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APT Women ACCELERATION PROGRAM IN TOKYO FOR WOMEN

Staff Blog

12-08-2018Report of 2nd ProgramIntroduction of the Silicon Valley dispatch in the 2nd Cohort Program

We brought five women entrepreneurs to the world’s most advanced innovative city, Silicon Valley, for ten days from August 1 to 11 to carry out the overseas dispatch program. In today’s post, we are going to give you an overview of this program.

The overseas dispatch program consists of compulsory programs in which all participants must participate and custom programs in which participants can plan business meetings, market research activities, etc. at their own discretion.

In the compulsory programs, the participants had opportunities to gain new perspectives and improve their business plans through having pitch sessions with business experts and receiving feedback from them, and listening to senior entrepreneurs describe their firsthand experiences.

In the custom programs, the participants were allowed to conduct any activities that would help their business expansion to the U.S., such as visiting retailers and incubators to hear their opinions on participants’ products and services, and having business meetings with potential business partners.

In this blog post, we are going to introduce you to some of the compulsory programs.

[Pitch session at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP]
The first program we would like to introduce is the pitch session at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.
In this session, the participants had an opportunity to receive various insightful feedback regarding business expansion to the U.S. from business legal affairs experts and top-notch female executives.
They gave different insights into what should be covered in a sales pitch, such as reasons why the participants wished to expand their business to the U.S., target customers, what kind of value they wanted to offer in the U.S., and what their business models look like.

 

[One-on-one mentoring]
The next program we would like to introduce is the “one-on-one mentoring” program held at UC Berkeley. The participants received advice on their business models and matters that should be covered in a sales pitch from Ms. Gigi, a lecturer specialized in entrepreneur training, and Ms. Fushida, a board member of VLAB, which runs events in Silicon Valley to connect entrepreneurs, experts in various industries, VCs, etc. Many important lessons were learned in this session, such as the importance of making messages clear and expressing them in a simple manner.

[Visiting Mr. Yoshitaro Kumagai at Fitbit, Inc.]
The last program we would like to introduce is the session program with Mr. Kumagai, a legendary Japanese businessperson who is Senior Advisor for FItbit. He shared the secrets to the success of startups based on his past experience as an entrepreneur, such as the importance of personal networks and the significance of luck and timing. It seemed that the participants learned an entrepreneurial mindset from Mr. Kumagai’s warm personality and each of his words, which were infused with strength and power.

 

All the participants gave us positive reviews of this dispatch program.
We are now working with the lecturers on a plan for the 3rd program, so that the next season will also be a great program to assist women entrepreneurs’ activities. Stay tuned and wait for future updates!