Hokkaido ecosystem has been striving to evolve its startup ecosystem for the last few years — but what’s actually happening?

What’s the advantage of starting a startup in Hokkaido, and what kind of competitive advantages Hokkaido has as a market?

Our target

As a Startup Frontier HOKKAIDO, we are planning to achieve the following goals by the end of FY2024.

• 40 startups raising fund annually
• 10 billion JPY (63 million euro) investment raised by startups in Hokkaido annually
• 5 billion JPY (31.5 million euro) fund available in Hokkaido in total
• 40 startup visa holders
• 150 startups spinned out from universities in Hokkaido

3 key pillars to achieve the goals

We focus on three main sectors to target : GX (Green Transformation), AgriFood and SpaceTech. Why?

GX (Green Transformation)

22% of the entire Japanese land belongs to Hokkaido

Hokkaido has vast land to install new renewable power capacity such as solar power, wind power, geothermal power, hydroelectric power and biomass power.

40 trillion JPY (252 billion euro) GX fund is launched in Hokkaido

Over 200 billion Euro is accumulated to foster green finance in Hokkaido, and “Team Sapporo-Hokkaido” was co-established by 21 institutions within and outside of Hokkaido.

Carbon ZERO by 2050

Hokkaido has an ambitious goal of becoming carbon ZERO by 2050.

AgriFood

Hokkaido’s food self-sufficiency rate is 206% on calorie basis

Whereas Japanese national food self-sufficiency rate on calorie basis is only 37%.

23% of Japan’s self-sufficiency rate is covered by HOKKAIDO

Nobody can compete against with Hokkaido’s food production power!

2,000 hours of sunshine

Many people think Hokkaido is always covered with fluffy snow — but our weather is not like some countries located in northern high latitude. Our position is latitude 41–45 degrees north.

• Marseille, France
• Rome, Italy
• Milan, Italy
• Firenze, Italy
• Barcelona, Spain

During the winter time, we are still fortunate to have at least 8 hours of day light hours “with sunshine”.

39.4 ha farmland

Japan is a small country, but Hokkaido has a vast land. Each farmstead in Hokkaido has 39.4 ha on average — which is 18 times larger than the other parts of Japan.

SpaceTech

The 1st public spaceport in East Asia launched

Hokkaido Space Port (in short HOSPO) is located in Taiki Town, Hokkaido. Hokkaido Spaceport has been established for world-wide shared use spaceport, and it’s been a dream for several decades.

Since 1985

Residents in Hokkaido, especially in Taiki Town have been dreaming about establishing a rocket launch spaceport. Geographically Taiki Town is located in the perfect position to launch applicable to both east and south direction.

HOSPO is the only spaceport in Japan that enables both Vertical Rocket Launch and Horizontal Rocket Launch, and it is suitable for orbit insertion of satellites into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) by east-side launch and polar orbit by south-side launch.

Artificial satellites can be transported by land, but rockets can be only transported by ship — HOSPO is located in the best place to accept all the rockets to go to space.

Do you want to know more or get involved?

Now are you more interested in joining Hokkaido ecosystem and get to know the startuppers, government people, investors and ecosystem builders accelerating the startup ecosystem in Hokkaido?

You have good reasons to visit Hokkaido!

Tokachi Agri & Food Summit

On October 12th, 2023, LAND, a startup support organization based in Tokachi is organizing TOKACHI AGRI & FOOD SUMMIT. All of the food producers in Tokachi get together — first come, first served!

HOKKAIDO SPACE SUMMIT 2023

And on the same day at the same venue, HOKKAIDO SPACE SUMMIT 2023 is happening! One of the most famous startup founders & investors in Japan, Takafumi Horie is also coming — you cannot miss this!

NoMaps 2023

If you really want to escape from the hot weather in mainland Japan earlier — we have NoMaps 2023 from September 13th to 17th — the biggest tech festival in the center of Sapporo that celebrate technologies, entertainment and creative!

Now you have multiple reasons to visit Hokkaido and explore our ecosystem. Why don’t you start discovering our community?