Bit Valley

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What Does Bit Valley Mean?

Bit Valley is an area of Shibuya, a suburb of Tokyo, that housed many of Japan’s Internet startups during the dot-com boom. The name Bit Valley is a play on the English translation of Shibuya (bitter valley) and the computer term, "bit." Bit Valley was seen as the Japanese answer to Silicon Valley, but it did not achieve the size and scale of its U.S. cousin before the dot-com bubble burst.

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Techopedia Explains Bit Valley

Bit Valley received a high level of investment from Japanese firms, which in itself was groundbreaking. Prior to the 1990s, Japanese firms were very hesitant about investing in startups. Unfortunately, the dot-com bust sunk many of the tech firms in Bit Valley. Although there is still a tech presence in Bit Valley, Japan’s post-bubble tech and Internet firms are not concentrated in a single location.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.