STARTUPCENTRAL

SusHi Tech Tokyo, running April 27–29 at Tokyo Big Sight, is being billed less as a traditional conference and more as a global business marketplace — 60,000 people are expected, with 750 startup booths, 151 program sessions and delegates from 49 countries. Organizers say the signature feature is operational: roughly 10,000 business meetings are being arranged and confirmed before most attendees arrive, turning the event into a purpose-built venue for deals rather than a sequ

Dan Gregor and Doug Mand explain how hustle, stage skills and productive disagreements carried them from college shows to a surprise box-office winner Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, the writing pair whose credits include How I Met Your Mother and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, say the reboot of The Naked Gun — starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson — has crossed the one‑hundred‑million‑dollar mark, a milestone few modern comedy reboots reach. In a recent podcast conversation they laid out

Fly By Jing’s founder began with a handful of crowdfunding supporters and pop-up dinners; today her spicy sauces and noodles appear in thousands of grocery aisles, a growth story rooted in restraint and authenticity. Jing Gao’s journey started with a modest Kickstarter campaign that drew only 25 contributions, and a series of underground supper clubs where diners first encountered her take on Sichuan food. Those early experiments served as a low-cost market test — proof that

What began as a modest purchase for his mother has become a nationwide restaurant chain with more than 235 locations and a business model that has handed ownership — and wealth — to longtime employees. Eddie Flores Jr. bought a small eatery for $22,000 and built L&L Hawaiian Barbecue into a network of company-run shops and franchises by keeping the brand closely tied to Hawaiian identity and trusting people close to the operation. Flores Jr. didn’t set out to create a franchi

A local-operator’s checklist for cutting through glossy pitches and finding the real help that keeps a business running. Franchises sell support the same way they sell brand recognition — with slick brochures, discovery events and friendly development teams. Those elements matter, but they rarely show how a franchisor behaves when things get messy. Prospective owners should treat marketing claims as a starting point, not proof, and push for concrete evidence of how the brand

Local business leaders and HR managers are increasingly finding that incorrect paychecks usually have roots in how hours are tracked and approved, not in the payroll run itself. Errors that appear on payday tend to accumulate over several days or even weeks — a missed clock-in, an unrecorded shift swap or approvals that arrive after a payroll cutoff can quietly distort the data payroll uses, leaving workers underpaid or the company exposed to unexpected costs. Those small mis

A personal encounter with inaccessible vacations pushed one planner to build an inclusion-focused travel arm that now employs more than 300 agents and has generated roughly $75 million in sales in under a year. When Karen Morales began using a wheelchair in 2020, she expected some logistical hurdles. What surprised her was how often luxury properties failed to meet even basic mobility needs. That discovery prompted Morales — a lifelong trip planner with a background in consul