I've rarely, if ever, seen such incredibly high readings from my bullshit-o-meter. But yeah, if you believe that "the best data" and "the best algorithms" merely need to come together (and will do so "through competition") to make useful, competent AI (with an actual "I" in there) a reality, I guess that's pretty cool stuff.
That's not true. You just need more examples of leaders who are engineering focused but can also get business stuff done.
Unfortunately, the US has been taking Japanese talent to big companies and startups over here. Hopefully some of that talent stays there to BUILD and sell stuff.
It's about damn time the Japanese get back into entrepreneurialism.
I walked around Tokyo seeing waves of people going to work and thinking, "there's way too much group think here" which I later learned is part of asian culture.
It's about time they get back into building solutions instead of slaving away as salarymen.
They work long hours, but it's not that they are working super hard. Of course, it's a general statement, but definitely true when it comes to large corporations that constitute a large chunk of employers in Japan, especially for college students.
Funny, because people who grew up in post war Japan where they had nothing to lose and everything to gain, are some of the most driven and fearless entrepreneurs I've met.
Once the country prospered, not taking risks became the logical choice, and I'd there's anything that characterizes modern Japan, it's rationalism.
At which point in history was japan ever a huge entrepreneurial society? The business success that I hear about most from japanese companies is often taking an idea and making it better, not necessarily being the first to innovate.
Though I guess I'm conflating being enterprising with being innovative, when the vast majority of enterprises aren't neccesarily innovative.
Also, while I somewhat agree with the sentiment that japan should do more to spur people to innovate, I don't think that many other countries are much different, people just drive to work at the random job that doesn't really mean anything to them, rather than walk/ride trains. Also not sure that every single asian culture demonstrates this strong group think...
Instacart's biggest issue is not knowing real-time inventory. Amazon will never have this issue, because they just bought Whole Foods. Instacart, on the other hand, relies on crowdsourced shopper data to manage this.
The results is basically a hit and miss experience. My guess is they hope to get this inventory data direct from the stores one day, but who knows if they will.
I've heard the toy analogy with the iPhone or Facebook before. When you look at the front page of YC, most of the successful companies are either 1) Enterprise (Dropbox) or 2) Consumer Facing (Instacart, Airbnb, etc.)
It's actually quite rare, Aaron, that they end up like Twitch or Reddit but I get your point.
