Japan is Galapagos islands
Slack is one of the hottest start-up companies, and it has been rumored Amazon valued USD0 billion to acquire Slack. But there is a Japanese company that started providing Slack-like service 2years before Slack , even 2months before Facebook messenger. ChatWork launched their collaboration platform in 2011 and now has 70% market share in Japan with 140,000 companies. "Japan is Galapagos islands and isolated from the outer world by its unique mechanism of evolution." This tired cliche is often used when explaining a few Japanese companies succeeding in overseas markets other than manufacturers. LINE dominates instant messenger market, and few use WhatsApp in Japan. Few use Uber, OpenTable, Netflix, etc. There may be many reasons, but I think language must be one of them. It is challenging to reach the latest overseas information in Japan. Of course, you can access the Internet and see what you want to see. But you may choose articles written in your mother language.