Building Your Brand as a Founder 🇯🇵
Hosts Paul Chapman, Jason Ball, Nalin Advani, Ilya Kulyatin and guests discuss building your personal brand as a startup founder in Japan.
📝 Episode transcript available here
💌 Contact hosts Jason and Paul on the Business In Japan group on LinkedIn
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Transcript
Welcome to Founded In Japan, where we share uncommon knowledge about starting up.
Shiba Inu:Hosts Paul Chapman, Jason Ball, Nalin Advani, Ilya Kulyatin, and guests, discuss how to develop your brand as a founder in Japan.
Shiba Inu:Founded In Japan is recorded live on Clubhouse, and audio for some speakers may be degraded at times.
Shiba Inu:Nonetheless, we hope you find the content to be valuable throughout.
Shiba Inu:Feel free to reach out to us on the Business In Japan LinkedIn group.
Shiba Inu:Thanks for joining us, and here we go...
Paul:It takes a lot of time, right?
Paul:To build your brand.
Nalin:I wonder about that.
Nalin:You can go about it in a very structured and probably more effective way.
Nalin:And I think that's part of what we can discover and chat about, but I think all too often, me included, we're guilty of not really putting any structure or thought behind it, and maybe coming across a little bit chaotic.
Jason:Fundamentally, a personal brand exists whether you tried to build it or not.
Paul:Why don't we start with the story then?
Paul:I'm allergic to social media, I can never commit to that much time.
Paul:I've been doing a startup for 10 years, and before that I was doing mobile apps.
Paul:So it's been a while since I've had a regular "J-O-B".
Paul:It's never been something I've put effort into.
Paul:I've often written ideas for blog posts, but somehow I could never take the time away from Moneytree, my startup, to do that.
Paul:I imagined I'd do this in Japanese and get a following and get an audience.
Paul:The commitment seemed to be too immense, because I didn't want to just get started and then leave it.
Paul:Have you had a similar experience where you've really wanted to build your personal brand leveraging social media, but it's just too difficult?
Jason:Absolutely.
Jason:Whilst I'm ah the very opposite of you when it comes to LinkedIn, and have been a proactive Japan focused, and active member of LinkedIn since February 2004, what you just said, about committing to a regular, content creation, a schedule of what be it blog, or video, or podcast.
Jason:I also have been, not wanting to commit to something and then just have it die.
Jason:Clubhouse was, let's jump in just do it, perhaps somewhat thanks to Covid and social distancing, and being stuck inside, kept it going twice a week for near on a year, because It's such a great way to engage with the Business In Japan community.
Paul:Let me turn back the clock a little bit more to the early days of Moneytree.
Paul:And this might be interesting for foreign founders making their way in Japan or Japanese founders.
Paul:I had no idea how to do PR, what that was like.
Paul:I originally got media training from an American PR agency because we couldn't even find a PR agency in Japan that understood what we did.
Paul:I just didn't understand how any of this worked, or how you're meant to get publicity, how you get people to write about you.
Paul:We did have a press release when we launched and there's a very kind gentleman named Larry Greenberg who charged us only, I think a few hundred dollars for that first press release.
Paul:And when I came back to him for the second press release, he goes, Paul, this time I'm gonna have to charge you regular rates, and it was thousands of dollars.
Paul:I'm like, oh, I'm good.
Paul:I'm good, I don't need another press release!
Paul:So in the early days, we were struggling to get anyone to write about us.
Paul:Mostly because when they wanted to write about a Japanese entrepreneur, they didn't write about me and my co-founders at Moneytree, because none of us were Japanese.
Paul:But really it's the traditional media where we started burnishing our brands in Japan, and that's, a nice problem to have.
Paul:We had a product growing so quickly that we managed to somehow by hook or by crook, got a few journalists to be interested in us.
Paul:And of course we stood on the shoulders of giants, other people introduced us to their roster of journalists that they knew.
Paul:I won't go into any more detail, until my memoirs, which are gonna be coming out in about 20 years time.
Paul:So that was a nice problem to have.
Paul:We only had the traditional media.
Paul:We only worked with, the journalists who would meet with us.
Paul:And it's not like we had them at our beck and call, every now and then they'd wanna write about us.
Paul:I remember the very first press mention we got was NHK, and they came to the office when we were in our co-working space in Shibuya.
Paul:There's actually a YouTube video with a very early version of Moneytree on there, where we had all the banks logos until we got told, "careful, they might sue you!"
Paul:Of course, NHK in their infinite largess, they did not mention our company name.
Paul:NHK's policy is only to mention your name when you don't need them to mention your name.
Paul:If you need them to mention your name, they're not gonna do it.
Paul:So no one knew who the heck we were, but it was good to get the practice.
Paul:And I have to give, give, credit to the founder of Zaim, Takako Kansai, who said, you should really start doing some speaking engagements.
Paul:And I'm thinking, oh my God, I don't wanna speak on the stage in Japanese.
Paul:It's hard enough in meetings.
Paul:This was 2012, so about 10 years ago.
Paul:So we started getting into events.
Paul:I think the first event we really got invited to that made sense was the 2015 Financial Innovation Business Contest, FIBC.
Paul:And sneakily from 2016 onwards, it was always in English.
Paul:But I had to do it in Japanese.
Paul:But in all that time, until Clubhouse, I haven't really leveraged social media properly.
Paul:I have to say.
Paul:Jason, how does that look to you a startup perspective?
Jason:There's no either or.
Jason:A social profile is a must.
Jason:If it's non-existent, that's a bad thing.
Jason:If it's there, you've got some level recognition and people will be periodically checking and wanting to learn more about you.
Jason:Especially if they've had an interest in your startup, they're gonna go looking for founder, for people involved and try to learn more about it from whatever perspective they're coming from, potential employee, investor, someone who just wants to learn how you became successful, what your background was.
Jason:You have some level of control over how people perceive you.
Jason:And social media is one big lever on, on how to do that.
Jason:Traditional media, of course, also very important and, can be difficult to get for free.
Jason:It's usually top of the lists of guerrilla marketing.
Paul:We did a bit of research into this and looking back, the way we could have done it at Moneytree, had I been much better at Japanese at the time, I already had JLPT 1 by the way, but that doesn't mean, that doesn't mean I can just, write witty tweets at the drop of a hat.
Paul:Somewhat infamously our very first blog post in the very first line had a typo in it, which, which some kind soul on the internet, of course in Japanese tore us to shreds for having a mistake on the top of our website.
Paul:Whoops!
Paul:Hey, come on, Japanese is our second language.
Paul:It was funny.
Paul:I'll never make that mistake again, that's for sure.
Paul:But what we could have done, is we could have built a bit of a brand before we got started and I think we were just a bit too obsessed with product and not quite interested enough in how do you get the product to market.
Paul:It's always about luck and skill and hard work and luck always plays a part, I think.
Paul:We often get our first choice, and every other choice doesn't work out.
Paul:With investors, we've often had our first choice of investor, but the second, third, and fourth, we're talking to all told us no.
Paul:We've been lucky in this way many times at Moneytree.
Paul:So with our go to market strategy, we thought, what if Apple promotes us?
Paul:Let's make something Apple will definitely promote by making something great for iOS and it worked really well.
Paul:We had no second strategy.
Paul:If that hadn't worked, Moneytree probably would not exist today.
Paul:So thank you, thank you to the app store team back in 2013.
Paul:So if we had spent some time building up a following, we probably would've looked more like the CEO of, of Zaim one of our luminaries, and friendly CEO Takako Kansai.
Paul:She worked for a social media company.
Paul:She had tens of thousands of followers.
Paul:And that I think also being a female entrepreneur when it was still much rarer than it is today, and it's still too rare, she attracted a lot of attention.
Paul:In fact, her company's Twitter account famously has very few followers and she has a ton.
Paul:Her own social media profile was her promotional strategy, and it worked very well, I think.
Paul:But for a foreign founder, achievable?
Paul:Nalin, have you got any thoughts on that or Jason?
Nalin:Hey, so Paul, your question is basically is it possible?
Nalin:I think it's possible.
Nalin:Just to to highlight, we're talking about building your brand.
Nalin:And this is the brand, both of the founder as well as the company that you've founded.
Nalin:And in some ways, I think a personal brand because if you do well, you go on and found more than one company, right?
Nalin:So there's that personal brand that's equally as important as the brand that you have for yourself.
Nalin:Paul.
Nalin:Your self-awareness is really, it's great because like you said, your personal branding and the branding of Moneytree are tightly coupled, right?
Nalin:Almost hard to separate.
Nalin:Whereas if you look at Jason, Jason's got Business In Japan and that's like a powerful brand that's been around for years.
Nalin:For both of these, when we look at these brands, we associate the person who created it with the entity or the group that is associated with the brand.
Nalin:So I think it's entirely possible and both of you are good examples of how it's being done.
Nalin:Looking at myself I'm very organic, I'm very unstructured so if I feel like posting something, if I react to something, I will post it, if I have a strong opinion, I will post it.
Nalin:But I don't have a regular schedule so much, much like you, the Clubhouse on every Sunday morning in Japanese, in, in English on every Monday night is about the most structured and regular thing I do in terms of my social presence.
Nalin:And you can see there's value in having some structure to it because it builds upon, every iteration you go through builds upon all the previous ones.
Nalin:So there's a bit of a learning there, and I suppose in my non-Clubhouse, Activities, maybe having a little bit of structure would help as well.
Nalin:But going back to your question, Paul, I think it's entirely possible being a foreign founder in Japan and building a brand about it, and, both of you are great examples.
Paul:Thanks, Nalin.
Paul:I actually felt that I needed to start burnishing my brand separately to Moneytree, not because I'm going anywhere.
Paul:Not for a while at least.
Paul:I've got plenty of work to do.
Paul:However, if I talk as the CEO of Moneytree, I get to talk about certain topics and there's a, there's an interesting, gotcha, as a Japanese company CEO, there is an expectation that you don't talk the most out of the people in your company.
Paul:You only talk sometimes, and there's a, I think there's a reason for this.
Paul:One is, of course you want to restrict access to the top person, so only the best people get access.
Paul:I guess that must be at the FOMO strategy.
Paul:But another one is, it's Japanese business culture.
Paul:The CEO gets rolled out when he or she is really needed, and if the CEO rocks up to an early stage meeting, people freak out, unless there's a very good excuse for it.
Paul:The CEO shouldn't be deep into sales discussions once the company gets to a certain size.
Paul:So I, I think when you've got a sales team and you're visible in the market, perhaps when you get to a certain amount of CEO gravitas - or more arse than class, as I like to say - but a certain degree of CEO gravitas can cause problems going to business meetings or turning up at the wrong time or speaking too frequently and so on.
Paul:The 'fushu', the 'convention', the way it's done, is that they hold you back, and so all I get to talk about at Moneytree is vision, which is not small, I shouldn't complain.
Paul:Privacy is one of my main topics because I'm also the Data Privacy Officer at Moneytree, and I have been for 10 years.
Paul:Very few companies would say that they care about privacy so much that the CEO is the data privacy officer.
Paul:But I don't get to talk about much, and I'd love to talk about startups.
Paul:I'd love to help startups.
Paul:I'd love to help founders.
Paul:I'd love to mentor.
Paul:And so that really became the genesis a year ago of, Founded in Japan, and the reason why I thought I, better start working on my own brand.
Jason:I'd like to just point a quick spotlight on evolving, personal brands of startup founders, our own Ilya here.
Jason:Also in the audience, Asa Quesenberry, both of them have really blossomed in their, visibility and the relevant, on topic information that they're sharing, and then they're engaging around and that they're getting the engagement.
Jason:Ilya for DeFi and other areas and Asa for drones and drone security.
Asa Quesenberry:Hey, Jason, thanks for having me up.
Asa Quesenberry:I talked with a couple members in this clubhouse about the success you can build through your brand as a founder.
Asa Quesenberry:For me I of owe all my success to that.
Asa Quesenberry:When I came to Japan, had very, not, as you would say, appropriate Japanese level for a Japanese based founder.
Asa Quesenberry:Didn't know anyone came here with a book bag basically, and just through my outreach and engagement and content on LinkedIn and some other channels, I quickly went from having no network, to really it being my strongest asset here in the country.
Asa Quesenberry:Your brand pays dividends.
Asa Quesenberry:Your personal brand can really set you out from the crowd and I find even if you look at selling a product where people don't want the salesman, people come to you for free value, first and foremost, and a lot of times if you can make that free information or knowledge, by doing that, people, they trust you.
Asa Quesenberry:They engage with you more and it makes plugging your company all the easier.
Paul:In the early stages, if you're pre founding, you want to get out there and become, not just a subject matter expert and be recognized as someone knowledgeable in the space, but also be an aggregator, bring other people together and be useful by connecting them to each other.
Paul:So Ilya, could you tell us if you're there a little bit about how you've been doing that in the machine learning community in Japan?
Ilya:Just like bringing people together because I think there are so many much more interesting people than myself, then it's more fun to put somebody smarter or more interesting in the same room.
Ilya:So that's why I'm doing that, not to build my own brand don't care that much about personal branding, I just do whatever I find interesting for myself that's why I organize these startup events, or machine learning drinks, or crypto drinks and so on.
Ilya:Just to put some smart people together, or sometimes so less smart but interesting.
Ilya:It's been quite successful in the sense that in Tokyo maybe it's because of the pandemic, but a lot of people have been just sitting around not meeting.
Ilya:I've noticed that at all different stages.
Ilya:For instance, I'm also relatively active in, let's say, mentoring or helping new graduates trying to do so with some of them.
Ilya:Most of them, they've actually never seen their current fellow students.
Ilya:They've always studied remotely.
Ilya:They don't even learn how to do this networking thing, how to meet other professionals.
Ilya:That's another motivation to do this, just to help people get out there and, learn how to add more value to the community and how to grow it and see the results out of it.
Ilya:Paul, you asked about the machine learning experiment.
Ilya:When I moved here in Japan, my plan was to start a company, a business, and I was just meeting a lot of people and eventually some of them wanted some advice on starting up.
Ilya:One asked then another one, and then it just took so much time to just talk to each one of those that I decided to put them together in a small group.
Ilya:I've noticed that it was much easier in other countries where I lived, in Japan for some reason, this community building effort.
Ilya:Maybe, especially in the startup scene.
Ilya:The startup scene is so fragmented.
Ilya:Nobody's really talking to each other.
Ilya:Something needs to be done and I'm happy to just contribute on this side.
Asa Quesenberry:Ilya, I can attest to that.
Asa Quesenberry:Being based in Osaka, the startup community here compared to Tokyo, obviously small.
Asa Quesenberry:It's growing quickly, but there's no bridge between the two cities.
Asa Quesenberry:In a country so small, you wouldn't think that would be the case.
Asa Quesenberry:But yes, definitely a fragmented startup community.
Paul:I wonder why that is.
Paul:When we started in 2012, there were some accelerators, which we we never thought we'd apply to.
Paul:I think we, we felt we knew how to get a product to market, we had some bootstrap money from two of the founders, one being a non-active founder.
Paul:So we're like, no, we need, we have everything we need.
Paul:But we didn't really network very much.
Paul:And I have to credit, Hiroki Kudo, the CEO of Merrybiz and Natalie Shiori Fleming, who is now I think, Director of Corporate Development at Infcurion, and also Maruyama-san, who's the CEO of Infcurion.
Paul:They, they started the FinTech Meetup, and my co-founder Mark and I went to that.
Paul:That became our lifeline, and luckily Mark was super keen and interested in that, cause I was not.
Paul:After the second one I stopped going, but he kept going and that became the FinTech Association actually, Nihon FinTech Kyokai started from the FinTech Meetup, I think in 2014.
Paul:It is today still the peak industry body for fintech, and it has banks and financial institutions and not enough fintechs, but still plenty of fintechs as members.
Paul:At the time, Natalie, I think, was working for Payoneer, or maybe Transfer Wise, which is now Wise.
Paul:Hiroki was CEO of MerryBiz , and they put a fair amount of time into that.
Paul:That was a way that they could burnish their own brands, that made a lot of sense to them, they're both very sociable, they're both fully bilingual.
Paul:However, on the other hand, it's a time suck, right?
Paul:When you put this investment in, when you create a meetup, or the industry association, or you spend time writing blog posts, or podcasts, or Clubhouses, well, you're not spending that time doing something else.
Paul:After 9 or 10 years of Moneytree, it's okay, it's time to give back.
Paul:It's time to start doing something because you know you could be dead tomorrow, God forbid.
Paul:So when are you gonna start giving back?
Paul:That was really my thinking a year ago, but I don't know, maybe there's a generation gap.
Paul:Ilya, and Asa, do you find it a lot easier to just get out there and be on social media?
Paul:Cuz honestly, even as a Gen Xer, I'm super allergic to it.
Paul:I'm just, I don't know why.
Ilya:I find it quite easy.
Ilya:It's all, it's obviously tiring after a while just meeting people, talking to people, but, eventually it's, it brings, it, its fruit.
Ilya:So I don't really find it so annoying.
Ilya:People that find it tiring, even though if they're extroverts, but they find it tiring to network and, building your own brand.
Ilya:But not my case.
Asa Quesenberry:It could come down to personality types.
Asa Quesenberry:For me, I enjoy networking to begin with.
Asa Quesenberry:But the only social media I think I can put effort into is LinkedIn, because in my opinion, that's the only social media that pays off.
Asa Quesenberry:Unless you are trying to become an influencer or something of this sort.
Asa Quesenberry:In my mind, every person I reached out to and talked to on LinkedIn was a possible opportunity for my company.
Asa Quesenberry:That was motivation enough to keep at it.
Asa Quesenberry:Eventually, once the momentum builds and you start getting the engagement, it's not too difficult, I think, to keep up with.
Paul:That's a good point Asa.
Paul:If you're working with Enterprise, LinkedIn is definitely the best place to be.
Paul:But of course it's a little bit underpowered for Japan, since everybody is not on LinkedIn, unlike in other countries.
Asa Quesenberry:I attended a webinar not too long ago, and they said that less than 2 million people in Japan have LinkedIn compared to over 50% of the US.
Asa Quesenberry:I think LinkedIn also really depends on your, what you do for a job.
Asa Quesenberry:If you're just working within a company.
Asa Quesenberry:You might not have that motivation just to keep touting your company's campaign, so to speak.
Asa Quesenberry:But if you're trying to build your personal brand, if you're trying to move up in your career, if you're trying to establish yourself or stick out from the crowd, so to speak, then LinkedIn can be a really powerful platform because every connection you make has opportunity connected with it.
Asa Quesenberry:Whereas, people on other social media platforms, they might have 30,000 followers but what are the value of those people that arguably just sit there and watch you.
Asa Quesenberry:With LinkedIn, everyone you connect with, any piece of thoughtful content you put out that people engage with just presents, limitless opportunities and connections with it.
Jason:I would, second that and someone brought up the, number of people who use LinkedIn in Japan.
Jason:Anyone can find that out by starting a campaign.
Jason:You don't even have to finish it or spend any money and just select Japan as the audience and they'll give you an estimate of the audience.
Jason:A couple of weeks ago it was 3.2 million and obviously, you could even say that at least the Japanese people in that 3.2 million are even less active, less going into the platform and looking.
Jason:But I can't help thinking that a lot of the comparisons are because people want to broadcast on LinkedIn and they want to put something out there and have something come back, or they want to be discovered by this buzzing, involved community and in that sense they're missing the point.
Jason:Especially from someone who's in a niche area.
Jason:A niche area, in a niche location.
Jason:The number of users of LinkedIn in Japan, is is what it is.
Jason:And it's less important how many they are.
Jason:It's more important about who you are and what you do on the platform and what you do proactively on the platform.
Jason:Keep in mind, every one of those people who are in Japan has a whole network behind them.
Jason:Build a relationship with them, perhaps, one way at first, but at some point meet them, build some rapport and get to know them then their network is there for you as well.
Jason:You'll never run out of people being proactive to reach out to.
Asa Quesenberry:A hundred percent.
Asa Quesenberry:Jason, I think if you are doing business in Japan if you are a founder, you need to have that presence on LinkedIn.
Asa Quesenberry:Even if it's just for the people outside of Japan that are looking to engage with and find people based in the country because of the language barrier when you broadcast that, hey I'm based here in Japan and I'm involved in this, whatever this might be, someone out there is looking for that and they're not gonna find the Japanese language version of what you're saying.
Jason:Welcoming Cheryl Tong to the stage.
Jason:As part of the Tech News Room on Clubhouse, very aware of what startups are doing social media.
Cheryl Tong:Hey Jason, thank you for inviting me.
Cheryl Tong:I've been in, in Tokyo for about 16 years now, of course I'm based between Tokyo and Singapore.
Cheryl Tong:It is not surprising that there are not many users on LinkedIn in Japan compared to the other countries, because LinkedIn is used more as a professional network, and many people put their profiles on LinkedIn because they want to be seen by recruiters, and as we all know that in Japan, I think, 'tenshoku' is still not a very open topic for most Japanese people, so they are probably not used to that.
Cheryl Tong:As a foreigners, if you want more visibility, definitely yeah, you should, yeah, put up something on, on LinkedIn.
Cheryl Tong:It is more convenient, but, honestly speaking, I'm not, and I'm not active in any social media.
Cheryl Tong:I'm just more regular on Clubhouse, since last year when I joined.
Jason:Before you go, Cheryl, what are your thoughts on personal branding for founders?
Jason:How important is it for them to start thinking about how people perceive them and their control over that?
Cheryl Tong:If you want my honest opinion, I don't think they should be too worried of how people perceive them.
Cheryl Tong:They should be more worried about what problem they're trying to solve, when they build whatever project, build whatever things they're trying to build.
Cheryl Tong:Because if you're really sincere, one thing to do good things, people can see your effort, people can see your result, and then definitely they will see you.
Cheryl Tong:So you don't have to intentionally brand yourself so that, people, to attract people's attention.
Cheryl Tong:Because if you're doing good things, people will definitely look at you.
Paul:Cheryl, if I can, I think that's very inspirational.
Paul:If I can, contribute some thoughts on that.
Paul:That's true.
Paul:That's how, that's why Moneytree exists cuz God knows, no one knew who we were.
Paul:On the other hand, our peers had great pedigrees and had come from either well-known families in Japan or well-known companies, they all were Ivy League MBA holders.
Paul:It was like, who are these schmucks at Moneytree?
Paul:Over time we've built our brand from, purely achieving in the product space, but I gotta tell you, if I'd known more, if my Japanese had been better, I certainly would've appreciated the increased ease of fundraising if people knew who the heck I was when we started Moneytree, or at least there was more written about me and some relevant source of information, because they were just like, who the heck are you guys?
Paul:You're doing this great thing, but it wasn't enough in Japan.
Paul:Just making something great and coming out of nowhere was not enough, and it's added years to our startup journey, and it also created a lot more dilution for us as we fundraised because we weren't able to raise at very high multiples, because their conviction was low, despite what we'd been doing.
Paul:I'm grateful for where we are, but the less lesson learned, definitely put information out there.
Paul:Definitely meet people, be helpful, bring people together, be recognized as a source of, of expertise.
Paul:All these things do count, but in a way, Cheryl's right.
Paul:Focus on your startup.
Paul:That's really the key thing.
Paul:If you're in the preparatory phases, it's probably a great time to start building that future brand of you as a founder.
Nalin:So I'm just gonna just throw some thoughts out there for us to chew on right.
Nalin:. There's the concept of, the company's brand.
Nalin:And I just, I was having a conversation earlier today with some MBA students in, in Singapore, and we were looking at how Google versus P&G, versus Coca-Cola do corporate brands.
Nalin:So Google has Google and then, Google, and then there's Google Docs, then Google, Spreadsheets and Google this, and Google that, but there's like a, a Google 'kammuri', I don't know the English word for this, a Google heading for everything.
Nalin:Then there's P&G, which has like a bunch of brands like, can't even remember what they are, but stuff that you use around the house to clean your house and so on.
Nalin:But they're all actually owned by P&G, and P&G doesn't really bother making sure that the P&G brand is known.
Nalin:So I, yeah, here's one Tide for, for people from the US, Folgers Coffee, and Pampers diapers, are all P&G, right?
Nalin:And then Coca-Cola takes another approach, which is like Coca-Cola, Minute maid, Sprite and so on.
Nalin:So I think, from a company's point of view, there's, you can even apply some of these learnings to startups.
Nalin:Then flipping that over to the personal brand.
Nalin:And I was just thinking, who do we know in terms of even large startup founders, or large companies, but people who have very strong brands as individuals, right?
Nalin:And one that popped into mind for me was Mark Cuban.
Nalin:And then I was like, Mark Cuban, we all know him, his name, but what company did he run?
Nalin:I can't even remember what company he was.
Nalin:So the power of his brand, his personal brand has eclipsed the companies that he's, he's been associated with.
Nalin:And then the flip side is you have somebody like, you have Microsoft, right?
Nalin:And.
Nalin:Bill Gates, who's so tied to Microsoft, it's very hard to decouple him from his company.
Nalin:So there's a range of kind of branding stories to build and taking a cue from what we started out with, which was, some of us are very actively involved in making our brand and some of us are like myself quite passive and organic.
Nalin:But, wanna put those thoughts out there.
Nalin:Multi-brand, how do you go about it?
Nalin:And then personal brand, do you associate yourself tightly to a business or do you stay above and beyond just a single brand?
Nalin:Just some stuff to talk about and chew on.
Cheryl Tong:I just invited a friend into the room his name is Keith.
Cheryl Tong:He's down there in the audience.
Cheryl Tong:He just, came to Japan recently to have a collaboration with JR East.
Cheryl Tong:One of his startup is a robot Barister.
Cheryl Tong:I think he can share with us about branding because he built a very successful robot Barista brand in Singapore, and he's now actually launching in Japan.
Keith Tan:Hi everyone, I've just completed my seventh day of quarantine back in Singapore after Japan.
Keith Tan:So everyone was like, oh, Keith, you're left at the right time because the cases are surging now.
Paul:So we're talking about building your brand and Cheryl introduced, I'm not sure if you missed it, but just introducing your successes with JR East.
Paul:How did you go about doing that from Singapore?
Paul:And also any insights into the topic of how you've built your brand, either alongside your company, or if you've done it separately to your company, before your company.
Paul:Go for it.
Keith Tan:We are based outta Singapore and, two years ago I was pitching in CEATEC Tokyo back then I met JETRO.
Keith Tan:So JETRO is the external Japanese external trade organization.
Keith Tan:They have an office in Singapore and they follow up with me.
Keith Tan:And I remember when he came by and he said, Keith, , we heard your pitch on, on, on stage.
Keith Tan:And, our job is to bring tech companies, into Japan.
Keith Tan:And we, we will introduce corporates or partners to, to help you and who would you like to meet?
Keith Tan:And at that time, I was, I would like to meet, Japan Rail because that's, the rail based network in Japan is it's so intricate, right?
Keith Tan:It's part of our daily lives.
Keith Tan:When I'm in Tokyo, you can't miss JR, or the other national lines, and our robots are perfectly suited for commuter high traffic locations.
Keith Tan:And they were like, Keith, there is JR East has a subsidiary in Singapore and they have a joint venture with our local, railway network, MRT, they're building the new Thompson East Coast line.
Keith Tan:Do you wanna meet them?
Keith Tan:So I said, yeah, please.
Keith Tan:They came a week later and then, a month later, the HQ guys came, they saw our robots.
Keith Tan:They said, Keith, we are, we are innovating as a train company, for the next 30 years we are looking at lifestyle development beyond train stations and what you've got with the robotic barista, it's a mix of AI and robotics, and that's something that, addresses our concern in Japan with regards to labor.
Keith Tan:And, they said, Keith we could buy your robots and bring it to Japan, but that's not good enough.
Keith Tan:We should invest in your startup.
Keith Tan:So they did, they made an investment in late 2020.
Keith Tan:We spent a whole year, planning for it and the whole Covid situation didn't help.
Keith Tan:Eventually I managed to get in November, and we launched it in Tokyo Station and Yokohama Station.
Keith Tan:Branding is so important, especially as a, a tech startup, we didn't have it easy.
Keith Tan:As founders, while you're solving a problem, you need to think about how that story would resonate with people, and that comes back to branding.
Keith Tan:The VCs in Singapore are not into robotics, because there's hardware and it's just harder to scale, initially.
Keith Tan:It's just harder sell.
Keith Tan:We went through a rough patch trying to raise money.
Keith Tan:Eventually we got a few CVC's like strategics to support us.
Keith Tan:Still it was really hard.
Keith Tan:It's essential to be authentic in the branding.
Keith Tan:People are discerning.
Keith Tan:They could sus you out very quickly and you have to be, authentic right in your approach.
Paul:Strongly agree.
Paul:Keith, thank you very much.
Paul:I think that sincerity part is super important, especially in Japan.
Keith Tan:It's super important.
Keith Tan:Getting the message across, what are your vision?
Keith Tan:What is your mission?
Keith Tan:How would you want to change society with your technology?
Keith Tan:And be really sincere about it.
Keith Tan:If you are in a business to solve problems, you need to articulate that really well, and that's through your branding strategy, how do you translate that to end users?
Keith Tan:So the, that your audience could sense it, and then, and they could see that this company is innovating in a way to solve problems and bring value to everybody.
Paul:Part of it is not just sounding sincere, I'm sure you're aware of this too, so not telling you anything, but rather sharing with the audience.
Paul:How does that translate into action for a founder?
Paul:It means being true to, to what you say you're gonna do, but also it translates into saying no to certain things.
Paul:Oh, that's not what we do, or, we're not able to do that, or, we're not just gonna say yes to, to any form of revenue.
Paul:The kind of revenue we want to get is this kind, because that's in line with our vision and that's what we're building towards.
Paul:Thanks Keith.
Paul:I think you're doing a great job there.
Paul:So look forward to hopefully seeing you join us again.
Paul:Jason you did a great job of the run sheet, some of the areas that having a good personal brand can help are attracting co-founders, attracting early team members, and also throughout the lifecycle of your startup.
Paul:In particular your personal brand has a lot of impact on your success in the early days because your company doesn't have a brand yet.
Paul:And as much as every startup says, oh, our brand is our competitive advantage, it's no one cares about your brand.
Paul:You care, your team cares, but no one else cares!
Paul:What was it Jeff Bezos says about brands?
Paul:"It's what other people say about you when you're not in the room".
Paul:So when people care enough to talk about your product, your service, your startup, and you've got fans, you've got the makings of a brand.
Asa Quesenberry:Just to backpack on that, for my company, when we were first getting started, people often could look at my personal brand and what we were building there, that kind of validated a lot of the work we were doing at the company.
Asa Quesenberry:Because we didn't have, 'jisseki' is so important in Japan, so it became a place to showcase, relatively cheap as well you don't have to pay for it to just have it there and have it available for people to see.
Asa Quesenberry:So credibility, is also another thing that you're gonna be building with your personal brand.
Paul:That's definitely true.
Paul:Definitely true.
Paul:So personal brand can come from where you've worked, what you've achieved, if you've had any previous exits, if you've had any awards.
Paul:So if you've had an elite job, or had an elite education.
Paul:If you haven't, you can still build it up, but it is important, I think in the early days that you can prove yourself credible and trustworthy when you're speaking to angel investors or seed round investors because your company probably hasn't got enough of a brand yet, hasn't got enough achievements , enough runs on the board yet for you to be able to say "my company's this great".
Paul:If you can start doing that as you're approaching the founding of your startup, that's probably the best time to do it.
Paul:But once your startup begins, I actually think you shouldn't be focusing too much for a couple years at least on you being separate from your company, just put all your effort into your company and you as the founder.
Paul:And that means you're connected at the hip, there's no difference, and that's fine because right now you don't want someone to think of Asa as the CEO or founder, as well as Asa being an expert in X, Y, and Z.
Paul:You just want 'em to think of you one way as this great opportunity to invest in, and it's gonna be super successful.
Paul:So I think you have to switch.
Paul:Once your company has evolved to a certain level, I think you can bifurcate.
Paul:I mean, that's, that's what I'm doing.
Paul:For me it's more about paying it forward and sharing learnings, observations, connections, knowledge that just wasn't available to us in the early days.
Paul:It's more about having a bigger mission.
Paul:What's fundamental there isn't what I chose my mission to be, but that you have a mission greater than your company, greater than your product, as well that you can put yourself into.
Paul:That could be something to do with sustainability.
Paul:It could be something to do with e equality, it could be something to do with, all sorts of social causes or just what you're interested in, some new technology.
e's those two or three stages:pre founding, immediately post founding, and much later stage when I think it's more acceptable for you to be using your platform as a somewhat successful founder, or as a very successful founder, if that's your situation.
e's those two or three stages:Still working on that here.
e's those two or three stages:But using that platform to do something else because one platform can create another platform which can, do a whole lot of stuff.
e's those two or three stages:Hope that makes sense.
e's those two or three stages:What do you think guys?
Jason:Taking some fundamentals of personal branding because I, of course am not a startup founder, but I've looked into personal branding, quite a bit.
Jason:One reason to begin early is that it's going to give you attempting to steer your personal brand, craft your personal brand, is gonna help you learn to communicate in the best possible way.
Jason:Give you experience getting out of your head and your heart, what you really feel in the way that supports the stage your startup is at.
Jason:Allowing you to communicate your own individuality and things that make you stand out from others.
Jason:And the whole point is to catch the ear, catch the eye of the sorts of people that you want to meet.
Jason:Not just investors, but staff, perhaps a co-founder, those sorts of things.
Jason:Grabbing people's attention who are interested in the same things you're talking about and therefore obtaining the benefits of being recognizable and and someone that people want to be around or someone that people want to refer others to.
Jason:People who know and like you and appreciate what you're doing, start thinking of you when they come across people you'd like to meet and want to refer them to you.
Nalin:I said earlier, I'm very organic with my social presence and I'm very unstructured about it.
Nalin:At the risk of being contrarian here, looking at tactical things to do, I'm thinking back to an earlier role I had where I multi hatted it and I also have the Chief Marketing Officer role in a large funded robotic startup.
Nalin:The company is called Gray Orange, and I was the gray, because I have gray hair.
Nalin:In the gray orange robotics startup, quite big.
Nalin:We got 30 million in funding and when I had the marketing role, I also said I need lots of money basically.
Nalin:Of the 30 million of funding we got, I took 1 million and used it for marketing.
Nalin:One of the things I did was the two founders, one was 26, the other was 29 years old, I spent a lot of that million to build their brand.
Nalin:So in other words, I paid Forbes to put 30 under 30.
Nalin:I paid a lot of media money to get exposure for these two founders.
Nalin:The fact that we were able to give them so much exposure and get that perception of being these genius wizbang kids actually helped us then in the two subsequent fund raises.
Nalin:While being organic, while being, humble and simple, sometimes you've gotta take a few tactical calls.
Nalin:I will say that because we spent that million, unbranding for the company, but a significant portion branding for the two founders, we were then able to go out and raise 70 million and then 140 million after that.
Nalin:In a very competitive fundraise environment with honestly speaking, several companies doing pretty much the same thing, one of the largest reasons we were able to raise so much money is because we built a very strong personal brand for the founders.
Nalin:Spend your money if you've got funding as a startup, if you've got money, don't forget to spend some of it to build a great story for the company and the founders, because that's going to help you for your future fund raises.
Asa Quesenberry:Certainly pays dividends.
Paul:Definitely agree on that one.
Asa Quesenberry:I don't know if there's any Japanese nationals or Japanese founders in the audience, but I'm really curious to hear about the opinion of personal branding from the Japanese mind in that perspective.
Nalin:There was one here, he's left.
Nalin:Keita Okumura.
Nalin:I'm an investor in his company and it's called Jua.
Nalin:I'll take the liberty to speak on his part if nobody else is going to.
Nalin:He's too humble and I always in our monthlys, I'm always like, you have to get more exposure, you have to sell yourself your own brand.
Nalin:He believes in the value of his product and his technology and his idea.
Nalin:Which is, it's a lovely idea, but I've always been pushing him and saying, you've got to, in Japanese, make your face be more known, but he's too humble and he feels a little bit shy.
Nalin:So that's just one perspective to your question, Asa.
Asa Quesenberry:In a country as conservative and conforming I, I can't imagine it's a comfortable thing for a, a Japanese national to really put effort into building that brand, at least in like the non-organic approach in the approach that takes time.
Paul:There's a whole spectrum, Asa.
Paul:Not everyone fits the same mold.
Paul:In a country of 128 million people, there's going to be some variation.
Paul:I've seen all sorts, and you could probably identify them in certain archetypes.
Paul:There's the more humble middle of the road, doesn't overstate it, doesn't oversell it type.
Paul:That's a lot more common than in the US I would imagine.
Paul:On the other hand, you've got the, 'akindo' sell his grandmother type.
Paul:Talks a big game doesn't necessarily deliver.
Paul:Uses money mostly for self-promotion, maybe the product is an afterthought.
Paul:I've also seen another type where it's I would describe it as painfully lacking in self-awareness and overdoes it, but in an innocent way.
Nalin:How many of you guys remember Horiemon?
Nalin:He's like the grandfather of self aggrandizing founders, and I think he did it really well.
Nalin:And he, a lot of people learn from him.
Nalin:For those of you who are too young to remember him, he's the former CEO of Livedoor, and after a spint of a few issues, he spent some time in jail and came out and he's a folk hero to a certain breed of Japanese founders who, you know, who believe and subscribe to his vision, which is the founder has to be seen and vocal and opinionated in order to be heard and respected.
Paul:It probably also matters which market you're going after to, to what extent is the hard driving, fast talking persona a fit for who you're selling to?
Paul:If you're selling to individuals, as long as it sells, it works.
Paul:That's it!
Paul:You can be whatever.
Paul:If you're selling to companies, it's a very different discussion, right?
Paul:Are you selling to small to medium enterprise?
Paul:Then you're more of a visionary potentially.
Paul:Are you selling to the enterprise?
Paul:In which case you're more of a salesman, you talk about partnerships and so on.
Paul:You gotta fit your persona or your natural persona to what you're going after.
Paul:If you're not a good fit, you either change your approach, or you change what you're going after.
Paul:All right, we've been talking about building your brand as a founder.
Paul:We'll go around the room for some final words on building a brand as a founder.
Paul:Let's get some thoughts.
Paul:Nalin would you like to start off?
Nalin:Thank you, this is a great theme and a little bit unusual.
Nalin:I think both the personal branding and the company branding are really important subjects.
Nalin:I ended on a tactical note there, but I still echo what I started with, which is, be true to yourself.
Nalin:I tend to be organic, but you have to find a way to balance between being organic and tactical.
Nalin:If you've got money spend it, because it comes with returns and yeah, all the best and good luck, everybody who's gonna build their personal brand.
Jason:Fantastic.
Jason:And, your story, though many people may not have a million dollars just to spend on the brand of founders, does indicate that a targeted approach to what you want to do with branding can pay dividends.
Jason:And, whether you call it organic or, just, bootstrapping your personal brand, there's value to it.
Jason:I just wanna add, if, if you're ready to take a look at your personal brand, the one that exists, and think about where you want to take it, a great way to create a baseline for what you're putting out there is to Google yourself.
Jason:And for those that, do more than just stick a word or two in Google, get good at, at, using Google for, more in-depth searches, Google yourself and see what's out there.
Jason:If there's anything you need to change, if what's out there tells a story you don't want, told, and start thinking about, at least what you're doing on social media, what you're doing publicly.
Jason:Think before you post, and be aware your brand is building and you're a founder and you've got to start, presenting yourself the way you want to be presented.
Asa Quesenberry:Totally echo that, Jason.
Asa Quesenberry:Just know you know what your target market is.
Asa Quesenberry:What type of funder they're expecting to see.
Asa Quesenberry:Not that you need to change who you are, but as you said, you don't want to be a certain type of way when your audience is expecting the opposite.
Asa Quesenberry:Be organic in a sense.
Asa Quesenberry:Don't make it your make or break, but remember that people are watching, and that if you've done properly, it can really pay dividends, especially when you're just getting started.
Asa Quesenberry:I know in my sense that without the branding I had done and without the network that came from that, I probably wouldn't be in the place I'm at now.
Paul:I guess the final thought for me is, to be self-aware, but don't be too self-critical.
Paul:Don't be too constraining of yourself.
Paul:If you know that you're naturally someone who oversells it, then pull back.
Paul:If you're someone who is more humble, more middle of the road, you're probably likely to undersell it like most people would.
Paul:Be self-aware in both directions in terms of what you're good at, how you're perceived, but also how you're critical of yourself and maybe holding yourself back.
Paul:Because you have to be able to pitch a big enough vision as well.
Paul:Your personal brand as a founder, it's a little bit hit and miss.
Paul:Get a lot of feedback.
Paul:If you've got a marketing team, they'll tell you.
Paul:If you've got investors, they'll tell you.
Paul:But you need to be open to that feedback.
Paul:I think you need to be flexible.
Paul:Who you are is going to evolve, and your startup is a powerful change agent.
Paul:It's a crucible that will impact your personality in somewhat unpredictable ways.
Paul:Lean into that, but also try and direct that motion.
Shiba Inu:Thank you once again for listening to Founded In Japan.
Shiba Inu:This episode was recorded live on Clubhouse on January 24, 2022.
Shiba Inu:Founded In Japan is part of the Business In Japan Clubhouse and Linked In group.
Shiba Inu:Follow us on Clubhouse or Linked In to join our live audio events, or subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
