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Japan’s Trapro brings people together around important social issues

Rick Martin 2013.05.27

Civic startups, or startups that try to achieve some social good, are especially rare in Japan. But at the Infinity Ventures Summit LaunchPad event last week, we saw a pitch from Trapro proposing a sort of Wikipedia for social issues. The startup is an interesting one that plans and organizes tours around important social issues, and helps people interested in those issues to participate in a tour related to that issue. So that could mean a 10-person tour of a local NPO, where each person pays 5000 yen, or about $50. So if an NPO were to conduct such a tour several times a month, it could represent a significant revenue stream for them. The tours will take place on the weekend so as to not interrupt the NPO’s business. Of course the big knock against civic startups is that they don’t often make much money. Trapro hopes to give 70% of the your earnings to the NPO, so there’s still a decent chunk left for them. Whether or not it enough to be sustainable remains to be seen. Founder Toshiki Abe explains: This is something that people have trouble finding out about, so I want to make a system…

Civic startups, or startups that try to achieve some social good, are especially rare in Japan. But at the Infinity Ventures Summit LaunchPad event last week, we saw a pitch from Trapro proposing a sort of Wikipedia for social issues.

The startup is an interesting one that plans and organizes tours around important social issues, and helps people interested in those issues to participate in a tour related to that issue. So that could mean a 10-person tour of a local NPO, where each person pays 5000 yen, or about $50. So if an NPO were to conduct such a tour several times a month, it could represent a significant revenue stream for them. The tours will take place on the weekend so as to not interrupt the NPO’s business.

Of course the big knock against civic startups is that they don’t often make much money. Trapro hopes to give 70% of the your earnings to the NPO, so there’s still a decent chunk left for them. Whether or not it enough to be sustainable remains to be seen. Founder Toshiki Abe explains:

This is something that people have trouble finding out about, so I want to make a system that makes it easier. There are some things you can’t understand unless you go in person. When you come back from a trip, you can write your impressions and add photos, thus raising awareness of that issue. ¶

So far Trapro has had over 60 such social issue tours with more than 2000 participants. They hope to involve public schools as well. Currently Tokyo University students can earn credit by planning these trips. The startup plans to have people go on issue-related tours around the world and have fun learning about them.

Trapro tied for fifth place at the LaunchPad pitch event, but it was one of my favorites as founder Toshiki Abe gave an enthusiastic and convincing pitch. We’ve often spoke about how difficult it is to be an entrepreneur in risk-averse Japan, and I think it requires an extra large pair to do a idealistic, socially-minded startup like this one. I sincerely hope it does well.

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Digital music score platform PiaScore now has an iPhone version

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.05.27

Japanese startup Plusadd has released an iPhone version of its popular digital music score platform PiaScore. The iPad version was released back in December of 2010, and has been downloaded over 100,000 times, counting professional musicians and educators among its fans. The digital music score platform aspires to bring music scores to the hands of people all over the world. Both the iPhone and iPad version of PiaScore are provided for free, with features that allows users to view music scores and make notes on them during practice. PiaScore’s ‘Realistic Display Mode’ makes these digital music scores appear as though they are on paper. Plusadd has also developed what they claim is the world’s fastest page rendering features. Classical music scores can be downloaded for free within the app, however, features such as recording, keyboard, and tone tuner costs 250 yen. Another key feature of the app is its Cloud Play which supports Dropbox. With Cloud Play, users can download over 57,000 scores by 7,800 composers directly from International Music Score Library. The CEO of Plus-Add, Hiroyuki Koike, is an ex-Sony engineer. He explained how he came up with the service: I was not a professional musician, but I used…

Japanese startup Plusadd has released an iPhone version of its popular digital music score platform PiaScore. The iPad version was released back in December of 2010, and has been downloaded over 100,000 times, counting professional musicians and educators among its fans.

The digital music score platform aspires to bring music scores to the hands of people all over the world. Both the iPhone and iPad version of PiaScore are provided for free, with features that allows users to view music scores and make notes on them during practice. PiaScore’s ‘Realistic Display Mode’ makes these digital music scores appear as though they are on paper. Plusadd has also developed what they claim is the world’s fastest page rendering features.

Classical music scores can be downloaded for free within the app, however, features such as recording, keyboard, and tone tuner costs 250 yen. Another key feature of the app is its Cloud Play which supports Dropbox. With Cloud Play, users can download over 57,000 scores by 7,800 composers directly from International Music Score Library.

The CEO of Plus-Add, Hiroyuki Koike, is an ex-Sony engineer. He explained how he came up with the service:

I was not a professional musician, but I used to play the piano as a child growing up. During club activities and concerts, I discovered many problems that musicians encounter. One major problem was that it was a lot of work to carrying around and manage music scores. I built PiaScore as a solution to this very problem. ¶

In the near future, PiaScore plans to develop auto page turning features, and logging and managing of music scores. The company is also looking for possible collborative partners such as music education institutions to help realize this new type of communication through music.

PiaScore previously won the Distinguished Honoree award at the International Business Awards in 2011, and was chosen as a finalist at Japan’s prestigious IVS in spring of 2012. If you want to read our reports about IVS 2013, you can find them here.

The PiaScore app is availabe on iOS for download.

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Speedy wants Japanese students to take their study mobile

Rick Martin 2013.05.27

At the Infinity Ventures Summit event last week in Sapporo, there was no shortage of great startups pitching their ideas at the LaunchPad event. One of the standouts, in my view, was Speedy, a service that incorporates a mobile platform where high school students can capture and share their study notes online. The solution was pitched by Marie Kojima of Scryva Inc (pictured below), who pointed out that lots of students use smartphones to stay connected particularly on platforms like Line or Twitter. Naturally using mobile devices for study is something that Japanese users would embrace, since paper is heavy and cumbersome in comparison to your mobile, which is always with you. Speedy proposes that students digitize their notes by taking a picture and then uploading it to their platform so they can review it while on a train or bus, or even share with friends. The sharing process, Kojima points out, can help students deepen their understanding through discussion. Speedy hopes to encourage this process by making it more fun with stickers too, which can be added overtop of notes to brighten up the commentary. The platform will also let students call for help if they need. So on…

At the Infinity Ventures Summit event last week in Sapporo, there was no shortage of great startups pitching their ideas at the LaunchPad event. One of the standouts, in my view, was Speedy, a service that incorporates a mobile platform where high school students can capture and share their study notes online.

The solution was pitched by Marie Kojima of Scryva Inc (pictured below), who pointed out that lots of students use smartphones to stay connected particularly on platforms like Line or Twitter. Naturally using mobile devices for study is something that Japanese users would embrace, since paper is heavy and cumbersome in comparison to your mobile, which is always with you. Speedy proposes that students digitize their notes by taking a picture and then uploading it to their platform so they can review it while on a train or bus, or even share with friends. The sharing process, Kojima points out, can help students deepen their understanding through discussion. Speedy hopes to encourage this process by making it more fun with stickers too, which can be added overtop of notes to brighten up the commentary.

The platform will also let students call for help if they need. So on the night before a test, for example, if they can’t solve a problem, they post a question. At that point a tutor (tutors are mostly university students) gets an alert that a student has a question, and they can record and return their answer in the same way. The process is entirely mobile.

What’s most interesting here is that Speedy plans to build a database of such answers so they can be repurposed in the future. And such a bank of information, if organized correctly, should prove popular.

So far students have been enthusiastic, and in a survey the company conducted, 55% of students responded that they would like to use such a service. As for payment, users would need a credit card (so they’ll have to ask their parents) to pay the 2980 yen fee each month, but that would get them access to unlimited tutoring advice.

Speedy will be launching in June, with the goal of bringing on 500,000 free users, and then converting some of those to its paid plan.

Check out Speedy’s demo video above to find out more about how it works.

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With 10% of its users Japan, Strikingly officially launches localized service

Rick Martin 2013.05.27

At Infinity Ventures Summit in Sapporo, Japan, we briefly caught up with David Chen, the CEO of Strikingly, a service that lets you create small websites that look great on mobile with minimal effort. The service is now going after the Japanese market, and Strikingly.jp just went live late last week with a Japanese-language interface. Surprisingly, ten percent of the company’s users already come from Japan, and that’s without any efforts to localize or promote the service in the country. Perhaps even more important is that many Japanese users are also paid customers, though maybe that’s not so surprising given that Japan’s internet can be thought of largely as a mobile internet. Strikingly’s designs are entirely responsive, and look good on any sized device — a key feature for any such service here in Japan. I’ve used some similar services in the past, most notably About.me which is pretty simple. That service, however, when viewed on mobile does a better job of promoting About.me than it does its users. Personally I like the idea of just using Github Pages, but if you’d prefer to save yourself the trouble and the difficulty, Strikingly is a great option, especially if it’s for…

david-chen-strikingly — David Chen of Strikingly, at Infinity Ventures Summit

At Infinity Ventures Summit in Sapporo, Japan, we briefly caught up with David Chen, the CEO of Strikingly, a service that lets you create small websites that look great on mobile with minimal effort. The service is now going after the Japanese market, and Strikingly.jp just went live late last week with a Japanese-language interface.

Surprisingly, ten percent of the company’s users already come from Japan, and that’s without any efforts to localize or promote the service in the country. Perhaps even more important is that many Japanese users are also paid customers, though maybe that’s not so surprising given that Japan’s internet can be thought of largely as a mobile internet. Strikingly’s designs are entirely responsive, and look good on any sized device — a key feature for any such service here in Japan.

I’ve used some similar services in the past, most notably About.me which is pretty simple. That service, however, when viewed on mobile does a better job of promoting About.me than it does its users. Personally I like the idea of just using Github Pages, but if you’d prefer to save yourself the trouble and the difficulty, Strikingly is a great option, especially if it’s for your business.

So for example, many of the startups we cover on this site could certainly use such a service to create beautiful pages for their apps. I whipped up a sample photography page for myself in just five minutes using the new Japanese site. As you can see below, the process is as simple as choosing your type of site, selecting a theme, and then editing the content.

Strikingly is backed by Y-Combinator, but as we heard from David on when he spoke at the Infinity Ventures Summit, the startup has faced a number of obstacles in getting where it is today.

Check out the new localized version over on Strikingly.jp.

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Japan tech this week: Sapporo heats up!

japan tech this week

Rick Martin 2013.05.26

We’ve had another fun week here at SD, doing our best to bring you interesting tech stories going down in Japan. On Thursday and Friday we attended the Infinity Ventures Summit in Sapporo, and you’ll find our reports from that event below (or in Japanese here). If you’d like to get this weekly summary plus other bonus content, we hope you’ll check out our shiny new newsletter here. Infinity Ventures Summit Panel sessions How can Japan Innovate? CEOs from Rakuten, Line, and more discuss. 5/23 Reps from GREE, DeNA, & Gumi discuss how to win in global gaming 5/23 Dave McClure and Shinya Akamine talk ‘Tales from Silicon Valley’ 5/23 How can Line monetize its 150 million users? 5/24 Asian startups discuss taking on global markets 05/24 How digital fabrication is changing our world, and Japan 05/24 CyberAgent CEO Susumu Fujita chats with Japanese entrepreneurs about their journey 05/24 LaunchPad startup session These are just a few of the startups who pitched at the IVS LaunchPad event. We hope to feature more of them in the coming days. 1st Place: Freee – CFO’s accounting service 2nd Place: CocoPPa – a service that lets you collaboratively create cutest iPhone homescreens Another…

innovate-japan — The ‘Innovate Japan’ panel at the Infinity Ventures Summit

We’ve had another fun week here at SD, doing our best to bring you interesting tech stories going down in Japan. On Thursday and Friday we attended the Infinity Ventures Summit in Sapporo, and you’ll find our reports from that event below (or in Japanese here).

If you’d like to get this weekly summary plus other bonus content, we hope you’ll check out our shiny new newsletter here.

Infinity Ventures Summit

Panel sessions

LaunchPad startup session

These are just a few of the startups who pitched at the IVS LaunchPad event. We hope to feature more of them in the coming days.

1st Place: Freee – CFO’s accounting service
2nd Place: CocoPPa – a service that lets you collaboratively create cutest iPhone homescreens
Another one we like: LifeTimer – redefining the calendar app

Cute Japanese photo app ‘StickerMe’ is a hit in Greater China

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Japan’s Trapro brings people together around important social issues

Digital music score platform PiaScore now has an iPhone version

Speedy wants Japanese students to take their study mobile

With 10% of its users Japan, Strikingly officially launches localized service

Japan tech this week: Sapporo heats up!

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Infinity Ventures Summit

Panel sessions

LaunchPad startup session

Features

Business

Design

Apps

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