Tech Hubs in Tokyo: Incubators and Co-Working Spaces

Because I'm working with others on developing a downtown tech hub in Galway, I was interested in visiting a few of the Tokyo tech hubs while here.

I found a great map that shows many of the Tokyo tech hubs, and I extracted the names and web addresses of these hubs from the map (incubators, accelerators, co-working spaces, etc.) - plus one or two more - for the list at the end of this post.

I met up with some Irish guys yesterday for what we called a "hub crawl".

We first went to a tech hub called Digital Garage. It was pretty impressive: their incubator is called Open Network Space, and I found out that Joi Ito (whom I remember from my Web 2.0 days, he is now director of MIT Media Lab) was a co-founder.

They have also invested in Twitter, Betaworks, and other cool companies.

Some pics are here:


https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=62377636@N00&tags=onlab

We then went to Impact HUB Tokyo, part of a global network of Impact HUBs, and set up by a woman called Shino Tsuchiya who was inspired by her time at Impact HUB Westminister.

That was cool too – great kitchen/community space, fantastic co-working area, and a very interesting toilet!

Some more pics are here:


https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=62377636@N00&tags=hubtokyo

Lots of pentagonal / hexagonal tables in both spaces – good for working around and the hexes can be connected together into interesting and useful collaborative shapes.



After some fantastic sushi (om nyom) near Ebisu, we went back to HUB Tokyo for an event called FuckUp Nights Tokyo (all about lessons in failure from startup entrepreneurs; one was actually held in Dublin last night too).



Three entrepreneurs told us of their epic fail stories, and one of them with some brave honesty showed us his bank account statement at the beginning and the end of a year in operation, during which he blew some $300k+. Another told us of a deal worth €125M that went south.

I really enjoyed our hub crawl and hope to visit some more tech hubs in Tokyo soon.

Here's the aforementioned list of tech hubs in Tokyo:

• 0->1 Booster
• Archetype
• B Dash Lab by B Dash Ventures
• BOAT by Voyage Ventures
• Creative Lounge MO
• FabCafe
• HUB Tokyo
• IMJ Ventures
• Incubate Fund
• Initiative for Development of Entrepreneurship in Asia
• J-Seed
• Jelly Jelly Cafe Tokyo
• KDDI Mugen Labo
• Kronos Fund
• Lightningspot
• Midori.so
• MONO by Samurai Incubate
• Movida Japan, Inc.
• NetAge Startup Program by NetAge
• NEW'S BASE by NOMAD
• Open Network Lab
• PAX Coworking
• Shimokitazawa Open Source Cafe
• Startup Base Camp by Cyber Agent
• ten-to
• Venture Generation
• Ventures Samurai Startup Island by Samurai Incubate

(And here's another useful list of startup incubators, in Japanese.)

 

Found a cool tool called Mosaic Maker that allows you to create mosaics of albums, so here are some mosaics of...

HUB Tokyo



...and...

Open Network Space