This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014.
On Day 2 at the B Dash Camp event taking place last week in Fukuoka, there was a session where prominent startups from Japan and the rest of Asia completed each other. According to the organizer, 35 finalists among all 100 applicants from six countries were invited to the event and could received a preliminary screening chapter which took place on Day 1. As a result of that, only 10 startups plus other 2 invited startups could have a chance to pitch in front of a crowd of awesome investors and ambitious entrepreneurs.
Let’s have a quick rundown about which startups have achieved a good result in the competition.
<Top award winner> Space Market (Japan)
Space Market is a platform that connects permanently- or temporarily-unused venues or facilities owned by established companies with people who are interested in using these assets for organizing an event like a big conference, a shareholder meeting, and a employee training etc.
This platform helps you find the issues to solve in your web app or mobile app. Since this complies with service analyics framework AARRR, you will be able to adopt this to improve any service regardless of its business category. Our readers may recall we have featured their platform before.
This service allows you to customize or design products like t-shirt, jacket, and smartphone cases, as well as sell them online. Instead of you, the company takes responsibilities for receiving orders, manufacturing, shipping, and customer support.
This platform helps brands like Gogle, Blizzard, Gigabyte, Lexus, Kabam, and Playboy receive a best deal with a best proposal from marketing companies. Launched in Taiwan, they are now based in San Francisco Bay Area.
MindQuake has developed a series of mobile services and products intended for infants and babies. Nester, one of their products, encourage children to stop using a smartphone with a children-friendly interface when they exceeded their preset usage hours per day.
Akippa helps customers find an available parking space online. When you book a time slot for it using your desktop or smartphone, you will be allowed to park your car there by paying up to 500 yen ($5) a day. It also allows parking lot owners to easily manage their venues via the platform as well. Our readers may recall the company recently fundraised several hundred thousand US dollars from DeNA and angel investors.
Lezhin Comics allows you to enjoy browsing a number of web cartoon titles for free. The company raised about $5 million from Korea’s major online gaming developer NC Soft this spring.
iChef provides iPad-based quick and versatile POS (point-of-sales) solutions for restaurants. Now they have 200 restaurants using their solution in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and they are planning to expand to Japan as well. You can read more about them in our recent interview.
Developed by Korean startup Scatter Lab, this app gives you insights about your relationship with other people by analyzing messages you have exchanged via messaging apps Line, KakaoTalk and WhatsApp.
Designed for small business owners, Shake Media allows you to crate a customized video only by choosing templates designed by advertising professionals. Most video clips are available for 10 to 60 US dollars.
<Invited> Keukey (Korea)
Keukey is focusing on making improvements for smartphone keyboards. It aims to improve the smartphone user experience by addressing keyboard and text input problems. Correcting typos without backspace is first solution of the company.
<Invited> Drivemode (USA/Japan)
Recently founded by entrepreneurs from Zipcar and Tesla Motors, Drivemode is a software and hardware product that gives you the coolest technology experience ever using your car and your Android.
Junya Mori
Masaru Ikeda
