Tsubame Lab (Leader: Koshiro Narazaki, M2, Electrical and Electronic Engineering), which won the Steve Blank Award in our Lean Launchpad Program (LLP), contents of Science Tokyo Entrepreneurship Courses ( (Master’s/Doctoral) Practical Group Work for Leadership and Bachelor’s Practical Group Work for Value Creation) offered in 2025 1Q2Q, participated in the Lean Launchpad Japan National Competition 2026 Hokkaido held on February 25, 2026, and emerged as the top team out of 16 teams from LLPs across the country. Tsubame Lab also won the right to receive a ¥1 million investment from Startup Brain, Inc., the organizer of the competition, when it was established.
Tsubame Lab
The company aims to automate biochemistry experiments, which take up more than half of researchers’ time, and maximize their creative time by establishing a cloud lab business that allows researchers to outsource repetitive scientific experiment tasks. Similar services have already been launched in the United States, and the market is expected to expand in Japan as well. However, cost, equipment, and the “not-invented-here” mentality remain prevalent. To overcome these barriers, the company will begin, first of all, by offering development of open-source automated equipment, and then aim to offer outsourced lab services. The company’s vision for its presentation was to “create an infrastructure that fundamentally changes the reproducibility and productivity of laboratories.” The judges highly praised the company’s vision and the scale of its future business, with some commenting that the proposal “resonated with the business proposal made by Amazon AWS.” The judges unanimously selected the company.
Lean Launchpad program（LLP）
This business feasibility study program was developed by Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur from Silicon Valley who also runs an LLP at Stanford University. It encompasses the essence of new business creation, including problem setting, hypothesis testing, and pivoting to identify early adopters for customer development, as well as business plan creation. It also effectively fosters entrepreneurship. In Japan, Takashi Tsutsumi (CEO of Startup Brain Inc.) presides over the LLP.
The program first launched at our university (Tokyo Institute of Technology) in 2013, and has expanded to universities, local organizations, and companies across the country. At our university, the program has been offered as a course offered by Academy for Global Leadership (AGL) since 2013 and as a course offered by Academy for Leadership (ToTAL) since 2018. Starting in 2025, the program will be available to all students as part of Science Tokyo’s Entrepreneurship Course. It is open to both undergraduate and graduate students, and is held in the first and second quarters of each year.
The Lean Launchpad Japan National Competition
Starting in 2023, the event has been held once a year since 2023, organized by Mr. Takashi Tsutsumi, CEO, Startup Brain, Inc. It brings together winners of each LLPs from universities, MEXT programs, and local organizations across the country to compete for the most social impact and feasibility of their new business, and determines the winning team. The first event was held at our university (https://startupbrain.jp/news/zOGsMU2K), with 15 teams participating. Two teams from our university’s LLP participated: Offi-casu (Yoshimoto, Okabe, Fujii, Ishii, Morikawa, Nakagawa) and Zeusera (Kato, Iwamatsu, Kaneko, Yoshioka (Weathernews)).Offi-casu got the Jury’s Award. The second event was held in Kyoto (https://startupbrain.jp/news/hkzjzMeo), with 17 teams participating. Ukanomi (Azuma, Akiba, Yuasa) from our university’s LLP participated and also got the Jury’s Award. The third event was held in Sapporo on February 25, 2026, as a joint venture between Startup Brain Inc. (http://startupbrain.jp/) and the Hokkaido Multi-Tech Creative Council (https://www.hmcc.jp/).
16 teams participated, representing various programs, including regional programs from Hokkaido, Nagaoka, Kyoto, Nagano, etc., which feature local university students; university-based programs from Waseda University, Doshisha University, Shimane University, Kinki, and our university; and programs sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, such as Tongali/GTIE. Each time, the judges select the judges’ award and the grand prize.
Next year, the 2026 event is scheduled to be held in Nagaoka around February 2027.
Contact
Leadership and Innovation Section, Center for Entrepreneurship Education
e-mail: lead.innov_edu@cee.isct.ac.jp
