Agatha’s CEO, Chiemi Kamakura, joined the Disrupting Japan podcast to talk about Japan’s SaaS startup industry, her company’s success, the role of female founders, and much more.
Here’s what they talked about:
- The real reason Japanese hospitals can’t get away from paper
- Why it’s hard to innovate from inside a company
- Can Japanese SIs survive in the SaaS era
- Agatha’s commitment to being global from Day 1
- How global and Japan SaaS markets are different (and how they’re not)
- How SaaS can thrive in highly regulated industries.
- The importance of a personal network in high-trust products
- How to develop more female founders in Japan
- Some good advice on going global with a SaaS product
On Why She Started Agatha
And in one meeting room, I saw that a lot of paper, like 30 centimeter paper per person, then they are for 20 people. So I was so shocked. What is this paper? And then I asked the person at the hospital, and then she answered :
‘This is a document sent from a pharmaceutical company. It’s for an application for a clinical trial. And then next week, there’s a meeting for that. And then after that, everything will be destroyed.’ I was so shocked.
Then after 5 or 10 years, I saw many services moving to cloud. And if you use Cloud, there are many systems downsizing and going off-premise, not just life sciences companies.
Hospitals are a little bit conservative. It’s always other industries to change first, and then healthcare or life science. I saw that many SaaS startup companies bringing new innovation to many business processes. Then in 2015, I thought it’s the time, we can bring that innovation to hospitals and pharma.”