JETRO Beyond Japan Zero to X
US market entry program in Los Angeles (3rd cohort)
- Selected for JETRO Beyond Japan Zero to X (3rd cohort)
Overview
I was selected for the 3rd cohort of Beyond Japan Zero to X, JETRO’s US market entry support program, and was based in Los Angeles from July to November 2025. I went over with LUMION, a product of Cocoreach Inc.
Activity log
Discussing with a local mentorIn July 2025, I was accepted with a plan for expanding LUMION into North America, and the program began.
An on-site meeting in Los AngelesMy first task was validating the market. The sales method I had built in Japan, visualizing latent purchase intent, faced a question: would it work as is in North America, where the market size and business customs are very different? I ran interview after interview on the ground to find out.
With the people who went through the program with meIn parallel, I drew up a list of routes to the key people at Goldenvoice, Live Nation, and AEG, the majors of North American live entertainment, and pushed ahead with negotiation preparation and relationship building with investors and entertainment companies.
The gap between a product that works in Japan and a product that sells in the US was wider than I had expected. How deals move forward, how you reach the decision maker: these were all things I could not have grasped without going there. On the other hand, I found that when an engineer can speak all the way down to the implementation, trust comes early at the negotiating table. That was a solid result, and the North American expansion of LUMION now runs on the network I built here.