Today I got my daily Japan Times news summary- don’t always read it, sometimes it ends up in the junk mail like it did today, but today for some reason I decided to have a look - and at the top was an interesting offer - “Secrets to Doing Business in Japan Revealed!” - for only $1, I’d get the free e-book and access to the Japan Jump Start site and forums.

That was too good an offer to refuse - so I visited the site and read about all of the potential secrets about doing business in Japan - and even though I have trusted friends in Japan who are kind enough to teach me these things, I felt there would be no harm in finding out what some of the “big” successes in Japan had to say.

So I signed up and gave my information - the only payment option is PayPal - not necessarily a bad thing, I will be doing this myself on my travel site soon - but definitely not a sign of “big” business.  But then again, why do a proper credit authorization for only $1 - of which you’d probably lose most of it in fees?

Instantly, I got an email which granted me access to the site, videos, forums, and other resources - plus a link to download the e-book, which was the first thing I did.  A lot of the information in the e-book made for interesting reading - but the bulk of the information was very basic, something you’ll probably find in any beginner’s guide to doing business in Japan (I had already read most of this in a book I bought a couple of years ago).  Couple that with spelling errors (or more likely typos), some repetitive stuff, and general lack of organization, I thought to myself - “Well, kinda interesting, could be useful, but nothing new for me.”

So I went to the site and looked at the resources which were available - interviews with four successful executives who have managed businesses in Japan - the most interesting was one with Joi Ito, who I’d heard of before - he’s on the board of Mozilla and Technorati, amongst other things.  Probably the most useful thing was that you could choose to either watch the video interview, read a transcript, or else read a summary of the main points.

Perhaps the best feature of the site was having those choices - but not organized into an easy-to-read manner, everything being put into a single list.

There are some other interesting reads about incorporating in Japan, finding office space, even talking to immigration experts - I didn’t go over these too closely because I have no need for any of these things - but again this looked like basic information that can be found in other guides or simply by asking the right people.

At the end of a 14-day trial period, if I did not cancel, I would be billed $47 per month for “charter” membership to the site.  I felt that the expenditure of $1 was definitely worthwhile - I’d have even paid more and would’ve been happy - but I had managed to read all of the material on the site in a few hours (stopping often to watch the Olympic boxing, sip my coffee at Starbucks, and watching the pretty girls walk by).  Thus I could not see why there was any good reason to spend $47 per month to continue my membership.

I should mention that there is a 60-day 100% money-back guarantee if at any time you decide to cancel.  Which  means I could, if I so chose, wait to see how the site develops for 60 days and get every cent back.

Eager to see this idea succeed but unwilling to fork out the monthly fees for what did not immediately seem to be excellent value, I went to the “Contact Us” form and wrote in my comments, similar to what you saw above.

To my surprise, I had a response within a few hours from the CEO, and one of the successful entrepreneurs, Ejovi Nuwere - but from his landrushgroup email address, not the Japan Jump Start domain.  A bit strange, but nevertheless a quick response was much appreciated.

In the email, he explained that not all the content and resources were ready yet (at least a couple of the areas I saw had “Coming Soon”) and that this was to be expected with a charter membership (not that I’ve ever seen with other “charter” memberships I’ve been invited to take part in).  He also talked about a conference to be organized in November (no dates, no speakers confirmed) where a ticket would cost 9000 yen but would be free to members.

I responded that in my experience, the key to success was to be able to convert the people with trial memberships to full memberships, and that I did not see anything at all that would convince me that an investment of $47 a month (granted, not a lot of money, but still) would be worthwhile. 

I also pointed out that one of the other successful entrepreneurs had mentioned that it would be much easier to raise funds with a site that was already successful with plenty of content - yet in his case the site had a bare minimum of content which could be perused within a few hours.  It was almost as if he had not taken the advice of some of the people he interviewed.

In any case, my response was polite and hopefully informative because I would really have loved to see the concept succeed, as the information would be beneficial to me as well.

The response - again, quite quick, but this time, much more terse - was this:

All of your concerns are addressed with this simple statement: “Use our service for a full 2 months. If you are not 100% satisfied, just let us know within 60 days. We’ll give you a full and prompt refund of every penny paid without question or cavil.” And we stand by that.

Nice promise - but it didn’t address any of my concerns, nor did it thank me for my comments, nor was there any concrete promise of value other than a money-back guarantee.

Sadly, I’m going to have to pass on this - which is really too bad because I rarely ever see an offer like this which interests me - and when I find one, there’s not enough reality there to keep me interested.

A false start, indeed.  I do hope that things get dramatically better over the trial period and that Ejovi and his partners make a success of this - but they will have to quickly rethink their strategy, and perhaps take the advice of the entrepreneurs they interviewed - if this concept is to become reality.