Three Days in Kyoto: Bringing KUMIHIMO Tech Camp Full Circle
Two years ago, Murata Manufacturing’s KUMIHIMO Tech Camp set out to connect Japan’s deep hardware expertise with Bulgaria’s most ambitious deep-tech founders, and to see what real collaboration between the two could look like. This July, Simobotics, Nasekomo, and Solumar – the program’s three 2025 winners – traveled to Kyoto to find out, joined by Simona Nikolova, COO of Endeavor Bulgaria, for three days of technical sessions, an Award Ceremony at Murata’s global headquarters, and a rare look inside a company most of the world only knows through the components in their pockets.
Getting to Know Japan’s Ecosystem and Murata’s HQ
The trip opened at JETRO’s Kyoto office, with representative from Kyoto City Government also joining the session. The founders got a grounded look at what it actually takes to enter the Japanese market – the incentives available, how business gets done, and the kind of on-the-ground support that exists for companies from Eastern Europe looking to establish a presence in Japan.
From there, the group moved to Murata’s headquarters for two full days with the teams behind the components. Each company met with the departments most relevant to its work, going through past and future component applications and exploring how the collaboration could continue beyond the program – the kind of direct, working-level access that’s genuinely hard to come by.
The Award Ceremony
The KUMIHIMO Award Ceremony took place at Murata’s HQ hall in an exclusive venue that carried real weight and cultural heritage – a warm, generous welcome from everyone involved.
Bulgaria’s three winning teams weren’t the only ones recognized: two winners from KUMIHIMO Tech Camp in Japan cohort were honored in the same ceremony, in front of Murata’s board and executive leadership, with hundreds of employees joining both in person and virtually.
This recognition moment became a genuine cross-border gathering. Founders from Bulgaria and Japan, built through the same program on opposite sides of the world, met each other for the first time in the very hall where they were both being celebrated.
The conversations that followed over the networking reception were exactly the kind of connections this program was designed to create.
What Made It More Than a Business Trip
The final morning brought a guided tour of Murata Innovation Museum at its Nagaokakyo office — closed to outside visitors. It traces the company’s history from its earliest years through the milestones and turning points that shaped it into the components leader it is today, alongside the setbacks along the way. It’s the kind of institutional memory companies rarely put on display, let alone share with outside founders.
For a group of entrepreneurs used to telling their own founding stories to investors, seeing a much larger company’s version of that same journey — the wins as much as the near-misses and pivots — landed as something more than a history lesson. It was a reminder of what it actually takes to build something that lasts at scale.
Between the sessions and the ceremony, there was Kyoto itself — traditional dinners around Kawaramachi, evening walks through Gion’s Hanamikoji-dori with an eye out for a passing geisha, the kind of details that don’t fit into a meeting agenda but shape how a trip is remembered. It’s easy to plan a program around deliverables and outcomes; it’s harder to build the kind of shared experience people actually want to be part of again.
That’s ultimately what KUMIHIMO Tech Camp has always been reaching for. Not just access to components or an award on a stage, but the kind of relationship between founders, engineers, and ecosystem builders that survives past the ceremony — the three threads the program was named for, braided together into something that holds.
Congratulations again to the teams at Simobotics, Nasekomo, and Solumar. And thank you to Murata for creating three days that made the distance between Sofia and Kyoto feel a lot smaller.