When Japanese firms want to create or strengthen their presence in the United States they often take business trips to Silicon Valley. They meet executives and CEOs from Google, Facebook, and any relevant industry players. Many also make a visit to a modest office in San Francisco, a trip which has also been made by noted American firms like Expedia and Square. They are dropping in on Btrax, a boutique consulting firm that has quietly become a critical player in facilitating cross-border expansion between the United States and Japan.
Ten years after opening its doors, Btrax remains a startup punching above its weight. A team of 20 staff – 15 in San Francisco, five in Tokyo – generate an average of US$20-30 million in extra yearly revenue for the companies they advise. The bilingual, bicultural team has pulled off a number of impressive tricks over the years. Recent standout jobs include increasing Expedia Japan’s web traffic by a factor of 10 in three months to help propel the company to the top echelons of Japan’s online travel industry. Square benefited as well, getting localization guidance and competitor analysis.
The same immediate impact has not been found in Japanese companies expanding to new areas, but market leaders like gaming firm DeNA have come to Btrax for guidance.
Btrax also helped turn The Cove, a searing documentary about ritual dolphin killings in a sleepy Japanese port town, into a critical and box office hit in Japan in spite of the country’s well-known aversion to criticism over its fishing practices.
Btrax even came to the rescue of 500 Startups. It localized the VC firm’s pitch deck for potential limited partners in Japan and helped teach the fund’s startups how to enter Japan. Btrax has a soft spot for startups. It offers them consulting services free of charge and brings Japanese startups over to San Francisco for pitch contests to expand their profiles. The next event is set for early November.
The man laying the tracks
Brandon Hill had not expected this success when he started the company. He created Btrax more out of necessity than for any grand vision of bridging what were then the world’s largest two economies. “I didn’t have any ideas about running the business. I just could not get a job as a web designer at the time since it was the dot-com bubble bust. So I thought I might as well set up my own company to give me a job,” he says.
After getting steady work for a year, Hill decided to take advantage of his heritage to power his business. Although he graduated from San Francisco State University, he had grown up in Japan and knew how to navigate the country’s business circles. More importantly, he knew how to make a product and a message resonate with both Japanese and American users.
When he first started, Hill was mostly helping American firms tap Japan’s potential. Since the global recession, however, the greatest demand comes from Japanese companies wanting to enter the US. Hill estimates that 70 percent of his business is now catering to Japanese clients.
Regardless of client, the Btrax method remains mostly unchanged. It identifies ways to improve user experience and user interface while refining the company’s branding for the new audience and connecting it to valuable business and media contacts. Implementation, on the other hand, varies by product and custom. The needs of the local market are always kept in the forefront of any discussion, a necessity that not every firm appreciates.
“In a way, the Japanese companies are very flexible about changing their business models or modifying their services. They take a look at potential competitors and run focus groups so they know exactly what they should change. US companies are a little more egocentric because they have been so successful in the domestic market,” he observes.
Brandon Hill, founder and CEO of Btrax at the firm’s San Francisco office
An expansion for Btrax as well?
The Btrax brand has not been a steady presence for 10 years by resting on its laurels. Now it is starting to expand operations into China and South Korea. Hill shrugs off the company’s slow start in China – “there are still very cheap options, maybe our rates are too high,” he says – and speaks enthusiastically about the new roads being made in Korea.
“We are talking with the Korean government to provide marketing services to the US for Korean startups. The government is aiming to have two to three hundred startups per year go global. I think it is not too far away that we start generating some amount of revenue from the Korean market,” he says.
Even with an explosion of Korean startups looming, don’t expect Btrax to rapidly expand its workforce. “The smaller a company is, the stronger the team will be. You can move faster, change service models more quickly, and possibly give better service to your clients,” he says. “It’s not my intention to have a huge amount of sales. Since we don’t get any VC funding, we don’t have pressure to scale too big. We have full control of the company. That’s the beauty of it.”
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