Snack & Connect Weekly: collaboration with Anna Skrypka

Snack & Connect is a weekly evening gathering in Shibuya for founders, operators, and others working in the startup ecosystem. The format is light snacks, relaxed conversation, and introductions. Doors open at 4:00 PM, the guest talk and Q&A run from 4:30 PM to 5:15 PM, and open networking follows until 6:00 PM. This session features Anna Skrypka, founder of The Augmented Society and author of the forthcoming book Japan as a Stress Test (October 2026). She led Japan go-to-market at Autodesk, scaling direct SaaS business from $0.2M to over $30M ARR, worked inside Woven by Toyota's AI-native venture, and brought her own AI product (EVE.calls) into the Japanese market. She now advises Series A and later companies on why their Japan expansion is not converting. The talk is framed as a diagnostic rather than a culture primer: the three trust layers that decide whether a foreign company succeeds in Japan, anonymized breakdowns of real cases from inside Toyota and Autodesk, and the single question founders should answer before committing capital to a Japan launch. Intended for founders, GTM leaders, senior operators at AI-native companies entering or stalled in Japan, and investors with Japan-exposed portfolios.