See the original article in Japanese

Wunderlust, the startup behind the travel log platform Compathy, has allocated shares to Incubate Fund and Recruit. The amount of shares was not disclosed, but it expected that Companthy has raised tens of millions of yen (or hundreds of thousands of dollars).

Compathy lets users upload their travel photos to a page (or pages) telling their travel story. They can easily create the online album pages by sorting uploaded photos based location and date information, arranging them in chronological order. The service was released at the end of last year, and within in three months about 1200 users have posted travel records, and 8,000 comments have been posted on the site.

The team will use the new funds for app development. Kentaro Horie, the CEO of Wunderlust, told us:

After we released the service, we found out some users felt awkward about uploading their photos. One reason for this is that many users couldn’t choose the best photos out of so many shots. Another reason is that because the average quality of photos posted by travelers is quite high, many other users lack confidence and feel awkward sharing in public.

Horie says that the team is going to develop an app that will try to break such a psychological barrier, thus increasing the amount of mobile users.

We aim to make it easier to upload photos from mobile devices, and we want to let users to apply enhancing effects to photos in the app. By overcoming this psychological barrier, we can motivate users to share travel records and add more comments about travel destinations.

They plan to develop an iOS app, with a launch planned for this summer. Compathy is also starting a marketing campaign by tying up with Airbnb Japan, offering a discount in Airbnb fees for users who register for Compahy before the end of May. The startup is willing to actively collaborate with other travel-related services like this in the future.