See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s Studio Ousia, a startup developing keyword mining and linking solutions, announced Tuesday that it has fundraised 100 million yen ($1 million) from Tokyo-based system integration company NID (TSE:2349). According to NID, the investor has taken a 33.5% stake in Studio Ousia. Studio Ousia will use the funds to strengthen the development of new apps based on the Entity Linking technology. Studio Ousia is an standout graduate from Keio University SFC’s incubation program. In 2012, the company launched a smartphone browser add-on product called Phroni, and funraised 70 million yen (about $864,000) from Nissay Capital. Studio Ousia’s product portfolio includes Linkify, a keyword linking SDK (software developers kit) for mobile developers, as well as LinkPlaza, an affiliate solution for bloggers launched last year. It’s unclear as to what kind of app they will release as a result of their further development efforts, but we understand that they will emphasize apps development for the advertising sector as well as user real-world connection. For example, these include an app which displays an online reference on the smartglass screen by recognizing what are being looked at through a smartglass device. With the improvement in smart devices, people…
Japan’s Studio Ousia, a startup developing keyword mining and linking solutions, announced Tuesday that it has fundraised 100 million yen ($1 million) from Tokyo-based system integration company NID (TSE:2349). According to NID, the investor has taken a 33.5% stake in Studio Ousia. Studio Ousia will use the funds to strengthen the development of new apps based on the Entity Linking technology.
Studio Ousia is an standout graduate from Keio University SFC’s incubation program. In 2012, the company launched a smartphone browser add-on product called Phroni, and funraised 70 million yen (about $864,000) from Nissay Capital.
Studio Ousia’s product portfolio includes Linkify, a keyword linking SDK (software developers kit) for mobile developers, as well as LinkPlaza, an affiliate solution for bloggers launched last year.
It’s unclear as to what kind of app they will release as a result of their further development efforts, but we understand that they will emphasize apps development for the advertising sector as well as user real-world connection.
For example, these include an app which displays an online reference on the smartglass screen by recognizing what are being looked at through a smartglass device. With the improvement in smart devices, people now want many alternative user interfaces beyond the keyboard. So the company sees a huge potential market out there.
See the original story in Japanese. We heard from folks at Rovio Entertainment when they set up a Japan office early last year. If you are a resident in the startup community here in Tokyo, you may have seen their Japan country manager Antti Sonninen more than a few times. Yesterday was the last chance where we could see him wearing a red Angry Birds sweatshirt. It’s because Sonninen joined a new startup today. Tokyo-based Beatrobo, the startup best known for its smartphone-enabled small gadget PlugAir, announced today that Sonninnen joined their team as COO. Beatrobo has been led by their co-founder and CEO Hiroshi Asaeda since its launch in 2011. Upon Sonninen’s joining the team, they expect to strengthen the globalization efforts in their business operations. From global gaming giant to Japanese startup Sonninen has been serving Rovio as Japan country manager for more than a year. Since joining the company in Finland back in 2011, he has been seeing rapid growth for over three years. When he joined Rovio, their entire headcount was about 70, but it has been grown up to 900 to date. In a response to my question about why he joins Beatrobo at this…
We heard from folks at Rovio Entertainment when they set up a Japan office early last year. If you are a resident in the startup community here in Tokyo, you may have seen their Japan country manager Antti Sonninen more than a few times.
Yesterday was the last chance where we could see him wearing a red Angry Birds sweatshirt. It’s because Sonninen joined a new startup today. Tokyo-based Beatrobo, the startup best known for its smartphone-enabled small gadget PlugAir, announced today that Sonninnen joined their team as COO.
Beatrobo has been led by their co-founder and CEO Hiroshi Asaeda since its launch in 2011. Upon Sonninen’s joining the team, they expect to strengthen the globalization efforts in their business operations.
From global gaming giant to Japanese startup
Sonninen has been serving Rovio as Japan country manager for more than a year. Since joining the company in Finland back in 2011, he has been seeing rapid growth for over three years. When he joined Rovio, their entire headcount was about 70, but it has been grown up to 900 to date. In a response to my question about why he joins Beatrobo at this time, Sonninen explained:
I’ve seen my colleagues establishing local Rovio offices in Korea and China. I think Rovio will keep growing. I’d love to put myself in an early-stage startup. And I’d love to do what only I can do.
Prior to joining Rovio, Sonninen was running a startup providing a social network platform, which focused on helping non-governmental organizations coordinate their operations with each others in developing countries. So he should be called an entrepreneur rather than a businessperson, and we can understand he wants to put himself in an environment which has a great potential in making a successful leap.
Sonninen added:
Beatrobo fundraised from Lawson HMV Entertainment in April. At that time, I had a chance to see Asaeda and we were jestingly talking, wondering if we could work together. But this talk has turned into reality.
Sonninen understands what a country manager or a local office for a startup is required to do in its global operations. Upon his experience as a country manager at Rovio, Sonninen will focus on embarking on a global expansion strategy and addressing issues around these business operations.
What globalization means for Beatrobo
Beatrobo partnered with American mixture band Linkin Park and LA-based creative thinktank Makeshop late last year. Comparing to typical Japanese startups, Beatrobo is going steps ahead on globalization.
What does globalization mean for Beatrobo? The company’s CEO Asaeda shared an interesting story that their corporate culture started changing after Sonninen started appearing regularly at the office a short while ago:
With Antti’s joining as a trigger, we changed the language we use in our regular meeting to English. When we started it, nobody could speak nor understand and this made little sense. However, we kept doing it for four weeks, and our members finally became able to articulate about what they are thinking about.
While Asaeda is bilingual and Sonninen can speak Finnish, English and Japanese, that doesn’t mean their company is global because their entire team has to understand what their global users in the world really want. Asaeda continued:
At a typical Japanese company, its management thinks only of the Japanese domestic market and their overseas department cares for international businesses. The overseas department is usually positioned in the same level with business development or system development departments in the company’s hierarchy, so it will be difficult for the overseas department to transfer feedback from users to these other departments. Hence, whether or not a startup can become globalized depends on whether its management has a global perspective on business.
Once a company has formed an organization structure to target the domestic market, it is more unlikely to change it to fit global operations later on. So if you started preparing for global operations after acquiring market share in the domestic market, that would be usually too late. So now you can recall that Taizo Son, founder of Tokyo-based incubator Movida Japan, has revealed an entrepreneur should start developing the English version first before the Japanese version (Beatrobo graudated from the forth batch of Movida Japan’s incubation program).
Asaeda added:
Whether or not we have an overseas office doesn’t matter for our globalization. We’re a seven-person team but don’t have to work apart each others yet, so we all are based at our Tokyo office. When we feel the necessity, we’ll consider setting up an overseas office.
Boosting hiring
Five people at Beatrobo excluding Asaeda are all engineers. Considering a scale of a startup like Beatrobo, support personnel for every function will be needed. However, they haven’t hired any people other than engineers, and Asaeda has been handling all other back-office operations.
Asaeda explained why they haven’t hire non-engineers to date:
We can afford to hire support personnel. But once we hire them, we need to give them a position where they are willing to keep working in addition to supporting my tasks. I thought that was difficult so I’ve been doing all other tasks.
Upon Antti’s joining the team, I’d like to be more focused on better managing or facilitating our team. I think Antti knows that point much better, so there will be so many things that I can learn from him.
Asaeda revealed that they will more focus on hiring new people regardless of their nationality. As the team is now ready for hiring new people upon Sonninen’s joining the team, they started receiving applications for new positions like business development, product development as well as interns. If they can succeed in acquiring good global human resources, we can see their new product soon following their social music player product Beatrobo and content-sharing gadget PlugAir.
See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s Nikkei reported this morning that Tokyo-based Uzabase, the startup behind curated news app NewsPicks and company/industry database service Speeda, will announce on September 1st that it has fundraised 470 million yen (or about $4.5 million) in a round led by Itochu Techology Ventures. Other participating investors in this round are YJ Capital, Kodansha (publishing company), Globis Capital Partners, SMBC Venture Capital, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Shinsei Bank, GMO Venture Partners, and Monex Ventures (investment arm of Monex Securities). Uzabase has started providing content from Kodansha’s Gendai Business e-magazine on the NewsPicks app. Upon this investment, Uzabase will add Courier Japon, Kodansha’s monthly magazine focused on global issues, to NewsPicks’ content lineup. See also: Japan’s Uzabase introduces business news curation app NewsPicks was launched in September 2013 and is available on desktop as well as for iOS and Android. Uzabase has differentiated NewsPicks from other similar apps by curating news topics by notable economics news outlets. While the company has not disclosed the app’s download count, users have been actively using the app and some news topics have received comment numbers in the three-digit range. Uzabase started a paying subscription service on a trial basis…
R to L: Yusuke Umeda (Uzabase Co-CEO), Norihiko Sasaki (Managing Director & NewsPicks Editor-in-Chief)
Japan’s Nikkei reported this morning that Tokyo-based Uzabase, the startup behind curated news app NewsPicks and company/industry database service Speeda, will announce on September 1st that it has fundraised 470 million yen (or about $4.5 million) in a round led by Itochu Techology Ventures.
Uzabase has started providing content from Kodansha’s Gendai Business e-magazine on the NewsPicks app. Upon this investment, Uzabase will add Courier Japon, Kodansha’s monthly magazine focused on global issues, to NewsPicks’ content lineup.
NewsPicks was launched in September 2013 and is available on desktop as well as for iOS and Android. Uzabase has differentiated NewsPicks from other similar apps by curating news topics by notable economics news outlets. While the company has not disclosed the app’s download count, users have been actively using the app and some news topics have received comment numbers in the three-digit range.
Uzabase started a paying subscription service on a trial basis in February, where users can read articles from eight newspapers and magazines including Dow Jones Business News for a flat-rate monthly fee of 1,500 yen ($15).
To strengthen the publishing of original content, Uzabase recently appointed former Toyo Keizai Online editor-in-chief Norihiko Sasaki as the editor-in-chief of the NewsPicks service, which shows that they use a different strategy versus other curated news apps that use machine-based curation technology such as Gunosy or SmartNews.
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese startup Eureka has an office in Ebisu, Tokyo. Since its launch in 2008, the company has provided mobile apps like Pairs and Couples. We recently visited the office to hear from the company’s CEO Yu Akasaka and COO Jun Nishikawa. Boasting over 1.3 million users In July, Akasaka and Nishikawa co-founded a company focused on incubating and investing in startups in Japan and the rest of the world, called Eureka Ventures. In association with DeNA and other companies, Eureka Ventures participated in a $500,000 investment round in East Meet East, a New York-based online dating service for Asian people. Eureka expects that the partnership through this investment help their business grow further while exploring a business synergy between the North American and Asian markets. Since its launch two years ago, the Pairs app has acquired over 1.3 million downloads from the Japanese and Taiwanese markets to date, with about 500,000 users users coming from Taiwan. Given the high penetration rate of Facebook and a pro-Japanese attitude, they attempted to focus on marketing in Taiwan, becoming a big success. Akasaka explained what prompted them to start developing the Pairs app: There are many online…
Eureka CEO Yu Akasaka (right) and Jun Nishikawa (left)
Japanese startup Eureka has an office in Ebisu, Tokyo. Since its launch in 2008, the company has provided mobile apps like Pairs and Couples. We recently visited the office to hear from the company’s CEO Yu Akasaka and COO Jun Nishikawa.
Boasting over 1.3 million users
In July, Akasaka and Nishikawa co-founded a company focused on incubating and investing in startups in Japan and the rest of the world, called Eureka Ventures. In association with DeNA and other companies, Eureka Ventures participated in a $500,000 investment round in East Meet East, a New York-based online dating service for Asian people. Eureka expects that the partnership through this investment help their business grow further while exploring a business synergy between the North American and Asian markets.
Since its launch two years ago, the Pairs app has acquired over 1.3 million downloads from the Japanese and Taiwanese markets to date, with about 500,000 users users coming from Taiwan. Given the high penetration rate of Facebook and a pro-Japanese attitude, they attempted to focus on marketing in Taiwan, becoming a big success.
Akasaka explained what prompted them to start developing the Pairs app:
There are many online dating services in the North American and North European markets. But we thought this sector is not yet well established and still had much space for growth. Typical online dating sites may give you a negative impression, so we understood the importance of changing the culture to improve it.
After shutting down two mobile apps
Eureka has actually introduced four apps to date: Online dating and marriage hunting app Pairs, memory sharing app Couples, app discovery app Peepapp and its antecedent Pickie. But the latter two services have already been shut down.
Following other users, Peepapps allowed you to peep what apps they were using. But it was too early because there was no trend among people exploring a new app on a social basis. Regardless of support from a big company or a big promotion budget, we learned through our experience that a service not in step with the times would be never accepted.
After shutting down the two services, Eureka had been exploring the next business to take on while handling cultivation of contracted software development businesses. Nishikawa subsequently came up with an idea for an online dating service:
When it comes to a new business idea, we wanted to create one which is obviously monetizable. The online dating sector is becoming integrated and has a solid revenue model. I believed a huge potential is out there because I saw many friends around me using such service when I was abroad to study.
Adopting a data-driven approach
Despite the fact that the Asian region is considered a ‘Blue Ocean’ market for them, there are many competitors in the online dating sector. What is a key advantage behind their steady growth?
The two co-founders have strong backgrounds in marketing through their experience working with e-commerce businesses. They attach much importance to metrics like customer acquisition cost, lifetime value or conversion rate, and are adjusting the service in line with the data-driven approach that they have learned from their previous business experiences. Akasaka elaborated:
We keep seeing metrics and improving the app every day. In addition to various metrics and user feedback, we’re sharing figures like how many times the app has crashed in our entire team so we can run a PDCA cycle very quickly.
Improving user experience to satisfy user needs
Akasaka pointed out that both the product itself and the promotion effort combined make a big success. These are directly linked with behavior which they have been developing the app toward, from the user’s perspective.
Akasaka explained how they are making efforts to improve the app:
We launched a new version of the Pairs app for iOS and Android on August 21, where we rolled out various improvements. For example, typical online dating apps show you square-shaped profile photos but we changed it to round-shaped ones, which shows less numbers of candidates in a first view screen. This is a very minor change but creates a world view different from that of conventional dating sites, which makes users easier to sign up.
Nishikawa added:
While our desktop version looks like Facebook, the iOS app has adopted a similar interface to Line. Considering apps that our users are using most often, we are improving interfaces of the service for devices accordingly.
We can see their thoughtfulness in the well-designed interface. For example, they use an elaborate design in the app screen so you will not have to worry about a peep even when you are using the app in a crowded train. That’s from considering Japanese women’s typical concern that they hate anyone knowing about them using an online dating app.
Educational activities needed in any markets
The Pairs has acquired over 8 million Facebook likes, over 1 million monthly active users, and matched over 4 million couples in total.
However, once a user finds a good partner on the Pairs app, he or she will quit the app shortly. How did the team address this issue? In a response to my question, Akasaka explained:
It doesn’t matter. If a couple step into the next phase, they will start another of our apps, Couples. Even if their relationship doesn’t work out, they will get back to us and start using the Pairs app again.
As Akasaka now thinks that they can grow the service tenfold, he aims to educate people and improve their negative stereotype about encounters through online dating services. Nishikawa explained how they will proceed from here:
We invested in New York-based online dating service East Meet East a month ago. In a recent discussion with the team, they told us even Western couples are not willing to unveil that they have met each others using an online dating service. So this education process will be needed globally. We’ll be devoting ourselves to it.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Vivit launched an excursion buddy and destination discovery site under the same name last week. The startup participated in the sixth edition of Incubate Camp, an intensive two-day business development program for entrepreneurs organized by Japan’s Incubate Fund. Coinciding with service startup, Vivit announced that it had fundraised about 30 million yen (about $300,000) this spring from Venture United and Incubate Fund . Vivit lists outdoor activities, from rafting and buggy rides to sightseeing hotspots and seasonal events. By integrating with a Facebook account, users can express interest in an activity on the website and share it with friends by clicking on the “I-want-to-go” button. The service highlights activities your friends like, so your friends may also see activities you want to join in. If you or a friend shares the same activity as their preference, a “talk button” will appear onscreen to show the activity, which allows you to interact with him or her and even arrange an itinerary to enable participation together. The website has listed about 150 activities to date, and most of them are day-trip excursions in the Tokyo metropolitan area and its suburbs. They released the service…
Tokyo-based startup Vivit launched an excursion buddy and destination discovery site under the same name last week. The startup participated in the sixth edition of Incubate Camp, an intensive two-day business development program for entrepreneurs organized by Japan’s Incubate Fund. Coinciding with service startup, Vivit announced that it had fundraised about 30 million yen (about $300,000) this spring from Venture United and Incubate Fund .
Vivit lists outdoor activities, from rafting and buggy rides to sightseeing hotspots and seasonal events. By integrating with a Facebook account, users can express interest in an activity on the website and share it with friends by clicking on the “I-want-to-go” button.
The service highlights activities your friends like, so your friends may also see activities you want to join in. If you or a friend shares the same activity as their preference, a “talk button” will appear onscreen to show the activity, which allows you to interact with him or her and even arrange an itinerary to enable participation together.
The website has listed about 150 activities to date, and most of them are day-trip excursions in the Tokyo metropolitan area and its suburbs. They released the service partially to go live prior to their official release at this time, and told that they have acquired more than 10,000 visits from users.
The website lists about 150 activities, and most are day-trip excursions in Tokyo and its suburbs. The service gained more than 10,000 user visits recently, upon “teaser” release prior to official release.
CEO Hisayoshi Mizutani highlighted the service:
For a short-term excursion, you should emphasize with whom one wants to go with rather than where to go. By visualizing and sharing excursion preferences for you and your friends, our service allows you to create more opportunities to hang out, fulfill leisure time, and help connect with more people
One may experience an interesting hotspot or leisure destination but give up because it’s troublesome to find someone to visit together and to arrange plans. However, Vivit enables completion of a set of processes from discovering an activity to arranging an itinerary with someone.
Mizutani outlined his development strategy:
TThe more users we acquire, we will gain more activities they like. Based on this data, we’re developing an algorithm that can recommend someone with similar preferences as you. We are also planning to launch a mobile app and a media site. We aim to acquire 100,000 users by the end of this year, hopefully publishing around 200 to 300 new activities each month.
Vivit’s CEO Hisayoshi Mizutani is pitching at Incubate Camp 6th. (His mentor Satoshi Maruyama from Venture United on the left)
Tokyo-based ResuPress, known for its social networking platform Storys.jp, announced today it has launched a bitcoin exchange called Coincheck. Users can buy, sell, or send bitcoins after depositing money into a bank account designated by the company. ResuPress charges a commission of 1% on bitcoins bought, withdrawn, or remitted through the platform. To prevent fraud or money laundering, users must submit identification to withdraw more than 10,000 yen ($100) per a day. Coincheck offers three advantages: Sign-up can be completed in as little as one hour Available 24 hours a day Easy-to-use interface ResuPress will launch a bitcoin payment gateway for e-commerce site integrators in September. Japan has bitcoin exchanges, wallets, ATMs, and remittance services such as Zaif, Bitflyer, and Bitcheck. Via TechCrunch Japan
Tokyo-based ResuPress, known for its social networking platform Storys.jp, announced today it has launched a bitcoin exchange called Coincheck.
Users can buy, sell, or send bitcoins after depositing money into a bank account designated by the company. ResuPress charges a commission of 1% on bitcoins bought, withdrawn, or remitted through the platform. To prevent fraud or money laundering, users must submit identification to withdraw more than 10,000 yen ($100) per a day.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Ptmind, the startup that operates heatmap access analytics solution Pt engine (previously known as Ptmind, and especially known as Miapex outside Japan), announced today that it has launched an Android native app version in closed beta. Conventional versions of the solution support heatmap analytics for web apps on mobile but not the ones for native apps. Comprised of tracking and reporting SDKs (software developer kits), the Android native app version analyzes user behavior on news curation apps, for instance, which typically have dynamic scrollviews or screen changes. So Ptmind expects a wider range of app developers to use the solution to analyze user behavior. The solution has such functions as: Analytics reporting available without a desktop Heatmap analytics available in real-time access or for past access in the last 30 days Reporting available on mobile anytime, anywhere Even on apps using dynamic scrollviews or screen changes, animated analytics heatmap can be overlapped on a real-time app screen showing accordingly. (see video below, 08sec to 15sec) Since its global launch in October 2013, Pt engine has been adopted by over 4,500 mobile websites in Japan alone. Developers interested in the new version can apply…
Tokyo-based Ptmind, the startup that operates heatmap access analytics solution Pt engine (previously known as Ptmind, and especially known as Miapex outside Japan), announced today that it has launched an Android native app version in closed beta.
Conventional versions of the solution support heatmap analytics for web apps on mobile but not the ones for native apps. Comprised of tracking and reporting SDKs (software developer kits), the Android native app version analyzes user behavior on news curation apps, for instance, which typically have dynamic scrollviews or screen changes. So Ptmind expects a wider range of app developers to use the solution to analyze user behavior.
The solution has such functions as:
Analytics reporting available without a desktop
Heatmap analytics available in real-time access or for past access in the last 30 days
Reporting available on mobile anytime, anywhere
Even on apps using dynamic scrollviews or screen changes, animated analytics heatmap can be overlapped on a real-time app screen showing accordingly. (see video below, 08sec to 15sec)
Since its global launch in October 2013, Pt engine has been adopted by over 4,500 mobile websites in Japan alone. Developers interested in the new version can apply for a test integration on the company’s website. The company says an iOS native app version will follow.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Realworld, the company that operates a crowdsourcing/rewards platform in Japan, has announced that it has been approved for an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers market on Friday. The company will be listed on September 18th with plans to offer 220,700 shares for public subscription and to sell 73,600 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 270,400 shares. The underwriting will be led by Daiwa Securities. Its share price range will be released on August 29th, bookbuilding is scheduled to start on September 2nd and pricing on September 9th. According to the consolidated statement, they posted a revenue of 2 billion Japanese yen ($20 million) and an ordinary profit of 36 million yen ($351,000), or a net profit of 2 million yen ($20,000). Since establishment in July 2005, the company has been operating several crowdsourcing/rewards platforms such as Crowd and Lifemile, the latter being acquired from CyberAgent in 2011. The combined total of users across these several platforms is 8.5 million. Led by the company’s founder Masaaki Kikuchi (holding a 67.28% stake), its major shareholders include Incubate Fund, Nissay Capital, Recruit Strategic Partners, and Mobilecom.
Tokyo-based Realworld, the company that operates a crowdsourcing/rewards platform in Japan, has announced that it has been approved for an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers market on Friday. The company will be listed on September 18th with plans to offer 220,700 shares for public subscription and to sell 73,600 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 270,400 shares. The underwriting will be led by Daiwa Securities.
Its share price range will be released on August 29th, bookbuilding is scheduled to start on September 2nd and pricing on September 9th. According to the consolidated statement, they posted a revenue of 2 billion Japanese yen ($20 million) and an ordinary profit of 36 million yen ($351,000), or a net profit of 2 million yen ($20,000).
Since establishment in July 2005, the company has been operating several crowdsourcing/rewards platforms such as Crowd and Lifemile, the latter being acquired from CyberAgent in 2011. The combined total of users across these several platforms is 8.5 million.
See the original article in Japanese. Japanese internet marketing company Allied Architects (TSE:6081) launched its first overseas subsidiary in Singapore in April. The company, Allied Asia Pacific, has basically two roles: bringing Allied’s service developed in Japan, such as Monipla, to the global market, and developing a new global service of their own. Allied Asia Pacific launched its first service called ReFUEL4 on July 30th. Based on an approval from Facebook as its official API partner and partnership with Nanigans, one of Facebook’s strategic preferred marketing developers, the company has started providing a crowdsourced Facebook ad design platform for advertisers worldwide. According to Allied Asia, a Chinese gaming company and a telco from the Southeast Asian region will start using the service tomorrow as a group of their first clients. While they are many available spaces that crowdsourced business can be applied to, the wonder is why they have chosen to focus on Facebook ads. Kazuhiro Takiguchi, the managing director for Allied Asia as well as managing the ReFUEL4 project, explained why. Facebook ads are ‘consumed’ faster Typical TV commercials aim to imprint their messages on viewers by showing them the same clip as many times as possible. Looking at…
Japanese internet marketing company Allied Architects (TSE:6081) launched its first overseas subsidiary in Singapore in April. The company, Allied Asia Pacific, has basically two roles: bringing Allied’s service developed in Japan, such as Monipla, to the global market, and developing a new global service of their own.
Allied Asia Pacific launched its first service called ReFUEL4 on July 30th. Based on an approval from Facebook as its official API partner and partnership with Nanigans, one of Facebook’s strategic preferred marketing developers, the company has started providing a crowdsourced Facebook ad design platform for advertisers worldwide.
According to Allied Asia, a Chinese gaming company and a telco from the Southeast Asian region will start using the service tomorrow as a group of their first clients. While they are many available spaces that crowdsourced business can be applied to, the wonder is why they have chosen to focus on Facebook ads. Kazuhiro Takiguchi, the managing director for Allied Asia as well as managing the ReFUEL4 project, explained why.
Facebook ads are ‘consumed’ faster
Kazuhiro Takiguchi, Managing Director of Allied Asia Pacific
Typical TV commercials aim to imprint their messages on viewers by showing them the same clip as many times as possible. Looking at what’s happening on Japanese private TV networks these days, many startups developing mobile games or news curation apps are investing a lot of money to broadcast their TV commercials so that consumers are aware of these products. TV commercials allow you to promote your “stuff” efficiently, but they merely keep broadcasting over the long haul because it is costly.
Meanwhile, Facebook ads allows one to easily target a niche in the potential global user base for affordable rates though it doesn’t reach a vast consumer base like TV commercials can do. Facebook gives you a dashboard where one can easily narrow down a segment of an ad target, but many companies running global marketing campaigns usually submit their ads through one of Facebook’s 50 preferred marketing developers or 13 strategic preferred marketing developers. They provide an ad submitting and management tool as well as serving one as an agent for Facebook advertising.
Takiguchi explained why he has developed the crowdsourced platform:
While Facebook ads are cost effective, the more impressions an ad receives, the more likely it will bore users because they recognize they have looked at it before. So advertisers keep creating new designs one after another to prevent viewers from getting bored with your ad. However, typical advertisers can never catch up with the pace to keep creating it. That’s why we developed a crowdsourced platform focused on creating Facebook ad designs.
Despite over $10 billion revenue from its global annual ad sales, Facebook earns only 5% of that from the Japanese market. That’s why ReFUEL4 targets the global market rather then Japanese market alone. On the platform, over 2,500 crowdsourced creators from many countries, including the US, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore, have been proposing designs to advertisers according to their preference orders.
Considering the locality advertising, if one wants to appeal to Indonesian consumers, for example, the platform encourages one more to crowdsource to Indonesian creators who usually better understand the market trend in Indonesia.
Advertisers use this screen to receive proposals from crowdsourced creators
Guaranteed CTR for advertisers, motivating creators for better designs
While ReFUEL4 is an ad production platform rather than an ad network platform, what’s unique is that it guarantees CTR (click through rate) for advertisers. Advertiser can order designs to crowdsourced creators using the platform at any time, but a creator can get no reward for his/her production unless advertisers adopt it and ad viewers (Facebook users) provide a favorable reputation to the published ad design by clicking it. Takiguchi elaborated how it works.
When submitting an offer, crowdsourced creators will propose their designs for the ad. If one take such an offer and it performs well, 3% of the ad revenue from the adopted design will be paid to its creator and Allied Asia on a 50/50 basis.
ReFUEL4′s dashboard for crowdsourced creators shows the CTRs of ad designs developed by other creators as well as own works. So it will let one understand what kind of designs will be favorably accepted and help earn more money. Takiguchi added:
We want to encourage more creators to get involved in bigger-budget promotion campaigns. And we’ve developed the platform so that creators can get money depending on how well their works have been performed for advertisers. While production cost is usually limited in the ad industry, advertisers can pay more if their ad shows better performance. Our creators can have larger dreams because our platform can pay them on a percentage basis.
Process workflow among parties concerned
Why Facebook ads?
There are many businesses that a crowdsourced platform can be applied to. If you look at these platforms only in banner ads designing, we’ve seen services like C-team by Recruit or startups like New York-based Dispop which came from Tel Aviv, Israel and fundraised $725,000. In a response to my question about why ReFUEL4 is focused on Facebook ads designing, Takiguchi explained:
Because our platform guarantees the minimum CTR, we have to work with a platform which has a technology helping keeping it high. The answer is Facebook or Google. I think even Twitter is still to come. Furthermore, Facebook ads have fewer format patterns, which can be implemented to a crowdsourced platform more easily.
Advertisers using the ReFUEL4 platform submit their ads to Facebook via aforementioned marketing company Nanigans. Based on a partnership with the latter company, Allied Asia can receive creation orders from advertisers for the crowdsourced platform without any massive promotion effort.
Allied Asia is currently developing a type of image recognition technologies behind the crowdsourced platform, to enable them to suggest how advertisers or creators should expose their products or put texts and images in ad designs for better performance.
With ReFUEL4, it is very interesting that the performance of an ad will have direct impact on the income of those who created it, which may also impact the business model of the conventional ad industry in the near future.
See the original story in Japanese. On Friday, Japans CyberAgent Ventures held its annual Rising Expo 2014 event which showcased up-and-coming 15 startups to a crowd of local investors and entrepreneurs [1]. Unlike past editions, the investment firm held preliminary events at their regional offices in Seoul, Beijing, and Jakarta prior to the finals where 15 teams, including 5 foreign startups, competed by pitching their product to attendees. Last year smartphone-based livestreaming app TwitCasting won the top prize, and the startup subsequently fundraised $5 million. Among the 15 participating startups this time, Space Market was chosen as the audience favorite. Top prize winner: Space Market (also winning the Recruit Career prize and the Sumitomo Fudosan prize) Space Market lists unused or idle venues and allows users to pick one to rent on demand for business needs such as corporate meetings, shareholder meetings, training courses, and other events. Reservations are made online. 2nd Prize winner: Hachimenroppi (also winning the AGS Consulting prize) Hachimenroppi buys fish from markets and brokers across the country and delivers it to Japanese restaurants or diners, according to specific needs. It was previously outlined in specific details about how it works, so please check it out ….
On Friday, Japans CyberAgent Ventures held its annual Rising Expo 2014 event which showcased up-and-coming 15 startups to a crowd of local investors and entrepreneurs [1].
Unlike past editions, the investment firm held preliminary events at their regional offices in Seoul, Beijing, and Jakarta prior to the finals where 15 teams, including 5 foreign startups, competed by pitching their product to attendees.
Last year smartphone-based livestreaming app TwitCasting won the top prize, and the startup subsequently fundraised $5 million. Among the 15 participating startups this time, Space Market was chosen as the audience favorite.
Top prize winner: Space Market (also winning the Recruit Career prize and the Sumitomo Fudosan prize)
Space Market lists unused or idle venues and allows users to pick one to rent on demand for business needs such as corporate meetings, shareholder meetings, training courses, and other events. Reservations are made online.
2nd Prize winner: Hachimenroppi (also winning the AGS Consulting prize)
Hachimenroppi buys fish from markets and brokers across the country and delivers it to Japanese restaurants or diners, according to specific needs. It was previously outlined in specific details about how it works, so please check it out . They recently fundraised $4.5 million last month following the previous round back in October.
3rd Prize winner: VIP Plaza (from Indonesia)
Co-founded by former Rakuten Indonesia director Tesong Kim and former investment banker Yoga S. Sugiharto. VIP Plaza lists fashion items from international and Indonesian brands at daily discounts of 30% to 80%. They plan to add other categories like men’s fashion, beauty and home products, aiming for expansion into other countries in Southeast Asia.
The Tohmatsu prize winner: Utagoe
Utagoe’s Moment Diary is a free journal app with a calendar, allowing users to make notes with timestamps, adding texts, images, videos, and audio. Since its launch in January 2011, the app has acquired over 5 million unique users with 30 million downloads from 211 countries on iOS and Google Play. Women in Asia region make up the majority of users. The company plans to integrate the app with wearable devices. They fundraised from KLab and KLab Ventures in January.
The SMBC Nikko Securities Prize winner: iCare
ICare provides a cloud-based medical record management platform for occupational physicians called Catchball. It helps physicians better serve patients and share updates with the companies that these patients are working for to improve their working conditions.
The Intelligence Prize winner: Glider Associates
Glider Associates provides news curation app Antenna, which delivers over 600 articles from over 230 news media oulets. Big companies had been allocating promotion budgets for mass media advertising for many years, but the company thinks it can encourage these companies to partially set it aside to run native ad promotions on the news app. They plan to launch an English version for global expansion.
The following startups did not win but gave interesting pitches.
PurpleCow
PurpleCow provides a crowdsourcing service called Crevo specializing in animated videos. The service was launched in March and acquired 100 video production requests in the first two weeks.
iCook (Taiwan)
iCook provides an online recipe sharing service in Taiwan. The startup fundraised from CyberAgent Ventures in October 2012 and subsequently partnered with Rakuten in January 2013.
Bequ.com (China)
Bequ.com is a travel-focused social networking service, allowing users to connect with official tour guides and fellow travelers. It also provides tools to create travel plans and record travel experiences.
Pocket Supernova
Pocket Supernova provides a video clip decoration and sharing app called Unda, which allows users to create 20-second video message clips for private use as well as for sharing with other users. They graduated from 500 Startups. See our previous interview with the Pocket Supernova team.
Oriflamme
Developers of the Oriflamme team previously worked at DeNA where they produced the global hit game Blood Brothers. They want to overwhelm the global market with castle building RTS (real-time strategy) games as well as social games casting popular characters.
Toyro
Toyro provides a comparison platform focused on life insurance and medical insurance products called Insnext, gwhich gives the best answer to consumers using the life expenses simulator. The company fundraised an undisclosed sum of investment from CyberAgent Ventures in November.
Kabuku
Kabuku provides a 3D printing marketplace called Rinkak, where anyone with 3D data can open shops on the platform and sell products based on their designs. The startup fundraised $2 million from CyberAgent Ventures, Fuji Startup Ventures, and Nissay Capital in June.
Japanese beverage company Calpis runs a time-limited promotion campaign using the Rinkak 3D printing platform where a user can win a “miniature statue” with his or her face by uploading their portrait.
Tunedra (Korea)
Tunedra is an iOS app that allows users to create original songs. When singing or humming a tune while launching the app, it will automatically add chords or an accompaniment to the melody and allow the user to share it with others.
Matchmove Global (Indonesia)
Matchmove Global provides an entertainment platform for international brands. As credit cards are not common in Southeast Asia, the company issues pre-paid cards approved by global credit card brands and sells them to consumers at convenience stores or retail stores.
Similar to regular credit cards, their pre-paid cards have unique card numbers so that users can settle online payments at e-commerce or in-game app purchases by entering the numbers.
All finalists pitched at Rising Expo 2014
Disclaimer: The author was one of the selection judges. ↩
Masaru Ikeda
Takeshi Hirano
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Junya Mori
