder University is to build the bottom-up TAM. And your two examples, an airport, okay. And then the other one, like a conference, that was almost proving to me as an investor like, oh, maybe there's no customer here. So take a second. Did you figure out a business model here yet? Or are you still in the trying to figure out how you might monetize this?

• 30:54Speaker 04

  That is actually a really good question. And in fact, one of the reasons we're with Techstars is that we're trying to explore the Japan market. But I will tell you this, we've received an impressive amount of inbounds and they come from different verticals. So of course, we started with the airports, but I am getting inbounds from amusement parks that want to make, you know, customer service experience a lot better. They want KPI in a flash and that's where the importance of the dashboard comes. By no means is point-to-point navigation our moat. It's the data here that is at play. The data of, okay, where are my customers? Where are they spending more time in? Are they buying anything in the luxury stores of the airports? So that is where the business is.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Great, and that's where I thought you might go.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Which is awesome. And then when you go down that maze, then the next thing is you have to have done the research.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Of all the other people who have tried that as well and where they wound up.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Company density IO that we've been investors in for 10 years. They use sensors in spaces to count people and then they sell it to office spaces. So they can, you know, tell you where there's open desks. They will tell the cleaning crew which conference rooms have to be cleaned. But if nobody was in the conference room for the last 24 hours, that they will have the cleaning people skip that conference room, right?

• 32:15Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  So that area is a known area as well. And there's a couple of companies that have been venture-backed that do video. So you're in the idea maze. You've obviously got technical chops. I think it's time now, you've proven you can build a product, but you're going to have to be cutthroat about how you're going to make money and you really have to know all the people in the possible places. Don't be passive about it and wait for inbound. What I hope you do is you go to 10 people, 20 people. You show them the technology and then you interview them about what their issues are, et cetera, and try to find something that is a hair-on-fire problem, like a real problem.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  You hear vitamins and painkiller, this discussion, you've heard this as well, I'm sure. Like right now feels like a vitamin, which is if you skip your vitamins, you know, you freak, you might skip your vitamins for an entire week and not notice. But if you skip a painkiller and you've got a twisted ankle, you're going to know in six hours you forgot to take it. So that's what I want you to do next, okay? Great job. Let's give her a big round of applause.

• 33:23Speaker 04

  Thank you so much.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Yuki, was I too hard? Was that?

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Amazing feedback.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Was it too hard? I don't care. I want you to get the hard, I want you to get the hard stuff. No, I do care. I care enough to give the brutal candid advice. And you know what? I'm, I'm often wrong, but not that often. Like I can always tell how investors are going to interpret it and the investors don't tell you the truth. But you always have me to tell you the truth. Yuki will tell you the truth as well. Investor in blue, investor in blue. Did any of what I say, did any of the like handicapping I did about how investors would interpret this, parallel what you were thinking?

• 34:12Speaker 01

  We're the clients, exactly. Boom. And so one of the things that'll happen is you go to conferences. Everybody wants to support founders. And then the investors want to support founders and there's no upside for an investor doing what I just did, which is being brutally candid, like J Cal level candid. Because what if she gets upset at me and she's like, J Cal's a jerk. I'm never going to let him invest in my company. When I do figure it out, I'm going to send him an email when I sell my company for a billion dollars and let him know he missed out, which I do get those emails sometimes.

• 34:48Speaker 05

  Arabat helps electronics manufacturers to recover valuable materials from their waste. Hello, everyone. I'm Ralph, CEO and co-founder of Arabat. Batteries, capacitors, magnets, the building blocks of AI, energy and defense, they all depend on critical minerals we can secure. More than 200 million kilograms. That's the amount of e-waste generated by AI data center alone every year by 2030. And of the rare earth locked inside it, 90% of the world's recycling capacity

• 35:28Speaker 05

  is still concentrated in one country, US, Japan, no, China. Electronic manufacturers face the same problem. Disposal costs, supply risks and compliance all at once. Our solution to all of that, just an orange. More precisely, instead of using expensive and harsh chemicals to do the recycling, we just use orange peels and other cheap agri-food waste to recover the critical minerals from the electronics.

• 36:05Speaker 05

  Our patented technology takes in e-waste and scrap and using more than 50 fruits or vegetable, it can selectively recover critical minerals for the industry like lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earth. More precisely, we open the hardware, we crush it and we mix it with biomass to get finally all the crystals of such critical minerals ready to sell for the industry. And we do this 60% cheaper, 50% cleaner and also twice as fast to permit compared to any other competitors.

• 36:47Speaker 05

  Taya Yuden, a multi-billion dollar Japanese company is already testing our solution under a recently signed strategic agreement. Real NCA batteries, real capacitors, local Japanese biomass. To date, we have already two patents, a pilot plant under development. And now we are raising to scale up our bio-based approach worldwide. Because our future shouldn't depend on who owns the mines. It should depend on what grows nearby. Because money doesn't grow on trees. Critical materials do, like simple oranges. Thank you for your attention.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Wow. You found this company, Yuki? You found it?

• 37:35Speaker 02

  No, I didn't. I wonder if he applies.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  He applied, yeah. Great presentation. You're a natural presenter and you have something that nobody here has ever seen. Has anybody here ever heard of this technique for? Were you in the program with him or are you a biologist? You met him before? Ah, got it, yes. But nobody knew about this until you did it. So this puts you in a very unique startup category, which is you're like this very unique, like a unicorn without the revenue and the valuation. But so when in a pitch contest like this or meeting investors, you're going to need to, after you get them intrigued, like I'm intrigued right now

• 38:22Speaker 01

  and other investors might be intrigued, you're going to have to really educate us. How does this get to market? The go-to market is going to be the big question here. Is there somebody who really needs this? And that's where pilots come in. And when you do pilots, you really want paid pilots. You don't want to hire just anybody. You want to work with the very top, most skilled people who really understand every aspect of the work they're doing. But seeking out a crew of specialists, well, that's its own full-time job and you've got a startup to run. Now there's a solution. Upwork. When you make a podcast like we do, there are so many different kinds of jobs that need to be done behind the scenes. Every platform where we post videos needs its own kind of content

• 39:06Speaker 01

  and different editors specialize in different kinds of videos. When we need somebody to massively boost our following on Instagram reels or start knocking out TikTok edits that will hit perfectly on your for you feed, we find these freelancers on Upwork. Now we want to help you try it out for yourself. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. U P W O R K dot com. Upwork.com. So anybody can get a free pilot. You have a pilot, right?

• 39:40Speaker 05

  We have, we have done free pilots and now it's a paid pilot from a Japanese customer.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Got it. But you did free pilots before that. How many free pilots?

• 39:47Speaker 05

  Some free pilots, two.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Two of them, okay. So what we're always contending with in our accelerator and then in Founder University is getting people from the free pilot mode to the paid pilot mode. And what's the ballpark figure for the pilot? How much are they putting at risk?

• 40:06Speaker 05

  $50K.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Okay. And that's for a three-month pilot or something?

• 40:09Speaker 05

  Um, more, six months, six, nine months.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  And what will, if it succeeds, what will be the outcome? And then what will you charge them for the next either pilot or the first deployment?

• 40:24Speaker 05

  They told us that are interested at opening new business initiatives around recycling because they are losing money from their defective capacitors. And so they told about licensing or joint venture. This was what they said.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  And so you're in that discovery phase, but the technology works, yeah?

• 40:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. On lab and also pilot already tested.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Perfect. So we'll assume this product's going to work. Is it? Cost effective, like, does it actually recover enough materials to make it profitable, very profitable, somewhat profitable? Tell us about the profitability.

• 41:05Speaker 05

  So profitable, especially when the feedstock to recycle includes rare earths, like ceramic capacitor present in each smartphone, or magnet waste. And in our case, we are cost effective. Why? Because biomass is cheap. The maximum cost could be $100 per ton.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Where are all these materials being sent today? To landfills? To Africa?

• 41:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, landfills and China, because China, for example, has the most important industry in recycling, and they still use traditional technology.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Could you just go to the landfills and say, "We will pay you half of whatever we recover, and we just want the 50-year license for all the garbage coming here"?

• 41:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, we are thinking about that, yeah.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if this is so profitable, maybe you need to just have people give you the material, and then you give them money, or find out where that material is, and then you buy the rights to it. So you're not dependent on this electronics company getting through a pilot. Like, if you actually know that there's, you know, rare earths in this garbage dump in Japan, where they're putting it onto a barge and sending it to China, you need to intercept it before it goes to China and say, "Hey, we'll take it." Because they sell it to China, or they pay China to take it?

• 42:31Speaker 05

  They sell to China.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  They sell used electronics to China to rip it?

• 42:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, apples powder from electronics, yeah.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, interesting. Very interesting business. Okay, let's give them a big round of applause.

• 42:42Speaker 05

  Thank you very much.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  So this is, I think, Yuki, a really interesting company. Maybe you could say a few words about it, and what you think they need to do next as well?

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, they are selected in my investor companies. I hope they do well. But I think your feedback was extremely helpful. And then, in our case, I agree. It's a very unique proposition, so very few people actually understand the value, and then, you know, GTM, and all that. So I think that's the challenge I think they will face. And then Lamia's case, I think, like you said, it's a known problem. So they need to find, you know, the...

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yes, when you look at the two different startups, one of them is doing something that is a known problem. We know some people have tried. The other one is like, "Okay, that's very weird. We've never even heard of this." And you have to understand that there's going to be different benchmarks for what's going to be expected. If this problem's a known problem, well, we expect you better have, like, a good solution here, and you better have a really good idea about the business plan. When it's the first time you hear about it, it's nascent, you may give them a little bit more breathing room to figure it out, right? There might be a little more tolerance from investors.

• 43:55Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Takuya, and the co-founder of Asset Hub, and we are making the 3D AI agent for IP content. So at first, the 3D model in entertainment, that is the biggest cost. So, for example, for gaming, it accounts for 50% of whole budgets. So everyone will use the 3D foundational model to make assets. But it doesn't work for important content like IP character. For example, this model is made by foundational model, but it doesn't work for IP holders, because a proportion of rebound is not the same with the concept, right? Right side is bigger, left is smaller, something like that. So the IP is a set of

• 44:39Speaker 06

  those kind of local rule. It's not exported publicly, right? So that's why just using the foundational model trained by public data doesn't work. So we developed Asset Hub. This is our AI agent for making the high-level IP content. So at first, our agent take image, and they analyze, okay, what type of image need to be prepared for 3D AI, separate the parts, and they check the consistency with the original inputs, and they generate 3D model with foundational model. And later, to make it usable, compose them into single character by referring to the original concept, so while maintain the original taste. So

• 45:22Speaker 06

  by doing this, we can optimize the entire process for making the quite important characters. So we applied this method for actual clients, and then the client was making the anime contents, and then, okay, they spend at least around a week to make single character, but now it's less than a day. And even more, AI can do its parallel, right? So it's quite faster and then cheaper. And then, so far, okay, we earned around 290K annual run rate, and while working with the top IP content. And then we have many Japanese clients, and also as a pipeline, we are going to have a more US side enterprise too. So our business

• 46:05Speaker 06

  model, at first, we introduce the FDE model. So by directly working with IP holder, we customize our agent. And then after that, we can export those kinds of things as a software. So just sometimes a global user can use a self-sub style, or just we sometimes do the, okay, say, IP licensing business by giving the IP customized agent, which is acquired by the FD Prozess. So this is our go-to market. So simply say, what we got to do is IP roll-up business. So at first, okay, we can reduce the cost of main content,

• 46:48Speaker 06

  something like, okay, Hello Kitty, okay, they have so many media, right? So anime, gaming, or something, everything use 3D model. So we optimize the cost of them. And then once we could have agents, that even we do a more licensing business, I mean, just export this top-grade IP agent to every creators, even UZC, India, something. So anyway, by making the top customized agents by IP holders, we can expand IP revenue, even we can take revenue share from the contents too. So the only Asset Hub does it. So they are the foundational model company, or some AI outsourcing company too, but most of them focusing on more casual

• 47:31Speaker 06

  asset creation. So in Japan, so many IP content creators, and then there's so many enterprise want to work with startups. So that's why we could have this reach by working with them. So, yeah, time is, at first, we want to replace a 3D artist labor cost. So it's, there are around 30K artists in the world, and then the cost is around the average 80K dollars, something, so it's $25 billion. And even more, if we can expand our IP revenue share with IP roll-up style, it's could be $6 billion, so it's around the $30 billion time. And then, so we're going to achieve the $100 million with this timeline. So

• 48:12Speaker 06

  just within four years, we expand FDE, and then also the IP revenue share initial model. And then after that, yeah, by 2034, we'd like to achieve the $100 million. Yeah. And then our team is a series of founders from entertainment to gaming. So my previous three, I co-founded Gaudi, that raised $70 million, and they're working with Japanese IP content, Sony, Abana, or something. And then we also did IP roll-up business. And then Jonathan is in San Francisco, and the executive founder in gaming field. And Andrew is also the president, founder of the company. So we combine those expertise in this company, and then try achieving the concept biggest outcomes from there. So, yeah, that's all. So thank you for listening.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Let me make sure I understand the business. You have a tool that, instead of making 3D models in CAD tools, or however Pixar makes them, or Hello Kitty makes them, you make an AI version of that that's really good and fast, and allows people to make those models maybe 12 times faster, if I got it right, 10, 12 times faster. Then, if you can do it faster, then you can export those, and when somebody licenses Hello Kitty, you put it on a T-shirt, or in a video game, or whatever, you can give them the assets faster and more efficiently, yeah?

• 49:34Speaker 06

  Yes, exactly. So at first, so it's beyond just a replacement to CAD or something. I mean, the artist workflow, of course, makes 3D model. But after that, to check the consistency, quality, this is a review process, right? So we cover end-to-end process. So, okay, take input image as a design, create a 3D model, and even given the feedback and review and the adjustment. So that's why it's beyond the justice.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Got it. So the person who's making the figurine has to make sure that the person they're licensing it from agrees that it's worthy of being...

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Produced.

• 50:12Speaker 06

  Yes, so yeah, the reason why the can say many people cannot use IP is the following the rule is really tough. But our agents replace the process automatically by software.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Very interesting. It's we don't have as much of an IP business in the US or Disney does Marvel and Star Wars. We don't have as much, I don't think, but I could be wrong as well. And the best way to make money from this is to sell people the software. Yeah, that's your belief.

• 50:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, and especially we expect a global user use this IP agent. So I mean, the popularity of the Japanese anime IP or something in UDC is getting growing. And even around the $500 million is a pilot's version of IP content in Roblox, only Roblox, right? So that's why working with IP.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  You might have consumers making characters for Roblox and they own that IP and they can license it to some other party.

• 51:12Speaker 06

  Yes, so for for example, just example, just to make a, for example, Hello Kitty agents for their own original content. And then once we could make agents, just distribute these agents to UDC creators. Of course, they can make you see content with IP, right? And then once they earn some revenue, do distribution, something like a 20% revenue or something.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  So I get Hello Kitty and I make a movie or something, a short film. It will give the license or give the licensing revenue back to the owner.

• 51:41Speaker 06

  Yes, something like that, yes.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Ah, interesting. So that's very disruptive and interesting, I think. I literally just tweeted today, people have been making Marvel movies using Sea, is it Sea Dance? Sea Dance, we don't have it in the United States, the other Chinese one. So people are making, because they don't respect the IP, they're making these Marvel ones. And I said Marvel should put this into, or Disney should put a Marvel shorts creator into Disney Plus. If you have a Disney Plus account, they should let you make your own shorts of up to like three minutes and then publish them to the site and people could vote on them. And maybe you could win prizes or get a ticket to Disneyland or something in exchange for doing it.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  But people were making Spider-Man versus the X-Men and it was like trending on X.com today. It was very interesting. So I think that's what I hope for you is that maybe you can create a model that helps them make more money. Like I would think even bigger, right now you're thinking about the tool. I would think about the ecosystem as well. Selling the tool is interesting. Creating a new ecosystem based on what you know is insane. So maybe you need to find somebody or maybe you could buy some old IP and then you could prove it by making your own ecosystem and allowing consumers to make their own content and share in the revenue. This is a very interesting idea.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  I like the bigger idea of you maybe being in the IP business somehow or creating the marketplace of IP. Very interesting. There's an expression, come for the tool, stay for the marketplace. So you have the tool. I wonder what the marketplace is here is very interesting idea.

• 53:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  You also seem very talented. Each, all three entrepreneurs are very good. Let's give them a big round of applause. All three, great entrepreneurs. It's hard to rank these, especially since they're so disparate, like very different businesses. But if you told me I could only invest in one, I probably would go for Arabat because it's the crazy of the moment. You know, startup, because everybody needs minerals now and there's a shortage of rare earths or, you know, it seems like there's so much momentum in that space, right? So very interesting. All right, so now we're going to have eight companies who are going to pitch.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  But to make it efficient, they get two minutes each and they're going to go four back to back. And then Yuki, since you don't, haven't seen these, you can start at, you ask like whichever top two you want to ask questions to. But we're going to let them go in a row so that we can, but you got to take notes. It's very important we take notes because you'll forget the startup, three startups ago. Okay, so lightning round. Here we go.

• 54:35Speaker 07

  Hello, everyone. My name is Yosuke from Klazier. We are building the AI agent or turning the conversation data into your business growth. Millions of a conversation happen every day, but what if someone could uncover insight and act on them? Alex, a game marketing manager, he just launched a new mobile game. He invest a lot for new user acquisition, but player leaves easily. He is overwhelmed by the tons of conversation from users and not sure what really happened there.

• 55:07Speaker 07

  Confluence analyzes all the conversation across the platform and just find out the rising frustration from users. And there is a 52 high value players at the risk of churning. So Alex looked this segment and turned on our AI agent. And that agent started a conversation with the users automatically with a personalized messages. And then while talking to users, the agent tried to understand the user needs. And the Confluence platform turned this conversation data into career business intelligence and also the action plan for Alex. Based on this insight, the team provide a hotfix roadmap, better matchmaking system and this improve the user engagement and the in-game revenue.

• 55:49Speaker 07

  So our business model combine the subscription and usage based pricing based on the conversation volume. Then software, we have the four paid customer across Asia market and a training K MRR from a global gaming publisher and a consumer brands. And as software, we have 100 paid customer retention ratio since last year. And now the market, as long as have the conversation data, this is our scope. We start to focus on the gaming market and enter into the other industry and the region to achieve the $100 million by 2030.

• 56:23Speaker 07

  Team member, I used to work at the meta global gaming team as a marketing specialist. And my CTO also have the strong background of the engineering across fintech and AI. Then we are backed by engineer investor Shimada-san. He's the executive director of the Rockton before. That's all my presentation. Thank you.

• 56:41Speaker 08

  I'm Hiro Michiito, founder and inventor of Jujuju. We give protein structure.

• 56:49Speaker 08

  This is protein and this is fat. Let me show you the concept.

• 56:56Speaker 08

  Our patented technology combines protein and fat, keeping their boundaries intact, the goal.

• 57:04Speaker 08

  Thick, naturally barbed, whole cuts in seconds.

• 57:17Speaker 08

  New proteins are everywhere, but turning them into a greater steak takes structure. Plant fermentation, mycelium, cultivated, four sources of future protein. Beyond Meat Steak Ferret shows the opportunity beyond ground meat, whole cuts. 3D printing explores the structure in the lab. The question is, how to deliver it at scale?

• 57:48Speaker 08

  These are potential customers. They make the protein. Jujuju give is give it trust structure. A major Japanese food company has invited us to demonstrate hybrid meat. You may have eaten their food. Jason, you may also have too before. Absolutely.

• 58:14Speaker 08

  We are meat plus plant protein, building and fat kept visibly distinct.

• 58:21Speaker 08

  If successful, imagine this company alone reaching billions of meals with a 5 cent royalty.

• 58:31Speaker 08

  We lesson structuring technology, food companies produce meals. We are recovering royalties as productions growth.

• 58:41Speaker 08

  Our vision reaches beyond Earth, structuring without relying on gravity, even on the moon. We give the proteins of the future, the structure people love. Jujuju, the structural layer for the protein ecosystem. Thank you.

• 58:58Speaker 09

  Hello, we are building Japan Media. Japan Media is a platform that combine manga and anime creation with global distribution. Our traction, we had 400K dollars last year in four months. And this year we forecast 1.8 million dollars and we have already 200K booked. And we have already 330,000 Japanese existing titles. And the world market demand is extremely exploding, but supply cannot keep up. Every year, over 10% of manga and anime creator has been disappearing from the industry because labor intensive work, low wages.

• 59:40Speaker 09

  So the world wants Japanese content, but we can only supply 7% of anime. Japan Media can make manga and anime 10x faster and 1/5 cost cut. And the most outstanding point is corporate company can own their IP. So far, it has been, it has been impossible.

• 1:00:06Speaker 09

  This is our AI tool. You only have to do is just chat with AI agent. And the AI agent can make manga and adapt into anime. After they translated into 10 languages and distributed all over the world, including Netflix, Amazon Prime. And this is our works. And so you can see the most our concern is to keep originality, keep original creativity. This is so extremely difficult for any other AI tools. And we have already 330,000 Japanese IP licenses,

• 1:00:49Speaker 09

  and some of them are in good revenue. And we are going to adapt into anime. These famous in Japan anime. So originally manga can make money twice as much as in the revenue. And our team, so almost all our team are used to want to become manga anime creator, but we couldn't make it because like we cannot draw or we cannot story. So we founded my company. Thank you.

• 1:01:20Speaker 10

  Yeah, hi, I'm David Fu, co-founder of Twin AI. We are here to scale your intelligence. So when I was working for AOL, we used to buy many small startups such as Engadget and AutoBlog. And when we buy those startups, it's an exit for the startup and basically the entire team leaves. And I was left to maintain that software. What a nightmare. So we are building AI twins for software developers to capture their thinking process before it's lost due to employee turnover. We have our own algorithm called RLPF, which is reinforcement learning with personal feedback.

• 1:02:02Speaker 10

  Our AI twin can meta-promote AI tools such as Claude code. Tech leads love our product and so do universities. Our AI twin can be deployed locally or in the cloud. Technical debt is a well-known problem. And now vibe coding just makes it worse and it's compounding. And Grung, Tim Draper and Reid Hoffman already have their AI twins. It's Jason and Yuki joining them next. I'm an ambassador for DeepLearning.ai and I have been organizing many AI events.

• 1:02:42Speaker 10

  And we have a natural market that we can sell our twin to. Our twin has, each of them has their own model that it find tunes. And we are working towards personal AGI. My co-founder, she loves the design and she wants her twin to do creative work for her. Let's end this with a demo.

• 1:03:15Speaker 11

  Hello, I can't help but notice the AI is posing you quickly. It throws the latter line method ever so slightly. How can I assist you today? Are we working layouts, other types of the house as they show in the written statistics?

• 1:03:30Speaker 10

  Thank you.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Let's pretend that you and I are deciding, Yuki, who we're going to accept to Techstars or to Launch or Founder University. And so we're inside the private room and you guys all get to hear the comments. Sound good? Okay. Which one is your, we absolutely have to accept this because the founder and the founder product combination is so strong. Which one did you just love the founder and their energy and the product? We saw four great ones.

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Which one? Customer conversations analyzing them with Crazya, 3D printed steaks with Jujuju, Jujujujuju. And then Japan Media AI tools for making manga at a tenth of the cost. Or David from Soon AI creating digital twins, the founders who have left companies to bring them back from the grave. Which one did you think has the most upside? And you just thought, wow, this founder is going to just work really hard and make it happen.

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  It's hard to pick. And then also I have to disclose that Japan Media, Yuki, was a textures company.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  I would go with Japan Media still.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  I mean, it was for me, the one I thought the founder had great energy and the product was awesome. Let's give her a big round of applause. I think it is the one that is the most, the quickest path to having revenue, scaling revenue and an obvious idea. We were just talking in the previous presentations about, oh, people are making Marvel characters. Wonder if that could be inside of Disney? And then here we go, here's an AI tool for making manga. Yeah, and other things, comic books, et cetera. And she's already made the tool and she has no problem with that. She's made a tool to do it. A lot of people who are outside the industry or inside the industry are like, we can't do that. We're not allowed to make that tool.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  We have to go with artists and this is sacrilegious. And she didn't have that concern.

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  She's like, oh, more people get to make more interesting things. Here we go. And it's just another tool. And I believe that. That is like the original criticism of CGI, computer graphics was, oh, this isn't real. Like the Disney artists were very upset about Pixar. And it was like, well, Pixar makes really great content. It's still very creative, right? So I really like your business. And I like that you have different ways to monetize it. I think you got to get rid of the old business maybe and just be focused on this new tool and business and make it simpler to understand for investors how that marketplace actually makes money.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  Agreed, agreed.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  The market is growing.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  Too much going on to understand what the real business is. Which one do you think will get customers and money? Customers and money.

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  Crazya?

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was mine as well. Explain why that's so obvious that they're going to get customers quickly. Why do you think?

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  Why do I think so? I mean, they already have the four enterprise customers. So they approved like, you know, initial product market fit. So they just need to expand into what they have discovered through customers. But I think this is sort of like a kind of easy play to sell. I'm not sure if it's going to scale to an expansion all degree. But in terms of customer finding and initial growth, I think Crazya.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Japan Media looks like it could scale to the moon, right? It could catch fire, but it's going to take a little bit of time. And then Crazya looks like you're going to really quickly get customers. But how big can it get? Because it seems like such an obvious idea to study the chat room, right? And then have the chat room.

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Give you ideas and then do customer surveys using AI. And it also feels like anybody could build it, right? So you're going to really have to make a very good product so that people don't roll their own. Because you could ask Claude to just make it for you, right?

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  And so that is the challenge is like, why are they going to buy it from you if they can make their own bespoke software? It's a really high benchmark for SaaS products today. All right. So I think we're both in alignment on that. And then you have to ask yourself, okay, the wildcard. We always talk about wildcards when we're putting together a class. And we have two crazy wildcards here. One of them wants to make 3D printed steaks yum yum with great marbleization. That's a crazy idea and nobody's really made that work. And the other one wants to make digital clones so that when you buy stuff. And there's actually a company, Bending Spoons in Italy, that's been buying up all these old assets. And their core premises, the company had 200 people, they get it down to 20.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  It had 20 people, they get it down to four. And they use AI to automate everything and make it profitable so they can take loans out to buy the products. And if they, yeah, so it's kind of interesting. So which of those two do you like for your wildcard? Digital twin or 3D steaks?

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  Digital twin. I have actually invested in the cultivated meat company before. And I think it's hard. The regulator, the, yeah, hurdles is really hard. And then I think industry is not doing well in general. So regardless of their amazing technology and whatnot, I.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, even if they have the best thing, they have the biggest mountain to climb.

• 1:09:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  I too went with the digital twin. That seemed like an easy one. Okay, let's give a big round of applause for our first group. They did great. And let's do four more.

• 1:09:29Speaker 12

  I'm Jacob from Rumilite. We are focused on AI server right now. AI server has a big challenge as we know. The AI chips gotten faster and faster. So moving the data between the chips is very limitation. So the fundamental PCB inside of AI server is limiting the data of the data transfer. So this causes a few problems.

• 1:09:53Speaker 12

  Okay, at Lumilite, we developed a solution to data transforming of the PCP ball and direct at high speed, create a new direct high-speed pace between the GPU and GPU. Doing so, we are able to increase a four-time speed with our first-generation product. It's on my hand right now. This is not a TV cable. This is real product. And our second generation can increase the speed over eight times. We're planning to launch next year, Q2. This is going to revolutionize the way the AI server are built. The AI server of the tomorrow will not look like a sand as the AI server today.

• 1:10:37Speaker 12

  Okay, with the direct of the ball pace, we can do this and maintain a clear signal with a 50% low signal loss than Reverend PCB. This is a major, not a simulate.

• 1:10:52Speaker 12

  And we already have the customer engaged right now. We have four customer engaged, two in Taiwan, one in US. I cannot name the name, but I'm sure you recognize the few player we are talking to.

• 1:11:07Speaker 12

  And we build and we measure. And now we are going to win the platform. And I'm frontressing right now to get through our initial production line and able for the conclusion of a POC with some major server manufacturers at both tier one and tier two level. We are getting a lot of interest right now and looking for the right investor that are willing to join our journey to build up the super fast AI infrastructure around the world. Thank you.

• 1:11:37Speaker 13

  Nice to meet you. I'm Megumi, co-founder of Toraru. We are building Genji. Genji is immersive experience platform service. Shopping has become very convenient, but we lost some single freedom of discovering, feeling the real culture with your eyes and ears. Millions of overseas Japanese pop culture fans want to come to Japan and get items only available in Japan, but cannot. Why? Because travel time, cost, physical limitations. That's why we developed Genji. Genji is platform service. So Genji lets you achieve your goals remotely through local worker acting on your behalf

• 1:12:20Speaker 13

  while sharing sight, hearing, and touch. How to request is like Uber. On a map, you can choose a specific location, time, task, and we will assign the local worker as your avatar. So then, you can send me teleport there. This is happening in real time, and you are in Japan now. If you click the direction button, you can move in that direction like this. If you click the screen, you can close to the item. If you press the A button or Y button, you can grab the item and you can purchase this. So Genji brings their personal immersive experience for you without physical trouble.

• 1:13:01Speaker 13

  Unique point, first is platform service, their response through high vision, gaming UI system, and certified digital payment approved. We already some traction and global patents. This is a global partners. Our special team has a special technical skill, and we all have mission to eliminate global inequality. We are seeking investor and strategic partner collaboration for POC. Well, thank you very much. We create a world everyone can move freely, live authentically, and get access to opportunity, no matter where you are. Thank you very much.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Wow, very good. Holy cow. That is crazy. I want to do it.

• 1:13:51Speaker 14

  Hi, everyone. I'm Shivangi, and we're Tatwa Silicon. This is the problem we're solving. First-cut analog circuit design takes months, and it costs $10,000 for one circuit. We want to fix that. Shivraj is a senior analog circuit design engineer, and he wants a first-cut design of a 12-bit SAR ADC with 100 mega samples per second on 180 nanometers. So he types it in. Our agent confirms if all his specifications are correct, and then he runs the design. He goes through his entire workflow, starting with architecture, device sizing, math and trade-offs. He can also inspect all the waveforms, and he gets a

• 1:14:35Speaker 14

  DRC report. He can go back and change the specifications, try 50 mega samples per second, and a new architecture is instantly generated. He can look at all the activity logs of the agent, and he can ask how to understand the reasoning behind it, just like talking to a senior colleague. This used to take more than three months before this, and now it takes less than a day. We're already validating in three ways. We have a design pilot, and they've already reached accuracy of 90%. We also have a procurement champion and silicon validation access. We're going to be charging for each user annually $15,000 to $150,000 and more for enterprises depending on this type of license.

• 1:15:20Speaker 14

  Our team consists of myself and experts from analog, AI, as well as enterprise security. We're Tatwa Silicon, and we're cutting analog circuit design cycles from months to days. Thank you.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  All right, very well done. Wow, so many great companies.

• 1:15:40Speaker 15

  Hello, everyone. My name is Ananya. I'm the founder of Mimi, AI Japanese learning app. Meet Hope. She's used Duolingo for eight months, and despite having full streaks, she still is unable to actually order at a restaurant. And that's the reality of Japanese learning these days. I get it. As a self-taught Japanese speaker myself of over 10 years, I've been sharing my learnings to nearly a million followers, and I've noticed a common problem. It's that most of these apps prioritize streaks over actual fluency, and the result is that 70% of foreign residents in Japan can't speak Japanese, and we're seeing a real societal friction. Mimi fixes this. Mimi is an AI Japanese learning app that puts you into real situations, like a convenience

• 1:16:22Speaker 15

  store or your first day at work, and actually goes through the conversations and talks to you, fixes your issues in real time, so that you're able to actually speak Japanese with confidence. And just like that, Hope is actually able to speak Japanese, and no app has achieved this before. Our real customer has said that it's really been a practical solution for them to use as they're studying Japanese, especially for output. Our business model is subscription, so we do $20 per month, and for enterprise, we do $100 per seat.

• 1:16:54Speaker 15

  So far, we have one customer, 30 users, and about $20 of revenue to date. And looking against our competitors, Mimi is truly the outstanding option, especially with the kinds of tools and study methods we have.

• 1:17:07Speaker 15

  Before creating Mimi, I validated this core idea by creating a beginner Japanese course, and we've done about 1,000 students and 100K in revenue. In order to achieve our users, I will utilize my social media, podcasts, as well as focus on product-led growth. So for revenue, we're expecting in the first year about 1,000 MAU with about 240K in revenue and 24 million over the next three years. In order to achieve 100 million, we would need about 225 MAU and 50 enterprise contracts. Our bottom-up TAM is focused on the total Japanese learning market, and that's about 960 million. And as a Japanese learner myself, I have the highest Japanese language certification

• 1:17:49Speaker 15

  and have led marketing at Amazon. And that was Mimi AI Japanese learning app. Thank you.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  All right, well done. I have seen this pitch before, and it gets better every time.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  I just have to say, like, sometimes I see a startup and I go, wow, that is just crazy and awesome and fun. And that, for me, was Genji.

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  The company is Toraru, Toraru, but letting people watch a person walk around Akihabara and going to different stores is mind-blowing, and then to buy it and then they put it in a box and send it to you is insane and fun. And there's a very famous science fiction author, William Gibson, and he said, "The street finds its use for technology." And this is an example of the street finding its use for streaming technology and e-commerce

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  and location data and smartphones. And who knows when you say you can rent this person for $30 an hour to go shopping for you, what people will have them do?

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  I might actually have a person do this and just have them go eat the French toast I like, and then send the video to my friend and say, "Go get this French toast." Or like, I might have them go look for weird stuff in Akihabara on like the seventh floor and, yeah, just for fun with my daughters and watch them run around town. It's like, almost like entertainment, and it reminds me of the live streaming that we're seeing now in China that people are doing for shopping. That's now they're trying to make it work at Amazon, but there's something very interesting here, and I'm really intrigued by it. It's

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  like a virtual TaskRabbit in another culture, and I could see it working in France and New York and other places for rich people to go have people do weird things and buy stuff for them. It's insane and crazy, and I like it. What did you like in this group of four?

• 1:20:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like that too. The only thing I had about the company was how they make money. They said 120, 90K revenue.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  You take 30% of the hourly fee? Is that how you make money? Revenue share?

• 1:20:32Speaker 02

  Revenue share with merchandise.

• 1:20:34Speaker 01

  Oh, with the merchandise too.

• 1:20:36Speaker 02

  Or, I, yeah.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  Well, that's interesting. Got it. So you take 20% on top of the, what's sold? Is that what you do?

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  I think so. I think so.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  So, um, yeah, it, it's very like Japan, uh, like app or, you know, product. But I'm not sure if it works in the United States, for example.

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  I'm not sure it does.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  If you go through Walmart or Target and see.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, see the stuff that came from China to, yeah, to America. Very strange.

• 1:21:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then I liked, if I can continue, uh, I liked Rumi Light, but I have a quick question. Where are they made? Okay. So everything is made Taiwan. All parts procured in Taiwan. Okay. Understood.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I, there's a lot of innovation happening with chips. Two of the four presentations here, uh, in this last group were doing chips and I, um, the last, the second to last company, Tata Vasilka, we gotta rename it. That is something people are doing in the United States. People are ordering, you know, circuit boards and chips and making all kinds of bespoke hardware now, thanks to the ability to build it in AI and then ship it and then people will make five boards and send it to you. And it, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And if it doesn't work, you take a hundred dollars in boards and throw it in the garbage and then you order it again. It's incredible. The world is nuts right now.

• 1:22:01Speaker 02

  So physical AI, yeah, definitely. The, so the validation, I think it's key. And then she mentioned 90% accuracy. So if it goes like about 95, 99, I think it's, yeah, very promising.

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  Well, and just what will people be able to do? Like, what won't people be able to do? Like, you're going to be able to, people are making, there, there's also companies in the United States now that are doing CAD. You can just send a CAD drawing and it will send you something fabricated in aluminum or steel or whatever you're making. So you send them, like, somebody just made like a door for their dog to get in and out of their house. And they just custom fabricated it. They made it in 3D and then it came to their house in parts and they put it together. Like, the world's nuts right now. Yuki, it's crazy. What's going on out here in these streets?

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  I like to know.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  You can just make anything. It's nuts. All right. You have a favorite in this group? Like, if you were going to accept them into tech startups, you'd be like, okay, this makes a lot of sense. Like, or this is a crazy one that I'm going to take a risk on one of my slots with because it's an outlier. What's your crazy outlier? What's your layup? Like, a layup in basketball is like an easy shot. Which one is the easy get to revenue quickly? You know, has a good chance of getting further investment? And then which one's the crazy one?

• 1:23:19Speaker 02

  Crazy one is Rumi Light, I think. Uh, I mean, hardware manufacturing is tough. Uh, but if they can build, uh, and they mass produce what they say they can, uh, I think it's a gigantic, uh, company and a crazy idea. The other three, I think it's pretty similar, uh, in my opinion. Uh, Anaya did a great job in presenting, but if it's only Japanese, I think the market is probably too small. So you do need to think, you know, how to expand into other languages.

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm going to go with Genji as my crazy wildcard. And then, um, I would give it to Mimi, but, uh, since they went through Founder University, I shouldn't vote for you. So I'm going to take you out and then I'm going to make my, um, one that I think is got a straight shot is, uh, Tuck TV. I think like a lot of people are going to really want that. But I also really think Rumi Light's in a chance to make some big money. So I like it as like a big money play. Like, what if it works? And then they, they, a company like that will get bought very quickly, in my experience.

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:24:26Speaker 01

  Right? Like, they'll be like, if, if it's like a really good team and they made a really innovative product, Jensen or AMD is going to be like, we need that team. We need that innovation. TSMC, somebody's going to just snap it up at some point.

• 1:24:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Both are Taiwanese too, so.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Both Taiwanese entrepreneurs.