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Hot new mobile game from Okinawa rides an early wave

Rick Martin 2013.09.09

Thanks to the folks over on Gamebiz for pointing out that a new made-in-Japan mobile game, Ancient Surfer, has surpassed 100,000 downloads in its first four days. The title launched last week (on September 5th) for both iOS and Android, and since then has done fairly well in its home market of Japan (currently third in the iOS sports category), as well as other big markets like the UK, Brazil, and Thailand.

The title features dead-simple two-button controls for turning, a button each for right and left, and with the Unity game engine the graphics are very impressive. The iOS version is plagued by a really irritating ad in the upper right, however, perhaps enough to keep me from coming back to the game. I’d consider paying to remove it, but I saw no such option readily available.

Ancient Surfer comes from SummerTime Studio based in Okinawa. We don’t often have the pleasure of featuring companies from that part of Japan, so it’s certainly great to see a game like this one do well. According to Gamebiz, we can expect to see another new title from the studio in the coming weeks.

If you’d like to give Ancient Surfer a try yourself, feel free to pick it up from the App Store or from Google Play. Or check out our demo video above.

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15 Japanese startups pitch at Rising Expo 2013, TwitCasting takes top prize

Masaru Ikeda 2013.09.09

See our Japanese coverage of Rising Expo here On Friday, Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures held its annual Rising Expo 2013 event which showcased up-and-coming 15 startups to a crowd of local investors and entrepreneurs [1]. Last year smartphone-based credit card payment provider Coiney won the top prize of 2 million yen (about $20,000), and the startup subsequently raised 100 million yen ($1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures, East Ventures, and an individual angel investor. Among the 15 participating startups this time around, TwitCasting was chosen as the audience favorite by way of voting. TwitCasting is a mobile live-broadcasting application that was launched back in February of 2010. Its userbase is currently around 3 million, a larger total than Ustream currently has in Japan. Almost 20% of it user base comes from the overseas, and it is getting more and more popular in places like Brazil and the Middle East. It raised 64.8 million yen (approximately $648,000) from East Ventures and Japanese entrepreneur Masao Ito (who runs User Local). TwitCasting was pitched by Yosuke Akamatsu (@Yoski) of Moi Corp. For this competition, every single finalist had 10 minutes for their pitch, longer than most other startup events. This gave Akamatsu a chance to…

See our Japanese coverage of Rising Expo here

On Friday, Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures held its annual Rising Expo 2013 event which showcased up-and-coming 15 startups to a crowd of local investors and entrepreneurs [1]. Last year smartphone-based credit card payment provider Coiney won the top prize of 2 million yen (about $20,000), and the startup subsequently raised 100 million yen ($1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures, East Ventures, and an individual angel investor. Among the 15 participating startups this time around, TwitCasting was chosen as the audience favorite by way of voting.

TwitCasting is a mobile live-broadcasting application that was launched back in February of 2010. Its userbase is currently around 3 million, a larger total than Ustream currently has in Japan. Almost 20% of it user base comes from the overseas, and it is getting more and more popular in places like Brazil and the Middle East. It raised 64.8 million yen (approximately $648,000) from East Ventures and Japanese entrepreneur Masao Ito (who runs User Local).

TwitCasting was pitched by Yosuke Akamatsu (@Yoski) of Moi Corp. For this competition, every single finalist had 10 minutes for their pitch, longer than most other startup events. This gave Akamatsu a chance to explain the app’s user experience by showing a live online chat being broadcast by some high school girls. In a response to his question “Why you are TwitCasting”, the girls answered “Because its fun”. This impressed the audience a lot, possibly because typical middle-aged men usually have no chance to talk with young girls!

Like Coiney, which won the grand prize award at last year’s event, TwitCasting is expected to accelerate its global expansion and user acquisition moving forward.

To learn about all the other startups that pitched at Rising Expo, check out our overview below.

15 Startups from Rising Expo ¶

1. Kosodate Share (co-operative childcare), pitched by Keiko Koda (Asmama)

This service allows you to ask other users in your neighborhood to take care of your children. Available tasks vary from babysitting to taking them to schools or kindergartens when you can’t manage. For parents, when you ask someone for a nursery task using the service, it will charge 500 yen (about $5) as a usage fee. The fee covers insurance in case of emergency, and which will ease your concerns about your child’s safety. To date the service has acquired more than 3,000 users.

2. Conyac.cc, pitched by Naoki Yamada (Anydoor)

Conyac is a crowdsourced translation service for individual and corporate users. The company recently set up a San Francisco office and is intensifying its global service expansion. In terms of user demographic, the company’s major clients include buzz marketing sites, media websites, and social gaming studios. The startup has fundraised 40 million ($400,000) from United, Skylight Consulting, angel investor Anri Samata.

3. Cafetalk, pitched by Kohtaro Hashizume (Small Bridge)

Cafetalk is a C2C marketplace focused on learning foreign languages online. The service itself does not provide any learning service but rather it connects teachers with students. To date it has acquired 15,000 students and 2,000 teachers who have posted more than 1,000 available lessons. The company has recently seen more than a few teachers who can make a living through this marketplace only. According to a Searchina interview with CEO Hashizume with, the service is in high demand among females in their 30s, who typically want to learn foreign languages as a hobby.

4. Factelier, pitched by Toshio Yamada (Life Style Accent)

This startup claims to enable fashion enthusiasts buy Louis Vuitton-class fashions for prices as reasonable as Uniqlo. By eliminating the middleman between fashion retailers and clothing factories, the startup succeeded in bringing low-priced but high-quality Japan-made clothes to consumers worldwide. Prior to launching this startup, CEO Toshio Yamada worked at Gucci Paris when attending university, and he subsequently worked at Fashionwalker.com, one of Japan’s leading fashion e-commerce sites and the host of Tokyo Girls Collection. Readers may recall that my colleague Yukari Mitsuhashi previously spoke with him about how the company plans to change the industry.

5. Kawaii Museum JPN, pitched by Taketo Tanaka

Kawaii Museum is a global platform for distributing Japanese character franchises. To date it has acquired more than 4 million likes on Facebook and several tens of thousand users for its Pinterest-like curation website. The startup is currently being developed by Ruby programmer Taketo Tanaka (below) who previously worked with DeNA. It was chosen back in March to be included in the fouth batch of KDDI Mugen Labo’s incubation program.

6. Relux, pitched by Takaya Shinozuka (Loco Partners)

Relux is a satisfaction-guaranteed marketplace for Japanese inns. Every month its user number grows by 1.5 times, and the company expects to see more traffic from all around the world. To date the startup has received investments worth 60 million yen ($600,000) from CyberAgent Ventures and Recruit Incubation Partners. You can also check out our previous interview with Shinozuka.

7. Base, pitched by Yuta Tsuruoka (Base)

Base is a Shopify-like instant e-commerce platform developed by Project Liverty, a tech savvy team led by entrepreneur Kazuma Ieiri. Since its launch back in November of 2012, the company has acquired more than 40,000 merchants. It raised 23 million yen ($230,000) back in January, and is aiming to transact 100 million yen ($1 million) in deals by the end of this year.

8. Event Regist, pitched by Kosuke Hirayama (Event Regist)

Event Regist provides a platform for event organizers to market their events and issue tickets online. The service is available in Japanese, English, Indonesian, Thai, and traditional Chinese. Many players are fiercely competing in C2C-based ticket deals (e.g. Ticket Street or Ticket Camp), and its B2C business is dominated by box office companies (e.g. Ticket Pia). So the startup has decided to focus on the B2B business model. It raised seed investment from East Ventures, Skyland Ventures, and Shinwa Agency back in June, and has exclusively handled ticket issuing for events like the Tokyo Game Show 2013 and CEATEC 2013 Japan.

9. Ubiregi, pitched by Keita Kido

Ubiregi is a cloud-based POS (point of sales) system that uses an iPad at storefronts. Compared to conventional systems, it can be eailsy deployed and maintained, especially for individual merchants like small restaurants, standing bars, and accessory shops. The startup was launched by Keita Kido in August of 2010, and raised around 20 million yen (over $200,000) from Voyage Ventures and Kronos Fund. It also has a capital tie-up with SalesForce.com. To date it has acquired 7,000 merchants nationwide, with the expectation of reaching 20,000. That would account for 1% of the Japanese cash register market.

10. WebPay, pitched by Kei Kubo (FluxFlex)

WebPay is an easy-to-install, API-based card payment solution for Japanese e-commerce companies. In order to give developers an easy interface for payments, the startup partnered with GMO Payment Gateway, one of the oldest and biggest payment processing companies in Japan. Upon its official launch, the company also received an undisclosed amount of funding from CyberAgent Ventures, Architype, and GMO Payment Gateway.

11. SLASH 7, pitched by Nobuhiro Hayashi (pLucky)

Slash–7 aims to gives website owners sophisticated data analysis for reasonable rates. Many executives at Japanese companies are becoming increasingly interested in making the most of big data analysis to improve their business. This company’s CEO believes it has an advantage over similar services (like Mixpanel) in terms of offering a variety of features for a cost. The company previously raised 20 million ($200,000) from CyberAgent Ventures and Incubate Fund.

12. planBCD, pitched by Kenji Sudo (KAIZEN platform)

PlanBCD is a platform that helps developers improve the user interface of their web services. It provides developers with an A/B testing environment, especially useful for improving web content and interfaces. Using the service, you can also crowdsource the UI and UX improvement process. It raised seed funding worth $800,000 from Gree Ventures, GMO Venture Partners, and CyberAgent Ventures back in August.

13. Seconds, pitched by Miku Hirano (Spicy Cinnamon)

Seconds is a mobile app for sharing photos between intimate friends or family members. You just take a photo, and choose your desired album for upload. Photos added are immediately visible to members who have access to that album, and those members can also upload pictures as well. The app was launched back in April, and it has acquired more than 40,000 users from three Asian countries in two months. It was incorporated in Singapore back in October and has engineers in HoChi Minh City (Vietnam) and Bangkok (Thailand). It received seed funding back in December from CyberAgent Ventures and other angel investors.

14. TwitCasting (see above)

15. Candy, pitched by Yosuke Fukada (Yoyo Holdings)

Incorporated in Singapore, this company plans to form a mobile economic ecosystem in emerging markets such as the Philippines. Since very few people pay with credit cards in these upcoming Southeast Asian markets, the company believes there are huge opportunities to cultivate business around monetary needs over there. Candy is a platform that gives users rewards which can be used to pay their cellphone bills in return for completing ‘microtasks’ such as participating in an online survey.

Disclaimer: I was involved in a preliminary screening process at the competition to choose the finalists with the other judges. ↩

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What country finds you most attractive? Find out with this app from Japan

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.09.06

There are a lot of online dating apps and services out there. Here in Japan, many domestic services are limited to Japanese users due to the language barrier. But one iPhone app is looking beyond Japan. GooLook is a social networking app that lets its users see if people in other countries find you attractive. Choose a country where you want your face to be rated The app is available in eight different languages, spanning 168 countries. Users are required to login using Facebook or Twitter credentials, or by creating an account within the app. After than you can choose a country where you want your face to be rated. Your photo will be sent out to 50 people in that country, and your popularity measured by the number of responses (or ‘smiles’) you receive. One fun feature of this app is that it displays the results in a graph, showing at glance which country finds you most attractive. In the near future GooLook plans to add a ranking feature, showing off the most popular faces in the whole world. The app already lets users see your popularity work ranking with its ‘Smile Rank’. GooLook was initially released in beta…

Choose a country where you want your face to be rated

The app is available in eight different languages, spanning 168 countries. Users are required to login using Facebook or Twitter credentials, or by creating an account within the app.

After than you can choose a country where you want your face to be rated. Your photo will be sent out to 50 people in that country, and your popularity measured by the number of responses (or ‘smiles’) you receive.

One fun feature of this app is that it displays the results in a graph, showing at glance which country finds you most attractive. In the near future GooLook plans to add a ranking feature, showing off the most popular faces in the whole world. The app already lets users see your popularity work ranking with its ‘Smile Rank’.

GooLook was initially released in beta back in June of 2012 and was downloaded over 22,000 times within its first two weeks. Initially 95% of the downloads came from Japan, but soon after folks in the United States and Korea caught on, as well as other countries in Europe. The app ended up attracting users from over 100 countries, and a year later, the app emerged from the beta stage to make its official debut.

GooLook can be downloaded for free over on the App Store.

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Japanese recipe sharing site Cookpad acquires private lesson marketplace Cyta.jp for $10 million

Takeshi Hirano 2013.09.06

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Coach United, the startup behind private lesson marketplace Cyta.jp, announced today that it has been acquired by Japanese recipe sharing site Cookpad. Update: Several news sources say the acquisition price is 1 billion yen ($10 million). Since its launch back in June of 2011, it has grown to provide users with about 140 different private lessons (in fields such as language learning, music study, or qualification acquisition), available at 3,000 locations around the country. Unlike other marketplace services which typically connect potential students to teachers, the startup assures the quality of the lessons they introduce on the website by checking into will teach them or where it will take place. In our past interview with the startup’s CEO Nobuhiro Ariyasu, the company expected to have 20,000 users received private lessons (as of August). Prior to the acquisition, the two companies have worked with each other on some test marketing initiatives back in late 2012.

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Coach United, the startup behind private lesson marketplace Cyta.jp, announced today that it has been acquired by Japanese recipe sharing site Cookpad.

Update: Several news sources say the acquisition price is 1 billion yen ($10 million).

Since its launch back in June of 2011, it has grown to provide users with about 140 different private lessons (in fields such as language learning, music study, or qualification acquisition), available at 3,000 locations around the country. Unlike other marketplace services which typically connect potential students to teachers, the startup assures the quality of the lessons they introduce on the website by checking into will teach them or where it will take place.

In our past interview with the startup’s CEO Nobuhiro Ariyasu, the company expected to have 20,000 users received private lessons (as of August).

Prior to the acquisition, the two companies have worked with each other on some test marketing initiatives back in late 2012.

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The announcement I wish Nintendo would make

Rick Martin 2013.09.05

This morning I stumbled across M.G. Siegler’s post on the death of Nintendo, which he says has been “greatly under-exaggerated.” Like Siegler, I’m a fan of Nintendo. But I don’t think they’re completely dead. There is one final Hail Mary pass that I think Nintendo has to inevitably throw before completely tossing in the towel. And that’s the Nintendo Phone. Of course, this is the product that they should have launched back in 2009, when the iPod Touch was spared a camera upgrade in favor of positioning it as a gaming machine. I was a huge Nintendo DS fan at the time, and I remember noticing some clever homebrewers running VoIP applications on a Nintendo DS. It seemed to me back then that if Nintendo added phone capabilities to the DS, that in terms of pure function, they would be offering essentially the same device as Apple. Not as cool of course. But it would have been interesting. As we all know, things didn’t turn out that way. But is there still time? I mean, now that casual games have taken over the planet via the smartphone, doesn’t the world’s most experienced maker of casual games even have a chance…

Of course, this is the product that they should have launched back in 2009, when the iPod Touch was spared a camera upgrade in favor of positioning it as a gaming machine.

I was a huge Nintendo DS fan at the time, and I remember noticing some clever homebrewers running VoIP applications on a Nintendo DS. It seemed to me back then that if Nintendo added phone capabilities to the DS, that in terms of pure function, they would be offering essentially the same device as Apple. Not as cool of course. But it would have been interesting.

As we all know, things didn’t turn out that way.

But is there still time? I mean, now that casual games have taken over the planet via the smartphone, doesn’t the world’s most experienced maker of casual games even have a chance if they rolled out a phone right now?

And with that in mind, I went and drafted my dream ‘Nintendo phone’ announcement. As you do. In my head. It’s not real, so you’ve all been warned.

Nintendo unveils the DS phone, ‘Nintendo classic’ subscription plan, and Pokemon Glass™

Today Nintendo is proud to announce that it will be releasing the next evolution of its DS lineup, the Nintendo DS Phone™. The product comes via a partnership with Kyocera, a company already experienced in making a dual-screen mobile phone with its Kyocera Echo handset.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata elaborated:

Both companies are headquartered in Kyoto, Japan, making this a natural partnership. We have heard our fans repeated demands to have our games made available for mobile, and this announcement is proof that we haven’t completely ignored them at all for years and years.

To ensure that fans hit the ground running with plenty of games when they first purchase our DS Phone™, Nintendo are making its entire back catalogue of classic games available for instant download as of today, as part of the ‘Nintendo Classic’ subscription plan. For just $1.99 per month, fans can get iconic games like Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Mario Kart, Final Fantasy, Metroid and hundreds more.

Never a company known to sadly stagnate, Nintendo has also completely refreshed its Pokemon franchise to once again take the lead as the world’s premier gaming company. By working with augmented reality pioneer Takehito Iguchi and his new company Telepathy, Nintendo has created Pokemon Glass™, a new geo-location game that lets you collect and train Pokemon that you find at different locations in the real world [1]. Telepathy recently raised $5 million to develop it’s wearable Google Glass-like technology.

Iwata added that he hopes that Pokemon Glass™ can spark tourism in Japan, with super rare localized Pokemon that can only be obtained by traveling to certain regions and cities, starting with the Tohoku region. Nintendo will also work with local travel agencies to develop informative in-game content around local landmarks where rare Pokemon can be obtained.

More games are set to be announced at the Tokyo Game Show this year, an event that Nintendo swears it will not skip this time.

There’s actually a little bit of reality to this notion, as Iguchi-san hypothesized such a game when I interviewed him back in 2009. ↩

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Finland’s Startup Sauna coming to Tokyo, brings opportunity for local entrepreneurs

Rick Martin 2013.09.05

Startup Sauna is a startup accelerator from Helsinki Finland, now touring 25 cities around the world, with an upcoming stop here in Tokyo on September 17th at Open Network Lab. The event will feature a panel including Taizo Son, the CEO of Movida Japan and founder/chairman of GungHo ; Peter Vesterbacka, the chief marketing officer of Rovio ; Hironao Kunimitsu, the founder and CEO of Gumi, and Naoki Aoyagi, the CEO of GREE International. But many of our readers will be pleased to hear that there will be a pitch event as well, with the winner receiving an invitations as well as free airfare (courtesy of the event sponsor Finnair) to attend Slush 2013 in November in Helsinki. That two-day event is expected to host 1,000 startups 5,000 attendees, and more than 600 international investors. So it certainly looks like a great opportunity. Miki Kuusi, the director of Startup Sauna, noted in the event announcement: Our two countries [Japan and Finland] have always had a lot in common. We share strong educational institutions that produce leading technical talent, a culture that has yet to warm to neither entrepreneurship nor failure, plus economies that must lessen their dependency on established electronics…

Startup Sauna is a startup accelerator from Helsinki Finland, now touring 25 cities around the world, with an upcoming stop here in Tokyo on September 17th at Open Network Lab.

The event will feature a panel including Taizo Son, the CEO of Movida Japan and founder/chairman of GungHo ; Peter Vesterbacka, the chief marketing officer of Rovio ; Hironao Kunimitsu, the founder and CEO of Gumi, and Naoki Aoyagi, the CEO of GREE International. But many of our readers will be pleased to hear that there will be a pitch event as well, with the winner receiving an invitations as well as free airfare (courtesy of the event sponsor Finnair) to attend Slush 2013 in November in Helsinki. That two-day event is expected to host 1,000 startups 5,000 attendees, and more than 600 international investors. So it certainly looks like a great opportunity.

Miki Kuusi, the director of Startup Sauna, noted in the event announcement:

Our two countries [Japan and Finland] have always had a lot in common. We share strong educational institutions that produce leading technical talent, a culture that has yet to warm to neither entrepreneurship nor failure, plus economies that must lessen their dependency on established electronics industries and seize huge opportunities in fast-moving companies.

If you’d like to apply to pitch at the event, you can do so here. The last day to apply is September 13th. Good luck!

Hot new mobile game from Okinawa rides an early wave

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