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How venture capitalists can help entrepreneurs? [NES 2014 panel]

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This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. On day two of the New Economy Summit here in Tokyo last week, we heard a panel about how venture capitalists can help entrepreneurs both here in Japan and abroad. Moderated by Daisuke Iwase, the president and COO of Lifenet Life Insurance Company, the session included: George Kellerman, managing partner and fire chief at 500 Startups Akio Tanaka, partner at Infinity Ventures LLP David Lee, co-founder and managing partner at SV Angel SV Angel’s David Lee kicked off the session by making a brief introduction to his firm. Since its launch back in 2009, SV Angel have been investing in tech notable startups including Twitter, Pinterest, Square, Dropbox, and Airbnb in their early stages. Akio Tanaka introduced Infinity Venture Partners’ recent activities in nurturing the start ecosystem in China. He gave us a look at the Chinese answer to Angellist, 36kr (one of their portfolio startups), as well as their recently established startup hub in Beijing, TechTemple. To accelerate the startup ecosystem in Japan, he emphasized that large companies should play a key role. In…

venture-capitalist-panel
From the left: David Lee (SV Angel), Akio Tanaka (Infinity Venture Partners), George Kellerman (500startups)

This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.

On day two of the New Economy Summit here in Tokyo last week, we heard a panel about how venture capitalists can help entrepreneurs both here in Japan and abroad. Moderated by Daisuke Iwase, the president and COO of Lifenet Life Insurance Company, the session included:

  • George Kellerman, managing partner and fire chief at 500 Startups
  • Akio Tanaka, partner at Infinity Ventures LLP
  • David Lee, co-founder and managing partner at SV Angel
venture-capitalist-lee
SV Angel’s David Lee

SV Angel’s David Lee kicked off the session by making a brief introduction to his firm. Since its launch back in 2009, SV Angel have been investing in tech notable startups including Twitter, Pinterest, Square, Dropbox, and Airbnb in their early stages.

venture-capitalist-tanaka
Infinity Venture Partners’ Akio Tanaka

Akio Tanaka introduced Infinity Venture Partners’ recent activities in nurturing the start ecosystem in China. He gave us a look at the Chinese answer to Angellist, 36kr (one of their portfolio startups), as well as their recently established startup hub in Beijing, TechTemple.

To accelerate the startup ecosystem in Japan, he emphasized that large companies should play a key role. In the US, such companies have been helping startups by circulating capital and human resources around the ecosystem. Even in China, larger organizations such as Baidu and Tencent are investing in tech startups more and more rather than buying them out or copying their business models.

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500startups’ George Kellerman

500 Startups’ George Kellerman says that his firm has invested in more than 700 companies in the last four years. Noting that established companies in Japan reserve as much as 150 trillion yen (about $1.5 trillion) as their retained earnings, he insisted that they have to put at least 0.1% of it towards accelerating the startup ecosystem. That could either be by acquiring startups, forming funds, or investing in existing investment funds. Another important effort needed for the ecosystem can be made by inviting more women to the workplace, he says.

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Addressing a question about how investors can help entrepreneurs, Lee said that one of the most important roles for investors is to serve as a mentor and role model:

In addition to providing money, investors need to help entrepreneurs hire good people, and advise with their business development and overall business operations, since younger entrepreneurs typically don’t have management experience.

Kellerman added:

A lot of VC people have operating background from the tech industry. My founder Dave McClure previously worked with PayPal as head of engineering, and I also worked with Yahoo and Dell. For investors, money is the easy part. That’s a commodity. Investors have to pass on their knowledge of operational experience to startups.

What good is Silicon Valley to Japanese entrepreneurs? [NES 2014 panel]

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This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. On day two of the New Economy Summit here in Tokyo last week, we had a chance hear a panel discuss the benefits that Silicon Valley can have for Japanese entrepreneurs. This session was moderated by Gen Isayama, co-founder and CEO of WIL (World Innovation Lab), and the participating speakers included: Noriyuki Matsuda, CEO of Sourcenext Hironobu Yoshikawa, CEO and co-founder of Treasure Data Hitoshi Hokamura, chairman of Evernote Japan Satoshi Sugie, CEO and co-founder of Whill [1] Recently more Japanese investors and entrepreneurs have been moving to Silicon Valley. In order to get to the bottom of this trend, Isayama asked the panelists why they set up bases in Silicon Valley. Japanese software distribution company Sourcenext established a local subsidiary in Silicon Valley back in 2012, and has partnered with notable companies to distribute packaged editions of their software products. Since that office opened, Matsuda has spent more than a half of his time in Silicon Valley. He explained: I had no option but to come to Silicon Valley by myself. I used to…

entrepreneur-panel
From the left: Hitoshi Hokamura (Evernote Japan), Hironobu Yoshikawa (Treasure Data),
Noriyuki Matsuda (Sourcenext), Satoshi Sugie (Whill)

This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.

On day two of the New Economy Summit here in Tokyo last week, we had a chance hear a panel discuss the benefits that Silicon Valley can have for Japanese entrepreneurs. This session was moderated by Gen Isayama, co-founder and CEO of WIL (World Innovation Lab), and the participating speakers included:

  • Noriyuki Matsuda, CEO of Sourcenext
  • Hironobu Yoshikawa, CEO and co-founder of Treasure Data
  • Hitoshi Hokamura, chairman of Evernote Japan
  • Satoshi Sugie, CEO and co-founder of Whill [1]

Recently more Japanese investors and entrepreneurs have been moving to Silicon Valley. In order to get to the bottom of this trend, Isayama asked the panelists why they set up bases in Silicon Valley.

Japanese software distribution company Sourcenext established a local subsidiary in Silicon Valley back in 2012, and has partnered with notable companies to distribute packaged editions of their software products. Since that office opened, Matsuda has spent more than a half of his time in Silicon Valley. He explained:

I had no option but to come to Silicon Valley by myself. I used to make having short trips there, but I subsequently figured out that it’s difficult to arrange appointments with locals unless I have a base there. During the several months that I’ve been there, we made a lot of good partnerships. So finally I decided to hand my previous role at headquarters over to some reliable people and I started living in Silicon Valley.

Sourcenext's Matsuda
Sourcenext’s Noriyuki Matsuda

The discussion moved on to Hokamura-san, who is known to have worked at Apple as director of marketing in the early 1990s when it was far less common for Japanese businessmen to work in Silicon Valley. He looks back at that time, explaining:

I had no intention to launch a business during the time. Why do I still stay there? Maybe because I can meet many exciting people. In Japan, I think we need to consume more of our energy on trivial tasks.

Evennote Japan's Hitoshi Hokamura
Evernote Japan’s Hitoshi Hokamura

Prior to launching his next-gen wheelchair startup, Sugie previously worked at Nissan, and also as a Japanese teacher for non-Japanese speakers. He explained his relocation:

Compared to the electric vehicle industry, the US market is 15 times larger than that of Japan. If you look at the number of vehicles sold annually, it’s 300,000 in the US versus 20,000 in Japan. So we decided to launch our first prototype in Silicon Valley. The area has a larger base of early adopters and it’s easier to arrange interviews with people, including investors and consumers.

entrepreneur-sugie
Whill’s Satoshi Sugie

Yoshikawa previously worked with the investment arm of Japanese trading company Mitsui & Co. Isayama asked him why he abandoned such a good position to launch a startup. Yoshikawa explained:

Since I was investing in tech companies, it was natural for me to be in Silicon Valley. But I subsequently found huge potential in big data, so I launched a startup doing that business by myself.

Treasure Data's Yoshikawa
Treasure Data’s Hironobu Yoshikawa

Isayama also asked about the challenges of doing business in Silicon Valley. Wheel’s Sugie confessed he had many difficulties hiring local talent.

Hiring is so hard in the US. When we interview potential employees, they try to sell themselves saying “I’m very confident I can fill a role at your company” or “My skills are a great fit for your company.” It’s not like Japan where employers can believe in a resumé from an interviewee. We definitely need to speak to at least three people that they have worked with before prior to hiring. I think there’s a huge cultural gap around hiring.

Sugie wrapped up the session by speaking about the attraction of Silicon Valley and encouraged audience members to launch their business there:

Silicon Valley is obviously awesome. But the geography doesn’t matter so much. Europe is great. China is also great. I think the mindset that entrepreneurs have in Silicon Valley is pretty important. Once you have it, you can go anywhere and launch your business anywhere in the world.

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WIL’s Gen Isayama moderates the panel

  1. You can check out our exclusive interview with Sugie in this article.

How different countries motivate local entrepreneurs [NES 2014 panel]

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This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. Day two of the New Economy Summit in Tokyo included a panel about how governments in the Middle East and European regions motivate local entrepreneurs. Speakers included: David Heller, managing partner of Vertex Venture Capital Talmon Marco, CEO of Viber Peter Vesterbacka, Mighty Eagle at Rovio Entertainment Chris Wade, venture capital advisor of UK Trade and Investment Heller kicked off the panel describing how his company has evolved the local startup scene in Israel. Since its launch back in 1997, Vertex has invested in 108 companies, and over 30 went on to an exit. The most recent was Waze, a community-based, real-time traffic and navigation app, acquired by Google last year. He emphasized that one of the most interesting things about the Israeli startup ecosystem is the amount of VC investment per person is much higher than that of any other developed country. Marco then introduced himself by encouraging the audience to call Viber a Japanese company, since they were acquired by Japan’s Rakuten earlier this year. Despite the fact that they started business in…

emea-panel2-lead

This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.

Day two of the New Economy Summit in Tokyo included a panel about how governments in the Middle East and European regions motivate local entrepreneurs. Speakers included:

  • David Heller, managing partner of Vertex Venture Capital
  • Talmon Marco, CEO of Viber
  • Peter Vesterbacka, Mighty Eagle at Rovio Entertainment
  • Chris Wade, venture capital advisor of UK Trade and Investment

Heller kicked off the panel describing how his company has evolved the local startup scene in Israel. Since its launch back in 1997, Vertex has invested in 108 companies, and over 30 went on to an exit. The most recent was Waze, a community-based, real-time traffic and navigation app, acquired by Google last year. He emphasized that one of the most interesting things about the Israeli startup ecosystem is the amount of VC investment per person is much higher than that of any other developed country.

David Heller
David Heller

Marco then introduced himself by encouraging the audience to call Viber a Japanese company, since they were acquired by Japan’s Rakuten earlier this year. Despite the fact that they started business in Belarus and then moved on to London, they have an especially large user base in South East Asia, especially in Myanmar and the Philippines. His advice for Japanese entrepreneurs? You need to encourage your employees to respect individualism and think out of box.

Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka explained that his company initially started out as a gaming company, but is now focused on three Es: entertainment, education, and entrepreneurship. As part of these efforts, they have been involved in organizing Finland’s largest tech conference Slush [1]. He encouraged Japanese entrepreneurs in the audience to create global success stories, pointing out that Tokyo alone has a larger population than all of Finland. He says startups have to stand out and differentiate from others, and that his company respects the diversity of employees. After launching an office here in Tokyo, they hope to be more Japanese than Japanese people, he says.

UKTI’s Chris Wade explained that his organization has been helping to grow the local startup community in East London by eliminating obstacles for entrepreneurs who are launching a company, providing them with the necessary mentorship. He says the UK government has also deployed several measures to accelerate entrepreneurship, including tax incentives for seed investments and issuing an entrepreneur visa to helps startups more easily hire talented people from outside the country.

He noted that every entrepreneur has to fail fast and keep trying. That’s the must-have mindset not only for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, but for people all over the world who are keen to launch a business.

Peter Vesterbacka, Chris Wade
Peter Vesterbacka, Chris Wade

  1. Update: We’re told the largest tech conference in Eurasia, in fact.  ↩

How do you promote innovation within a company? [NES 2014 Panel]

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This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. The morning session on day two of the New Economy Summit in Tokyo opened with a panel on how companies can spur innovation, and it boasted an all-star panel of speakers: Matt Wilsey, entrepreneur and investor Akira Morikawa, CEO of Line Corporation Jerry Yang, Co-founder, AME Cloud Ventures Morikawa-san started off the panel with an introduction to Line (which we have covered extensively, a service that has now reached 400 million users. From his perspective, regardless of the scale of your organization, everyone can create a disruptive business. The problem is that every organization has nay-sayers when you come up with a new idea, and that is typically the biggest obstacle when trying to executing. Japanese people tend to follow a plan, and avoid changing it once it’s in place. So at his company, they make no detailed plan for the long term, and that helps their employees stay ready for unexpected changes based on user responses. He emphasized that it is not their management but rather their users who should decide if a new…

internal-innovation-panel

This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.

The morning session on day two of the New Economy Summit in Tokyo opened with a panel on how companies can spur innovation, and it boasted an all-star panel of speakers:

  • Matt Wilsey, entrepreneur and investor
  • Akira Morikawa, CEO of Line Corporation
  • Jerry Yang, Co-founder, AME Cloud Ventures

Morikawa-san started off the panel with an introduction to Line (which we have covered extensively, a service that has now reached 400 million users. From his perspective, regardless of the scale of your organization, everyone can create a disruptive business. The problem is that every organization has nay-sayers when you come up with a new idea, and that is typically the biggest obstacle when trying to executing.

morikawa-internal-innovation
Line CEO Akira Morikawa

Japanese people tend to follow a plan, and avoid changing it once it’s in place. So at his company, they make no detailed plan for the long term, and that helps their employees stay ready for unexpected changes based on user responses. He emphasized that it is not their management but rather their users who should decide if a new idea is good or bad.

Jerry Yang is best known as the founder of search giant Yahoo, but he’s currently working as an investor in Silicon Valley. His company, AME Cloud Ventures, has invested in over 50 startups, many of which are running data-driven businesses. He’s expecting huge potential in this sector since a big data methodology will enable any industry to rethink and rebuild things in our world. His strategy is based on an assumption/prediction about what will happen in the near future, and from there he decides what kind of startups to invest in.

Jerry Yang
Jerry Yang

In a response to the moderator’s [1] question about how to promote an entrepreneurial mindset at a company, Jerry explained there has to be a sense of urgency. Startups have obviously have it, but established companies also require it in order to make something new happen from the inside.

Matt noted that we can’t force anyone to be innovative. All we can do is create an environment that is friendly to innovation. Innovations typically happen in a place you’d never expect. And one of the biggest failures for companies when they have no time to create an environment or a culture that permits employees to try and fail.

Matt Wilsey
Matt Wilsey

  1. The panel was moderated by Takeshi Natsuno, a professor at Keio University.  ↩

The challenge of innovating the education industry [Panel]

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This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. At the New Economy Summit in Tokyo this afternoon, we had a chance to hear a panel on technology innovation in the area of education. Three speakers participated, moderated by Swimmy Minami of Bizreach: Youngme Moon, the dean of Harvard Business School’s MBA program Dennis Yang, president and CEO COO of Udemy [1] Jun Murai, dean/professor, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University Youngme opened by discussing what pointing out that most areas in our lives have been vastly changed by technology, but yet education remains relatively the same. If you compare learning years ago, and learning today, it continues to be very tedious and very uninspiring. When it comes to education, the audience is essentially captive and the teacher has little incentive to be very engaging. It is remarkably easy to get away with being a boring teacher. You just need to be an information delivery system […] and the student’s their job to absorb it. Does the system work? Sort of. But it is deeply flawed. ¶ She points to the example…

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This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.

At the New Economy Summit in Tokyo this afternoon, we had a chance to hear a panel on technology innovation in the area of education. Three speakers participated, moderated by Swimmy Minami of Bizreach:

  • Youngme Moon, the dean of Harvard Business School’s MBA program
  • Dennis Yang, president and CEO COO of Udemy [1]
  • Jun Murai, dean/professor, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University

Youngme opened by discussing what pointing out that most areas in our lives have been vastly changed by technology, but yet education remains relatively the same.

If you compare learning years ago, and learning today, it continues to be very tedious and very uninspiring. When it comes to education, the audience is essentially captive and the teacher has little incentive to be very engaging. It is remarkably easy to get away with being a boring teacher. You just need to be an information delivery system […] and the student’s their job to absorb it. Does the system work? Sort of. But it is deeply flawed.

Youngme Moon,
Youngme Moon,

She points to the example of MIT’s electrical circuits course, which is free online. Last year 150,000 signed up, and a year later only 5% remained. That dropout rate for online courses is typical, she said. Most of them are simple imformation delivery systems, very much like what we have offline. And for that reason, they aren’t very innovative at all. But yet she is optimistic.

These courses which are the exception to the rule are somehow managing to figure out how to make education more engaging and more immersive than ever. So I believe the real breakthough in online learning is yet to come.

Dennis Yang gave a brief introduction to his Udemy service, pointing out that in addition to delivering education to students, there is also the capability to enable more potential teachers, as opposed to just existing teachers:

At Udemy we believe that there are great teachers outside the walls of academic institutions. It could be a boss, a mentor, or a coach, and we’d like to give them a platform to teach students all around the world. I think most people identify with themselves as a student, but I encourage people to try to think of themselves as a potential teacher.

Dennis Yang
Dennis Yang

Dennis admitted that while many of the courses on Udemy skew heavily towards technological skills, that’s a reflection of the interests of the early adopters. But the platform has many new niche topics that they didn’t expect to see, such as how to pass the written exam for being a fire fighter. He says that he expects online education to continue to broaden in this way.

Jun Mirai added that there was an opportunity to make classes fit better through the use of the internet:

We all know about MOOCs these days. But one characteristic of the internet is personalization. So a matching mechanism could be [an interesting development in this space].

Jun Murai
Jun Murai

He also discussed the possibility of using online courses as a supplement to offline classes, noting that he is actually doing this at Keio University in his own class:

[For certain information] I tell my students, go check out the MOOC. I’m going to talk about different things in class. I think in this way I can then use the classroom in a more exciting way.


  1. I initially, and mistakenly, had Dennis as the president and CEO of Udemy. That’s incorrect of course, as he is the president and COO. Thanks to one of our readers for pointing this out!  ↩

Ben Silbermann talks about using Pinterest to showcase the best of Japan

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This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. Ben Silbermann, the CEO and founder of Pinterest, appeared at the New Economy Summit for the second year in a row (see his comments from last year here). He noted that this was his third trip to Tokyo, which surprised me, because the company – in which Rakuten has invested – recently rolled out a localized version of its service. He noted that among Pinterest’s billions of pins and millions of collections, that there are a number of people now using their service in interesting ways in Japan Food creator and blogger Masaki Higuchi gets inspiration from Pinterest, and that helps him be creative in his work. Paris Wakana collects ideas for outfit, uses it to plan ideas for travel. Rakuten using Rakuten recipes to share. Silbermann said that each time he comes to Japan, he’s amazed at the culture of art, food, architecture and more. He hopes that people here can continue to use his service to introduce all these cultural elements to the world. Welcoming women During the panel discussion, Ben was asked…

paris-wakana
Japanese Pinner Paris Wakana

This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.

Ben Silbermann, the CEO and founder of Pinterest, appeared at the New Economy Summit for the second year in a row (see his comments from last year here). He noted that this was his third trip to Tokyo, which surprised me, because the company – in which Rakuten has invested – recently rolled out a localized version of its service.

He noted that among Pinterest’s billions of pins and millions of collections, that there are a number of people now using their service in interesting ways in Japan

  • Food creator and blogger Masaki Higuchi gets inspiration from Pinterest, and that helps him be creative in his work.
  • Paris Wakana collects ideas for outfit, uses it to plan ideas for travel.
  • Rakuten using Rakuten recipes to share.

Silbermann said that each time he comes to Japan, he’s amazed at the culture of art, food, architecture and more. He hopes that people here can continue to use his service to introduce all these cultural elements to the world.

Welcoming women

During the panel discussion, Ben was asked how many executives at his company are women, given how popular Pinterest is among females. He answered:

Many of our senior positions are women. Across the board there are many strong women, and that needs to trickle down the organization. Many women are underrepresented in tech fields. We try to create an environment where gender is a non issue, and that takes some work.

He added that since half of the world are women, they want to create a friendly environment that would welcome anyone from that talent pool.

Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann
Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann

Yelp launches in Japan, aspires to be household name by 2020 Olympics

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This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. Yelp CEO and founder Jeremy Stoppelman spoke at the Japan New Economy Summit today, giving a brief introduction to his service and how it works. Somewhat surprisingly, he announced that Yelp is now available in Japan, and you can find its service online right now at yelp.co.jp as of this morning. During his talk, Jeremy explained that Yelp has about 120 million monthly users, with over 53 million reviews logged. He explained that with over 59% of Yelp searches coming from mobile, that they have truly become a mobile company. Stoppelman says that Yelp wants to be in every country (they are now available in 26 markets), and it has a big challenge ahead in Japan, with services like Tabelog and Cookpad being so dominant already. It will be interesting to see how they fare. He explains: We’ve always taken a one city at a time approach. […] You need high quality local data. You need locals to participate, not just tourists. He said that this process really takes time, but that’s the nature of…

yelp

This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.

Yelp CEO and founder Jeremy Stoppelman spoke at the Japan New Economy Summit today, giving a brief introduction to his service and how it works. Somewhat surprisingly, he announced that Yelp is now available in Japan, and you can find its service online right now at yelp.co.jp as of this morning.

During his talk, Jeremy explained that Yelp has about 120 million monthly users, with over 53 million reviews logged. He explained that with over 59% of Yelp searches coming from mobile, that they have truly become a mobile company.

Stoppelman says that Yelp wants to be in every country (they are now available in 26 markets), and it has a big challenge ahead in Japan, with services like Tabelog and Cookpad being so dominant already. It will be interesting to see how they fare. He explains:

We’ve always taken a one city at a time approach. […] You need high quality local data. You need locals to participate, not just tourists.

He said that this process really takes time, but that’s the nature of local. Singapore was their first exploration in Asia, but Jeremy said that they have long known that Japan is a very attractive market.

He cited some friendly nagging from SalesForce CEO Marc Benioff who always asked him “Why aren’t you in Japan?” But he says that on his last few trips it became apparent to him that it would work. He still thinks it will take time, but hopes that by the time the Olympics roll around they can be a household name.

yelp-japan

Larry Ellison talks about why data collection and use is not inherently bad

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This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. Last year the Japan New Economy Summit in Tokyo featured a number of interesting speakers from the international tech community (see our coverage here), and this year is no different, with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison opening day one with a keynote session that. He talked about data privacy, and gave a reasoned defense of data collection and use, condemning those who irrationally criticize the technology. Below are some selected highlights from his talk, recorded not quite verbatim, but close to it: I’d like to talk about data privacy in the age of the internet and cloud computing. Let me start with two words: Edward Snowden. He tells us that our government is collecting enormous amounts of information about us. ¶ Ellison notes that no one has named a single individual/example of this data being misused. Yet. No one is saying the government records our phone conversations, but what it does record is who I called and who called me. Snowden said we should be very worried. He left the democracy of the US and went…

ellison

This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.

Last year the Japan New Economy Summit in Tokyo featured a number of interesting speakers from the international tech community (see our coverage here), and this year is no different, with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison opening day one with a keynote session that. He talked about data privacy, and gave a reasoned defense of data collection and use, condemning those who irrationally criticize the technology. Below are some selected highlights from his talk, recorded not quite verbatim, but close to it:

I’d like to talk about data privacy in the age of the internet and cloud computing. Let me start with two words: Edward Snowden. He tells us that our government is collecting enormous amounts of information about us.

Ellison notes that no one has named a single individual/example of this data being misused. Yet.

No one is saying the government records our phone conversations, but what it does record is who I called and who called me. Snowden said we should be very worried. He left the democracy of the US and went to Moscow – a bastion of free speech (smiles) – and told us that we should be concerned about our government. That they are spying on us.

Privacy and the age of the internet is not a technology issue at all. If you want us to keep all your personal information private we know how to do that. We can encrypt voice, data, we can guarantee that no one can spy on you. And you the people can decide if that’s what you want.

In my country, the government is thinking of telling the NSA to mend their ways, because the people are putting pressure on the government. That’s the good thing about being an American, to have the ability to change the government. It is your decision. Our databases our technology can make sure that it is impossible to break in and decrypt that data. It’s simply a matter of what you want.

Edward Snowden has yet to name a single person who has been harmed by the collection of this data. […] Maybe that will happen in the future. […] Airplanes have been misused, but it doesn’t mean we should stop building airplanes. Every technology can be misused. Imagine the first caveman who discovered technology. […] It’s a fabulous technology. But there’s one guy in the cave who said, no no no, fire is dangerous. People will be burned at the stake. We have to stop fire now. My point is every technology can be misused.

Larry Ellison

We shouldn’t ban the gathering of data, but rather we should punish those who misuse it.

Let’s look at history. Do you really want to keep all your data private? I don’t think so. I think you are anxious to share the most intimate details of your life for something of value. I believe you would be willing to tell me where you work, how much you own on your car, where you went shopping last week (lists many examples) — I believe you would be happy to give me all that data about you, as long as I would be willing to give you, for example, a credit card. And that’s exactly what you did. You disclosed all the details about your family’s financial life in order to make shopping easier. But it’s interesting how much privacy we are willing to trade away to make shopping more convenient. […] It eased commerce. It stimulated the economy. It made us much wealthier. It allowed banks to extend loans in the fraction of a second.

That’s one example. Let me give you another example. I believe you would name all your friends, put pictures of you aunts and uncles online, put pictures of yourself on vacation. You disclose all those details voluntarily, in exchange for being a member of Facebook. Your trading an incredible amount of personal information, to see pictures of your kids in college, you get a little bit closer to your family and friends, and you willing give up enormous amounts of privacy as part of that deal.

You’re going to give me a complete map of your DNA and you’re going to do it voluntarily. You’ll give me every medical record on you, every test you took, you’ll want me to take it all. Every excruciating detail about your health. You can choose to give it and you can choose to hold it. You can dislose your health records on an individual basis just like you can join Facebook or not join Facebook. Let’s say you have high cholesterol, wouldn’t it be nice if he could go into the database and see what drug works best for people with the same genome characteristics as you? The only want to get that would be to disclose your details. To opt in. Wouldn’t you like your doctor to have that information. It would have your government a lot of money as well. You stay out of hospital, you can go to work. Your insurance company doesn’t have to pay. By sharing there are enormous benefits to you and society as a whole.

What is the government trying to do? They are trying to prevent terrorism, trying to connect the dots. Is it worth trading a little of your phone bill in exchange for preventing another 9/11 in New York City?

We can decide what we want to do with this technology that is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. We decide how much of this privacy we trade off for safety. It’s very different than in Russia where Mr. Snowden now lives.

Japan New Economy Summit 2014 kicks off in Tokyo

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This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. The New Economy Summit is one of the biggest technology conferences that Japan has to offer (see our coverage from last year here), perhaps the most international of the country’s tech events with guests and speakers from all around the world, including many familiar faces from Silicon Valley, Europe, and around Asia. Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani started the morning with a few brief opening remarks. He began by outlining how JANE can advance innovation in Japan, promote the country across the globe, among other important issues. Interestingly one of the issues that he talked about was an ‘Internet Autobahn’, and the goal of having free wifi in Tokyo before 2020. Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe then made a surprise appearance with some brief remarks, noting that “The atmosphere around Japan has been transformed, and Japan is beginning to recover the challenging spirit that it once lost.” He said that last year’s New Economy Summit resulted in invaluable recommendations. Abe said that we need to “enhance the metabolism of the Japanese economy” and they are working…

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This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.

The New Economy Summit is one of the biggest technology conferences that Japan has to offer (see our coverage from last year here), perhaps the most international of the country’s tech events with guests and speakers from all around the world, including many familiar faces from Silicon Valley, Europe, and around Asia.

Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani started the morning with a few brief opening remarks. He began by outlining how JANE can advance innovation in Japan, promote the country across the globe, among other important issues. Interestingly one of the issues that he talked about was an ‘Internet Autobahn’, and the goal of having free wifi in Tokyo before 2020.

mikitani

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe then made a surprise appearance with some brief remarks, noting that “The atmosphere around Japan has been transformed, and Japan is beginning to recover the challenging spirit that it once lost.” He said that last year’s New Economy Summit resulted in invaluable recommendations. Abe said that we need to “enhance the metabolism of the Japanese economy” and they are working to reform regulations to that end. Corporate taxes that have been lowered by 2.4% will be lowered even further, and he also mentioned a new English language exam for civil servants.

Venture capital last year was six times that of the previous year, and that’s already a positive sign. My administration’s reforms will continue, and we’ll continue to everything possible. Japanese citizens should have hope for a bright future. […] And entrepreneurs will play a key role in this.

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