THE BRIDGE

Mona Nomura

Mona Nomura

Mona Nomura (もえ/@mona) was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and lived in NYC for 11ish years with a short stint in LA. Raised by an MIT grad and engineer, love for technology runs through her DNA. She began her career as a product manager for Oracle, then fell into content strategy and digital marketing for music / entertainment properties. She's always had one foot planted in tech, mentoring and advising startups. She recently moved to Tokyo and enjoying life in Japan for the first time. If you see her at any events, don't be afraid to say hello. 日本語Okです!

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CNet Japan Startup Award nominees: Otaku Mode, Freee, Schoo, Coiney

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The quality of start-ups nominated for tonight’s CNet Japan Startup Awards is high, and Japanese entrepreneurs are seeking to solve problems on par with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. This is part seven of our preview of the nominees. The rest can be found here. Tokyo Otaku Mode Tokyo Otaku Mode (or TOM) is the 500 Startup graduate that exploded on the startup scene with a massive Facebook presence. The most fascinating part about TOM is how its growth trajectory has been the reverse of most startups. The normal flow goes something like this: a few entrepreneurs have an idea, build their product, then market it. But TOM started out by building a massive Facebook following of millions of fans. Since TOM hit critical mass on Facebook, it has been trying to figure out a problem most entrepreneurs would love to have: Well, we have reach. What’s next? From building iOS and Android apps, to an Etsy-like UGC strategy, it’s been fun watching them stumble uphill. Or as one of their angel investors, Craig Mod, perfectly summed up, “building their shrine”. Freee Like Quickbooks, BodeTree, Xero, Yendo, Zoho, et al., Freee is a cloud based software that helps small businesses with their…

tom-coine-freee-schooo

The quality of start-ups nominated for tonight’s CNet Japan Startup Awards is high, and Japanese entrepreneurs are seeking to solve problems on par with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. This is part seven of our preview of the nominees. The rest can be found here.

Tokyo Otaku Mode

tokyo-otaku-mode-lead
Tokyo Otaku Mode

Tokyo Otaku Mode (or TOM) is the 500 Startup graduate that exploded on the startup scene with a massive Facebook presence. The most fascinating part about TOM is how its growth trajectory has been the reverse of most startups. The normal flow goes something like this: a few entrepreneurs have an idea, build their product, then market it. But TOM started out by building a massive Facebook following of millions of fans.

Since TOM hit critical mass on Facebook, it has been trying to figure out a problem most entrepreneurs would love to have:

Well, we have reach. What’s next?

From building iOS and Android apps, to an Etsy-like UGC strategy, it’s been fun watching them stumble uphill. Or as one of their angel investors, Craig Mod, perfectly summed up, “building their shrine”.

Freee

FREEE-japan-03

Like Quickbooks, BodeTree, Xero, Yendo, Zoho, et al., Freee is a cloud based software that helps small businesses with their accounting. Founded by five-year Google veteran Daisuke Sasaki, who led Google’s small-to-medium sized business marketing in the APAC region, Freee fills a much needed hole in Japan. While working for Google, he realized a there was a huge problem with web-based accounting software, often only working on certain browsers and with a not so friendly user experience.

This year has been a huge year for Freee. They re-branded, raised $27M Series A, and added features and functions to streamline tedious paper-to-digital administrative tasks.

Freee addresses relevant problems for any small- to mid-sized businesses and is building partnerships [1], features, and functions that prove they are one step ahead of their competitors. Recently they added a POS (point of sale) system on their iPad app, and last week they announced a collaboration with receipt tracking app ReceReco to simplify the paper receipt tracking process.

Schoo

From the left: Koizumi, Mori, Nakanishi
Schoo

Schoo is an online learning platform founded by entrepreneurs with editorial backgrounds. Their vision is to encourage other entrepreneurs to be ‘eternal students’ by providing e-learning content focused on the startup and venture world. We recently talked with the founders about their strategy for building a quality e-learning space, and I encourage you to check out that discussion [2].

Coiney

Coiney is the fourth major player in mobile payment solutions along with PayPal Here, Square and Rakuten SmartPay. All four have similar products and strategies. Square and PayPal Here have challenges most US based companies have: localization. Coiney knows and understands the Japanese market as the founder is ex-PayPal Japan.

Rakuten SmartPay’s obstacle is that Rakuten is a massive corporation. In order to quickly gain traction in a highly competitive field like mobile payments, agility is a necessity. If Rakuten SmartPay can figure out how to move and iterate quickly, they will become a major player, as Rakuten Ichiba has existing relationships with small businesses in Japan. Keep in mind that Base is also a mobile payment solution player to be reckoned with, tackling market penetration in a different way [3].

This is definitely one race to keep an eye on.

Good luck to all four finalists tonight at the CNet Japan Startup Awards!

coiney_featured


  1. Partnerships with Suica and Seven and i Holdings Co. to track, record, and automate transportation and credit card expenditures.  ↩

  2. Read the interview in two parts here and here.  ↩

  3. In the interests of disclosure, I should note here that I’m currently employed by Rakuten.  ↩

CNet Japan Startup Award nominees: PlanBCD, Talknote, Wantedly

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The quality of start-ups nominated for Tuesday’s CNet Japan Startup Awards is high, and Japanese entrepreneurs are seeking to solve problems on par with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. This is part six of our preview of the nominees. The rest can be found here. PlanBCD, Kaizen Platform Inc. PlanBCD is one of the few startups — globally — attempting to bring high-converting designs to the masses. The closest corresponding product from the US is Optimizely, founded by an ex-Googler 1. While Optimizely’s core product is technology-reliant, PlanBCD is taking a different approach. Users post a job to PlanBCD’s dedicated network of designers, UI/UX specialists who they call ‘Growth Hackers’. These Growth Hackers pick a job they would like to take on, and the user chooses their favorite, which is then tested for 28 days. Payment is based on performance 2. Its human factor sets Kaizen Platform aside from similar products: Optimizely uses Amazon’s Analytics SDK and Google’s UI optimization tool, Content Experiments. We expect that PlanBCD is a product that will stay on our radars for awhile. Wantedly Wantedly is a social recruiting tool based on Facebook. The CEO and founder Akiko Naka’s ethos aligns with the product, aspiring to connect…

kaizen-wantedly-talknote

The quality of start-ups nominated for Tuesday’s CNet Japan Startup Awards is high, and Japanese entrepreneurs are seeking to solve problems on par with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. This is part six of our preview of the nominees. The rest can be found here.

PlanBCD, Kaizen Platform Inc.

kaizen-wantedly-talknote

PlanBCD is one of the few startups — globally — attempting to bring high-converting designs to the masses. The closest corresponding product from the US is Optimizely, founded by an ex-Googler 1. While Optimizely’s core product is technology-reliant, PlanBCD is taking a different approach. Users post a job to PlanBCD’s dedicated network of designers, UI/UX specialists who they call ‘Growth Hackers’. These Growth Hackers pick a job they would like to take on, and the user chooses their favorite, which is then tested for 28 days. Payment is based on performance 2.

Its human factor sets Kaizen Platform aside from similar products: Optimizely uses Amazon’s Analytics SDK and Google’s UI optimization tool, Content Experiments. We expect that PlanBCD is a product that will stay on our radars for awhile.

Wantedly

wantedly-icon

Wantedly is a social recruiting tool based on Facebook. The CEO and founder Akiko Naka’s ethos aligns with the product, aspiring to connect potential employers with talent through the social graph. She believes opportunities found through friends (and mutual friends) create better cultural fits and happier work environments.

“Invest in people, not ideas” is a saying repeatedly spoken by VCs and investors in the US. It is apparently working well in Japan, as Wantedly reports they have over 1,800 clients and more than 61,000 users.

Talknote

talknote-icon

If I were still living in America, it would be very easy to dismiss Talknote as just another Yammer clone. But here on the ground in Tokyo, it’s clear why Talknote acquired so many customers. There are many archaic infrastructures out there and the restaurant industry is certainly one of them. Countless establishments still have no website and even accept fax requests for reservations or food deliveries. Haruo Koike, the CEO and founder of Talknote, is the perfect person to push this industry forward, as he has been in the restaurant business for 10 years.

Disruption starts with little baby steps like these, and it will be exciting to track Talknote’s progress. There’s also a part of me that wishes an American start-up would take Koike-san’s approach, as the food industry in the US could use a big change as well.

Talknote’s Facebook page is also very engaging, and I love how the CEO uses and supports products in the start-up community.


  1. Fitting, as Google is known for its thorough A/B testing, the most well known, Marissa Mayer’s 41 shades of blue test. ↩
  2. There’s nothing online that describes their growth hacker acquisition strategy – the closest I found was this job-share posting found here. Since the founders are ex-Recruit, I’m assuming they have techniques unavailable for public knowlege.  ↩

CNet Japan Startup Award nominees: Exploring e-commerce with Monoco, Rinkak, & Base

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This is part five of our CNet Japan Startup Awards nominee rundown. The rest can be found here. Search and recommendation are a tough nut to crack, especially when it comes to e-commerce. We are overloaded by information, and technology struggles to parse relevance that can match our needs. Users now expect sites and services to know what we want before we know we want it (see Amazon and Netflix recommendation algos, for instance). This is a problem that needs solving regardless of where you live, and it can be a huge opportunity for startups to address a real consumer need. Enter Monoco and Rinkak, looking to connect designers with consumers. Think of them as Japan’s answer to Etsy or Fab. Meanwhile Base is the local version of Squarespace, Shopify, and Strikingly. All three are doing interesting things in Japan’s e-commerce space these days, attempting to solve the same difficult issues that face e-commerce businesses abroad. Monoco Monoco is an e-commerce site focused on selling fashion and craft goods of limited quantities for limited times. The items are curated by buyers the around the globe, and since the site’s launch in April of 2012, it has acquired more than 87,000…

monoco-base-rinkak-wide

This is part five of our CNet Japan Startup Awards nominee rundown. The rest can be found here.

Search and recommendation are a tough nut to crack, especially when it comes to e-commerce. We are overloaded by information, and technology struggles to parse relevance that can match our needs. Users now expect sites and services to know what we want before we know we want it (see Amazon and Netflix recommendation algos, for instance). This is a problem that needs solving regardless of where you live, and it can be a huge opportunity for startups to address a real consumer need.

Enter Monoco and Rinkak, looking to connect designers with consumers. Think of them as Japan’s answer to Etsy or Fab. Meanwhile Base is the local version of Squarespace, Shopify, and Strikingly. All three are doing interesting things in Japan’s e-commerce space these days, attempting to solve the same difficult issues that face e-commerce businesses abroad.

Monoco

monoco

Monoco is an e-commerce site focused on selling fashion and craft goods of limited quantities for limited times. The items are curated by buyers the around the globe, and since the site’s launch in April of 2012, it has acquired more than 87,000 users, with more than 1100 designers worldwide.

Because of the quantity and time constraints, it could be easy to write off Monoco as just another flash sales site. But browsing through the site, I think this format makes sense.

When you first log-on, you are immediately greeted by professional grade, high quality images. The products are carefully chosen, often a unique spin on regular products like mugs, phone accessories, handbags, and clothing. It’s easy to lose yourself scrolling and scrolling as you browse the many product offerings.

On the product pages, prices are hidden unless you are a registered user. And this is a pretty clever way to subtly encourage user registration.

The limited sale period and quantity creates a sense of urgency for the user to purchase, and it cycles products to surface designers. It’s a different way to approach recommendation, increasing the site’s overall stickiness factor as users will check, and re-check the site to see new items.

In July, Monoco announced series A funding of an undisclosed amount.

Rinkak

rinkak-screener

Rinkak (the name means ‘outline of object’ in Japanese) is a 3D printing marketplace that is Japan’s answer to Shapeways. The site opened to the public in September.

They offer a platform for anyone with 3D data to sell their printed designs. Like Shapeways, they offer various materials like plastic, pottery and metals.

3D printing seems to finally be gaining traction beyond the scope of early tech adopters. Shapeways, founded in 2007, most recently closed a $30 million series C round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with a total of $47.3 million raised thus far. With a physical shop, distribution center in NYC, and an API to encourage 3D printing apps, they are clearly the 3D printing market place leader in the US startup space. Let’s wait and see what Rinkak will do similarly or differently. For more on Rinkak, check out our previous feature back in September.

Base

Often referred to as Japan’s Shopify, Base’s e-commerce site is the marketing platform for the founder’s true vision: a mobile payment solution platform. Base has raised a total of $4.73 million and has expanded its team from 12 to 20 people. The CEO states they have acquired 50,000 merchants in the past year, with a monthly growth of 10% when we last spoke with them.

It’s rapid growth shows Japanese small- to mid-sized merchants are looking for e-commerce solutions other than Rakuten and Amazon. 70% of Base’s user activity comes from smartphones — another clear indication that Japanese e-commerce behaviors are shifting.

You can check out the company’s brief promo video below.

Good luck to all three startups on Tuesday night at the CNet Japan Startup Awards.

CNet Japan Startup Award nominees: Travel startups Asoview and Trippiece

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This is part four of our CNET Japan Startup Awards nominee rundown. The rest can be found here. In the past few years, there has been a surge of travel startups in the US. Trippiece and Asoview are looking to disrupt the archaic and monopolized industry in Japan. Trippiece is the most similar service to Gogobot in Japan. Gogobot, as many of you know, is the most visited travel startup in the US, beating out AirBnB and Hipmunk in uniques so far in 2013. Where Gogobot solely relies on social graphs for trip itineraries, Trippiece highlights all user-generated content and is planning to take it one step further than Gogobot by securing partnerships with major travel agencies [1]. Launched in March of 2011, the company has so far acquired more than 50,000 users. But the CEO admits they have a long way to go to meet milestones on their roadmap. They have a repeat user rate of 30% to 40%, and with over 60% of their overall users accessing their site through mobile, they are meeting the needs of Japanese travelers. Japanese internet user behavior is rapidly shifting and consumers are now more mobile than ever before with analysts predicting…

asoview-trippiece-wide

This is part four of our CNET Japan Startup Awards nominee rundown. The rest can be found here.

In the past few years, there has been a surge of travel startups in the US. Trippiece and Asoview are looking to disrupt the archaic and monopolized industry in Japan.

trippiece
Trippiece

Trippiece is the most similar service to Gogobot in Japan. Gogobot, as many of you know, is the most visited travel startup in the US, beating out AirBnB and Hipmunk in uniques so far in 2013.

Where Gogobot solely relies on social graphs for trip itineraries, Trippiece highlights all user-generated content and is planning to take it one step further than Gogobot by securing partnerships with major travel agencies [1].

Launched in March of 2011, the company has so far acquired more than 50,000 users. But the CEO admits they have a long way to go to meet milestones on their roadmap. They have a repeat user rate of 30% to 40%, and with over 60% of their overall users accessing their site through mobile, they are meeting the needs of Japanese travelers.

Japanese internet user behavior is rapidly shifting and consumers are now more mobile than ever before with analysts predicting that by 2014, 60.2% of users will switch to smartphones. That’s almost a 150% rate of change since 2011. Trippiece, whose users are mainly mobile, is ahead of the game.

Asoview resembles the early days of Zozi, an adventure experience site. Asoview has over 460 partnerships, securing its biggest one thus far in Yahoo Travel. They are looking to fill the niche of unconventional travel activities such as skydiving and ice climbing, or also more mellow experiences like swimming with dolphins. Regrettably, there is no available information on profitability or user base right now for Asoview that we can pass on, but we’ll update you if we learn more.

We wish both Trippiece and Asoview the best of luck at the Cnet Japan Startup Awards on Tuesday!

Asoview
Asoview

  1. Includes JTB and other unnamed agencies. See CNet Japan, e27 for more information.  ↩

CNet Japan Startup Award nominees: Mobile news services Gunosy and Smartnews

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This is part three of our CNET Japan Startup Awards nominee rundown. The rest can be found here. News aggregation apps are a dime a dozen in the US. There’s Flipboard, Pulse, Circa, Prismatic, Zite, Summly, News360 and the list goes on. In Japan, there’s News Hub, @nifty, and now LINE News as well. Smart News (pictured below) resembles US-based Pulse, where content is segregated in tabs by category. The content comes pre-loaded but feeds can be added. After using Smart News, the experience of Pulse seems clumsy in comparison. The load times are also significantly faster on Smart News than on Pulse. I want to say Gunosy (pictured below) is the Flipboard of Japan but the only similarity is their popularity. Gunosy’s interface and content is structured like a newspaper, and there are tabs for the AM edition, PM edition and a location-based, real-time trend tab. Articles are separated in large, easy to read boxes with prominent call-to-action buttons. Like Prismatic, Gunosy curates content based on machine learning. It displays the kind of stories the user has liked, shared, or clipped in the past. What really sets Gunosy aside from all news aggregation services is its approach to ads….

smartnews-gunosy

This is part three of our CNET Japan Startup Awards nominee rundown. The rest can be found here.

News aggregation apps are a dime a dozen in the US. There’s Flipboard, Pulse, Circa, Prismatic, Zite, Summly, News360 and the list goes on. In Japan, there’s News Hub, @nifty, and now LINE News as well.

Smart News (pictured below) resembles US-based Pulse, where content is segregated in tabs by category. The content comes pre-loaded but feeds can be added. After using Smart News, the experience of Pulse seems clumsy in comparison. The load times are also significantly faster on Smart News than on Pulse.

smartnews
Smartnews

I want to say Gunosy (pictured below) is the Flipboard of Japan but the only similarity is their popularity. Gunosy’s interface and content is structured like a newspaper, and there are tabs for the AM edition, PM edition and a location-based, real-time trend tab.

Articles are separated in large, easy to read boxes with prominent call-to-action buttons. Like Prismatic, Gunosy curates content based on machine learning. It displays the kind of stories the user has liked, shared, or clipped in the past.

What really sets Gunosy aside from all news aggregation services is its approach to ads. The service separates ad types into three categories: business, fashion, health/beauty, and then behaviorally targets based on user habits. The sign-up and onboarding process for potential advertisers is automated and simple. They are one of, if not the global leader in this category 1.

Regarding both these news services, I’m really happy to see such a high calibre of product comings out of Japan.

gunosy-2 gunosy-2


  1. Gunosy’s ad service launched in November. We recently spoke with new Gunosy team member Shinji Kimura, who elaborated more on this aspect of their business. ↩

CNet Japan Startup Award nominees: Retty’s mobile advantage

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This is part two of our CNET Japan Startup Awards nominee rundown. The rest can be found here. Retty is a Japan-based restaurant recommendation site based on your Facebook social graph. It’s often compared with Tabelog, the Yelp of Japan, which has 25.77M desktop users and 22.97M users on mobile. But like Yelp, Tabelog has an outdated interface. Users are immediately overloaded with information from strangers. A lot of hunting and pecking is required to reach even the contact information of certain establishments, which is unfortunate. And yet it is also understandable for a site that has been around for so many years. In contrast, Retty’s strength lies with its mobile app and clean PC interface. Familiar faces greet you there because it is Facebook reliant. Tabelog may have millions of users but their text-based app is catered towards feature phone users. Smartphone users will find the gesture-based search and discovery of Retty far easier to use. Retty also maps of saved restaurants for a simple, visual search (see below). It can be easy to underestimate the power of mobile and how easily it can disrupt. So even if Retty only has a fraction of Tabelog’s users, it could ride…

Retty

This is part two of our CNET Japan Startup Awards nominee rundown. The rest can be found here.

retty-logo

Retty is a Japan-based restaurant recommendation site based on your Facebook social graph. It’s often compared with Tabelog, the Yelp of Japan, which has 25.77M desktop users and 22.97M users on mobile. But like Yelp, Tabelog has an outdated interface. Users are immediately overloaded with information from strangers. A lot of hunting and pecking is required to reach even the contact information of certain establishments, which is unfortunate. And yet it is also understandable for a site that has been around for so many years.

In contrast, Retty’s strength lies with its mobile app and clean PC interface. Familiar faces greet you there because it is Facebook reliant.

Tabelog may have millions of users but their text-based app is catered towards feature phone users. Smartphone users will find the gesture-based search and discovery of Retty far easier to use. Retty also maps of saved restaurants for a simple, visual search (see below).

It can be easy to underestimate the power of mobile and how easily it can disrupt. So even if Retty only has a fraction of Tabelog’s users, it could ride atop Japan’s astounding smartphone market growth to grow exponentially [1].

Retty is also experimenting with content marketing, most recently collaborating with a local service Tokyo Calendar, to publish a special magazine-like guidebook (similar to US-based Zagat). Retty tapped into their top users, including notable food bloggers, models, and business women to recommend bars and restaurants perfect for date spots. Obviously this is a pretty great marketing campaign to bring in new male users.

Retty also recently closed a $3.2 million series B round, having raised a total of $4.4M so far. With all this progress, I wouldn’t write them off just because they don’t have Tabelog’s user base. At least, not yet.

retty retty-map


  1. From April to September of 2013, 68.5% of users switched from a feature phone to a smart phone, according to research from Mobile Marketing Data Lab. Analysts also predict that by 2014, 60.2% of users will switch switch to smartphones — almost a 150% rate of change since 2011 (see eMarketer citing a July Hakuhodo survey).  ↩