And who Says Fun can't be Educational?

The Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) offers divisions of play from under eight to over eighty at the annual disc golf World Championships. I’m aware of a Japanese SaaS app which, despite being sold at low price points on a low-touch month-to-month model (all predictive of relatively high churn rates) has a churn rate which would be considered exemplary for an enterprise SaaS app sold with high-touch sales on an annual contract. On the plus side, after you’ve actually won the business and demonstrated capability to serve customers to these standards, Japanese customers are very loyal. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but people do ask, so: Japan is a highly developed industrialized nation where any business input you require is available, in quantity, if you’re prepared to pay for it. I find that this depends strongly on what exactly you’re doing. In my business, the overwhelming majority of this time is spent on doing taxes. I was whisked between three departments staffed by knowledgable, efficient, mostly pleasant bureaucrats, and in less than 30 minutes walked out the door with health insurance, a public pension, and forms filed to reflect that I’d be filing as a self-employed person for taxes the following year. They’re approximately as burdensome as American taxes at my scale of business. In many respects, the actual mechanics of starting a business are quite easy. The irons are for hitting shots from the fairway to the green. Extension poles are also used to get a quick drink of water to the driver. And most importantly, disc golfers also have to avoid pesky water hazards. They have a protocol, and you need to walk the messages of that protocol between each of them, until they tell you you’re done. That said, if you’re willing to look around a bit, walk an extra 10 minutes from the closest train station, and go to a slightly less prestigious address, you can reasonably get a startup-capable office for $2,000 to $3,000 a month. Office real estate, particularly highly desirable office real estate in Tokyo, is more expensive than you might expect and modestly difficult to acquire. Japanese folks consider at-will employment to be an alien institution, much like you might be thinking about the salaryman system. Japanese customers, in both B2C and B2B relationships, expect a level of personalized, attentive service which is qualitatively different than that in the United States. So, in the U.S., the aw states that you need to wait until 30 minutes after sunrise to turn off your headlights. 500 and 30 minutes. Assuming you’re not in a regulated industry, like e.g. finance or healthcare, the thing which is most likely to bring you to government attention is hiring full-time employees. This is largely because, as a startup which is considered off-the-scale risky, you’re not a good candidate for a lease. Anomalously good sales reps in the US are frequently operating at table stakes or below in Japan. Although the ATS got good reviews when it came out in the 2013 model year, sales really didn't keep pace with Cadillac's expectations. Spend the money to purchase good golf socks, like Bombas, and say goodbye to blisters for good. Internet connectivity in public spaces like e.g. (regular) cafes is much, much rarer than it is in the United States, although this is changing. If one wants to terminate an employee for poor performance in Japan, the most efficient way is dealing with them like an unwanted New York or San Francisco tenant: offer to buy them out. 5 work days a year dealing with government requirements. I quit job on March 31st, took April 1st off, and went down to town hall to file paperwork on April 2nd. As an American, I expect dealing with city government to be a very painful experience. Imagine having the following conversation with the relevant authority: "Incompetence at one’s job is only a reasonable cause for termination if you’ve dutifully discharged your duty to retrain the employee, documented several months of poor performance subsequent to the retraining, and explored options for other jobs they could do for you. Within that e-mail, other options may be available -- sending e-mail invitations to your guests, flower delivery to the restaurant or downloadable maps to the restaurant. If they don’t take the buyout and don’t wish to leave, your escalation options are limited and fairly high-stress. They don’t make numbers big enough to compensate for how much I trust my bank. Was I a particularly large account to the bank?