500 Startups family rocks - Meetup at B Dash on April 2nd
A meetup with 500 Startups mentors and friends was held on April 2nd Monday at B Dash Ventures located at the center of Tokyo. As it was a typical 500 Startup style i.e. guerrilla gathering, we decided to hold this on Sunday and did on Monday.
In addition to 500 family, diverse entrepreneurs from Tokyo-based communities such as BRIDGE got together. More women than other startup events in Japan -- Naoko, Aki, and Eiko came from SPARK!, a women entrepreneur group.
Three guests from the Bay Area: Elliot Loh , Elle Luna , Brenden Mulligan , Elliot and Brenden are 500 Startups mentors which I am, too.
Brenden and Emi Takemura@Orinoco Peatix, a 500 family company
Hiroyuki Fukuhara (center) @Cinemacraft, a 500 family company, and two e-commerce entrepreneurs, Eiko Muramatsu and Sunao Munakata
Maxwell@B Dash and Elliot; We thank B Dash Ventures. Nabe-chan, CEO, B Dash was too sick to join us, but kindly let us use its office for this sudden event.
Naomi Kumazawa, Akiko Naka, and Elle
Akiko Naka, Brenden, and Yukari Mitsuhashi
Shoko Sakurai and Kaz Kubota
Elliot, Brenden, Elle and Japanese startups (pic by Yukari)
Elliot, Brenden, Elle, thanks a lot for joining us and great advise to Japanese startups.
This sort of small meetup is a fun and a great opportunity for socializing and communicating each other indepth. Since most of us were so excited, we extended the meetup by one hour. Many were in "flow", such a zone. Let's do this again.
A few tweets:
Brenden Mulligan @mulligan:
@500 Startups meetup in Tokyo with @loh and @elleluna. Big table of beer, typical of a @500... (at B DASH Lab) [pic] — http://path.com/p/3UM9lL
Elliot Loh @loh
Great to see a lively startup scene in Tokyo, plus many female entrepreneurs. Thank you, Shuji Honjo, B Dash @mulligan @elleluna! #500strong
Shuji Honjo @shonjo
500 Startups family rocks! RT @mulligan: big thanks to @shonjo for organizing and hosting a great @500 & friends meetup tonight in Tokyo!
Blog -- Naoko Tsubaki | Advice from 500startups mentors at meetup