Tea Ceremony in Blue Jeans & Startup Lessons

Investors were skeptical that combining traditional face-to-face learning with a P2P web platform would work. Over the past three years, startup founder Takashi Fujimoto of StreetAcademy has been proving them wrong. Takashi is showing Japan that the new does not have to replace the old. Sometimes the new just makes the old things even better. StreetAcademy matches those who want to teach with those who want to learn. Local courses are offered in everything from cooking, to yoga, to foreign languages to how to best use Excel to generate a startup business plan, and three years in StreetAcademy is only just getting started. EdTech is one of the hottest sectors for Japanese startups today, and the Japanese education system is ripe for disruption. However, there are also formidable barriers to change, and very few startup founders are willing to throw themselves against the problem head on. On the podcast, Takashi and I discuss a possible third way forward. One that is blends the old and the new to achieve improvement in a productive, harmonious, and very Japanese way.