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Japan wants to learn how to code.
Over the past 15 years software development in Japan has changed from low-level clerical work to a mission-critical skill, and the Japanese government and industry as scrambling to find programmers and develop new talent.
Yan Fan came to Japan on a mission to teach everyone how to code. After opening Japan's first coding bootcamp, and she and her co-founder Kani grew Code Chrysalis to profitability and about 50 staff, and continue to grow rapidly.
Yan and I talk about digital literacy in Japan, and she also explains her blueprint for making sales in Japan without speaking Japanese, identifying a startup's unique value in Japan, and her experience raising money from both angels and CVCs
It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.
As promised, here is a picture of "Benesse's pumpkin"a work by Yayoi Kusama. It will all make sense after you listen to the episode.
Show Notes
Why Japanese enterprise is looking at coding bootcamps
Why software development was a dirty job and how that's changing
Why come to Japan to start a startup
Raising money as a non-digital startup in Japan
How angel investors add value and what attracts CVCs
Attracting your first customers as a foreign startup in Japan
Why Japan needs a community-learners mindset where people learn from each other
Yan's networking and marketing strategy for foreign founders in Japan
Why Japan Inc and METI want Japan to learn to code
How to improve mobility in Japan's labor market
Links from the Founders
Everything you wanted to know about Code Chrysalis
Check out their enterprise classes
Follow them on Twitter @codechrysalis
Send them an email at [email protected]
Connect with Yan on LinkedIn
Follow her on Twitter @yanarchy
Read her blog about teaching Toyota staff to code
Transcript
Welcome to Disrupting Japan. Straight Talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs.
I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.
There are a surprising number of entrepreneurs who dream of coming to Japan to start a startup. And recently the Japanese government is working hard to make Japan as attractive as possible to foreign founders by relaxing visa requirements, creating tax breaks, simplifying the incorporation process, and even setting up dedicated teams to attract foreign founders and provide them support in English.
You might think that all this would make it easy to build a startup as a foreigner in Japan, but it's not. Of course, part of it is just that growing a startup anywhere is really hard. But the culture and linguistic challenges in Japan are very real, and yet a lot of people are doing it.
Today we sit down with Yan Fan, an old friend and co-founder of Code Chrysalis, who's on a mission to teach Japan how to code.
Yan came to Japan with the goal of founding and growing a startup, and that's just what she's done. And in our conversation, she lays out her blueprint, how she built a network when she didn't speak the language, how she identified her startups unique value add in Japan, and her experience raising money here from both Angels and from CVCs.
Its advice that every aspiring foreign founder or active foreign founder for that matter in Japan really should know about.
We also talk about how the image of software engineers, especially foreign software engineers, is changing some of the ways METI and the Japanese government are trying to teach Japan how to code, and why they now consider that skill to be so important for the future of Japan. And also why there is now a picture of Benesse's Pumpkin on the Disrupting Japan website.
But, you know, Yan tells that story much better than I can. So, let's get right to the interview.
Interview
Tim: So, we're sitting here with Yan Fan, the co-founder of Code Chrysalis, who's teaching Japan how to code. So thanks for sitting down with me.
Yan: Thanks for having me today, Tim.
Tim: You know, I can't believe it's taken me this long to get you on the show. We've been talking about it for years and I gave a really high level overview of Code Chrysalis before, but I think you can explain it much better than I can. So, what does Code Chrysalis do?
Yan: We started out as a coding bootcamp here in Japan, but I think we've really evolved to, not just providing classes for consumers, but really doing enterprise training, helping Japanese companies leverage their talent from within and create more innovative, agile engineering teams.
Tim: Okay. Let's talk about both of those groups of customers. So first, the individual programmers or people who want to be programmers. Which is where Code Chrysalis got started. So, how many have gone through the programs so far, and who are they?
Yan: Oh, wow. I think we're probably over the thousand mark. I mean, we keep those classes fairly small. The typically the people coming through our program is in English, and so you have mostly English speakers looking to either have a career change here in Japan and go into technology or there are cases where people come here from overseas and then go back, or they use us as a transition point in terms of leaving Japan.
Tim: So, you mentioned everything is in English. So, are most of the students non-Japanese or Japanese? What's the split there?
Yan: Yeah, I would say most of the students are non-Japanese. The split is probably it's like 30% Japanese historically. So, in every class we'll always have some English speaking Japanese people. But yeah, it's predominantly foreigners who found themselves in Japan.
Tim: Interesting. And so why did you decide to do it all in English?
Yan: Yeah, so I think when we first came here, we really saw this gap in the market where, I think you've spoken about this with Connie, my co-founder in the past, but software engineering has been like a dirty job. Low pay, long hours, kind of like mind numbing, wasn't attracting a lot of talent, but when we came here about what, six and a half, seven years ago, we were seeing people in these jobs, but we were also seeing a lot of Silicon Valley-esque or Silicon Valley inspired jobs that were popping up.
Tim: Like what kind of thing?
Yan: Software engineering jobs that actually paid a decent wage that actually had a career.
Tim: Well, I think yeah, your timing was just about perfect on that because I think as recently as 10, 15 years ago, software engineering, software development was considered kind of a clerical job. It was almost like data input. And it was really with the cloud computing boom that kind of kicked off the rethinking of what software engineering was in Japan.
Yan: Yeah. And six and a half, seven years ago, there were also more and more startups. More and more well-funded companies that were popping up. So, like some of the first companies that we partnered with, like Zehitomo, for example, you've had Jordan on your show. And like they were needing more than just like a coding monkey. They needed software engineers in, I would say like in the sense that Silicon Valley was kind of pushing out to the rest of the world.
Tim: Since we're talking about software engineering, let's talk about inputs and outputs. So, when students come into the program, they have no programming experience or a year or two, and then when they go out of the program, where do they go? Do they go to startups? Do they go to big enterprises?
Yan: For our flagship bootcamp, we require people to get to a particular level of knowledge. There is a bit of a filter there. There's all this free stuff online, and our program is not cheap. It's like about 1.3 million yen.
Tim: So, like what kind of filter do you have? Is it like Hello world? Is it like build a website or like…?
Yan: It's like in between that. So, it's definitely more difficult than, just being able to output Hello world. It's a technical interview. Basically it's like a beginner level technical interview.
Tim: But the goal is, it's a level that you feel most people can get to by studying on their own on the internet.
Yan: Absolutely. We wanted really serious people, right? Because we were seeing these jobs that paid better, that were like higher quality. And so we wanted to make sure that we were getting high quality people that we could train up. And to your second question, I think most of our students go to like SMEs. So, and that includes startups of course, but like, I think small, medium sized companies have been the ones most active in terms of hiring our graduates.
Tim: Interesting. Why do you suppose that is?
Yan: I think big companies really struggle when it comes to any sort of like career switch or midcareer hires. I mean, you have touched upon this, I think in previous episodes.
Tim: It's getting better, but it's still a challenge. It really is.
Yan: So, I think there have been big companies that have been interested, and actually Google hired one of our first graduates. But even though we might have supporters of ours in some of these big companies, oftentimes they are handcuffed by like HR policies that they can't do anything about. And so it's a bit more difficult. Whereas I think small, medium sized companies, they're a bit more nimble. They're also in a much more competitive environment when it comes to finding talent. Talent in Japan tends to flow towards large companies still. It's gotten way better, especially since we've started. But when it comes to businesses like at our size, for example, we have to compete a lot more heavily because we don't have the fancy name recognition that like a large company would have.
Tim: Yeah. That does make sense. The SMEs would be more likely to take a chance on exactly different type of education and something that's non-standard.
Yan: And I would say the graduates coming out of our program are non-standard. These are career changers. So,
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