Why Your Startup Accelerator is Going to Die - Hiro Maeda

Almost all startup accelerators are going bankrupt and going away.

Hiro Maeda, the founder of two of Japan's most successful, and most different startup incubators explains both the brief past and precarious future of startup incubators and accelerators. We talk not only about the mechanics and challenges of what it takes to make an incubator successful, but Hiro has some practical advice on when founders should consider joining an accelerator and how they can avoid the 99% of them that provide no real value.

Hiro also explains why so many Japanese VCs today find investing in South East Asia more attractive than Japan, the forces behind Japan's startup boom, and what the next ten years holds for Japanese startups.


Show Notes for Startups

The motivation behind the founding of Open Network Labs Incubator
How to measure the success of an incubator
How Japanese VCs will be deploying capital in the next few years
The success of Beenos's Inception Program and why they had to shut it down
Why public companies have trouble with startups
How to tell a good incubator from a bad one
Why most incubators provide no value
The coming shakeout in the incubator industry
What’s driving Japan’s startup boom
The future of Japanese entrepreneurship


Links from the Founder

Beenos
Hiro's Blog
Follow Hiro on Twitter @djtokyo
Friend him on Facebook
The SGE Facebook Page

[shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment
Transcript from Japan
Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs.

I'm Tim Romero. Thanks for listening.

I hope you and your loved ones are staying safe and staying healthy during this coronavirus crisis.

I honestly can’t see too much more than that, because one of the things I learned in releasing our previous episode is that the situation can change dramatically from the time I record to the time I release and then again from the time of release and the time you get a chance to listen.

So about the only thing I can say right now that I know will make sense when you listen to this is that I hope you are doing OK and staying healthy; or failing that getting better.

Today, I’ve got a great Selects show for, so we can sit down over a beer with Hiro Maeda, one of the most insightful Japanese VCs. This interview was recorded back in 2015. A lot has changed since then, but a surprising amount of things have not. When we first caught up with Hiro he was just about to launch his new fund, and I’ll give you an update on what happened after the show.

What might be even more interesting, however, is that the predictions Hiro makes in this interview have not come true as quickly as expected, but many of them are playing themselves out in slow motion right in front of us.
Intro
Today, we sit down with Hiro Maeda and talk about Start-Up Accelerators. Now, Hiro is the creator of both Digital Garages, Open Network Lab and the Beenos Inception Program. These are two of Japan's best known Start-Up Acceleration Programs.

Their approaches are very, very different. Naturally, we talk about both the past and the future of Start-Up Acceleration in Japan, and the critical differences between the good ones and the bad ones.

What impressed me most about our conversation was Hiro's commitment to running his Accelerators just like Start-Ups.

Now, we dive into the fundamental reasons behind the attraction that Japanese VCs now have for Southeast Asian Markets. As well as the reasons behind what we both see as the coming hard times for Start-Up Accelerators, and the coming good time for Japanese Start-Ups.

I will let Hiro explain all of that in his own words. Let's get right to the interview.

[pro_ad_display_adzone id="1404" info_text="Sponsored by" font_color="grey" ]
Interview
Tim: I am sitting here with Hiro Maeda of Beenos formally. The man who found the Open Network Lab with Digital Garage. Today,