09
June
2008
|
06:27 AM
America/Los_Angeles

Tokyo Diary Day 2 - A Japanese Garage Startup . . .

We walk down a narrow alley and squeeze into a narrow room to meet with Mr Banganji and Mr Shimachi from a "garage" based Web 2.0 startup called Rinen. Their place seems more like a closet than a garage.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TauchMpPAQ8

We hear about several projects they are working on. We also hear about their challenges, especially in finding VCs willing to invest in early stage companies.

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One of their projects is called OpenTrace, a wiki-like database to calculate the carbon footprint of everything. This value could then be represented on the packaging of anything and help consumers make better decisions.



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[I'm on my first trip to Japan as a guest of Lunarr - a Portland based tech start-up founded by two Japanese entrepreneurs Toru Takasuka and Hideshi Hamaguchi. On the trip with me is Marshall Kirkpatrick from Read Write Web, Bob Walsh from 47Hats, and Kristen Nicole from Mashable.]