Business cards are far more important in Asia than they are in the West. Business cards command the same level of respect and deference as the person they belong to. Here in Japan, there are many times when a business conversation cannot get underway until all cards have been exchanged and everyone knows exactly who they are dealing with.

It's really no surprise then that Japan's fastest-growing business-networking and CRM platform, Sansan, uses business cards as their model. While LinkedIn, based on the Western notion of business networking, has been slow to gain traction in Japan Sansan has been growing at an amazing pace, and they are now expanding into the US and southeast Asia.

Chiaka and I sit down for a frank talk about business card culture and the challenges in moving into overseas markets.

Show Notes
- Today's Japanese business card etiquette, and how it is changing
Achieving a good product fit across multiple markets
- Why Chika's decision to start Sansan in Japan rather than America helped him grow
- Practical advice for big-company employees who want to start their own venture
- How to get large companies to work with small startups
- Some positive government efforts to promote entrepreneurship in Japan
- Japan's new angel investors and how they are changing the venture capital game