Can capitalism ever allow us a good night’s sleep?

There is something odd about the way we treat sleep.

We understand that it is essential for good health, but we are almost ashamed when we admit that we get enough of it. We are rightfully proud when we keep our resolutions to go to the gym more or to eat a more healthy diet, but if we get a good night's sleep, we tend to keep it to ourselves.

In fact, when we talk about sleep at all, it's usually to brag about how little sleep we are getting. We seem to consider getting a healthy amount of sleep to be some kind of luxury, or worse, as evidence of laziness.

Today we are going to talk with Taka Kobayashi, the founder, and CEO of NeuroSpace, and he's going to explain how things got so bad, and what he plans to do about it.

Taka is is building a business around that idea that companies should not only encourage employees to get more sleep but that they should pay NeuroSpace a helthy sum to do so.

Most sleep-based startups have failed in the past, but Taka explains how NeuroSpace is doing things differently and how he his building on his initial successes.

It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.

Show Notes

Why sleep is really a skill The reason we ignore the importance of sleep How to fall asleep more quickly What your iWatch isn’t telling you about sleep The right way to track your sleep A way to overcome jet lag The real challenge facing all sleep startups The good and bad sides of Japanese govement startup grants

Links from the Founder

Everything you wanted to know about NeuroSpace Check out Taka's blog Follow him on Twitter @kobat_jp Friend him on Facebook The ANA jet-lag project

Leave a comment

Transcript

Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs.

I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

Let’s talk about sleep. Are you feeling tired?

If you’re like most workers in Japan, the US, or Europe, the answer is yes, and oddly, even if you’re not feeling particularly tired, you probably won’t admit to be well-rested to your coworkers.

We, and by we, I mean all of the developed world, we have this funny relationship with sleep. We all know, we all acknowledge how important sleep is. Science and personal experience have proven conclusively that our own health and performance depend on it, but for some reason, we all like to brag about how little sleep we’re getting.

Normally, I’d call this macho bullshit, but women seem to be every bit as bad about this as men are. We seem to consider getting a healthy amount of sleep to be some kind of luxury or worse, as evidence of laziness.

Now, there are a lot of reasons for this and we are going to talk about them with Taka Kobayashi, the founder and CEO of NeuroSpace.

NeuroSpace is doing something important but something very difficult. Taka is building a business model based on convincing companies that not only should they encourage their employees to get more sleep but that they should pay NeuroSpace to help them do so. Taka is fighting some deeply ingrained culture here, but he is making progress, and today, we will talk about some of the unlikely partners and bedfellows he finds himself with, why so many other startups in the space have failed to achieve product market fit, and most important, what NeuroSpace is doing different.

But you know, Taka tells that story much better than I can, so let’s get right to the interview.

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Interview

Tim: I’m sitting here with Taka Kobayashi of NeuroSpace who is a startup specializing in sleep. So, thanks for sitting down with me.

Taka: Thank you.

Tim: What NeuroSpace is doing is really fascinating but I think you can explain it better than me, so why don’t you tell us a bit about what NeuroSpace does?

Taka: NeuroSpace is a company focusing on technology which is evaluating sleep relation and quality, and sleep skill improvement program for company. I found this company in 2013, a big motivation was my own serious sleep problem.

Tim: You said something really interesting. You mentioned sleep as a skill, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard sleep described as a skill. So, what do you mean by that? How is it a skill?

Taka: In general, anyone can improve like how to speak English and how to control bicycles, and so on. This is also a skill. Sleep also can be improved. For example, people suffering from wake up. There are some skill to wake up easy.

Tim: I’ve never quite thought about it this way. So, is sleep really like a collection of different skills? Is there like a, for example, falling asleep quickly or getting deep sleep, or waking up fully? Are these things that you can train yourself to do?

Taka: Yeah, of course, there are many kind of skill. To fall asleep, having good quality sleep, and easy to wake up, and so on, yeah.

Tim: Okay. You know, we don’t really talk about sleep much in terms of our health. We talk a lot about diet and if you go to a bookstore, you’ll find lots and lots of books on exercise and lots and lots of books on diet, but we don’t really talk much about sleep. Why do you think that is?

Taka: So, almost all people focusing on the time that we are active, but sleep is a very important thing in terms of consolidate our memory and eliminate our needless memory.

Tim: So, do you think it’s just because we are not awake not conscious, we don’t think about it, whereas diet and exercise, it’s something we consciously do and get feedback?

Taka: Maybe in the sleep time, all people does not have consciousness, so they cannot understand the importance.

Tim: It almost doesn’t feel like something we actually do, right? It feels like almost something that sort of happens to us. You know, actually though, when people to talk about sleep, and I think this is true both in Japan and in the US, there’s almost kind of this macho culture where people kind of brag about how little sleep they are getting. Every day at the office, I hear someone saying, “Oh, yeah, I only got five hours of sleep last night,” and “Oh, yeah, this week has been –“ so, it’s almost like we’re trying to train ourselves not to sleep.

Taka: Yeah. I understand the situation well. In the company view, many manager and leader don’t take care of employees’ sleep because sleep seems like spend time not active.

Tim: Yeah, it seems like almost like it’s being lazy.

Taka: Yeah, yeah, lazy, lazy, yeah.

Tim: So, how do you get companies interested in helping their employees improve sleep when there is this culture of no, we don’t need sleep.

Taka: In the NeuroSpace business, we promote importance of sleep in terms of productivity, concentration level. These conditions always depend on sleep condition.

Tim: But I mean, it’s definitely true, having too little sleep, being sleep deprived is a lot like being drunk in terms of reaction time and judgment. So, the scientific data is really clearer, but is the data strong enough to counteract this business culture?

Taka: Yeah, yeah, yes. In my opinion, this problem depends on culture, especially Japan and Korea have such kind of culture.

Tim: Yeah, it seems like there would be a real kind of honne and tatemae problem.

Taka: Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Tim: Thinking about it, most of the books and the blogs that focus on sleep seem to be telling people how to train themselves to get less sleep.

Taka: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Tim: So, there’s a lot of things like, “Okay, you don’t really need eight hours. You can train your body for six or four hours.” Is that possible and is that even healthy?

Taka: No, the answer it’s impossible. It’s impossible. The reason why these kinds of books are popular is business. Almost all people want to make their sleep little. Simultaneously, they believe that that is a good thing. This is a fundamental problem.

Tim: Right, right. So, how do you overcome that?

Taka: We provide questionnaire for employees which can detect 10 types of sleep problems. After that, we analyze the answer and we provide the company three problem tendencies.

Tim: So, what are you asking? Are you asking employees like, how much sleep they get a night or how well they sleep?

Taka: Yeah, ideal sleep duration and real sleep duration, and how many times do you have difficulty to wake up for a week?

Tim: Okay, so what’s you collect that data and once you have a profile of how well different employees are sleeping and how much, what do you do to improve the situation?

Taka: Okay, we provide a seminar. I teach the skills to overcome such kind of sleep problem, difficulty to wake up and go to sleep, and wake up during sleep.

Tim: What kind of things do you teach? So, for example, if someone is having trouble falling asleep, how do you train them or how do you teach them to train themselves to fall asleep faster?

Taka: For example, people who suffer from difficulty to fall asleep, we give advices that having sunlight, especially in the morning makes people sleepy in the midnight, in nighttime.

Tim: So, if someone gets exposed to sunlight early in the morning, by the time evening comes, they will be ready for sleep?

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Taka: Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Tim: Okay. So, I guess a lot of your techniques are just training the body to get into this kind of rhythm?

Taka: Yeah, yeah. Some people trying to fall asleep have a rhythm problem.

Tim: And what sort of results have you gotten?

Taka: It depends on the company,