EP21《Riding the Waves of Change: A Journey from Europe to Asia》ft. Mimmo Cangiano Belcuore
How to Evaluate Japan, Europe, and Italy for Startup Growth This episode follows Mimmo Cangiano Belcuore’s path from industrial design to startups across Italy, London, Tokyo, and now HoloSense. It is especially useful for founders weighing where to build, manufacture, certify, and scale, and for anyone trying to understand how trust, regulation, and culture shape business across Europe and Asia. Mimmo shares how adversity pushed him into entrepreneurship, why Japan made sense at the right economic moment, and how his current startup is splitting R&D in Japan with European deployment. The conversation also digs into what actually matters when entering a new market: not just funding or size, but timing, regulation, talent, and relationship-building. Key topics Mimmo explains how the 2008 financial crisis forced a reinvention from industrial design into teaching, consulting, and startup work in London. He describes moving to Tokyo in 2012, when Japan was rebounding and new business opportunities were opening up. We discuss how arriving in Japan required humility, relearning, and adapting to a different business operating system. Mimmo breaks down HoloSense, a physical AI and computational healthcare startup focused on non-intrusive physiological sensing. He explains why HoloSense is building hardware and AI for medical-grade data, starting with use cases like glucose monitoring for diabetics. We cover why Japan is the R&D and manufacturing base for HoloSense, while Europe is the primary deployment market. Mimmo compares the logic of choosing a market, emphasizing certification scope, market size, talent availability, and production quality. He argues that Japan has a deep but underrated talent pool in engineering, applied science, and hardware development. The conversation goes deep on trust as the real currency of business in Japan, Italy, and increasingly everywhere. Mimmo contrasts business cultures from Italy, the UK, and Japan, highlighting passion and craft, pragmatism and branding, and shared value and long-term trust. We discuss regulation and deregulation, including how Japan has been opening new sectors and why EU Inc. could help Europe create a more unified company structure. Mimmo explains Italy’s role as a manufacturing hub and talent pool, and why entering a market as a buyer can be smarter than entering as a seller. Timestamps (00:00) Why this guest’s Europe-Asia perspective matters (01:18) The 2008 crisis and the move from design into survival mode (02:58) Teaching, consulting, and building a business in London (04:07) Why Tokyo felt like another world (05:55) How humility helped Mimo break into Japan (07:07) Shoe manufacturing roots and a passion project that became business (09:00) Reading the market wave instead of forcing timing (11:04) What HoloSense is building in physical AI (12:26) Why physical-world data is the bottleneck for AI (13:41) Medical-grade sensing, certification, and launch readiness (14:12) Why the team is split between Japan and Switzerland (15:10) Market agnostic vs technology agnostic thinking (16:12) Why Europe makes sense for medical certification (17:15) Japan’s underrated talent pool in hardware and applied science (18:43) Semiconductor revival and Japan as an R&D hub (20:02) Why Europe is the deployment market, not Asia (21:26) Why Asia is fragmented compared with Europe’s single market (23:11) Japan’s cultural operating system and long-term trust (24:39) UK speed vs Japan’s relationship-driven business culture (27:21) Italy, the UK, and Japan as a source of different founder strengths (31:48) Trust as a global business crisis, not just a local trait (34:03) What a business is vs what a startup is (35:57) Why contracts are not a substitute for trust (37:33) Why businesses fade when people lose belief and energy (39:44) The role of vision, harmony, and individual leadership in Japan (41:26) How deregulation has helped Japan unlock new companies (43:45) EU Inc. and the case for a single European company entity (45:53) Why Europe may be the right moment for a startup hyperscaler (47:16) Italy as a manufacturing hub and talent base in Europe (49:04) Why entering a market as a buyer can be smarter than selling first (50:19) Mimo’s mission to encourage more people to build things Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.fm/user/cmm649g1a0qhr01y9acpu2jx7/comments 🎧 訂閱《跨義對談》 各大平台皆可收聽 → https://open.firstory.me/user/italyxtaiwan/platforms ☕️ 一杯咖啡，支持《跨義對談》持續製作更多內容 → https://buymeacoffee.com/italyxtaiwan 🤝 Business & Collaboration 有合作想法，歡迎與我們聯繫 → italyxtaiwan@gmail.com Powered by Firstory Hosting
