Toluu

Tokyotronic

Directly from Tokyo: A gaijin’s take on the Japanese Web and IT industry.

Reminder: ObenWebAsia conference in Seoul takes place October 14thOctober 3

Although I will most probably not be able to make it to Korea (shame on me, I am part of the initiative), I would like to remind the readers of my blog that you can still register for the first Openweb Asia 2008 that will take place October 14th in Seoul.



Here is my former post on the 1-day conference.

There will be a number of panels, presentations and speeches, for example by
- Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo and co-founder of TechCrunch50
- Loic Le Meur (CEO of Seesmic and responsible for LeWeb3, Europe's biggest web industry conference)
- James W Kim, CEO of Yahoo Korea
- Kent Lindstrom, Senior VP of Friendster
- Yozo Ka

10 things I learnt and saw during this year's TechCrunch50 conferenceSeptember 13

Yesterday, I came back to Tokyo from the TechCrunch50 conference that took place in San Francisco.



Here are 10 things I found particularly interesting about the event (in no particular order):

1)
The three days of the conference began with a professional singer who sang the Star-Spangled Banner. Speak about culture shocks!

2)
At the afterparty (held by Seesmic) of the last day, Michael Arrington stood in line for 10 minutes in the cold to enter the venue. And Michael is a) the organizer of TC50 and b) an investor in Seesmic.

3)
This was a highly international event with Israel and Japan being particularly strong. But Europe was VERY weak this year. I think my home country of Germany (Europe's biggest Internet market) was represented by one company only (Plista).

4)

I am currently at TechCrunch50 in San FranciscoSeptember 10

I am at TechCrunch50 in San Francisco now, the web industry conference/contest organized by mega Tech blog TechCrunch - which I happen to write for ;). Today (Wednesday) is the last day of the conference.



TechCrunch50 is much better than I expected actually: A positive vibe, perfectly organized (OK, the Internet connection was an issue but is solved now), tons of VIPs, VCs, "technical people", entrepreneurs etc. etc.

Please check out my Twitter, my articles on Asiajin and of course TechCrunch (my articles only) itself for more of my personal impressions of the conference, especially on the three Japanese companies presenting here: Opentrace, Tonchidot and Gazopa.

Here are some photos from TechCrunch50 (partly cou

This month's Mobile Monday Tokyo event: Japan's VC sceneAugust 31

I attended this month's Mobile Monday Tokyo event, which took place in a bar in Akasaka.

Two presentations were given and both were focused on the venture capital industry in Japan.

Aki Ohashi, partner at venture capital firm NGI, explained how to get financial support from companies like his, what venture capital actually means and highlighted a number of differences to the situation in the US (he is American).

For example, Aki pointed out that funding in Japan is normally relatively modest in comparison and that the US has a longer history in terms of venture capital, resulting in a more vibrant venture capital market and consequently a more active culture of entrepreneurship.

To learn more, please take a look at my earlier report on Aki's presentation at Tokyo2point0 on Asiajin.

Keis Ide from VC powerhouse Globis Capital followed up with a similar presentation. Globis Capital is one of Japan's biggest VC companies and actually an investor in NGI. In contrast to NGI however, Globis Capital doesn't focus on early-stage funding and seeding but prefers financing more developed start-ups. Also, Globis invests in non-IT companies a

This month's Venture Beat eventAugust 21

Yesterday, this month's Venture Beat Networking Party took place, this time in a new venue near Roppongi.



As always, the invitation-only event, backed by CNET Japan, was attended by a number (over 50) of high-profile CEOs, VCs, Tech journalists...and me.

For example, I was fortunate to meet Batara Eto who is the former CTO of Japan's biggest SNS,Mixi. Not only that, Batara-san even came up with the original idea for Mixi for which he is still a technical advisor for! And I have to say he is a very friendly and surprisingly modest person.

Another cool thing worth mentioning is a full-fledged DJ application for the iPhone I saw, developed by Atsushi Hoshino (who is also president of a web company called New Forestar). The app is still unofficial but you can have a quick look at it below. Nice work!

My older reports on Venture Beat can be found here.