Weekly Snack & Connect in collaboration with Anna Skrypka
Event timeline
・4:00 PM - 4:30 PM Doors Open
・4:30 PM-5:15 PM Guest speech, including Q&A
・5:15 PM-6:00 PM Networking
About Snack & Connect
Snack & Connect is a casual gathering designed to bring together founders, operators, and members of the startup community.
The format is simple: light snacks, relaxed conversations, and meaningful connections.
This session, we're welcoming a special guest:
Anna Skrypka - founder of Anna Skrypka Studio,
helping startups understand how Japan actually adopts new technology, and where foreign companies stall when entering the market. She draws on 15 years inside Japanese enterprises, Toyota, Autodesk, and bringing her own AI product (EVE.calls) into the Japanese market in 2016, translating that experience into research, a forthcoming book (Japan as a Stress Test, Oct 2026), and practical frameworks for founders navigating Japan today.
In this session, she'll share what most foreign startups get wrong about entering Japan and how to read the market before you spend on a team or a launch.
Most AI and technology companies don't fail in Japan because of the product. They fail because their GTM system breaks under Japanese enterprise adoption logic — and nobody sees it until millions are in the ground.
In this live session, Anna Skrypka, former Autodesk Japan GTM lead and author of Japan as a Stress Test — teaches the framework she uses to diagnose why companies stall in Japan, using real cases from inside Toyota and Autodesk.
This is not a webinar about Japanese culture. It's a diagnostic session you apply to your own situation.
What you'll walk away with
(1) The 3 trust layers that determine success or failure in Japan — taught live
(2) A real-world diagnosis: Anna breaks down anonymized cases from her experience — you'll recognize your own patterns
(3) The one question that tells you whether your Japan approach will work — before you commit capital
(4) Live Q&A
Who this is for
Founders
GTM leaders
Senior operators at AI-native technology companies entering Japan, considering Japan, or stalled in Japan.
VCs and investors with Japan-exposed portfolios who want to understand what their portfolio companies are actually facing.
About Anna
Anna Skrypka is the founder of The Augmented Society, a platform exploring AI adoption through a cultural lens, and author of Japan as a Stress Test (October 2026). She helps technology founders and enterprise business leaders navigate Japan reality and build effective go-to-market startegies for growth.
She led Japan GTM at Autodesk helping to scale SaaS direct business from $0.2M to $30M+ ARR across enterprise technology, worked inside Woven by Toyota's AI-native venture, and now advises Series A+ companies on why their Japan expansion isn't converting — and what to fix. Based in Tokyo since 2010.
Follow Anna: annaskrypka
Learn more: www.annaskrypka.com
🗼 About Shibuya Startup Support
Shibuya Startup Support is an initiative by the Shibuya City Office to support startups looking to launch or expand in Japan. We provide guidance, visa and incorporation support, and access to a thriving local ecosystem.
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