This site began in Japanese as Startup Dating back in 2010, since then bringing Asian tech news to readers in Japan. This year, I had to honor of joining the team to create a complementary English version, SD Japan, with the mission of bringing Japanese tech and startup news to the rest of Asia and the world.
So now this bilingual site is a bridge that sends news in two directions.
And I’m really happy to announce that we have some big plans to make it even better in the next few months.
The first step will be a rebrand that reflects what we aspire to be for the tech and startup space. On October 7 we will evolve our work so far into a new media presence known as ‘The Bridge’. Check out our swanky new orange logo on the right. It’s rich in vitamin C.
Without going into too many details, let me briefly say that this is far more than a simple rebrand. New features will be rolling out in phases, with a heavier focus on our database as well as a sort of scoring system that will guide our readers towards the hottest startups and trends in the industry.
We hope to be more than media, and act as a service to connect startups and investors, not just in Japan but around Asia too.
There will be more updates in our regular weekly newsletter as things develop, so I encourage you to sign up.
In an age where news is information, technology news sites have a responsibility to create more than just a firehose of articles. You deserve better, and we’re going to try our best to deliver. That means more than just text. It means video interviews, timelines, app/game screencasts, and more ambitious big-picture projects like our Japan Internet Map that tie it all together.
If you’re an aspiring writer, media producer, or data nerd looking to develop your digital media chops, do get in touch if you’d like to get involved. And as always, if you are a young startup company or entrepreneur, we’d love to talk with you as well!
For many people, thinking back to teenage years may bring some awkward memories. But recently here in Japan we’re seeing a number of apps that attempt to make life better and more fun for kids going through these difficult years. Here are three apps that we stumbled upon that are targeted at teenage girls in Japan, in no particular order. My Nikibi The last thing a girl wants is a pimple on her face on the day of a hot new date. ‘My Nikibi’, meaning ‘my pimples’, is an app that helps girls deal with unwanted blemishes. It lets them manage their pimples by taking photos, and noting which ointment they used to treat it. By looking back later, they can then figure out which methods work best. Like many services in Japan, My Nikibi features a cute character as well. The app is available as a free download for both iOS and Android. Decolink Decolink is another app by CyberAgent which we mentioned in a past article. Released back in February, the app competes directly with Line but focuses exclusively on teenage girls as its target user base. There are over 10,000 free stamps available, and girls can enjoy…
For many people, thinking back to teenage years may bring some awkward memories. But recently here in Japan we’re seeing a number of apps that attempt to make life better and more fun for kids going through these difficult years. Here are three apps that we stumbled upon that are targeted at teenage girls in Japan, in no particular order.
My Nikibi
The last thing a girl wants is a pimple on her face on the day of a hot new date. ‘My Nikibi’, meaning ‘my pimples’, is an app that helps girls deal with unwanted blemishes. It lets them manage their pimples by taking photos, and noting which ointment they used to treat it. By looking back later, they can then figure out which methods work best. Like many services in Japan, My Nikibi features a cute character as well.
The app is available as a free download for both iOS and Android.
Decolink
Decolink is another app by CyberAgent which we mentioned in a past article. Released back in February, the app competes directly with Line but focuses exclusively on teenage girls as its target user base. There are over 10,000 free stamps available, and girls can enjoy many customization features like changing the fonts and backgrounds for the chat app.
JK Mezamashi is a simple alarm clock app released by CyberAgent. The application is unique in that it is produced by an actual high school student who serves as the editor-in-chief of the mobile blogging platform, Candy. On Candy, CyberAgent conducted a survey of teens asking about their wake-up habits. Not surprisingly, 44% of girls uses the default alarm clock on their phones. Half of the respondents listed checking their mobile phone as the first thing they do after waking up.
The app has many fun alarm sounds including voices by cute guys in three different dialects. You can download the app for both iOS and Android.
Read this article in Japanese In Japan, we have seen a lot of hype around the e-commerce sector, and one of the startups getting a lot of attention is Stores.jp. Launched almost a year ago, the service recently made headlines when it was acquired by Start Today, the company behind the mega fashion e-commerce Zozotown. We visited the very cool Shibuya office of Bracket, the company behind Stores.jp, and talked to the CEO, Yusuke Mitsumoto, about their journey to this point, and where they go from here. The Bridge: Why did you choose Shibuya as the location to set up the Bracket office? Yusuke: I graduated from Aoyama Gakuin University which is located in Shibuya, so I’m very familiar and comfortable here. I really can’t think of any other place. We moved here about three weeks ago, but it’s only a five-minute walk from our previous office. We only had five people before, but the team has grown to be more than 20. The Bridge: How did you end up starting your own company? Yusuke: I use to work for a foreign advertising agency. The ad industry was so much fun, in fact too fun that I even felt a…
In Japan, we have seen a lot of hype around the e-commerce sector, and one of the startups getting a lot of attention is Stores.jp. Launched almost a year ago, the service recently made headlines when it was acquired by Start Today, the company behind the mega fashion e-commerce Zozotown. We visited the very cool Shibuya office of Bracket, the company behind Stores.jp, and talked to the CEO, Yusuke Mitsumoto, about their journey to this point, and where they go from here.
The Bridge: Why did you choose Shibuya as the location to set up the Bracket office?
Yusuke: I graduated from Aoyama Gakuin University which is located in Shibuya, so I’m very familiar and comfortable here. I really can’t think of any other place. We moved here about three weeks ago, but it’s only a five-minute walk from our previous office. We only had five people before, but the team has grown to be more than 20.
The Bridge: How did you end up starting your own company?
Yusuke: I use to work for a foreign advertising agency. The ad industry was so much fun, in fact too fun that I even felt a little scared. In Japan, the job of an ad agency is to sell media space sort of similar to a realtor, but outside Japan, you are more of a partner where you charge your fee by the hour. It was interesting to be able to work for different companies in various industries, from airlines to car manufacturers to even mineral water. But at the end of the day, the final decisions are always made by the client. I wanted to drive my own business and that’s why I started my own company.
The Bridge: Can you tell us about Bracket and its current business?
Yusuke: I founded Bracket as an internet business company back in October of 2008. Five years have since passed and it feels like the blink of an eye. The first service we released was CaFoRe, a C2C car-sharing service, and we now operate five web services in total. The others are Shoes of Prey, Privaterobe, Stores.jp, and ModelTown.
The Bridge: How did you end up making those five products?
Yusuke: The first two years we focused on CaFoRe, and in the third year we released everything except Stores.jp. We launched Stores.jp almost a year ago. We’ve been bootstrapped all this time, so we had to produce more sources of income and each product made contributions to our revenue.
The Bridge: In terms of revenue, which is the biggest contributor?
Yusuke: It’s more like a little from all products, but Shoes of Prey had more impact than we had expected. E-commerce is a simple business: you sell, you get cash. C2C services on the other hand requires a lot of time to grow. Currently, we have about 30,000 registered users on Shoes of Prey.
The Bridge: So would you say that you’ve been the only captain on the boat until now?
Yusuke: Yes, I’ve been the only executive until now. However, one of the team members Aya Tukahara, joined me on the board this year. All of the business decisions have been made by me. There are a few entrepreneurs outside the company that I can talk to, but many people choose to get funded or they already have enough funds at hand, so it’s hard to find someone in the same shoes as me.
The Bridge: Tell me a little about your current team.
Yusuke: There are roughly 20 members on our team including part-timers. Of those, about half are designers and engineers, and a quarter consists of managers and business development. The rest belong to customer support. There are no divisions within these teams, designers work on designs for all five products. But this year, we’ve pretty much focused on Stores.jp and Shoes of Prey.
The Bridge: How do you recruit people?
Yusuke: That’s the hardest part, but many are through introductions. We do put out recruiting ads but it’s been difficult to find qualified people. We don’t want to rush to hire people, because it just means more work when it doesn’t work out. Recruiting takes patience.
The Bridge: Can you tell us the current status of Stores.jp?
Yusuke: Since its launch almost a year ago, we have about 50,000 stores on the platform. About half of those are individuals, and the other half are small businesses with physical stores. Many stores owned by individuals sell design products like t-shirts and handmade items.
The Bridge: Your direct competitor is BASE. Why do your users chose Stores.jp over them?
Yusuke: We make many opportunities to speak directly with our users, and many chose us for our design and usability. They feel that the Stores.jp brand is cool. I think our simple domain Stores.jp helps with that branding.
The Bridge: What do you have planned for Stores.jp in the future?
Yusuke: We’re trying to enhance the ability to sell. At the end of July we released a feature called Promotional Switch. By turning this switch on, items within your store are promoted via partner e-commerce and media sites. We want to increase the number these partners to boost Stores.jp selling power.
The Bridge: Can people sell their items abroad?
Yusuke: Yes, there is a feature to translate stores into English. Not many stores use this feature, but we want this total to increase.
The Bridge: What’s your next big goal?
Yusuke: By the end of the year, we want to double the number of stores on Stores.jp.
Working with Start Today
The Bridge: Has anything changed since you joined Start Today, the company behind Zozotown?
Yusuke: Not really. Generally, when a company is acquired by another, you start your job the next day at the new office, you’re given new business cards, and even a new team. But for us, nothing has changed. The decision to move to our current office was decided before we began talking to Start Today, and I’m still the CEO with the same team working together. But by partnering up with Start Today, we now have access to the many powerful resources that they own.
The Bridge: We heard that the acquisitions talks only took two phone calls.
Yusuke: That’s correct. I have known Mr. Maezawa, the CEO of Start Today, for a few years. Before we launched Stores.jp or Shoes of Prey, he somehow found us and contacted us through our website. Ever since then, I’ve occasionally had dinner with him. Bracket had always been bootstrapped, so it was a big decision and a scary one to get funding from outside. But it was time, and we were looking for two hundred million yen.
The Bridge: So you were already in talks with potential investors.
Yusuke: Yes. At first we were talking about a business alliance with Start Today because Zozotown and Stores.jp had the potential to work together to boost each other’s service. But if we’re doing business together, I suggested it might be best for them to invest in us so that we can really work together.
The Bridge: How do you plan to work with them?
Yusuke: This is unintentional, but almost 70% of store owners on Stores.jp are in the apparel sector. There is obviously a huge demand in the apparel industry, and to cultivate this opportunity, it is crucial that we work with Zozotown which has a big influence in that industry.
The Bridge: How many users does Zozotown have?
Yusuke: They have over five million users, and we can certainly leverage these members, maybe providing stores to these people. They also have an impressive inventory, so its possible for us to provide these services to stores owners on Stores.jp. There are so many possibilities and opportunities that come from us working together, and we want to do that to boost the power of Stores.jp by every possible way.
Check out the video below where Yusuke gives us an intro to Bracket as well as some photos from their new office.
The Tokyo Game Show 2013 this past weekend showcased more than just games. Some companies were exhibiting solutions for game developers, one of the most interesting being QueryEye, a Nagoya-based startup that provides a marketing analysis solution. For mobile developers, if you see a sudden download surge for your app, you may have difficulty in figuring out what caused the spike. But QueryEye’s solution QuerySeeker gives you insight based on metrics and analytics that it collects. It continually crawls more than 45 million pages of popular blogs and app-focused websites. In this way you can figure out what social media post or online article helped give your app a boost. QuerySeeker was recently upgraded and so that now it can give you analytics in almost real time, updating every minute. It can be used for apps in a variety of app stores, like Apple’s AppStore, Google Play, KDDI’s au Smartpass, NTT Docomo’s dmenu, Amazon Kindle Store, the iTunes iBook Store, and Google Books. A single analysis package for an app is available for a monthly charge starting at 148,000 yen (about $1,500) not including the initial setup fee. The company was founded back in 2010 by Masashi Mizuno, known for…
The Tokyo Game Show 2013 this past weekend showcased more than just games. Some companies were exhibiting solutions for game developers, one of the most interesting being QueryEye, a Nagoya-based startup that provides a marketing analysis solution.
For mobile developers, if you see a sudden download surge for your app, you may have difficulty in figuring out what caused the spike. But QueryEye’s solution QuerySeeker gives you insight based on metrics and analytics that it collects.
It continually crawls more than 45 million pages of popular blogs and app-focused websites. In this way you can figure out what social media post or online article helped give your app a boost.
QuerySeeker was recently upgraded and so that now it can give you analytics in almost real time, updating every minute. It can be used for apps in a variety of app stores, like Apple’s AppStore, Google Play, KDDI’s au Smartpass, NTT Docomo’s dmenu, Amazon Kindle Store, the iTunes iBook Store, and Google Books. A single analysis package for an app is available for a monthly charge starting at 148,000 yen (about $1,500) not including the initial setup fee.
The company was founded back in 2010 by Masashi Mizuno, known for contributing insightful mobile market analysis in Japanese tech media.
In the area of user retention, we’ve recently seen more than a few solution providers, including planBCD, Growth Push, Fello, and Korea’s 5Rocks. What QuerySeeker provides is somewhat different but helps developers find more efficient ways to market their apps and bring in more users.
If 2012 was the year that mobile exhibitors overtook consoles at the Tokyo Game Show, 2013 was the year consoles rebounded, with Sony and Microsoft dominating the show. But there was still a strong mobile presence this year, perhaps the biggest exhibitor being GREE, once again shelling out for a large floor space. We spoke to their SVP of social games Eiji Araki, who explained why they feel the need to go big every year. But the standout newcomer this year at TGS was GungHo Online Entertainment, the developer of perhaps the world’s most successful game, Puzzle & Dragons, spotlighting their new 3DS version. They also previewed their upcoming title, Divine Gate, which is set for a September 30 release on Android. There were some notable absences from the mobile space however. GREE rival DeNA, as always, chose to skip the event. Colopl had a pretty large booth last year, but they took a pass on showing up this year. Casual game makers Line Corporation and BeeWorks, the creator of the wildly popular (and cute) Nameco franchise, were also no shows. We turned our eyes to the little guys in mobile this year, skipping over consoles entirely [1]. In the…
If 2012 was the year that mobile exhibitors overtook consoles at the Tokyo Game Show, 2013 was the year consoles rebounded, with Sony and Microsoft dominating the show.
But there was still a strong mobile presence this year, perhaps the biggest exhibitor being GREE, once again shelling out for a large floor space. We spoke to their SVP of social games Eiji Araki, who explained why they feel the need to go big every year. But the standout newcomer this year at TGS was GungHo Online Entertainment, the developer of perhaps the world’s most successful game, Puzzle & Dragons, spotlighting their new 3DS version. They also previewed their upcoming title, Divine Gate, which is set for a September 30 release on Android.
There were some notable absences from the mobile space however. GREE rival DeNA, as always, chose to skip the event. Colopl had a pretty large booth last year, but they took a pass on showing up this year.
Casual game makers Line Corporation and BeeWorks, the creator of the wildly popular (and cute) Nameco franchise, were also no shows.
We turned our eyes to the little guys in mobile this year, skipping over consoles entirely [1]. In the indie gaming area it was great to see companies like Okinawa-based SummerTime Studio, who has had a hit with their Ancient Surfer mobile game. We had a short discussion with their president, Hirotsu Takeyasu, which you can check out below.
Set up right next to them was Tokyo-based Link Kit, the maker of Samurai Defender, a game that we reviewed (and loved) earlier this year. Team Martini was also showing off Pechan, a really fun game for iPad where you have to push a juicer around the screen to crush fruit.
The game show also had an area dedicated to romance simulation games, featuring Eitarosoft, Voltage, and the oddly named ZZYZX. We did a short interview with Voltage (see video below), a prolific game publisher with over 50 titles to date. They plan to release one app every month, including some games that men can enjoy as well. This is one of those genres that is unique to Japan, but I imagine we will see more of these kind of titles creep into the global market (as we saw with card battle games), on an experimental basis if nothing else.
They came from beyond
Of course, the game show wasn’t just about Japanese game producers peddling their wares. There were also an abundance of foreign game makers parachuting into the country to show off titles here. As we mentioned yesterday, the one that most impressed us was Israel’s Nordau Creative with its Kazooloo augmented reality dragon fighting title.
But there was also an abundance of exhibitors from the Asia region, representing Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Tawian, Thailand, and Vietnam.
We also were quite impressed by the efforts of Russian developer and publisher Game Insight, who just recently launched a localized version of their Tribez game here in Japan for iOS. They win our unofficial award for the most enthusiastic game demo, corralling me and my colleague into a room and not letting us go until we had seen five of their games. They should get a raise.
And finally, making my naughty list this year is Square Enix, who once again had their “no photos” policy in effect at their booth, demonstrating that they still do not comprehend the concept of a “show”.
The Nordau Creative team, featuring Kazooloo AR game at Tokyo Game Show
There no shortage of coverage over on sites like Tktk and Tktk, so you can check that out there. ↩
While we were primarily focused on Japanese mobile game makers in our visit to the Tokyo Game Show, there were lots of foreign developers and publishers who brought great games to show off. The one that stood out the most for me was from Israeli studio Nordau Creative. They were turning lots of heads with their Kazooloo augmented reality dragon fighting game. This mobile title makes use of a large board that you place on the floor, which when viewed through the camera on your phone or tablet, appears as a sort of inter-dimensional vortex that spawns angry dragons for you to fight. Admittedly, these AR games can be somewhat gimmicky sometimes. But watching visitors dance around Kazooloo game boards shooting at floor dragons makes me think that this one has more potential than most. To try the game out for yourself, you’ll first need to get the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play and then purchase one of the available boards from the company website, which will then be shipped to you. They range in price from $14.99 for a mini-board, to $49.99 for larger sizes. If you’d like a visual demo of how the game…
The Nordau Creative team, featuring Kazooloo AR game at Tokyo Game Show
While we were primarily focused on Japanese mobile game makers in our visit to the Tokyo Game Show, there were lots of foreign developers and publishers who brought great games to show off.
The one that stood out the most for me was from Israeli studio Nordau Creative. They were turning lots of heads with their Kazooloo augmented reality dragon fighting game. This mobile title makes use of a large board that you place on the floor, which when viewed through the camera on your phone or tablet, appears as a sort of inter-dimensional vortex that spawns angry dragons for you to fight.
Admittedly, these AR games can be somewhat gimmicky sometimes. But watching visitors dance around Kazooloo game boards shooting at floor dragons makes me think that this one has more potential than most.
To try the game out for yourself, you’ll first need to get the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play and then purchase one of the available boards from the company website, which will then be shipped to you. They range in price from $14.99 for a mini-board, to $49.99 for larger sizes.
If you’d like a visual demo of how the game works, you can check out their promo video for the game below.
Rick Martin
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Masaru Ikeda
