In this episode of The Orita Podcast, Aaron Schwartz sits down with Tetsuro Miyatake, CEO of Off Topic, one of Japan’s top tech podcasts, and investor at Harizury, for a global view of what’s next in commerce, content, and consumer tech.

Together, they unpack:

• Why Japan’s retail landscape may hold the key to DTC’s future and why most U.S. brands fail to break in

• The "attention + trust" equation: how AI is flooding the content market, and why effort and intimacy are the new creative currency

• What creators get wrong about building brands and how smart founders are hiring creators instead

• From Anchor to IRL pop-ups: how Tetsuro’s side project turned into a media powerhouse, and what U.S. brands can learn from Off Topic’s rise

• The Harizury playbook: what Tetsuro looks for when investing in early-stage software and DTC startups across both sides of the Pacific

👥 Meet the guest

Tetsuro Miyatake, CEO of Off Topic & Investment Manager at Harizury

🎙 Hosted by Aaron Schwartz, Co-Founder & Co-CEO at Orita.ai

🎧 Chapters

[00:00] How Orita Met Off Topic: When Founders and Podcasts Collide [02:42] From Side Hustle to Media Powerhouse: Off Topic’s Unlikely Rise [05:29] Why U.S. Brands Flop in Japan (and How to Get It Right) [08:07] Inside a VC’s Head: What Actually Gets Funded [11:01] Founders That Win: The Traits Investors Actually Bet On [13:48] Attention ≠ Impact: Why Marketing Is Broken (and How to Fix It) [16:21] AI Is Flooding the Feed, What Comes After Cheap Content [19:06] The New Gold Standard: Attention + Trust = Brand Equity [22:04] Creators over Celebrities: The New Face of Authentic Growth [24:59] From Clicks to Community: How IRL Builds Loyalty in 2026 [27:27] Startup Gaps Nobody’s Solving (Yet) [30:02] Cracking Japan: How to Actually Enter a Hyper-Savvy Market

Transcript:

Aaron Schwartz (00:01.102)

Hey everyone, very excited to host an investor and I will acknowledge Tetsuro and Harzuri invested before I even joined Arita, so I get no credit for this. But yeah, I'm the Arita podcast. I'm Aaron Schwartz, one of the co-founders of Arita. We build AI customer segments for a bunch of Klaviyo's biggest brands. Now we're jumping into ads, but Tetsuro, we can talk about that maybe offline as we get there.

Tetsuro (00:22.718)

Yeah.

Aaron Schwartz (00:26.062)

It's good to see you, man. I'd love for you to do a proper intro of yourself, your background. Don't be shy. Let us know how you got here and I'll follow up with 400 questions.

Tetsuro (00:35.294)

Well, thanks for having me on, Aaron. think it's great to be on the show and it's great to be an investor in Norita. I'm Tetsuro. I work really two hats. One is a company called Off Topic, which I'm the CEO of. It's a podcasting company. We're trying to do podcasts. We currently run three podcasts and one being a tech focused one, one being a retail focused one, and the last one being a VC focused one.

And then we also do consulting work on top of that. And then another extension of what I do is I work with a company called Harizuri, which is a conglomerate retail company based in Japan. We own about eight, nine brands underneath us. And the main one being a leather goods brand called Tsuchiya Kaban, nine figure revenue. We operate about 50 stores across Japan, leather goods, jewelry.

cut glass brand, kind of a bunch of different stuff. then, yeah, domestically we've acquired a few companies and we've also invested in a few companies. And in the US, we've invested in retail brands as well as retail software, as well as kind of retail adjacent companies as well.

Aaron Schwartz (01:49.484)

I love it. Thank you. I'm going to go off script. got too many questions for you. Good. Let's just go. I know you, you know, not that well. That's a little bit like well enough to, I feel comfortable kind of putting you on the hot seat. When you guys started off topic, was it always going to be, was it one podcast that turned into three? Is there more to go? Like what was the original conceit and how has it changed over time?

Tetsuro (01:53.694)

Hey, let's do it. Let's do it.

Tetsuro (02:11.774)

Yeah. So, so my background, I used to work at a VC firm in Japan. It's a tech company that also did VC investments. We were one of the first investors in Twitter and we brought Twitter into the Japanese market. I wasn't part of a team back then, but that's what that company did. Um, and this off topic podcast started off as a side project between me my cohost, my cohost being kind of the one with a little bit of background in media. She started a blog post.

in high school interviewing different founders. And this is back, you know, almost 10 years ago now, I think. But yeah, so she's the one who kind of made the proposition. Podcasts were like pretty big in the US at that time, especially among kind of the VC crowd. This is back in 2018. And I also was looking to potentially invest in a company called Anchor back then.

And I unfortunately wasn't able to make the investment, but I was always interested in the space and we decided to do it. And it started off again as a side project and it kind of went from there. So we had no expectations making this into a company.

Aaron Schwartz (03:14.09)

It is now though. So what is like, where's the company going? Like you guys are massive in Japan from everything I can tell. I like try it, you know, I can use Google Translate on some stuff, but I struggle. Like what's the audience? What are they getting from listening to you all?

Tetsuro (03:15.443)

Yes.

Tetsuro (03:27.858)

Yeah, so the main objective of what we do at Off Topic is provide nuance to a lot of our audience members. And specifically, the thing we kind of do is we talk about what's happening in the US contextually, not just kind of headlines and kind of like what is growing, but why things are growing, why things are kind of operating the way it is to the Japanese audience. And so our main Off Topic one, we talk about tech in general, we talk about business, we talk about culture.

And then we do a more niche version of that with our retail podcast called Serial Talk, which we also operate a newsletter, but that again is talking about the U.S. DTC economy to the Japanese audience. Again, it's this, a lot of people in Japan, they read and hear about things, what's happening in the U.S., but they don't fully understand it. And me kind of growing up in both cultures, I'm able to kind of put my foot.

in both doors and so I'm able to like translate the culture a little bit better.

Aaron Schwartz (04:27.466)

You went to Babson, right? So like you have the, my sense is you've always had like a very entrepreneurial spirit. Is that fair?

Tetsuro (04:29.212)

Yeah.

Tetsuro (04:34.224)

Yeah, think I joined Babson without knowing about its entrepreneurial program. So it was just really happenstance. But I think I was always kind of really interested in on that side of things, especially with like investing as well. And so after that, I joined a company in Japan, it's a VC firm. yeah, like they it was really eye opening kind of understanding the tech ecosystem and startup ecosystem.

Aaron Schwartz (05:01.09)

When you're looking at kind of what's happening in the US and you're trying to get the context, how much of this is like you guys are spending a ton of time researching companies and how much is just like you've been in the ecosystem for a long time and you're like, okay, cool, Amazon did their whatever, like buy with Amazon or whatever the buy for me product is, right? It's like you're seeing this and you like have enough context that you're already a good enough translator. Like how do you guys approach the building?

Tetsuro (05:16.796)

Yeah.

Tetsuro (05:23.474)

Yeah, I think we always have our kind of perspective on things, but it all starts off with a ton of reading and a ton of kind of information ingestion. And this is something, you know, I spend at least four or five hours a day just reading different articles, reading Twitter, reading all these different, you know, I'm subscribed to probably over 200 subsets at this point. And so it's constantly kind of digesting information and understanding from kind of the best experts and kind of piecing that together. Cause I think

One thing that's really interesting is you see people in a lot of different industries actually talk about the same thing, but in different ways. And so you're able to kind of tie all that together.

Aaron Schwartz (06:03.758)

What are some of the recent changes? I mean, we can jump into AI and gender commerce. We can completely avoid that. I don't really care. What are some of the things that have been most fascinating to you as you've been diving deep and that you're bringing to your audience?

Tetsuro (06:17.246)

Yeah, I always think with like, agentic commerce, with AI and how it affects marketing, how it affects different things, there's always kind of a direct effect and then there's always a secondary and tertiary effect. And I think oftentimes what we, off topic, try to focus on is what is the secondary, what is the tertiary effect, right? And so like a very common one that I always talk about is that sure, like AI is going to dramatically reduce the cost to create content.

and to create advertisements, create interesting creatives. But at the same time, that applies to everyone. And so if everybody starts creating content, then at some point, the cost of actually getting someone's attention is going to be higher and higher. And so yes, maybe the budget to create things decreases, but perhaps the cost to acquire a customer actually increases because of that. Or people have to shift their...

resources more towards brand marketing or different types of stuff. So I think like that those are type of things that we try to kind of talk about in our podcast.

Aaron Schwartz (07:24.204)

If you think about that one in particular, like obviously that speaks to a brand who's thinking about their customers across many different channels and it's easier for them and they might be ahead of the curve, but they're probably ahead of the curve by months, not years, right? It's not a competitive advantage necessarily. How much of what you're talking about do you think actually does extend kind of category by category or like industry by industry, probably better set like same for financial services, healthcare. And is it just like, it happens faster in commerce or you just know commerce better? Like, yeah.

Tetsuro (07:53.593)

I think commerce is one of the leading edges in terms of how the industry overall, how the economy overall evolves. think if you look at culturally, it usually starts off with culture and then it translates into physical consumer products and then it goes into consumer software.

And then three years down the line, comes into B2B. even if you see the design trends today, how they translate into the B2B space, it all comes usually from consumer founders translating their thoughts and designs into B2B work.

Aaron Schwartz (08:32.909)

feel like I'm talking to Philip and Brian in future commerce right now too. So this is great. You guys are okay. It is always fun when I bump into those guys and I'm like, you're legit living in a future that I am too lazy to like ever get towards, but I love it. And like, I like to consume it and learn and just like, wow, the world is cool.

Tetsuro (08:35.614)

I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan, so.

Aaron Schwartz (08:53.422)

I want to come back to the attention question because it's actually saying that we think a lot about and I'm, you you haven't gotten like a investor pitch from a rebound a long time, but obviously like our vision and how we think about the ecosystem is very much tied to that. But I am curious, can you share how.

you found Arita in the first place and like why you invested and from there I want to you know not specifically about us because the business from two years ago or whatever is like obviously different but I want to go into like how you think about investing in general so what was what was the kind of like initiation or like the evolution of your relationship with with DB and Zach and Arita?

Tetsuro (09:28.178)

Yeah, I think we met DB and we meaning me and Yuji, who's part of the Harvey Zeri team. We met DB through Matt from Matt Bauer from Faring. And we've been chatting with Matt every single time we visit New York. And just to kind of stay in touch, we were customers of Faring and we still are. And so that's how we kind of we contacted.

Aaron Schwartz (09:53.378)

That's me man Matt. Got it.

Tetsuro (09:56.051)

Yeah, yes. And so we just contacted Matt out of the blue saying, you know, we're customers. We want to chat. Like we want to learn more about you. We were actually considering investing at some point, but I think I ended up not working out. But yeah, from there, you know, Matt was kind enough to introduce us to DB. And this is super, super early. And, you know, we're like, you know, if Matt, if Matt's advising this company, like we're gonna, we're gonna say yes. And so that's.

That's how we ended up investing in Orita.

Aaron Schwartz (10:26.606)

It's very cool. think the first time I met you, were giving DB or like I literally like saw you in an escalator because I had come from a meeting and you were leaving shop talk giving DB really fancy whiskey and I was very jealous. I'm like, oh, I should have made the connection faster. But you got us some really delicious chocolate last time. So thank you. It was like the little cookies. It was beautiful.

Tetsuro (10:46.588)

Yeah, think we partially want to be known for giving out really good Japanese snacks and gifts.

Aaron Schwartz (10:50.476)

Yeah, you're like most investors aren't useful. We will at least give you snacks. this is great. All right. So you you're like obviously at the bleeding edge and thinking about trends in the industry. But then in a weird way compared to like many investors right now, you still invest in brands. But obviously you do the enablement you mentioned adjacent. How do you look at I mean, I've got a bunch of questions here. But let's start with like when you're inspecting a company at the earliest stages.

Tetsuro (10:55.516)

Yes.

Aaron Schwartz (11:16.898)

and you're thinking about the founders, are the attributes of like the Kevin from Emmy versus the DB from Arita, is it like you're looking for the same attributes or is there something different when you're thinking about a brand founder versus like a tech founder?

Tetsuro (11:29.874)

Yeah, I think our investment strategy at HorryZoo is a little bit different from kind of traditional venture, partially because it's more of a corporate venture capital, right? And so we have slightly different objectives. Obviously, we're always looking for a capital gain and a return on our investment, but there's additional kind of value that we kind of look for. One is just kind of how easy it is to communicate with the founders and how much they're willing to share with us.

because we're there obviously to potentially be customers, to potentially help, but we're also there to learn from the founders because the founders are at the cutting edge of different things. And so I can't tell you how many times Kevin from Amy, his investor updates or just talking to him, he mentions out of the blue a really interesting software that he's testing out in his company. And we look at it and...

That's honestly how we found some of the companies we've invested in as well. And so it's kind of learning from founders and seeing if we can apply it to our businesses. And I think that's something we pride ourselves in is we don't want to ask too much of founders, but when we do kind of sit down with them once a quarter or once or twice a year.

we kind of get the most out of it and kind of really learn from them what they're doing.

Aaron Schwartz (13:00.108)

Interesting. And then if you think about kind of like your request for startups right now, right? Like you could go meet with any company. Is it actually equal balance of commerce enablement versus brands? Are you more interested in one or the other at this point?

Tetsuro (13:13.64)

Yeah, I think this has shifted over time. think maybe a few years ago, we were a lot more focused on the software side and almost all of our investments were on the software side. I think a few years before that, it was more brands. And so it kind of goes back and forth. And I think the industry itself has gone back and forth. And I think Harley from Shopify said it best. I think we are in the golden era of brands again.

and so, you know, think currently some of our investments are a little bit more focused on, on the, on the brand side. think with software, think, especially with this AI, wave that we're seeing, we're always kind of questioning like how much is this kind of replaceable? How much can we actually build it ourselves? how much, you know, is Shopify going to build this? and so those are questions we're always kind of asking ourselves now.

Aaron Schwartz (14:10.542)

Yeah, it's interesting. mean, like we've, we were very fortunate to work with Emmy. I think I actually met Kevin when he was at Pear. I'm pretty sure I picked Kevin on passport shipping, my old company. I think I was trying to figure this out. So obviously like just, you know, it's like we're buddies, but I followed the LinkedIn journey. We worked with Isabel there and they're just like a wonderful business. But I know like going to subscription was a very big piece for them. When you're looking at the brand side in particular, are there certain attributes of companies where you think these are the ones that are, you know, you guys

Tetsuro (14:18.295)

Okay.

Aaron Schwartz (14:41.528)

might have dual purposes, but you still do want that capital return. there's, you know, there's still like some venture scale outcomes that you're looking for. What are the best brands doing today?

Tetsuro (14:51.506)

Yeah, think the best brands, especially early on today that we see, are ones that understand where consumer behavior and attention are headed. And so it's a mixture. So one is

marketing side, is exactly that, which I mentioned, they have essentially a hack or an insight about how to acquire customers, right? And that could be a creator, you know, leveraging his audience. That could be, you know, someone, you know, like Comfort doing incredibly well with their TikTok. We're not investors or anything, but, you know, they've done incredibly well. And then the second side is product. I think, you know, at Hari Zuri, we operate multiple brands where our products are handcrafted. Like, do we have a

you know, a very, very focused mission around craftsmanship. so, you know, any company, I think more than ever now in the US today, I think more, more DTC brands or more brands are focused on craft and actually building good product. You saw this with some of the companies most recently that have kind of popped off, but yeah, I think, you know, it's a mixture of kind of, is it a good product?

And then, yeah, do they have a marketing kind of insight that we haven't seen before?

Aaron Schwartz (16:07.704)

I mean, there's something like the great brain or the authenticity, think really stands out on the companies that are scaling quickly. This also goes back to your comment earlier about attention, right? It's like in a world where everybody's gonna have great creative and they can hit you up in a thousand channels. It's like, how do you really stand out? I see that as like partially it's gotta be an awesome product. Cause if it's not there, you you're gonna lose word of mouth or word of mouth is gonna go the wrong way, right? Obviously in group's repeat purchases. But then having their authentic voice like,

Tetsuro (16:18.344)

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Schwartz (16:37.794)

talking to people when you have something they can use, right? Information they can use. It could just be because it's fun, right? It could be like a Chubby's type of brand. Yeah, it's really interesting.

Tetsuro (16:42.91)

Mm-hmm.

Tetsuro (16:49.352)

Yeah, I think on the product side, think we're a little bit more, we're a little bit different in a sense because I think we're from Japan. And I think if you've ever been to Japan, there's this insane culture around craftsmanship and building good product. And Japanese consumers in general are much more focused on functions and features rather than the brand or the narrative.

at least for most of the products you see. And they're really cheap as well. And so I think this is also why a lot of US consumer brands, it's hard for them to enter the Japanese market because if you go to a convenience store, there's so many good things at such a cheap price that it's going to be insanely hard to compete.

Aaron Schwartz (17:37.56)

why I use Muji notebooks and I buy them in bulk. And I'm like, this is the best quality notebook at the cheapest price and it's consistent and I love it. Yeah, man, I've had the pleasure, I haven't spent enough time in Japan, but I've been in Tokyo a few times and we actually went skiing in Niseko, which was just unbelievable. I'm not even a skier and I was like, this is the greatest place.

Tetsuro (17:39.166)

Yes, yes, exactly. Yes.

Tetsuro (17:52.562)

Nice, nice.

Yeah, there's by the way, it's it's so overcrowded now. There's there's other places to go now as well. And the snow is beautiful in so many places in Japan.

Aaron Schwartz (18:04.558)

Yeah, don't know if we're gonna be able to afford another trip there. So this isn't, I will no longer be kind of filling up the mountains, falling down all the time for everybody. I wanna linger on the attention side just for a minute because this is something we think a lot about, which is like, you know, I ran a brand for a long time. That was kind of how I kind of stumbled into e-commerce in 2010, but then it was funny enough, this is actually the t-shirt from our brand. We did like a Kickstarter in 2014 and this is one of the prizes.

Aaron Schwartz (18:34.478)

At the time it was very easy, right? Like you could go and you could get anybody on Facebook, I was gonna say Meta, but anybody on Facebook and they were to sign up. And then like when you post it, everybody would see it and it was wonderful. And then all of a it started to be throttled. And then every single channel obviously gets throttled quickly. What we are seeing in the ecosystem today is like, if you are a brand, you have more channels than ever to reach your customer. And within many channels, obviously like WhatsApp and TikTok, like WhatsApp and TikTok, but within email you could use Klaviyo, you could use...

You know, like, obviously MailChem, you could use it or you could use Braze, you could use anything. But what we are seeing is all of our brands and everybody's focused on the content, which makes sense, and the personalization, which is cool. But if everybody else is also focusing on that, the place where we see the problem is like, actually, there's just a lot of noise. I mean, I feel it in my inbox. I don't subscribe to any like newsletters, but even just like inbound emails from like every single topic in the world.

is overwhelming. Do you think that is like a uniquely US phenomenon? Is that something that you guys are seeing in Japan as well? Like I'm not sure how narrow my worldview is on this one.

Tetsuro (19:43.859)

Yeah, I think it depends on kind of channel, right? Like newsletters are not a thing in Japan that much. then like SMS isn't a thing, but Line, which is essentially the WhatsApp of Japan, is a thing. And so like you see different channels being inundated with different brands. You know, I have a, there's a really good quote by Gary Vaynerchuk and he says, you know, marketers ruin everything. And.

Aaron Schwartz (19:47.491)

Thank

Tetsuro (20:11.806)

I absolutely think this is true because marketers, their job is to find the next under undervalued attention and then they go into it and then everybody starts going into it. Right. And so now like newsletters are a big thing. I think newsletter specifically is, is really, it's really interesting and important for brands because more and more social media is, is turning into kind of a tick tock ask.

Aaron Schwartz (20:18.316)

Yeah.

Tetsuro (20:37.694)

and so it's harder for you to reach directly to your followers and your fans, and newsletters and email is one of the few places, or SMS, that's left to actually do that.

Aaron Schwartz (20:50.786)

We think about that in terms of like, it feels cheap.

but it's actually really expensive because when you take risk and I unsubscribe, like I'm gone forever versus, know, DB talks a lot about with ads. It's like, you can't really stop me from advertising to you. Like you may like, like, this ad is annoying, but like, I'll make it to chip with a, you know, out of home ad on the highway. And there's plenty of options, but I think, I don't know if there's actually a shift yet. We are definitely fundamental believers that like thinking about emails and cheap channels, absolutely the wrong way to do it. It's like wildly expensive if you like take risk without upside.

Tetsuro (21:09.118)

You

Tetsuro (21:20.606)

Definitely.

Aaron Schwartz (21:23.278)

By the way, we were just in Taiwan, and we went to the Brown House, and we got a lot of photos with Brown. So I appreciate LINE as not a user, but the character is just like, just get me very much.

Tetsuro (21:33.69)

Yes. And kind of going back to your point about attention, I think a lot of people talk about attention wars and how it's harder and harder to get attention. think that's a I think there's a more nuanced way of putting it where I think off topic, we talked about this since 2020 is it's no longer just about attention, it's about attention and trust. So it's the attention and trust economy. And so you have to kind of combine both.

in order to do well. And this is why creators do a much better job than traditional celebrities online because they build the trust through multiple daily vlogs or to different ways. so I think this attention and trust dynamic is what brands need to focus on a little bit.

Aaron Schwartz (22:19.756)

think about the creator economy and so I want to think about this in terms of D to C, right? So not you're getting sponsored or whatever. Is there a way for creator, there's clearly a path for creators to build a brand, right? Like we see it, there's like Rode and Mr. Beast and yada, yada, yada, fine. Is there a way for creator to be involved more on the like...

Tetsuro (22:24.83)

Mm-hmm.

Tetsuro (22:28.764)

Yeah.

Aaron Schwartz (22:44.846)

tech side or like literally as a partner of or do you think it's like actually the best creators who build that trust like it has to be their own brand because like otherwise they can't really kind of stamp the authenticity tied to somebody else.

Tetsuro (22:58.514)

Yeah, I don't think they have to have their own brand. think oftentimes that's a mistake. think you see a lot of creator brands popping up in the last three years or so. Most of them have failed. Most of them are not going to do that well, or they'll get the first million and then they won't continue. I've talked to the Feastables team before and the reason why they're special and the reason why they can continue to do well is

Aaron Schwartz (23:04.291)

Hmm.

Tetsuro (23:26.536)

partially because MrBeast keeps growing, but also partially because they have the right dedicated team to it. And so I think, you know, one thing that brands should think more about is hiring creators and kind of integrating them as part of their team. And it doesn't have to be large creators, right? I think Grazza did this extremely well when they first started. They hired a creator to reach out to other creators as well and to also post content for them. So I think, you know, it's...

How do you involve more more creators, both internally but also externally is I think the biggest question for brands.

Aaron Schwartz (24:03.334)

with my watch company, were print on demand and then we turned it into a marketplace. And one of the things, and we completely stumbled on this, we did a partnership with a woman, I think her name was Catherine Lowe. She was like the first or second bachelorette, like literally no recollection, this is a decade ago and I'm not cool, I'm not up to speed on pop culture. And we must have sold $50,000 of watches and they were just like, it was...

Tetsuro (24:18.91)

Mm.

Aaron Schwartz (24:32.461)

designed by her. It wasn't like the best watch ever, but it was just, and you know, we gave her a huge rev share and then we started doing this.

The philosophy that we actually got down to was finding micro-influencers or nano-influencers, whatever we were saying at the time, which was the idea of like, and even as silly as, our kids were born at UCSF. And so it was like, UCSF hospitals could do a watch. People who care deeply about their organization, there might be 35 people, but if they do a 20 % donation, something, something tied to it. And so.

for a long time I've thought about this side of it and you kind of just led into this with Grazza. How much can, is it about like finding the niche audiences or is it better to go get the one or two big guys or is it like it truly is brand dependent?

Tetsuro (25:18.718)

I think it is partially branded dependent. think the general strategy that I think you see today is you go after more nano and micro influencers. And I think this is a byproduct of the current attention channels that we live in today. So if you look at TikTok, most people aren't going to see the content of people they follow.

Right. Most of the content you see are from people you don't follow. And so by that logic, if you pay a ton of money to one creator, you know, who has, you know, a hundred millions followers on, on tick-tock, you know, maybe a few million, we'll see them. Right. Versus if you pay the same money and hire 300 creators to post, you know, one or two content per day for a month. Right.

you're gonna be able to flood the TikTok feeds enough so that people are gonna be more interested in it. Plus the content looks more authentic because it looks like it's more regular people promoting the product.

Aaron Schwartz (26:30.146)

interesting. there are there kind of going back to the off topic discussion? Are there other channels that you see starting to pop up more for brands like obviously TikTok and you know we're talking about it but is there anything new that's kind of in the offing?

Tetsuro (26:43.912)

Yeah, I a lot of people talk about in real life. think this year you're going to see a lot of brands do IRL activations. And I talked about this in off topic at the end of last year. One of the key themes that we're starting to see is how do you build shared intimacy? And I talk about shared in two different ways. Shared being it's shareable.

A lot of people will take video of it and share it, creating UGC content. And then the other shared is it's a shared experience. So people want more shared experiences and they want to experience things together. And so how do you create those moments? It's really hard to do that online. And so being able to do that offline is going to be, think, key for a lot of folks. so like last year, this isn't commerce related, but Ramp, which they have a corporate card.

They did this really, really good live event using Brian, who was one of the actors in the office, and they did a live activation there. They got a lot of impressions. They got a lot of people just posting videos. so think live streams, IRL stuff, that all contributes to this idea of kind of shared intimacy.

Aaron Schwartz (28:05.368)

I like it. I'm so sick of being in our basement and working, so this definitely resonates.

Tetsuro (28:08.734)

Well, I think it's partially why things like, know, like activity based communities have really popped up in the last one or two years, right? Running clubs, chess clubs, all these things. People crave kind of being together in one place. And it's really hard to find that. And so I think if as a brand, you can create those moments. It's like Nike, think in China, they did a shop, they did like a pop-up where they sell soup.

Right? It's like, you can be kind of weird and out about, and it can still work.

Aaron Schwartz (28:45.454)

Thanks for walking through this. I've been on the commerce tech side since 2017, but I deeply miss running a brand specifically because you can literally go do this, go be creative, bring the community together. Like in a more genuine way, connect with your customers, I think, is pretty cool and have them connect with each other.

Tetsuro (29:05.266)

Yeah, I think for brands, it's really, and I think this also applies to software companies as well. I think a lot of people focus on IRL as like a channel. I think the overall idea behind this is to, how do you show effort as a brand? How do you show that you care? And IRL is one way to do it now that makes sense. In the past, instead of the reason why Infographics as a social media

content used to work much better than before is because it was a lot harder to make. And so people appreciated the effort that you would put into it. And so that's why they're more willing to share it. It's harder to be copied as well. But now with AI, it's a lot easier. With Gemini, it's really easy to make an infographic at this point.

Aaron Schwartz (29:52.494)

We finally got onto an AI market map and now you're telling me that I should discount it because they probably just pulled it together.

Tetsuro (29:58.985)

Well, it's It's not gonna be as valuable, right? And so I think, for brands and for people who wanna kind of build attention, I think the question is, how do you showcase that you're kind of putting the effort in? And so like behind the scenes content is gonna be so much more important now, right? Like think Rode and like a few other kind of...

companies have done this where they not only show the creative of the ad, they show how they made it because, you know, the transition that they used or like the effects that they use were really special. so they showcase kind of the behind the scenes and that post sometimes gets even more attention than the actual post itself.

Aaron Schwartz (30:39.406)

Very cool. I love the framing, thank you. I was thinking when you started down the behind the scenes perspective, was like how we literally make it and here's how mold is made in Shenzhen and like this is, you know.

Tetsuro (30:49.66)

I, that, that could definitely work as well. Right. And so there's a lot of different types of behind the scenes content you can make. Right. And You can also fictionalize behind the scenes content as well. So like a really good example of this most recently is, you know, the, movie Marty Supreme, Timothy Chalamet, he had this like zoom kind of, zoom call that was fictionalized, but it was part of a promotion and like that went incredibly viral.

But that was kind of a manufactured intimacy or manufactured kind of behind the scenes. So I think you're gonna see a lot of different brands play around with this. But I think the overarching theme is how do you show the effort?

Aaron Schwartz (31:28.184)

I like it. We are going to show Zach and DB and and Ogni, our ML engineer and our data science team, just like building out a customer segment. Literally the most boring.

Tetsuro (31:36.783)

Yeah

Tetsuro (31:40.702)

But I think you'll find like a tech crowd, for example, really appreciate that, right? So yeah. That's right. That's right.

Aaron Schwartz (31:44.334)

Yeah, it'll be you. That's a throw in Matt and Matt from Farrington. This is exciting. No, thank you. It's very cool. All right, two kind of themes left that I want to talk to you about. One is.

problem spaces, opportunities? Like, where do you think if you're talking to people who are thinking about entrepreneurship or, you know, existing companies that are like adding new stuff, like what are some of the problem spaces that you think haven't been explored enough? And then the second question will be more tactical about international expansion. let's start with the like kind of requests for startups. What problems do you want to see solved?

Tetsuro (32:20.702)

Yeah, it's a really hard question. think there's so many different problems in the world. And because I'm interested in so many different spaces, it's really hard for me to answer this. I think there's a lot of questions about how organizations operate, how, you know,

transactions are done, how to build relationships all in this AI era that are not answered yet. And this relates to commerce, this relates to kind of org structures, this relates to a bunch of different stuff that I don't think are, you know, that are really answered. I think, so this idea of like AI native startups that you see way too often now are not actually AI native startups, right? They're AI enabled startups.

And so I think, how do you kind of rethink things from a zero basis, right? How do you think about Slack from a zero basis? How do you think about, is chat jbt, is that the right structure in terms of actually building a relationship with a customer for them to buy something? How do you actually build in an era where more and more traffic is being consumed by these AI chat bots? All these different things like,

I think, yeah, how do you build kind of these direct relationships is going to be a big question that I think hasn't been answered for a lot of brands.

Aaron Schwartz (33:57.294)

I think you interviewed Sarah Do recently. You're building something like a Slack from the ground up, is that right? Sarah, was, I am an investor in Alloy. Like definitely the smallest investor from God knows how long ago. So I was like, yeah, okay, we'll compete and see who's the smallest one. I still wear my Alloy sweater every once in a while, which is kind of great. Yeah, I'm excited to see what she's building.

Tetsuro (33:59.806)

Yeah.

Tetsuro (34:03.636)

That's what she says.

Tetsuro (34:12.369)

Likewise, we're very small investors.

Yeah

Tetsuro (34:20.893)

You

Aaron Schwartz (34:25.386)

All right, maybe the last theme just tactically. Talk to me if we want to, like I'm running a brand still and I'm thinking about international expansion. Generically, how should I think about it, but specifically like entering the Japanese market, like how would I do that in a strategic way?

Tetsuro (34:42.248)

Yeah, think understanding it's a very different culture in Japan. It's going to be a lot easier for you to go international in other places usually first. But I think the first question is, do you have somewhat of a dedicated fan base in Japan? Because Japanese people really like American stuff. And if they haven't found your stuff already, then it's probably going to be a red flag.

test the market out in that sense of looking on different websites in Japan. There's a few that specifically sell imported goods as well. so looking at that. And then I think figuring out who to partner with, what the right method of going into the market. Is it going to be just the commerce first? Is it going to be a storefront?

most Japanese customers prefer stores rather than e-commerce, especially in Tokyo. Within Tokyo, Tokyo is such a large place.

Do you sell in Ginza versus Harajuku versus Shibuya? All these different places have very different demographics, depending on who you're targeting. It's very similar to the US, right? Like selling in New York and even within New York, right? Selling in Soho versus Upper East Side versus Upper West Side, all that stuff changes. And it's exact same thing in Japan. So really understanding customer base and then seeing how can you kind of apply it to them is, think, the biggest question.

Aaron Schwartz (36:19.374)

Great. Thank you. You know, it's very interesting from passport shipping days, right? If everybody, you had your like map of where US brand ships, it's like 50 or 60 % in Canada, 20 or 30 % UK, maybe 10 % Australia, and then 10 % rest of the world, 5%. You know, it was like something like that, almost without fail. And there were so few brands that had a big presence in Japan, though those that did, it was like, if you're there, you're there, right? It was obviously very much held onto.

That's all, thank you. This has been really fun. The last questions for you, and you can choose not to answer if you don't want to. You have to answer one of them. I definitely want you to let everybody know where to find you and where to follow you. And then if there was any other takeaways, you shared a lot here, but anything, even if you said it, you just want to double click on that you wanted to share with the audience, please.

Tetsuro (36:57.927)

Okay.

Tetsuro (37:10.76)

Yeah, I think both at Off Topic and Harziri, what we're always looking to do is kind of help bridge the gap between Japan and the US, whether that's through helping brands expand, brands and software kind of expand between the two countries or kind of test the market, kind of see what it's like, or if they just want to understand. And so, you know,

If anyone who's listening to this is interested in just learning about Japan, of trying to understand what it's like, feel free to reach out to me. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Twitter. I'm very active on Twitter, although it's all in Japanese. so yeah, if LinkedIn, just find me by my name. On Twitter, it's think Tmiatake1. And so.

Yeah, I think what we're always looking for is really interesting founders, regardless of whether we invest in them, to chat with them and to learn from them. We usually make at least three trips at least to the US every year. If you're around, we'd love to come see everybody. then Aaron, think we've only...

met in person maybe twice. Yeah. Yeah. I think Beanstalk was the last time we actually kind of chatted. And so, you know, we'll have to catch up again.

Aaron Schwartz (38:35.35)

So last time I literally walked by in a park. was great.

Aaron Schwartz (38:47.854)

I'll see you early this year, We're gonna be showing out. We're gonna do as many in real life, IRL as a kid said, events. We've got stuff coming up at NRF and then at ETAL and then at Shop Talk. We're already scheduling it out. We're doing a bunch of Klaviyo events. So I'll be on a plane a lot this year. So I'm excited to see you. All right, man. Well, thank you. This was very fun. Appreciate you taking the time.

Tetsuro (38:53.213)

Nice.

Tetsuro (39:04.734)

Yeah, excited to see you.

Yep. Thank you.

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