Chang said Tokyo has long attracted finance and fintech companies because of its size. It has a dense concentration of major banks, insurers, securities firms and Fortune 500 companies, and all of them can be reached with short trips across the city. That makes Japan a natural market for startups expanding globally.

Chang stressed that the growth comes from a better ecosystem, and that it took years of effort from several groups:

Tokyo runs the Attraction U project, which gives fintech startups hands-on help entering Tokyo. The Tokyo government also hosts SusHi Tech, which brings together tens of thousands of entrepreneurs and investors from Japan and overseas.

Chang said local partners are easiest to work with because of language and context. Even so, she believes Japanese companies are open to global solutions, partly because of kaizen, the culture of continuous improvement. About ten years ago the first big fintech wave came from London and Silicon Valley, and Japanese corporations felt they needed to catch up. They sent teams like hers to global hubs and improved their internal decision-making for working with startups.

Chang noted that Netflix and Zoom took a few years to reach Japan, while ChatGPT and other AI tools arrived within months. The challenge is understanding Japan’s culture, industry and regulation quickly enough to keep up. She wants more English-language disclosures and more PR about the support available. She hopes that within three to five years the best entrepreneurs will choose Tokyo as their first place to start a business.

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