What you'll learn

• 1 (00:00) **Introducing Akemi Tsunagawa & The Labor Crisis Opportunity** - The host sets up the episode in Tokyo, explaining the macro context of Japan's labor shortage and introducing Akemi as the founder of Bespoke, who has built three businesses addressing this core problem.
• 2 (03:53) **“Faking It” Until It Works: The Do-Not-Scale Chatbot** - Akemi reveals the scrappy origin of her first startup, where she and her team acted as humans pretending to be a bot to validate demand and learn user behavior.
• 3 (04:53) **The Narita Airport Breakthrough & Building In-House Tech** - Akemi describes how a major customer (Narita Airport) validated the concept, forcing the team to build their own translation and chat technology from scratch.
• 4 (06:21) **Understanding the Japanese Tourism Boom** - The conversation pivots to the root causes of Japan's popularity and the resulting "overtourism" problem, which creates both business opportunities and cultural friction.
• 5 (10:33) **Cultural Tips for Visitors** - A brief, practical segment on how to be a respectful tourist in Japan, offering specific behavioral advice.
• 6 (14:06) **The Demographic Crisis: Why Population is Shrinking** - Akemi explains the second major problem her businesses solve: the severe and accelerating population decline, which creates a labor shortage that tourism alone cannot fix.
• 7 (17:10) **Be Trained: Solving the Skills Gap with Video** - Akemi introduces her second business, which uses smart glasses and video to train foreign workers who don't speak Japanese, turning expert knowledge into a scalable, translated resource.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app