We live and work remotely on some pretty great beaches on the Izu Peninsula, which is a couple of hours south of Tokyo, Japan. We are lucky in that we get to go surfing and get our feet sandy (hence the name), and hair salty whenever there is a good swell. As well as all the water sports we are also close to a wide range of great food, Onsen, and nature, as well as being just a couple of hours away (by car or public transport) from the biggest metropolis in the world.

All in all, we think we've got it pretty good where we are in terms of lifestyle - we really do embody the whole "work to live" ethos and put our health, family, and friends first. We have for all intents and purposes, established a highly successful and satisfying remote working lifestyle that embraces all of the benefits many people around the world have started to realise they should pursue for a better life.

While we get to enjoy these benefits daily, we also witness the challenges and struggles of coastal communities today. From global challenges like climate change and plastic pollution, to local issues like ageing population, abandoned houses or buildings, and struggling industries. There are a multitude of issues that persist. And without new ideas and business approaches we fear our coastal community, like many others, will continue its gradual decline and hollowing out. (We plan to document a lot of these issues on our blog.)

Our work before Sandy Feet Partners - and also continuing today - has seen us commissioned by tech startups and major global vendors as well as buyers of technology from SMBs through to enterprise and government. This work is typically based on a design-thinking methodology that helps the organizations with strategy and operations (you can see more here as background on Tech Research Asia, in itself a highly successful start up). Questions such as what markets and segments they should go after, how they can better engage, and what business models work best are common in our projects.

We think we've been pretty successful so far with helping established companies and want to share this approach and our experience with pre-revenue start ups of all types. We realise that the typical research, advisory, and consulting fees for such a program are out of budget range for 99% of early-stage startups. But we also firmly believe this type of work is really what so many need. As such, we wanted to take a different approach and offer the same in-depth and rigorous engagement via angel investing. We want to be involved and stay involved.

Our view is that there are a significant number of people and companies with ideas that could greatly benefit coastal communities like ours that are missing out on the support they need to get things off the ground or be successful. They are either not sure how to go about it, or their idea is just not attractive to the highly competitive venture capital players as they aren't aiming to be the next unicorn or big thing.

In our view, the support they need, is not just funding, it is the availability of people with the experience and skills to fast-track their business success both in Japan and across the Asia Pacific region (or the globe) - whatever the goal of that business.

This is where we think we can help. We are providing the stimulus to take on the many coastal community issues felt around the world via our events, competitions, and advocacy. We have the executives with skills, experience, and know-how - we've all been involved in start-ups and multiple businesses. We have an attractive acceleration program that aims to not just provide some funding, but establish sustainable, successful businesses with a focus on coastal communities. We have a work-style approach that instills a more fruitful, balanced, and sustainable lifestyle for leaders and teams that will help them in the long-term.

There is plenty more we can say about our story and drivers for what we do, so get in touch and lets start a conversation.

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