An interview with Nova brewmaster James Jin — Founded by Emiko Tanabe and James Jin in 2019, Nova Brewing Company is a sake brewery in Los Angeles focusing on modern-style premium sakes. Operating from a facility that was originally a craft beer brewery, in addition to sake, Nova produces a line of beer using sake yeast. Their sakes…

Get investors excited about the opportunity without losing credibility — The investor pitch usually starts with problem and solution, followed immediately by market size. This gives the market size huge importance in the presentation, and for good reason. There are a plenty of great products that fill unmet needs, but unless there is a huge market, they fail as investments. …

Your guide to the weird and wonderful supernatural spirits of Japan — If you have any interest in Japanese yōkai or Japanese culture in general, this compendium of yōkai is a must-have. The title of the book: “Strange Japanese Yokai: a Guide to Weird and Wonderful, Demons and Spirits” by Kenji Murakami, translated by Zack Davisson, is an accurate description of what…

Why those warm intros are mostly but not completely useless — Imagine you’re a hotshot venture capitalist and you get this message from one of your buddies: “Hey DC, sorry I can’t make golf tomorrow. I’ve got a meeting with one of our portfolio companies. They’re absolutely killing it and getting ready to close their next round. Our fund is putting…

One of the biggest startup accelerators is being liquidated. Was it a scam or just another failed startup? — Y-Combinator is without a doubt the best known startup accelerator. Newchip, based in Austin TX, rivaled it as one of the largest, with a radically different business model. On March 17, Newchip (under its corporate name of Astralabs) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors. This would allow the…

How many startups with female founders are getting funding? — I often mention that I’ve invested in 100 startups. A reader (thanks Lily York) recently challenged me — how many of those investments were in startups with female founders? That’s an important question, and I didn’t have a ready answer. So I went back and compiled the data. Which answered…

Fraud is an inevitable outcome of the venture funding system — Last week the NY Times declared an end to Faking It In Silicon Valley. The impetus for declaring the end of an ignominious era was: Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and convicted chief fraudster of Theranos finally ordered to prison Charlie Javice, founder of the fintech startup Frank arrested for defrauding…

Think you know what ikigai, kintsugi, and wabi-sabi mean? Here are alternative explanations. — The world is abuzz with Japanese buzzwords, from ikigai to wabi-sabi to mottainai. As a Japanese language teacher and author of a popular guidebook to the Osaka/Kansai dialect of Japanese, I’ve been given the task of compiling this handy-dandy reference with fun, alternative explanations of what trendy Japanese words really…

An award-winning collection of stories of Japanese life outside Tokyo — I must admit I’m biased. Having lived part of my life in Kobe (Rokko, Seishin, and Suma), there’s a thrill to reading stories set right here at the harbor, or in San-no-miya or Motomachi. Or off in Hyogo countryside around Himeji. There are plenty of novels set in Tokyo, and…