c0mpiled-7: San Fransokyo, pt2
Overview
It was great to be back in Tokyo for our second San Fransokyo event.
We met a new group of students and got to catch up with a number of returning participants. In less than four months since our last trip, the quality of what teams shipped stood out immediately. The technical depth and attention to detail continue to define the submissions we see from Japan. We especially liked the projects that connected YC’s Request for Startups with needs that are specific to the Japanese market.
By the numbers, we had 230 attendees and guests, with 65 project submissions built in under four hours. Duncan Ross gave a strong talk on building, experimenting, and being comfortable with failure. The University of Tokyo IPC team ran a networking session that worked really well. It helped people form teams quickly and brought together groups that had never met before in a format that felt genuinely new.
And a big thank you to Mori Building for making the event possible and supporting us with the space, food, and drinks.
Reflections
- Good: Pre hackathon team matching worked extremely well. We saw a lot of new teams form that would not have come together otherwise. People were genuinely excited to meet, learn, and build together, and some teams had very strong chemistry right away.
- Good: Engagement was meaningfully higher this time. Submissions were tightly aligned with the YC RFS and teams took a more consultative approach. The live translation support from Jia and Jian at Shisa AI played a big role here.
- Good: Having Duncan Ross spend time directly with teams was a major unlock. You could see the impact in the projects. Submissions were more focused, more refined, and clearer in what they were trying to do.
- Good: Judging ran much more smoothly than previous events.
- Good: Submission quality improved across the board. Projects were more complete and more engaging.
- Good: Running pitches in parallel with judging worked well. It filled downtime and gave every team a chance to present to the full audience.
- Good: Jia and Jian Shen built a project analyzer during the hackathon itself. It reviewed submissions for completeness and evaluated whether teams used agents or multi agent systems. Standout moment.
- Bad: Food. We under ordered for the first time across our events. This should not happen again.
- Bad: Presentation quality still needs work. Strong technical work often fell short because it was not communicated clearly to judges or the audience. We tried to coach teams live, but this needs to be systematized. Likely a simple site with clear guidance.
- Observation: Many participants asked whether their idea was “good,” fundable, or how to pitch it. A common pattern was focusing on a narrow instance of a problem. What we want to push is tying that instance back to a larger structural issue. It is not just that a form is broken, it is that the system around it is broken. This is a muscle we want to keep building.
- Observation: Fewer teams than expected used multi agent systems. This was surprising. It reinforces that the US, and SF in particular, operates in a different reality when it comes to AI tooling. It also highlights how large the opportunity still is for builders in this space. We are watching this closely over the years.
Judges
In-person:
- Nintendo, Sony, soonami, etc: Duncan Ross
- CrustData (YCF24): Abhilash Chowdhary
- VoiceOS (YC): Kai Brokering
- Shisa AI: Jian Shen and Jia Shen
- YC Alum: Taishi Nojima
Remote + Sponsors:
- Unbound Security (YC S24): Vignesh Subbiah
- Cactus Compute (YC W25): Henry Ndubuaku
- Blaxel (YC F24): Nicholas Lecomte and Paul Sinai
- Morph (YC S23): Tejas Bhaktia
- Supserset (YC P26): Kiet Ho
Prizes & Recognition
1st Place ($5,000): Engram
2nd Place ($2000): Noob
3rd Place ($1000): Yaorozu
- Koji Itano
- Haruto Watanabe
- Shoto Morisaki
- Sota Kobayashi
- Keita Yasui
Most Venture-Backable: Mercy
Best Design: PM Studio
- Queenie Wu
- Tomoyasu Hirano
- Tsubasa Kawakami
- Gaku Noguchi
Most Impressive Engineering Lift: Origin
get the next recap, and the date of the next hackathon.
one email per event. winners, every submission, what we learned. no spam.