Tech Culture Podcast - Conversations With Successful Founders In Japan

Building an AI product for 3100 customers in 50 countries with Hazumu Yamazaki

Kaustubh (@_ofkaus [https://twitter.com/_ofkaus]) and Prashant (@primaprashant [https://twitter.com/primaprashant]) sit down with Hazumu Yamazaki (@HazumuY [https://twitter.com/HazumuY]), co-founder and co-CEO of Empath [https://webempath.net/lp-eng/], to talk about challenges in building an AI product - from getting initial users to serving 3100 customers in 50 countries, from starting with zero data of their own to creating their data supply chain, and more. --- Do you love our content and want to help us grow?Leave a review on our website [https://www.techculturepodcast.com/reviews/new/]. Want to be among the first to hear from us? Follow us on Twitter@techculturepod [https://twitter.com/techculturepod]. --- Topics: * 00:00 - Intro * 01:17 - What's Empath all about? * 02:31 - How Hazumu's PhD research led to Empath * 04:37 - Market research and validation for emotion recognition API * 07:47 - Getting initial users and longer B2B sales cycle * 09:55 - Founding team * 11:11 - Becoming sustainable * 12:16 - Improving productivity of online meetings with JamRoll * 16:55 - Interesting feature requests like lie detection * 18:15 - Problems with emotion recognition in videos * 21:48 - Collecting data for a new AI startup * 23:47 - Adding labels to the collected data * 24:45 - Recognizing emotions in different languages * 26:05 - Sarcasm and hidden contexts in conversations * 27:49 - What distinguishes Empath from publicly available models * 30:06 - Tech stack at Empath * 32:02 - Adoption of AI Japan * 33:40 - Advice for the initial stages of building an AI product * 35:11 - Organizations that support AI startups in Japan * 37:10 - Going global * 38:54 - How to make a great pitch * 41:23 - Funding rounds * 42:00 - Biggest challenge in reaching the next milestone * 43:46 - Long term vision for Empath ---

#12 - Bootstrapping a B2B SaaS to 150+ Million Yen ARR with Iqbal Abdullah of Xoxzo

Kaustubh (@_ofkaus [https://twitter.com/_ofkaus]) and Prashant (@primaprashant [https://twitter.com/primaprashant]) sit down with Iqbal Abdullah (@iqbalabd [https://twitter.com/iqbalabd]), founder of Xoxzo Inc. [https://www.xoxzo.com/en/], and LaLoka Labs [https://lalokalabs.co/en/], to talk about: * bootstrapping Xoxzo to >150M JPY ARR, * uniqueness in B2B sales in Japan, * selling 67% stake in Xoxzo, * advice for people who want to build their own business in Japan, and more. --- Do you love our content and want to help us grow?Leave a review on our website [https://www.techculturepodcast.com/reviews/new/]. Want to be among the first to hear from us? Follow us on Twitter@techculturepod [https://twitter.com/techculturepod]. --- Topics: * 00:00 - Intro * 01:28 - Xoxzo's pronunciation and history * 05:05 - Beginnings of Xoxzo * 08:25 - Evolving use-cases of Xoxzo * 13:27 - Continuous improvement in the long-term * 16:56 - B2B sales in Japan * 21:30 - Selling majority stake in Xoxzo * 25:15 - Bootstrapping Xoxzo * 27:02 - Open-source grants * 29:25 - Contribution to Python community * 33:01 - Adventures at Laloka Labs * 38:12 - Book recommendations * 42:30 - Advice to build your own business in Japan ---

#11 - Going Full-Time on Side Business with Eric Turner of JapanDev

Kaustubh (@_ofkaus [https://twitter.com/_ofkaus]) and Prashant (@primaprashant [https://twitter.com/primaprashant]) sit down with Eric Turner (@_etdev [https://rebrand.ly/cea94b]), founder ofJapan Dev [https://rebrand.ly/1xfgajn], andVCList.jp [https://rebrand.ly/1nmrbwz], to talk about his transition to an IndieHacker role, common business mistakes made by engineers, getting customer feedback, sharing progress, and more. --- Do you love our content and want to help us grow?Leave a review on our website [https://www.techculturepodcast.com/reviews/new/]. Want to be among the first to hear from us? Follow us on Twitter@techculturepod [https://twitter.com/techculturepod]. --- Topics: * 00:32 - Intro * 01:09 - Working full-time on JapanDev and being accountable * 06:16 - Tasks with high ROI and impact * 07:38 - Job market in Japan * 15:00 - Building features that customers want * 18:43 - How JapanDev started and early mistakes * 26:11 - Managing side-business along with a full-time job * 31:01 - Eric’s long term plans * 34:20 - The technology for which Eric is most optimistic?

#10 - Newsletters and E-mail Marketing

We love the smell of newsletters in the morning. Learn all about newsletters and e-mail marketing. Topics: * 00:00 - Developing new habits (hint: habit stacking). * 02:57 - Introduction to newsletters and e-mail marketing. * 06:27 - Starting your own newsletter. * 09:14 - Metrics to keep track of for your newsletter. * 19:35 - Stats about B2B and B2C email-marketing. * 21:08 - Successful newsletter stories. * 22:42 - Newsletter recommendations. Sources for stats: HubSopt [https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-stats] Backlinko [https://backlinko.com/email-marketing-stats] MailChimp [https://backlinko.com/email-marketing-stats] Subscribe to us on twitter [https://twitter.com/techculturepod] and instagram [https://instagram.com/techculturepod] if you haven't already! We'd love to hear your feedback for this episode! You can provide us feedback using this form [http://feedback.techculturepodcast.com/].

#9 - LinkedIn Top Indian Startups 2021

Discover exciting startups from the LinkedIn Top Indian Startups 2021 [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-top-startups-2021-25-indian-companies-rise-/] list. Topics: * 00:00 - Personal updates for last few months. * 03:04 - Introduction to LinkedIn Top Indian Startups 2021 [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-top-startups-2021-25-indian-companies-rise-/] list. * 03:44 - Fampay [https://fampay.in/] is India’s first neobank for teenagers. It allows minors to do UPI, P2P and card payments without the need to set up a bank account. Fampay YC page [https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/fampay]. * 07:21 - ShareChat [https://business.sharechat.com/] is India’s #1 social media app, with more than 160 million monthly active users. * 10:27 - NoBroker [https://www.nobroker.in/] is a real-estate platform that makes it possible to buy/sell/rent a house without paying any brokerage. * 14:00 - Trell [https://trell.co/] is the largest lifestyle social commerce platform in Indian languages. Subscribe to us on twitter [https://twitter.com/techculturepod] and instagram [https://instagram.com/techculturepod] if you haven't already! We'd love to hear your feedback for this episode! You can provide us feedback using this form [http://feedback.techculturepodcast.com/].