Tokyo-based startup TownWiFi has been developing and offering a mobile app for Android and iOS under the same name. The app allows mobile users to gain public WiFi access at more than 2 million locations worldwide without any time-consuming sign-in process. The company announced on Thursday that it has started supporting public WiFi spots in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. This follows their global service expansion into Korea and the US (including Hawaii and Guam).
TownWiFi, previously known as WiFi Share, was founded back in 2015 by former Rakuten employee Takehiro Ogita. In 2016, he and his team unveiled the TownWiFi concept at Incubate Camp, the startup incubation bootcamp initiative run by Japanese VC firm Incubate Fund, and subsequently won the special award at TechCrunch Tokyo, an annual startup showcase event by the tech blog’s local entity in Japan.
The TownWiFi app Image credit: TownWiFi
For local users, the app allows them to off-load their data traffic using 3G/4G connection to public WiFi services when available without user intervention like choosing an SSID (service set identifier) or making a sign-in process so that they are likely to enjoy mobile web surfing without worrying about the possibility of hitting a monthly data usage limit. For international visitors, it helps them use public WiFi spots easily so that they need less to subscribe to roaming services, rent a mobile router or purchase a SIM card supporting a local cellular network.
When a user fails to establish a WiFi connection using the app, it will report the failure to the WiFi spot owner so that they are encouraged to improve the connectivity environment for future users.
Since its launch back in April last year, the TownWiFi app has surpassed 2 million downloads. In addition to Japan, Korea and the US, the expansion at this time announces that the app now supports 34 different public WiFi services in Taiwan (200,000 hotspots), 56 different services in Hong Kong (100,000 hotspots), and 20 different services in Macau (10,000 hotspots).
Tokyo-based Fringe81, the Japanese startup offering several adtech solutions, announced today that its IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Mothers Market on 27 June with plans to offer 108,800 shares for public subscription and to sell 39,000 shares in over-allotment options, for a total of 151,300 shares. Nomura Securities will lead the underwriting. Its share price range will be released on 6 June with bookbuilding scheduled to start on 8 June and pricing on 15 June. According to the consolidated statement as of March 2017, they posted revenue of 4.5 billion yen (about $40.5 million) and an ordinary loss of 54 million yen ($486,000). Public offering price per share is expected to be around 2,070 yen ($18.6). Led by the company’s CEO, Yuzuru Tanaka, (holding a 49.8% stake), its major shareholders include Itochu Technology Ventures (16.84%), Cyber Communications (5.54%) and CyberAgent (5.48%). Fringe81 was launched in 2005 under the former name of RSS Kokokusha (literally meaning RSS ad agency) where they had been focused on advertising in RSS feeds. Rebranded to Fringe81 in 2010, the company has added several new ad tech solutions including Digitalice, a cloud-based…
Yuzuru Tanaka, founder and CEO of Fringe81 Image credit: Masaru Ikeda
Tokyo-based Fringe81, the Japanese startup offering several adtech solutions, announced today that its IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Mothers Market on 27 June with plans to offer 108,800 shares for public subscription and to sell 39,000 shares in over-allotment options, for a total of 151,300 shares. Nomura Securities will lead the underwriting.
Its share price range will be released on 6 June with bookbuilding scheduled to start on 8 June and pricing on 15 June. According to the consolidated statement as of March 2017, they posted revenue of 4.5 billion yen (about $40.5 million) and an ordinary loss of 54 million yen ($486,000). Public offering price per share is expected to be around 2,070 yen ($18.6).
Fringe81 was launched in 2005 under the former name of RSS Kokokusha (literally meaning RSS ad agency) where they had been focused on advertising in RSS feeds. Rebranded to Fringe81 in 2010, the company has added several new ad tech solutions including Digitalice, a cloud-based ad server platform that allows advertisers and media companies to analyze ad performance as well as user behavior and how their users crawl the websites after viewing ads.
iStyle Capital is the investment arm of iStyle, the company behind Japan’s leading cosmetics review portal @Cosme. TBS Innovation Partners is the investment arm of Tokyo-based private broadcaster Tokyo Broadcasting System, or TBS for short. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. It has been around one year since we last reported (in Japanese) on Zeals. The company, which stems from producing interaction software for robots such as Palmi and Sota, raised an undisclosed amount of funds in January of 2015 from Will Group (TSE:6089), a major human resource (HR) service company in Japan. Zeals announced on Thursday that they have raised over 80 million yen (about $720K US) from Japanese adtech leader FreakOut Holdings (TSE:6094). In conjunction with this, they pivoted from producing the API for creating chatbots called Bot Tree and re-launched it as the chatbot management tool Fanp. The company will collaborate with FreakOut on strengthening their sales, development, in addition to international expansion. While Bot Tree made a dazzling debut in May of 2016, according to Zeals CEO Masahiro Shimizu, there was a continuous struggle in providing the service. Thanks to the offer of a free trial, hundreds of media sites signed up, but on the other hand, the amount of sites leaving was also great. Shimizu, who felt there was a problem in the service, determined to improve it by working together with media companies. The company joined forces with Iid…
L to R: Yusuke Sato (COO, FreakOut Holdings), Nobuyuki Akashi (Executive Officer, FreakOut Holdings), Masahiro Shimizu (CEO, Zeals), Yuzuru Honda (CEO, FreakOut Holdings)
It has been around one year since we last reported (in Japanese) on Zeals. The company, which stems from producing interaction software for robots such as Palmi and Sota, raised an undisclosed amount of funds in January of 2015 from Will Group (TSE:6089), a major human resource (HR) service company in Japan.
Zeals announced on Thursday that they have raised over 80 million yen (about $720K US) from Japanese adtech leader FreakOut Holdings (TSE:6094). In conjunction with this, they pivoted from producing the API for creating chatbots called Bot Tree and re-launched it as the chatbot management tool Fanp. The company will collaborate with FreakOut on strengthening their sales, development, in addition to international expansion.
Fanp Image credit: Zeals
While Bot Tree made a dazzling debut in May of 2016, according to Zeals CEO Masahiro Shimizu, there was a continuous struggle in providing the service. Thanks to the offer of a free trial, hundreds of media sites signed up, but on the other hand, the amount of sites leaving was also great.
Shimizu, who felt there was a problem in the service, determined to improve it by working together with media companies. The company joined forces with Iid (TSE:6038), developing and offering multiple online media projects, to jointly develop services. After getting wind of this, major companies such as En-Japan (HR service company, TSE:4849), the Mainichi Shimbun (newspaper publisher), and Career Design Center (HR media company, TSE:2410) introduced Bot Tree on their media sites. Reflecting the opinions of such companies, Zeals set about making changes to the interface to birth the new and improved Fanp.
Just as The Bridge also distributes newsletters, general media sites often send out email newsletters in order to raise reader retention (actually, engagement more important than retention). In the beginning, the rate of recipients who open these email newsletters is never high. Zeals uses chatbots to guide messenger (Facebook Messenger) users and it is said that the average opening rate is 72%, with an average withdrawal rate of 7.2%. It is 15 times higher than the opening rate of average email newsletters.
When we look at the fee structure of Fanp we might be reminded of Line@, the messenging giant’s ad service plan for business users, but for now Fanp is only available with Facebook Messenger. Fanp generates a database based on profiles and attributes acquired from Facebook when the user begins to use their bot, and it also has a CRM (customer relationship management) function that allows the media owner to reach the user by specifying conditions.
Shimizu recently had an opportunity to listen to Hiroto Kobayashi, CEO of Japanese leading online media publisher Infobahn, and he became aware that the media of the future is an era of increasing the engagement of the audience rather than creating a vast and shallow audience.
Shimizu said:
All the media site owners want to do e-mail newsletters, but the newsletters can’t tell who the readers are or their preferences yet. SNS covers this to a degree, but even if you get a lot of ‘likes’ you might not be able to reach a large audience. There just isn’t any really good channel.
So, next time you’re going to try to make an app, the CPA to get people to download the app becomes high. Ultimately, it is the push notification feature that is useful with apps. If it’s just a push notification, can’t we do that with messenger? Then let’s try chat media on messenger. That’s our proposal.
In addition to launching Fanp, the chatbot management tool designed for online media sites, they also released Fanp Biz for enterprises. While Fanp strives for an alternative channel for attracting users with email newsletters, Fanp Biz is the one specifically for enterprises aiming to replace their product landing pages.
Shimizu explained:
Now that it’s possible to lead users to messenger with Facebook ads, we can also bring in the bots.
By letting the bot accept documents and make appointments, I think we can obtain an overwhelmingly better user response than landing pages do.
The chatbot introduced on Iid’s automobile-focused online media site Response
Previously Zeals was a strong advocate of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in the development of conversational AI engines, but by switching to ”tap talk” (the user does not input text but instead selects the appropriate choice from multiple options presented in button form by the chatbot) between users and chatbots, they can minimize the resources needed for NLP development.
Shimizu added:
If we were still obsessed with natural language analysis like before, it would mean we’d have to develop in each language in order to go international, and obviously this makes it difficult to catch up with overseas competitors. ‘Tap talk’ is our way of overcoming this and moving towards international expansion.
At FreakOut there are many clients in Japan and abroad that use DSP (demand-side platform) / DMP (data management platform) and so on, and because they have headquarters overseas we have great expectations for international development, so that is what led to financing and collaborating with them.
When asked about their future development, Shimizu dropped the phrase “Communication Ad Platform”. This is when the media can use bots to round up readers, and perhaps next up on Shimizu’s plate is to monetize the next bot channel. There is a possibility that the media will be able to charge advertisers by having their bots relay advertising messages or by having them direct users to other sites (at the present time, there is no word from Facebook about regulating this).
Zeals wants to deliver an experience of a hub of bots that can connects them each other to better serve users of Fanp and Fanp Biz.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.” He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him @markbivens. The Japanese translation of this article is available here. There seem to be an abundance of blog posts lately advising on how to get a job in venture capital. Or perhaps more have just come across my desk. One of the recent themes centers on the concept of drafting sample investment memos of potential startups to gain the attention of a VC fund by showcasing your deal screening chops. This is not bad advice. Drafting a hypothetical investment memo could demonstrate not only your ability to think critically about an opportunity, but also your ability to reason thoughtfully on an investment thesis about a market. However, I hold a slightly different view on the most effective way to beginning a career in VC, at least from a European perspective. A common misconception of VCs in Europe is that they spend the bulk of their…
This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.” He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him @markbivens. The Japanese translation of this article is available here.
There seem to be an abundance of blog posts lately advising on how to get a job in venture capital. Or perhaps more have just come across my desk.
One of the recent themes centers on the concept of drafting sample investment memos of potential startups to gain the attention of a VC fund by showcasing your deal screening chops. This is not bad advice. Drafting a hypothetical investment memo could demonstrate not only your ability to think critically about an opportunity, but also your ability to reason thoughtfully on an investment thesis about a market.
However, I hold a slightly different view on the most effective way to beginning a career in VC, at least from a European perspective.
A common misconception of VCs in Europe is that they spend the bulk of their time reviewing new investments. Some prolific investment funds (Kima Ventures in France comes to mind) bear this out, and to their credit have honed their investment process into an efficient machine. The vast majority of European VC funds, however, invest in a relatively limited number of new companies each year on a per partner basis.
Funnel math of course means that for each new deal, probably hundreds of pitch decks were skimmed and dozens of meeting sessions were held. Still, I would posit that the investing partners of the major VC funds spend more time helping their portfolio companies than on any other activity.
I personally spend 1/2 to even up to one full day, per week, on each of my portfolio companies. People tell me that’s on the high side, but we lead deals and always take active board positions in our investments. With that comes a certain level of commitment and responsibility.
So if the principal activity of the job is supporting the venture portfolio, then as an aspiring candidate for a job in VC, your appreciation of this aspect is what interests me most.
Being an effective venture capitalist usually requires drawing upon a diverse set of talents to help your investments overcome obstacles. I like to think of it as a combination of experience, moxie, and humility.
Experience
Have you started companies before? Do you have experience operating and scaling small ventures into large ones? Is there particular industry expertise in your background relevant to our investment sectors? Beyond the obvious domain knowledge, do you have experience in fostering diverse points of view? Do you have experience making decisions under conditions of extreme uncertainty? Are you comfortable being uncomfortable?
Moxie
How will you convey your message and if necessary be persuasive to a management team over whom you hold little official authority? Have legitimacy when holding those difficult conversations with a portfolio CEO? Be your portfolio company’s best unpaid salesperson? Can you be an iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove?
Humility
The VC is not the hero, but rather enables heroes. Are you willing to play this role, or do you prefer to own the glory? Are you willing to be a fixer, clean up messes, soften up arch rivals, handle nasty litigations, and in general play the Michael Clayton on behalf of the portfolio company? Are you intellectually curious and willing to recognize that often, you are not the expert? Are you argumentative, or rather, inquisitive? Are you attached to academic theories, or rather, pragmatic and willing to simply get things done?
The VC industry is changing, no doubt about it (although it’s evolving much more slowly in Europe, I would argue). New models are emerging. There is no universal truth, such as “Only experienced entrepreneurs can become VCs,” or “Journalists and lawyers will never make it unless they come from money.”
On the contrary, practically anyone can become a VC. It’s easier today than ever before (unless of course you’re a woman or minority, but that’s a topic for another rant). There even seems to be a proliferation of self-annointed VCs these days. However, I submit that becoming a VC should not be your goal. Your goal should be to fulfill the role well, to selflessly support and add value to your portfolio companies, and to be a good steward of your own investors’ capital.
See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s Candee, running an overall mobile video-related media business, announced last week that it has acquired a full stake in Apollo Productions behind livestreaming business and made Apollo Productions into a wholly-owned subsidiary. The deal value was undisclosed. Along with this, Takuro Arai (Executive Vice-president and CCO of Candee) and Shuhei Okawa (Executive Officer of Candee) were appointed as board members of Apollo Productions. Toshiyuki Asada, the founder of Apollo Productions, was known for having established a portal website for students of the University of Tokyo when he was in university. He founded Apollo Productions in 2008 after engaging in video creation works for enterprise advertisement or movie promotion leveraging his experience of video distribution works such as a beauty pageant at the university. Subsequently, the firm started livestreaming business at Nico Nico Douga provided by Dwango (TSE:3715) in 2010. Apollo Productions had lately been taking on livestreaming business based on major distribution platforms including AbemaTV (by CyberAgent), Nico Nico Live and Line Live with about 30 staffers. Owning Apollo Productions, Candee is going to double the number of staffers and plans to arrange the system with 80 staffers just for content creation within…
From the left: Takuro Arai (CCO, Candee), Toshiyuki Asada (CEO, Apollo Productions), Kzuki Furugishi (CEO, Candee), Shuhei Okawa (Executive Officer, Candee)
Japan’s Candee, running an overall mobile video-related media business, announced last week that it has acquired a full stake in Apollo Productions behind livestreaming business and made Apollo Productions into a wholly-owned subsidiary. The deal value was undisclosed. Along with this, Takuro Arai (Executive Vice-president and CCO of Candee) and Shuhei Okawa (Executive Officer of Candee) were appointed as board members of Apollo Productions.
Toshiyuki Asada, the founder of Apollo Productions, was known for having established a portal website for students of the University of Tokyo when he was in university. He founded Apollo Productions in 2008 after engaging in video creation works for enterprise advertisement or movie promotion leveraging his experience of video distribution works such as a beauty pageant at the university. Subsequently, the firm started livestreaming business at Nico Nico Douga provided by Dwango (TSE:3715) in 2010.
Apollo Productions had lately been taking on livestreaming business based on major distribution platforms including AbemaTV (by CyberAgent), Nico Nico Live and Line Live with about 30 staffers. Owning Apollo Productions, Candee is going to double the number of staffers and plans to arrange the system with 80 staffers just for content creation within this year.
Arai explains the reason for this acquisition:
The movement of mobile content appears bipolar. One is the distribution of which a large quantity by individual amateurs and the other is the distribution by professionals. The latter will continue to expand since further increase in the number of clients is expected.
In the livestreaming business, the set of equipment, facilities and specialized experts is required. We had worked together with Apollo Productions as a creation partner in the past, but decided to become one in anticipation of future expansion.
The Candee team consists of professionals in the video industry including the founder members ambitiously aiming to create a new experience in the mobile era, and is expected to grow rapidly as fundraising 1 billion yen (about $8.8 million) last December.
So, do they pursue a rapid growth by further M&A activities?
Arai answered, “I cannot say.” This acquisition was not planned carefully in advance but reached agreement quickly and unexpectedly after the large-scale fundraising. There could be this kind of case again, since the firm professes an interest in related business including “girl management” or video experience production, other than content creation. In addition, they started an undisclosed test operation of the original platform of which we heard in the last interview.
Arai explains the vision of Candee:
We have no intention to create contents just being extreme or ones like downgraded TV shows. The project we are currently testing is to develop ‘video experience which cannot be accomplished by individuals’ focusing on the individual distribution field.
Sometime we may take on sudden projects, but mainly focus on projects based on community, such as the way how users are linked or the challenge to the limit of livestreaming.
Can these professional video creators cut into and step over the video platform business provided by top players such as Nico Nico, Line or Abema? The result of this acquisition will be checked in the official announcement of the new platform.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
Tokyo-based From Scratch, the company behind an integrated digital marketing platform called B->Dash, announced on Tuesday that it has raised about 3.2 billion yen (about $28.4 million) from Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ) and Rakuten Ventures, in addition to existing investors. This follows their previous 300 million yen ($2.4 million at the exchange rate then) funding in May of 2015 and 1 billion yen (about $8.3 million) funding in November of the same year. The latest funding means that the company has raised a total of 4.5 billion yen (about $40 million) in funding to date. B->Dash is a web-based marketing platform that allows a company to integrate data from different points of their entire marketing process and analyze it comprehensively on an all-in-one basis. The service’s major clients include Kirin Brewery and Okasan Online Securities. From Scratch will use the funds to enhance the marketing platform, especially by strengthening data integration and data processing capability as well as further development of artificial intelligence technologies. Via TechCrunch Japan, Markezine Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
Image credit: From Scratch
Tokyo-based From Scratch, the company behind an integrated digital marketing platform called B->Dash, announced on Tuesday that it has raised about 3.2 billion yen (about $28.4 million) from Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ) and Rakuten Ventures, in addition to existing investors.
This follows their previous 300 million yen ($2.4 million at the exchange rate then) funding in May of 2015 and 1 billion yen (about $8.3 million) funding in November of the same year. The latest funding means that the company has raised a total of 4.5 billion yen (about $40 million) in funding to date.
B->Dash is a web-based marketing platform that allows a company to integrate data from different points of their entire marketing process and analyze it comprehensively on an all-in-one basis.
The service’s major clients include Kirin Brewery and Okasan Online Securities. From Scratch will use the funds to enhance the marketing platform, especially by strengthening data integration and data processing capability as well as further development of artificial intelligence technologies.
Masaru Ikeda
The Bridge
This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.” He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). You can read more on his blog at 
Takeshi Hirano
