What’s it like to have Audrey Tang as your startup mentor?

J-STORIES - Taiwan’s digital prodigy Audrey Tang personally mentored three Japanese startups at the launch of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's “Premium Mentoring” program, providing a rare opportunity for Japanese startups to receive direct advice from a prominent mentor.  

Taiwan's former digital minister and current cyber ambassador-at-large was invited to kick off Tokyo’s state-run program, aimed at helping Japanese startups grow and succeed on the world stage.

After a 30-minute, all-English one-on-one session with Tang at Tokyo’s flagship startup support hub Tokyo Innovation Base (TiB), Shingo Otobe said he had a renewed respect for Taiwan’s digital icon, adding that Tang’s advice from an Asian perspective resonated with him. 

“What left the deepest impression on me was the advice offered from an engineer’s perspective—not just technical guidance, but insights into business strategies enriched by Eastern culture and philosophy,” said Otobe, CEO of Ibaraki-based startup Lightz, which develops AI systems that help clients – such as artisans and craftsmen – turn their expert knowledge and skills into data and transfer them to other people. 

“In conversations with Silicon Valley investors and stakeholders, the focus often leans toward how to win in a competitive environment,” said the mentee. “However, today’s mentoring session centered on where we should aim and what we need to prepare to get there.”

Tang stressed the importance of pursuing “plurality” over “singularity" in her keynote speech.

 “In Taiwan, ‘digital’ also means ‘plurality’ — more than one, many, diversity.” Tang explained. “So being a digital minister is also being a minister for plurality.” Known for co-founding a successful IT company at just 16, Tang, who is transgender, also emphasized the importance of sustainability and other “pro-social” values for entrepreneurs.

“My message to all of you startup people is to think about how to shift from the extractive economy model to a sustainable, high-tech model,” said Tang.

“For your startup, it’s important to build an ecosystem, not just a company. I’m sure that here in Asia, like in Japan and Taiwan, this is our default mode of action,” Tang said. “More and more, we’re seeing around the world that people see this as the right way to develop sustainable emerging technologies, without having the singularity-like colonization of the rest of the world.”

Tang’s speech was followed by a discussion session that explored how artificial intelligence and digital technology are changing society. The session was joined by Ren Ito, COO of Sakana AI, the Japanese startup that achieved unicorn status within its first year of operation, making it a standout in Japan’s tech ecosystem.

The Tokyo-based unicorn develops nature-inspired artificial intelligence models. Sakana AI aims to create a new type of foundational AI by drawing inspiration from nature’s efficiency, particularly through concepts like collective intelligence, similar to the behavior of bee colonies. 

“We wanted to do the extremely opposite of Open AI,” said Ito, referring to the developer of generative AI giant ChatGPT. “We come from an open-source background, and we thought, ‘Let’s make AI more sustainable, and let’s make sure it benefits the local community—like Japan.’”

Writing by Toshi Maeda

Editing by Mark Goldsmith 

Top photo by J-Stories (Toshi Maeda)

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