In a CoFE Conversations interview at IVS Kyoto 2026, the executive coach and community builder reflects on founder burnout, women’s representation and the need to build startup cultures where people can thrive

KYOTO, Japan — Startup ecosystems are often measured by funding, pitch competitions, exits, unicorns and investor attention. Heather Dobbin believes another question deserves equal weight: are founders and teams building in a way that is humanly sustainable?

Speaking to CoFE Conversations on the sidelines of IVS Kyoto 2026, Dobbin, an executive and leadership coach, professional facilitator and community builder in Japan’s startup ecosystem, said the next phase of entrepreneurship in Japan will depend not only on capital and technology, but also on confidence, communication, inclusion, emotional intelligence and healthier leadership.

Dobbin moved from the United States to South Korea before eventually settling in Japan. She first came into education as an English teacher, later moved through business development, recruitment, educational leadership and curriculum development, and eventually became Director of Programmes at an engineering bootcamp in Tokyo.

That role exposed her to people making high-risk career changes. “The people who were going through the programme were basically giving up everything and taking a huge risk to change their careers,” she said. “Through that I became really inspired, and that’s what inspired me to start my own business.”

After years as a solo entrepreneur, Dobbin noticed a recurring pattern. Individual founders and leaders could grow through coaching and facilitation, but once they returned to unsupportive workplaces or weak community structures, progress became harder to sustain.

“One of the things I love about Venture Café Tokyo is that innovation doesn’t happen in isolation,” she said.

That realisation brought her deeper into community building. Today, she approaches her work at three levels: connecting founders with networks and resources, coaching individuals on the human side of leadership, and facilitating programmes for companies to improve culture and team dynamics.

Risk-taking, confidence and perfection

Asked about the most common internal challenges faced by Japanese startup founders, Dobbin highlighted two themes: risk-taking and burnout.

In her view, the hesitancy many Japanese founders feel around communication, confidence and global storytelling is linked to the cultural importance placed on perfection.

“When you grow up Japanese and in Japanese society, this idea of perfection is very important,” she said. “You can see that in the high degree of quality that we have in Japanese products and services. So it has this positive aspect.”

But the same emphasis on perfection can become a barrier when founders need to pitch, speak internationally or share ideas before they feel fully polished.

“More often than not, a lot of the founders that I see he

re in Japan, and this is also true with executives as well, really hesitate to speak up,” Dobbin said. “These are amazing people doing world-class things.”

At IVS Kyoto, she observed founders leading impressive startups who still hesitated when asked to explain their work in English.

“There’s a huge hesitation like, ‘I can’t speak English, I can’t do this.’ And it turns out that it’s perfectly fine,” she said.

For Dobbin, this is not simply a language issue. It is an internal risk. Speaking imperfectly in a global setting can feel personally exposing, particularly when founders fear they may not appear as competent as they are in Japanese.

“I would say the risk-taking when it comes to interpersonal communication is a really big issue here,” she said. For Japan’s startup ecosystem, this matters. Globalisation requires more than good technology. It requires founders who can communicate their value, tell their stories and build trust with international partners, investors and customers.

Burnout and the cost of going it alone

The second major challenge Dobbin sees is burnout. Startup culture everywhere has a strong “grind” element. But in Japan, she believes this sits on top of a broader cultural foundation that already valorises hard work, endurance and group expectations.

“Startup culture all over the world has a lot of grind,” she said. “But particularly in Japan, there’s already a cultural foundation that really encourages that thinking.”

Founders who are passionate about building often struggle to set boundaries. They push themselves, neglect rest and allow work to crowd out other parts of life. In Japan, where long working hours and perseverance are familiar social expectations, startup life can intensify those pressures.

Dobbin also pointed to the lack of social support that many founders experience. Although entrepreneurship is becoming more accepted in Japan, taking the leap into startup life can still be misunderstood by families and peers. A founder leaving a stable corporate path may face questions about why they would give up security.

“If you go home and your family is like, ‘You’re crazy, you’re giving up your amazing corporate job for the stable life, why are you doing that?’ — that pushback from your dominant culture can increase your burnout risk,” she said.

This is why she sees community-building as essential. Founders need more than funding and pitch opportunities. They need people around them who understand the emotional and social reality of building something uncertain.

Japan’s startup culture is changing

Japan’s startup ecosystem has become more visible through platforms such as IVS Kyoto, SusHi Tech Tokyo, Tokyo Innovation Base and other government and city-led initiatives.

Asked what has changed most visibly since she began working in Japan, Dobbin’s answer was simple: “It’s cool to be a founder.” Entrepreneurship, she said, was once more of an outlier path. Today, it is increasingly seen as a valid and even attractive career choice.

“You see people here, they’ve got interesting hair, they’re all wearing black,” she said with a smile. “There’s a little bit of positive edginess that comes with being a founder. And so that generates social capital.”

She has also seen more women founders, which she described as encouraging. But the gap remains significant.

At large startup events, women founders are still less visible. In some startup competitions, women may be absent altogether. Dobbin believes this has to be addressed through representation, better event design, bilingual access and more intentional inclusion.

“The first one is representation,” she said. “When I walk into a room, in any business setting, I’m a minority. And oftentimes it’s not assumed that I am a person who’s working in business.”

Women founders, especially at the early stage, may enter male-dominated rooms and feel discouraged. Creating spaces where more women are visible can help build the psychological safety needed for them to enter broader ecosystem spaces with confidence.

Where are the women? They are already there

Dobbin is clear that the lack of women on panels, stages or founder showcases is not because women do not exist in the ecosystem. “You always hear this, ‘Where are the women?’ And I think that’s become an excuse,” she said.

She recalled an effort at Venture Café Tokyo where, within 30 minutes, she and a colleague identified around 50 women speakers. “People need to ask the people who know where the women are and actually get serious about putting them into programme leadership positions, into panel discussions,” she said.

For her, event organisers need to think more carefully about inclusion — not only as a target, but as part of the atmosphere, language, branding and format of events.

Many startup events, she noted, can carry a highly masculine energy: aggressive visuals, intense staging, competitive language and formats that may unintentionally signal that women do not belong.

“Are you making the atmosphere that’s attractive for them or not? That would be a deeper question,” she said.

Dobbin also pointed to another divide: the silo between foreign founders and Japanese founders, including women founders. Language and cultural barriers keep communities apart. This is why she values events that make a serious effort to be bilingual.

“One of the things that I like about IVS is that it’s very bilingual friendly,” she said. “Even on the Japanese stages, we make an effort to do simultaneous translation.”

For Japan’s startup ecosystem to become more inclusive, spaces must be designed so that people across language, gender and cultural backgrounds can participate meaningfully. “You just need to see yourself there, particularly in Japan,” she said.

Human skills, not soft skills

A central part of Dobbin’s work is helping founders develop what she calls “human skills”. She deliberately avoids the phrase “soft skills” because it makes communication, emotional intelligence, relationship-building and leadership sound secondary.

“I hate that they’re called soft skills,” she said. “That degrades them. It makes them seem less important.”

For Dobbin, these skills are foundational, especially in the age of AI. As machines take over more knowledge work and technical tasks, founders will still need to build trust, navigate conflict, communicate vision, create cultures, support teams and make decisions under uncertainty.

“Human skills are more important than ever,” she said. This is particularly true in Japan, where business is deeply relationship-oriented and built on patience, consistency and trust.

Her advice to founders is straightforward: “Come in, get the human skills you need, build the relationships, and then be successful.”

From grind to sustainable leadership

Asked what a healthier and more inclusive Japanese startup ecosystem could look like five years from now, Dobbin returned to the idea of sustainability. She is not against hustle. In fact, she says she is a “big fan of hustle.” But she distinguishes between hustle and grind.

“I would love to see people embrace that cycle of hustle, not grind,” she said. For Dobbin, healthy startup leadership means understanding when to push hard, but also knowing how long that pace can be sustained. It means setting boundaries, scheduling rest, making collective commitments and recognising that founders, teams and communities cannot build endlessly without renewal.

“Make sure you’re looking at yourself and your company and your team holistically,” she said. This is not simply about individual wellbeing. It is about the long-term health of the ecosystem. Burned-out founders leave. Exhausted teams break. Unsustainable leadership weakens innovation.

Dobbin’s vision is of a startup ecosystem where people thrive, contribute for the long term and solve social problems through more sustainable leadership styles.

Building ecosystems where people can stay human

Heather Dobbin’s conversation at IVS Kyoto 2026 offers a timely reminder for startup ecosystems across Asia. Japan’s startup scene is gaining visibility. More founders are emerging. More women are stepping forward. Global investors and ecosystem builders are paying closer attention. But the health of an ecosystem cannot be judged only by how much capital it attracts or how many startups it produces.

It must also be judged by whether people can belong, speak, lead, rest and grow within it.

For CoFE Conversations, Dobbin’s perspective is especially relevant because it connects inclusion with leadership, mental health, community and business performance. Her message is not that startup ecosystems should become less ambitious. It is that they must become more human.

Innovation does not happen in isolation. Neither does leadership. And the future of Japan’s startup ecosystem may depend on how well it learns to build communities where founders do not have to choose between ambition and wellbeing.