Japanese internet company Adways (TSE:2849) announced on Thursday that it has invested an undisclosed sum in and partnered with Korean startup 5Rocks. The latter develops growth hacking solutions for mobile apps, and launched services for Japanese app developers last year.
Our readers may recall that 5Rocks raised 230 million yen (approximately $2.3 million) from Japanese VC Global Brain.
It was reported last month that 5Rocks had sold its restaurant booking app Poing to fellow Korean startup Trust Us so it could focus more on its growth hacking tool business.
Adways has developed a performance analytics solution for mobile apps called PartyTrack, and they plan to integrate their suite with 5Rocks’ solution, aiming to provide more efficient mobile ad marketing services for clients.
Another Japanese startup, Sirok, also introduced a growth hacking tool called Growth Point last month. A series of such service launches indicates this sector will likely be a trending space this year.
As someone who has been trying to learn programming over the past few years, one of the biggest issues that I continue to run into is getting my local development environment to function properly. For a beginner, an amazing amount of stamina is required to power through the inevitable command line errors that often come up when you’re getting started [1]. But while interviewing a well-known designer/developer recently, he suggested that I check out Nitrous.IO, a cloud-based development environment platform that he assured me would make the process much easier [2]. And sure enough, it did. After signing up, you can create a development environment, or ‘box’, for one of four languages/frameworks: Ruby/Rails, Python/Django, NodeJS, or Go — all with little more than a button click. From there you’re presented with the familiar green-on-black terminal interface, all ready to go from the comfort of your web browser, letting you focus on writing code rather than fumbling with environment configurations. I got in touch with Nitrous co-founder A.J. Solimine to find out more about how their product came about. While I find it a helpful tool for my own beginner-level learning, Nitrous was built to make software configuration easier not just…
As someone who has been trying to learn programming over the past few years, one of the biggest issues that I continue to run into is getting my local development environment to function properly. For a beginner, an amazing amount of stamina is required to power through the inevitable command line errors that often come up when you’re getting started [1]. But while interviewing a well-known designer/developer recently, he suggested that I check out Nitrous.IO, a cloud-based development environment platform that he assured me would make the process much easier [2].
And sure enough, it did.
After signing up, you can create a development environment, or ‘box’, for one of four languages/frameworks: Ruby/Rails, Python/Django, NodeJS, or Go — all with little more than a button click. From there you’re presented with the familiar green-on-black terminal interface, all ready to go from the comfort of your web browser, letting you focus on writing code rather than fumbling with environment configurations.
I got in touch with Nitrous co-founder A.J. Solimine to find out more about how their product came about. While I find it a helpful tool for my own beginner-level learning, Nitrous was built to make software configuration easier not just for novices, but for everyone.
A.J. explains:
We’ve set out to make development easier and more enjoyable by eliminating the complexities that come with setting up and configuring software. On Nitrous.IO, you just write code, you don’t really need to know about Linux, and Ruby, and Rails, or Postgres configuration flags.
A.J. and his team began working on Nitrous (initially named Action.io) back in the summer of 2013 from a small shop in Singapore. The other cofounders are Peter Kim and Arun Thampi, who both studied at the National University of Singapore. While working on web and mobile apps, Arun and A.J. ran into difficulties keeping their development environments up to date for their many projects. They looked into Quora’s published explanation of their EC2 development, in an effort to see if a cloud solution might be the answer.
They found there were many configuration tools out there, but most with a steep learning curve and none built specifically for development [3]. The alternative that they devised (see a screenshot of the browser interface below) is one that has attracted a lot of attention and admiration from the development community, and from investors as well.
Nitrous raised $1 million in seed funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and other investors back in late 2012, and I’m told that since they launched their public beta in June 2013 they’ve averaged a stunning 500 new registered users per day. And in December they announced a beta ‘Nitrous for Business’ program, targeting larger teams that need a way to simplify their development and collaboration.
A Nitrous ruby box in the browser
The business model is very smart as well, in my view, with a number of upgrade plans (announced just yesterday) that give you access to more CPU share and virtual memory, as well as things like premium support, no automatic shutdowns (free boxes are shutdown after a period of inactivity), and direct SSH access.
But even free users can earn additional resources through Nitrous’s referral plan [4]. A.J. tells me that this strategy has served them very well so far:
The referral strategy has been a strong catalyst for growth for us – we don’t spend any money on marketing or advertisements, so all of our growth thus far has been due to our users sharing Nitrous.IO with their friends.
With an office now in the US as well as Singapore, it will be interesting to see how Nitrous progresses over the next year or so. They have made some astounding strides in a very, very short amount of time, so I think there’s really a lot of potential here. Nitrous is hiring too, for anyone out there who would like to get involved.
Expect big things.
Nitrous’s US team after a go-kart outing
I’m sure that many experienced programmers might assert that powering through such errors is an essential part of your learning, and understanding the development environment is important. And I think that’s very true. But with more and more people learning programming on their own these days, as opposed to in a classroom, a tool like this makes the learning process a little more accessible in my view. ↩
I’m referring to Sacha Greif, and my conversation with him is upcoming in a future article. He has written an informative post about running Meteor apps using Nitrous here. ↩
They also found some big companies centralized infrastructure in place for remote development, but that was usually the exception and not the norm. ↩
I’m going to shamelessly drop my own Nitrous referral link right here. ↩
See the original article in Japanese Whill is a Japanese startup that is currently developing a next-generation wheelchair. Earlier this week the startup unveiled that it has raised funds from Vegas Tech Fund, 500Startups, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and individual angel investors back on November 6th. The total amount of funding raised in this round is $750,000, completing the company’s seed funding of $1.75 million in total. Vegas Tech Fund, also involved in this most recent funding, includes Zappos’ Tony Hsieh as a partner CEO. Coinciding with the announcement, Whill has renewed its company website and has began online pre-orders. According to the CEO Satoshi Sugie, the company has already sold out the 50 available machines by pre-order, and there are over 100 users waiting to buy. They first plan to market the products in the US and are aiming to for a Japan release in late 2014. Sugie said that he wants to use the funding raised this time not only for Whill’s development but also to add some human resources, such as persons who can perform maintenance on the machine. He thinks it is very important to attain a high level of customer satisfaction. The company is also looking…
Whill is a Japanese startup that is currently developing a next-generation wheelchair. Earlier this week the startup unveiled that it has raised funds from Vegas Tech Fund, 500Startups, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and individual angel investors back on November 6th.
The total amount of funding raised in this round is $750,000, completing the company’s seed funding of $1.75 million in total. Vegas Tech Fund, also involved in this most recent funding, includes Zappos’ Tony Hsieh as a partner CEO. Coinciding with the announcement, Whill has renewed its company website and has began online pre-orders.
According to the CEO Satoshi Sugie, the company has already sold out the 50 available machines by pre-order, and there are over 100 users waiting to buy. They first plan to market the products in the US and are aiming to for a Japan release in late 2014.
Sugie said that he wants to use the funding raised this time not only for Whill’s development but also to add some human resources, such as persons who can perform maintenance on the machine. He thinks it is very important to attain a high level of customer satisfaction.
The company is also looking for business development persons and field engineers. Anyone keen to get involved should consider getting in touch. Sugie is currently exhibiting at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show taking place in Las Vegas.
Seeing more and more Japanese startups trying to break into overseas markets is very encouraging for the other startups in Japan. We will also keep an eye on Whill to see how they progress.
Japanese mobile marketing reserach company Livigen recently conducted a survey about video streaming and sharing services. The company used its own survey app Sumamoni (available on both Android and iOS) to collect responses from 500 participants [1]. When asked about which video sharing service they know of, almost all respondents – 96% to be precise – knew of YouTube. NicoNico Douga was the second most widely known at about 68%, with Twitcasting and Vine following at at 23% and 10% respectively. Twitcasting is a Japanese live-streaming app that we have covered in the past. Launched early in 2010, it now has almost four million users. Although Youtube was well known among the respondents as a whole, some services were found to be more popular in certain age groups. For example, Niconico Douga the service most known by people in their 20s, whereas Twitcasting and Vine were the most acknowledged among young teenage kids. Livigen’s survey also asked respondents to say what they found fun and interesting about these services. Some teens who prefer Twitcasting said things like: “People I became friends with on Twitter come to see me on Twitcasting” “It’s easier to use than Niconico Douga, and its a…
Vine is surprisingly popular with young people in Japan
Japanese mobile marketing reserach company Livigen recently conducted a survey about video streaming and sharing services. The company used its own survey app Sumamoni (available on both Android and iOS) to collect responses from 500 participants [1].
When asked about which video sharing service they know of, almost all respondents – 96% to be precise – knew of YouTube. NicoNico Douga was the second most widely known at about 68%, with Twitcasting and Vine following at at 23% and 10% respectively.
Twitcasting is a Japanese live-streaming app that we have covered in the past. Launched early in 2010, it now has almost four million users.
Although Youtube was well known among the respondents as a whole, some services were found to be more popular in certain age groups. For example, Niconico Douga the service most known by people in their 20s, whereas Twitcasting and Vine were the most acknowledged among young teenage kids.
Livigen’s survey also asked respondents to say what they found fun and interesting about these services. Some teens who prefer Twitcasting said things like:
“People I became friends with on Twitter come to see me on Twitcasting”
“It’s easier to use than Niconico Douga, and its a good way to kill time”
“All it takes is a mobile phone to broadcast.”
Meanwhile a teenage user on Vine said she loves that a six-second video can be easily made into a story, and another teenager responded that she enjoys to connect with people outside of Japan.
But as with most user-generated content services, most people access these products as viewers and do not actually post videos themselves. Out of all 500 respondents, only 0.8% had posted video on Vine, 4.6% on Twitcasting (pictured below), and even Youtube was relatively low at 18%.
Admittedly this is a small sample size, it’s a good indication that it might be a while longer before people in Japan to get used to casually sharing their videos.
Recently we spoke to the folks behind Tokyo-based survey solution Creative Survey, an online survey tool that emphasizes great design as its differentiator. That design-centric approach is similar to that of Barcelona-based Typeform, whose David Okuniev we spoke recently with about their progress to date and upcoming expansion plans. David tells me that their first Typeform first came into being four years ago as a sort of accident. He and a partner were running a design/development agency, and were asked to create a form that would sit in a gallery space, displayed on three iMac computers. Of course, in a setting like that, just any old design wouldn’t be enough. So they set out to build something that had an appropriately smart design. The initial version of TypeForm was created with the movie War Games in mind. 80s movie buffs will remember the back and forth Q&A-style conversation between the computer and Matthew Broderick’s character, as seen in the clip below: David explains that the simplicity of this interaction was inspiring: We thought, let’s forget everything we know about forms and do it the best we can. Along the way we realized it was more human and that we would…
Recently we spoke to the folks behind Tokyo-based survey solution Creative Survey, an online survey tool that emphasizes great design as its differentiator. That design-centric approach is similar to that of Barcelona-based Typeform, whose David Okuniev we spoke recently with about their progress to date and upcoming expansion plans.
David tells me that their first Typeform first came into being four years ago as a sort of accident. He and a partner were running a design/development agency, and were asked to create a form that would sit in a gallery space, displayed on three iMac computers. Of course, in a setting like that, just any old design wouldn’t be enough. So they set out to build something that had an appropriately smart design.
The initial version of TypeForm was created with the movie War Games in mind. 80s movie buffs will remember the back and forth Q&A-style conversation between the computer and Matthew Broderick’s character, as seen in the clip below:
David explains that the simplicity of this interaction was inspiring:
We thought, let’s forget everything we know about forms and do it the best we can. Along the way we realized it was more human and that we would increase conversions, and we can even put in images and video.
While early prototypes of the service was done in Flash, the company quickly moved to HTML5. After they raised funding, they continued to work to make work well on mobile, with responsive design and bigger buttons, presenting one question at a time. They launched their beta release last February, with a 1.0 release coming later this month. So far Typeform has over 40,000 users, with 8000 signed up in the month of December. They’re seeing good results so far, and are looking forward to making a push once their out of beta. Currently the team is comprised of 14 members, but they’re looking to make it 30 by the end of 2014.
Does Typeform have any plans for Japan? David tells me that they already have 1500 signups from here, even though the platform is not yet localized. Typeform does, however, allow you to select Japanese as the language for your form, with Japanese options available as form responses [1].
I understand that in addition to German, Japanese will likely be one of the first two fully localized languages for Typeform. The company is keen to speak with and get to know people here in Japan, and welcome anyone who might want to get involved in their efforts.
As far as monetizing their product, they have a number of tiered pricing offerings, including a free plan, and pro features available for those willing to pay a little more.
You can view some examples that Japanese users have created here and here. I’ll refrain from providing the actual links because I don’t want these users getting bombarded with unwanted responses. ↩
Tokyo-based internet company Allied Architects (TSE:6081) announced today that it has launched a social media marketing service using Facebook in Vietnam. For the company, this is its second international expansion following Taiwan back in 2012. In Vietnam, Facebook has surpassed the country’s local social network Zing Me in total users [1], and accounting for 22% of the country’s population as of last month [2]. The marketing platform is called Monipla, and it has been adopted by more than 500 companies in Japan and over 50 companies in Taiwan. As the first use case for the service in Vietnam, the company launched a Facebook promotion for the convenience store chain Ministop Vietnam, where users can get rewards by liking the chain’s fan page during the Vietnamese new year’s celebration. In this space, we’ve already seen more than a few players, including Kolor (by Interest Marketing), Crocos (acquired by Yahoo Japan back in 2012), Fantastics (by Gaiax), Smapo (acquired by Rakuten back in 2012), Shoprier (by Recruit), and Moratame (by Do House) in Japan. According to WeAreSocial. ↩ According to Cereja Technology. ↩
Tokyo-based internet company Allied Architects (TSE:6081) announced today that it has launched a social media marketing service using Facebook in Vietnam. For the company, this is its second international expansion following Taiwan back in 2012.
In Vietnam, Facebook has surpassed the country’s local social network Zing Me in total users [1], and accounting for 22% of the country’s population as of last month [2].
The marketing platform is called Monipla, and it has been adopted by more than 500 companies in Japan and over 50 companies in Taiwan. As the first use case for the service in Vietnam, the company launched a Facebook promotion for the convenience store chain Ministop Vietnam, where users can get rewards by liking the chain’s fan page during the Vietnamese new year’s celebration.
Junya Mori
Rick Martin
Takeshi Hirano
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Masaru Ikeda
