How Bespoke faked AI until it actually worked (w/ Akemi Tsunagawa) | E2320

Jason Calacanis interviews Akemi Tsunagawa, founder of Bespoke, about her three businesses addressing Japan's labor shortage. She discusses how her company faked a chatbot until it worked, landing Narita Airport as a client, then expanded into vocational training for foreign workers using smart glasses, and now builds robots for shipyard inspection. The conversation also covers Japan's tourism boom, population decline, immigration challenges, and the growing use of AI inside startups. - Akemi started with a multilingual chatbot for tourists, manually answering chats before AI matured. - Narita Airport became a major client due to multilingual tourist support needs. - The weak yen and visa policy changes drove Japan's tourism surge to 60 million visitors. - Japan's population decline (losing ~800k people/year) and aging society create severe labor shortages. - Her BeTrained platform uses smart glasses and AI to train foreign workers in Japanese trades. - Her third business builds climbing robots to automate scaffold and paint-thickness inspections at shipyards. - Profitable factories and shipyards are going out of business because there is no successor, offering acquisition opportunities. - Her company uses AI extensively to replace human roles and increase engineering productivity.