THE BRIDGE

Business

A missed opportunity for Japan’s startup ecosystem

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From KPCB’s internet trends report released yesterday, comes an interesting factoid: 60% of the top 25 tech companies [were] founded by 1st and 2nd generation Americans. (p.148, see table above) I thought this would be a good time to revisit the question we asked this time last year: As the race for high-skilled immigrants begins, does Japan want to compete? To help address that question, here’s a quote from Japanese PM Shinzo Abe from a recent TV interview, cited/translated by The Japan Times: What are immigrants? The U.S. is a country of immigrants who came from all around the world and formed the (United States). Many people have come to the country and become part of it. We won’t adopt a policy like that. That strategy may prove unwise.

tech-companies-immigrants
from KPCB Internet Trends report (click to enlarge)

From KPCB’s internet trends report released yesterday, comes an interesting factoid:

60% of the top 25 tech companies [were] founded by 1st and 2nd generation Americans. (p.148, see table above)

I thought this would be a good time to revisit the question we asked this time last year:

As the race for high-skilled immigrants begins, does Japan want to compete?

To help address that question, here’s a quote from Japanese PM Shinzo Abe from a recent TV interview, cited/translated by The Japan Times:

What are immigrants? The U.S. is a country of immigrants who came from all around the world and formed the (United States). Many people have come to the country and become part of it. We won’t adopt a policy like that.

That strategy may prove unwise.

shinzo-abe 2
Japanese PM Shinzo Abe

Spark Profit: Fantasy trading game promises rewards with no risk

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A few days ago we told you about Hong Kong-based online brokerage service 8 Securities which just recently made moves to expand its business to Japan. For aspiring traders out there who might need a little practice, or for someone looking to make some money on a slightly smaller scale, you might want to check out the fantasy trading platform Spark Profit. Launched by Tokyo-based Nous back in January, Spark Profit lets you simulate trading in your browser (pictured above), using an iOS or Android app. Just yesterday the company announced that it has added Nikkei 225 support, as well as a new global sentiment indicator for all markets. One of the more interesting claims that Nous makes about Spark Profit is that even if you have never traded before, you can learn and develop strategies to outperform the market. Nous CEO Justin Short explains the advantage of their new indicator in the announcement: The purpose of our new free sentiment indicator is to help market participants improve their trading strategies by showing them the average person’s viewpoint, from right now all the way back to Spark Profit’s launch in January. How does the company pay high-performing fantasy traders? I…

spark-profit

A few days ago we told you about Hong Kong-based online brokerage service 8 Securities which just recently made moves to expand its business to Japan. For aspiring traders out there who might need a little practice, or for someone looking to make some money on a slightly smaller scale, you might want to check out the fantasy trading platform Spark Profit.

Launched by Tokyo-based Nous back in January, Spark Profit lets you simulate trading in your browser (pictured above), using an iOS or Android app. Just yesterday the company announced that it has added Nikkei 225 support, as well as a new global sentiment indicator for all markets.

One of the more interesting claims that Nous makes about Spark Profit is that even if you have never traded before, you can learn and develop strategies to outperform the market. Nous CEO Justin Short explains the advantage of their new indicator in the announcement:

The purpose of our new free sentiment indicator is to help market participants improve their trading strategies by showing them the average person’s viewpoint, from right now all the way back to Spark Profit’s launch in January.

How does the company pay high-performing fantasy traders? I noticed on their site that Nous started out by trading based on player data, essentially copying what the good players do to earn money. But Short tells me that they’ve since moved to a different idea:

We’ve changed the business model slightly since [then]: rather than find and trade on the signal ourselves, we are concentrating on user (= data) growth at this time. Instead we will sell the data to large hedge funds for them to build a signal from.

I’m told they have started trials of this feed, called ‘Spark Data’, with some funds already. I understand that the company previously raised is in process of raising an angel round of about $600,000, and to date $30,000 in prizes have been paid to fantasy traders on Spark Profit.

The platform has 29,000 users spanning 194 countries, with 3,000 new users signing up every month.

Adways’ Party Track begins integration with 5Rocks to create one-stop mobile analytics solution

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Back in January we reported that Tokyo-based digital advertising network and game publisher Adways has invested in and partnered with Korean growth hacking startup 5Rocks. At the time we mentioned that Adways planned to integrate 5Rocks segment-specific user behavior analytics into its own app tracking tool Party Track, in an effort to make it a one-stop analytics solution for marketing attribution and insights into in-app user behavior. According to a brief announcement today, that integration has now finally begun. Adways CEO Haruhisa Okamura made a brief statement: Adways is always seeking the way to support our clients to maximize the profit by using our service – last year we released Party Track and realized the need to focus on not only ad-analysis but more detailed analysis on user basis. I believe this business tie-up with 5Rocks will help app developers to solve more issues.

Party Track

Back in January we reported that Tokyo-based digital advertising network and game publisher Adways has invested in and partnered with Korean growth hacking startup 5Rocks. At the time we mentioned that Adways planned to integrate 5Rocks segment-specific user behavior analytics into its own app tracking tool Party Track, in an effort to make it a one-stop analytics solution for marketing attribution and insights into in-app user behavior.

According to a brief announcement today, that integration has now finally begun. Adways CEO Haruhisa Okamura made a brief statement:

Adways is always seeking the way to support our clients to maximize the profit by using our service – last year we released Party Track and realized the need to focus on not only ad-analysis but more detailed analysis on user basis. I believe this business tie-up with 5Rocks will help app developers to solve more issues.

GREE Ventures closes $50M fund to target Asian startups

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GREE Ventures has just announced the initial closing of its second fund. Dubbed the AT-I Investment Limited Partnership, this is a 5 billion yen fund (or about $50 million) which it will use to target tech startups in Japan and South East Asia, mostly series A stage companies at about 100 million yen to 300 million yen per company ($1 million to $3 million). Investors in the fund include GREE Inc, SME Support Japan, Credit Saison, Ateam Inc, and Mizuho Capital. The announcement notes that a second closing will likely come later this summer. GREE Ventures (PDF)

gree-ventures

GREE Ventures has just announced the initial closing of its second fund. Dubbed the AT-I Investment Limited Partnership, this is a 5 billion yen fund (or about $50 million) which it will use to target tech startups in Japan and South East Asia, mostly series A stage companies at about 100 million yen to 300 million yen per company ($1 million to $3 million).

Investors in the fund include GREE Inc, SME Support Japan, Credit Saison, Ateam Inc, and Mizuho Capital. The announcement notes that a second closing will likely come later this summer.

GREE Ventures (PDF)

Mixi’s investment firm invests in Taiwanese recruitment site Job178

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I Mercury Capital, the investment arm of Japanese internet company Mixi (TSE:2121), announced today that it has invested an undisclosed sum in Taiwan’s Loyal Sun Holdings, the operator of Taiwanese recruitment site Job178. Prior to this funding, the Taiwanese company raised funding (the sum also undisclosed) from Japanese investment companies Inspire and ICP last August. The company charges advertisers based on a performance basis, so you don’t actually need to pay anything if you don’t hire anyone using the platform. As for job seekers, they can get a cash reward from the company when successfully hired using the platform. The company has been rapidly growing and has acquired more than 3,000 Taiwanese companies as clients. This strategy is similar to that of Japanese recruiting site Livesense (TSE:6054), which has had promising results in terms of acquiring both advertisers and job seekers. Interestingly, Job178 has been leveraging the Line messaging app for marketing and has successfully attracted more than 5.2 million users with their original Line stickers. Mixi has been running its own recruitment site ‘Find Job’, and is considering a possible synergy with the Taiwanese job site. via Mixi

mixi-job178_logos_leadimage

I Mercury Capital, the investment arm of Japanese internet company Mixi (TSE:2121), announced today that it has invested an undisclosed sum in Taiwan’s Loyal Sun Holdings, the operator of Taiwanese recruitment site Job178.

Prior to this funding, the Taiwanese company raised funding (the sum also undisclosed) from Japanese investment companies Inspire and ICP last August.

The company charges advertisers based on a performance basis, so you don’t actually need to pay anything if you don’t hire anyone using the platform. As for job seekers, they can get a cash reward from the company when successfully hired using the platform.

The company has been rapidly growing and has acquired more than 3,000 Taiwanese companies as clients. This strategy is similar to that of Japanese recruiting site Livesense (TSE:6054), which has had promising results in terms of acquiring both advertisers and job seekers.

Interestingly, Job178 has been leveraging the Line messaging app for marketing and has successfully attracted more than 5.2 million users with their original Line stickers. Mixi has been running its own recruitment site ‘Find Job’, and is considering a possible synergy with the Taiwanese job site.

via Mixi

Adways launches its app pre-registration service for the Korean market

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See our report in Japanese Adways Korea, the subsidiary of Tokyo-based Adways Inc, has announced the official launch of its Yoyaku Top 10 service in Korea. It lets users pre-register for mobile game apps, and has been available in Korea in the beta phase since January. For developers, it serves as a medium to reach fans before the launch of an app, or even provide push notifications for new updates or events. During that three month beta, the service has been used by 150 apps from 50 different developers, with as many as 10,000 pre-registrations coming on a single app. The company claims a 56% conversion rate, which they say is far better than PC-based pre-registration services [1]. Yoyaku Top 10 was initially launched for the Japanese market in January of 2013, and Adways apparently has experienced enough success with it to warrant localization into Korean to explore that market. After Korea, the company aspires to expand service elsewhere in Asia. Adways says this figure is 20% for PC services, though we don’t have any verification for this.  ↩

adways

See our report in Japanese

Adways Korea, the subsidiary of Tokyo-based Adways Inc, has announced the official launch of its Yoyaku Top 10 service in Korea. It lets users pre-register for mobile game apps, and has been available in Korea in the beta phase since January. For developers, it serves as a medium to reach fans before the launch of an app, or even provide push notifications for new updates or events.

During that three month beta, the service has been used by 150 apps from 50 different developers, with as many as 10,000 pre-registrations coming on a single app. The company claims a 56% conversion rate, which they say is far better than PC-based pre-registration services [1].

Yoyaku Top 10 was initially launched for the Japanese market in January of 2013, and Adways apparently has experienced enough success with it to warrant localization into Korean to explore that market.

After Korea, the company aspires to expand service elsewhere in Asia.


  1. Adways says this figure is 20% for PC services, though we don’t have any verification for this.  ↩

Japan’s Tabikul helps you arrange travel itineraries for new destinations

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Grood, the startup best known for its crowdsourcing platform for voice actors, announced today that it has launched a new platform called Tabikul. This service helps you arrange travel itineraries by capitalizing on crowdsourced information. Based on your request, crowdsourced users living in certain destinations will help you arrange a travel itinerary. You can select your preference for mode of transportation or accommodations from five options, depending on your price requirements. You can receive proposals from crowdsourced users in 72 hours from the submission of your request, and even can ask for minor changes by interacting over the platform. If you like the proposed itinerary, you can order the tickets needed on the website, without having to go to another booking site. When you order, the user who arranged your itinerary can receive 10,000 yen (about $100) as a reward from the platform. At the time of launch, Tabikul is still limited to accepting travel itinerary requests to France, the UK, and Italy. They plan to expand it as they acquire more crowdsourced users from other regions.

tabikul_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Grood, the startup best known for its crowdsourcing platform for voice actors, announced today that it has launched a new platform called Tabikul. This service helps you arrange travel itineraries by capitalizing on crowdsourced information.

Based on your request, crowdsourced users living in certain destinations will help you arrange a travel itinerary. You can select your preference for mode of transportation or accommodations from five options, depending on your price requirements. You can receive proposals from crowdsourced users in 72 hours from the submission of your request, and even can ask for minor changes by interacting over the platform.

tabikul-itinerary

If you like the proposed itinerary, you can order the tickets needed on the website, without having to go to another booking site. When you order, the user who arranged your itinerary can receive 10,000 yen (about $100) as a reward from the platform.

At the time of launch, Tabikul is still limited to accepting travel itinerary requests to France, the UK, and Italy. They plan to expand it as they acquire more crowdsourced users from other regions.

Kamcord raises $7M in funding, now lets users share game videos to Line, WeChat

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San Francisco-based Kamcord announced this morning that it has raised $7.1 million in series A funding, in a round led by Silicon Valley-based TransLink Capital. Other participants included DeNA, SV Angel, Innovation Works, KLab, M&Y Growth Partners, and XG Ventures. Kamcord’s SDK enables game developers to put a ‘movie’ button in game, and when it is pressed, users can then share video clips/replays of game play. Namco Bandai was the first Japanese company to use the localized version of Kamcord’s SDK, as we mentioned back in February. But now we understand that it’s also used in games from DeNA and Colopl. When we spoke with Kamcord co-founder Adi Rathnam last December in Kyoto (see below), he emphasized the importance of Asian markets, including Japan, Korea, and China. We wondered about the possibility of sharing Kamcord videos to Asian message services Line and WeChat, and the sharing functionalities to those networks has now been added. In their announcement this time around, Adi had this to say: In order to build a truly global platform for sharing and watching gameplay videos, we prioritized strengthening our presence in Asia. The partnerships we’ve formed with this round of funding will help us tremendously in…

kamcord

San Francisco-based Kamcord announced this morning that it has raised $7.1 million in series A funding, in a round led by Silicon Valley-based TransLink Capital. Other participants included DeNA, SV Angel, Innovation Works, KLab, M&Y Growth Partners, and XG Ventures.

Kamcord’s SDK enables game developers to put a ‘movie’ button in game, and when it is pressed, users can then share video clips/replays of game play. Namco Bandai was the first Japanese company to use the localized version of Kamcord’s SDK, as we mentioned back in February. But now we understand that it’s also used in games from DeNA and Colopl.

When we spoke with Kamcord co-founder Adi Rathnam last December in Kyoto (see below), he emphasized the importance of Asian markets, including Japan, Korea, and China. We wondered about the possibility of sharing Kamcord videos to Asian message services Line and WeChat, and the sharing functionalities to those networks has now been added. In their announcement this time around, Adi had this to say:

In order to build a truly global platform for sharing and watching gameplay videos, we prioritized strengthening our presence in Asia. The partnerships we’ve formed with this round of funding will help us tremendously in that effort.

As for Kamcord’s recent progress, we understand that users are now sharing at a pace of one video every two seconds, and that rate is sure to grow with more support for games and gamers here in Asia. The company has also recently launched a new Kamcord app (screenshots above) where you can watch fun mobile gameplay videos all in one place. You can get it for free over on the App Store.

Apple’s revenue growth in Japan driven by iPhone sales

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Apple’s Q2 2014 earnings are out, with the company reporting 26% revenue growth in Japan. It is very true that looking at Apple’s year-on-year revenue growth is very flattering towards the Japan market, as you can see in our chart here:   To be precise, Apple’s strong performance in Japan is (of course) powered by the iPhone, where Apple has taken 55% of the smartphone market, and iPhone sales were up 50% year-on-year (according to CEO Tim Cook in the earnings call). If we step back a little bit, and Apple’s long-term overall revenue picture for Japan is less dramatic, as you can see below. China is very obviously the company’s primary engine for growth in recent quarters.  

Apple’s Q2 2014 earnings are out, with the company reporting 26% revenue growth in Japan. It is very true that looking at Apple’s year-on-year revenue growth is very flattering towards the Japan market, as you can see in our chart here:

apple-regional-revenue-growth

 

To be precise, Apple’s strong performance in Japan is (of course) powered by the iPhone, where Apple has taken 55% of the smartphone market, and iPhone sales were up 50% year-on-year (according to CEO Tim Cook in the earnings call).

If we step back a little bit, and Apple’s long-term overall revenue picture for Japan is less dramatic, as you can see below. China is very obviously the company’s primary engine for growth in recent quarters.

apple-quaterly-revenues

 

Japanese social marketing company Allied Architects sets up shop in Singapore

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Tokyo-based Allied Architects(TSE:6081) announced yesterday it has set up a subsidiary in Singapore. It’s called Allied Asia Pacific, and it will administrate operations around the company’s marketing services in the region, including the ‘Monipla for Facebook’ marketing platform in Vietnam and Taiwan. Our readers may recall that the company recently partnered with Silicon Valley-based growth hacking startup AppSocially. So I expect this expansion is intended to assist such partner services in reaching out to local businesses in the region. via Venture Now

AAP_logo

Tokyo-based Allied Architects(TSE:6081) announced yesterday it has set up a subsidiary in Singapore. It’s called Allied Asia Pacific, and it will administrate operations around the company’s marketing services in the region, including the ‘Monipla for Facebook’ marketing platform in Vietnam and Taiwan.

Our readers may recall that the company recently partnered with Silicon Valley-based growth hacking startup AppSocially. So I expect this expansion is intended to assist such partner services in reaching out to local businesses in the region.

via Venture Now