Urara is a Co-Founder of Omotete, an early stage startup building a solution to simplify access to menstrual pads.
Starting her own company comes to no surprise as she has a history of starting organisations while in school. For example, she founded an NPO called Your School which provides educational and social support to hospitalized children or Anchor to make school trips more joyful for students. She is also interested in urban engineering for which she recently started a PhD at the University of Tokyo before pausing it to pursue her passion with Omotete.
The reason why I wanted to talk to her is to better understand her entrepreneurial spirit and to get a pulse on the next generation of founders who are taking over the Femtech market in Japan.
Thanks for joining and please enjoy my conversation with Urara!
This podcast is presented by Japan's Venture Academy: https://linktr.ee/jvacademy
It was brought to you by Kento: https://twitter.com/kentaki_fried
For feedback, please reach out to jvl.podcast@gmail.com
GUEST INFO
Urara’s twitter: https://twitter.com/uraratakaseki
Omotete: https://en.omotete.jp/
OUTLINE
1. About you and Omotete
[02:20] What’s Omotete and how did you found it?
[03:55] Which product will you launch with Omotete?
[04:51] Are there existing solutions to access menstrual pads in public in Japan?
[06:46] Why did you choose this business and not another?
[09:06] What is your most memorable learning from running Omotete?
[09:37] What keeps you in Japan?
[12:07] What drives you to take on new challenges?
[13:42] What makes you Japanese and what does not?
2. The Femtech market in Japan
[15:40] What does Femtech mean?
[17:01] How would you describe the current state of the Femtech market in Japan
[19:17] What makes Japan’s Femtech market different from others?
[23:34] Which Femtech products do you find interesting in Japan?
[27:48] How do you evaluate which products to trust and which ones to not trust?
[29:45] Do most product innovations come from big companies?
[31:05] What should the Femtech market start, stop and continue doing to improve?
3. Rapid Fire questions
[35:46] What would you be doing if it’s not allowed to be startup related?
[36:08] What advice would you give aspiring student founders in Japan?
[36:42] What does Japan need to blossom?