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Tokyo Office Tour: Japan’s Sansan wants to evolve how the world does contact management

Masaru Ikeda 2014.03.17

Our readers may recall we have featured Tokyo-based Sansan more than a few times in the past. Since the company’s launch back in 2007, it has been providing business card-based contact management solutions, in the form of its services Sansan [1] (for companies) and Eight (for individuals). Recently I received several notifications from the Eight app letting me know that a number of my contacts at the company had changed their profiles, because they had moved to a new office. The new space is located between Shibuya and Omotesando in Tokyo, a district that’s home to many prominent fashion brands. There is a cozy space available not only for their employees but also for the local community, with a great view of the city and lots of interesting potted trees and plants. One of the biggest reasons behind the company’s relocation is the rapid enlargement of their team. The number of their clients using the Sansan solution reached 1,500 companies as of this past December, up from 1,000 companies back in June. Eight, the freemium service for individuals, has acquired more than 600,000 users to date. The company may add premium features such as a mass e-mailing to your contacts…

Our readers may recall we have featured Tokyo-based Sansan more than a few times in the past. Since the company’s launch back in 2007, it has been providing business card-based contact management solutions, in the form of its services Sansan [1] (for companies) and Eight (for individuals).

Recently I received several notifications from the Eight app letting me know that a number of my contacts at the company had changed their profiles, because they had moved to a new office. The new space is located between Shibuya and Omotesando in Tokyo, a district that’s home to many prominent fashion brands. There is a cozy space available not only for their employees but also for the local community, with a great view of the city and lots of interesting potted trees and plants.

One of the biggest reasons behind the company’s relocation is the rapid enlargement of their team. The number of their clients using the Sansan solution reached 1,500 companies as of this past December, up from 1,000 companies back in June. Eight, the freemium service for individuals, has acquired more than 600,000 users to date. The company may add premium features such as a mass e-mailing to your contacts or exporting profiles for use in other apps.

In order to make it easier for Eight users to scan business cards from new contacts, Sansan has announced new services today in partnership with some business solution providers. The company has tied up with 10 co-working spaces in Tokyo, where entrepreneurs and SME owners can easily save the profiles of their contacts onto Eight using scanners at those sites. They will also provide a similar service at certain printing outlets.

Sansan has been intensifying its promotional efforts in the North American market as well, and it will be interesting to see how their solutions are accepted in regions beyond Japan.

sansan-office-visit-2 — At reception, you can call them using the digital board for an appointment.

sansan-office-visit-4 — A nice soft sofa for employees when they get a little tired.

sansan-office-visit-5 — This gong is rung when a significant announcement is made, if they achieve a sales milestone for example.

sansan-office-visit-6 — A scanner for the Sansan and Eight solutions

sansan-office-visit-7 — Hiroshi Senju, director of marketing for ‘Eight’

Flowers sent from well-known entrepreneurs and investors celebrating Sansan’s office relocation

Previously known as Link Knowledge. ↩

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How Japan’s online social restaurant guide Retty doubled its monthly visitors

Takeshi Hirano 2014.03.13

Based on the original article in Japanese Online social restaurant guide Retty achieved 1 million unique visitors in the month of October 2013. That was pretty good, but since then the number has doubled. Retty announced on March 6th that visitors to the site has surpassed 2 million in the month of February. According to CEO Kazuya Takeda, the service sees about a 120% increase every month. Their total number of customers reviews has reached 800,000. The company raised over 300 million yen ($3 million) in December 2013, and they recently relocated to a new office as well. To find out a little more about how Retty is doing these days, we held a short interview with their CEO Kazuya Takeda. Takeda: It’s been about a year ago since we decided to put more resources into SEO. The renewed site was launched in May last of year, and it was about 3 months until we saw the effects when visitors coming to the site via search engines dramatically increased. When Retty initially launched, social media was a big trend. And the team developed the service expecting most traffic to come from social media sites. The challenge of beating the existing…

Based on the original article in Japanese

Online social restaurant guide Retty achieved 1 million unique visitors in the month of October 2013. That was pretty good, but since then the number has doubled. Retty announced on March 6th that visitors to the site has surpassed 2 million in the month of February. According to CEO Kazuya Takeda, the service sees about a 120% increase every month. Their total number of customers reviews has reached 800,000.

The company raised over 300 million yen ($3 million) in December 2013, and they recently relocated to a new office as well. To find out a little more about how Retty is doing these days, we held a short interview with their CEO Kazuya Takeda.

Takeda: It’s been about a year ago since we decided to put more resources into SEO. The renewed site was launched in May last of year, and it was about 3 months until we saw the effects when visitors coming to the site via search engines dramatically increased.

When Retty initially launched, social media was a big trend. And the team developed the service expecting most traffic to come from social media sites. The challenge of beating the existing competitors like Gurunavi and Tabelog, who see big traffic from Yahoo and Google, appeared daunting. Takeda explains:

In the early stages, we could increase our restaurant data and the amount of reviews through social media like Facebook and Twitter. But it took quite a long time to reach a certain volume.

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Even though the pace was slow, Retty gradually increased its fan base. When Retty accumulated data for 150,000 restaurants with a half million reviews, they begun to work on SEO. The site appears to have been positively evaluated by Google, and the traffic increased a lot. His strategy, which was to win fans on social media and increasing visitors using SEO, seems to be working quite well.

Having said all that, Takeda tells us that strengthening SEO was not his original plan.

Actually the service didn’t scale we first planned. We once aimed at scaling the service only through app downloads. But we found visitors to the site were really growing. Expanding the service using just the app would be somewhat limiting. We realized strengthening SEO would be necessary to scale the site.

Social media and smartphone apps have been two technology developments that drove a number of food-service apps to be developed over the past few years. But in Japan, none of them have succeeded to the level where they threaten industry leaders Tabelog and Gurunavi.

So how far can Retty go? I asked Takeda about his future plan.

I’d like to pursue smartphone-centered restaurant search. I’ve thought about what is necessary to offer the greatest user experience in this field. And I think the answer lies in listening to users’ voices. It’s a bit hard to explain logically, but things naturally turn around when we put top priority on our users.

What is the target goal you are looking at?

I believe we can reach 30 or 40 million users domestically. And we are expanding overseas at the same time. […] I didn’t name Retty with some Japanese words because I was looking beyond Japanese market. Even though it would have been better for our Japanese users if we had done so.

Platforms like smartphones and Facebook are now available everywhere in the world. This is a very rare occasion. I think the Japan has a great advantage in the overseas market, especially in areas such as food, games and content.

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Explosive potential: Nitrous puts pre-configured development environments in the cloud

Rick Martin 2014.01.09

As someone who has been trying to learn programming over the past few years, one of the biggest issues that I continue to run into is getting my local development environment to function properly. For a beginner, an amazing amount of stamina is required to power through the inevitable command line errors that often come up when you’re getting started [1]. But while interviewing a well-known designer/developer recently, he suggested that I check out Nitrous.IO, a cloud-based development environment platform that he assured me would make the process much easier [2]. And sure enough, it did. After signing up, you can create a development environment, or ‘box’, for one of four languages/frameworks: Ruby/Rails, Python/Django, NodeJS, or Go — all with little more than a button click. From there you’re presented with the familiar green-on-black terminal interface, all ready to go from the comfort of your web browser, letting you focus on writing code rather than fumbling with environment configurations. I got in touch with Nitrous co-founder A.J. Solimine to find out more about how their product came about. While I find it a helpful tool for my own beginner-level learning, Nitrous was built to make software configuration easier not just…

As someone who has been trying to learn programming over the past few years, one of the biggest issues that I continue to run into is getting my local development environment to function properly. For a beginner, an amazing amount of stamina is required to power through the inevitable command line errors that often come up when you’re getting started [1]. But while interviewing a well-known designer/developer recently, he suggested that I check out Nitrous.IO, a cloud-based development environment platform that he assured me would make the process much easier [2].

And sure enough, it did.

After signing up, you can create a development environment, or ‘box’, for one of four languages/frameworks: Ruby/Rails, Python/Django, NodeJS, or Go — all with little more than a button click. From there you’re presented with the familiar green-on-black terminal interface, all ready to go from the comfort of your web browser, letting you focus on writing code rather than fumbling with environment configurations.

I got in touch with Nitrous co-founder A.J. Solimine to find out more about how their product came about. While I find it a helpful tool for my own beginner-level learning, Nitrous was built to make software configuration easier not just for novices, but for everyone.

A.J. explains:

We’ve set out to make development easier and more enjoyable by eliminating the complexities that come with setting up and configuring software. On Nitrous.IO, you just write code, you don’t really need to know about Linux, and Ruby, and Rails, or Postgres configuration flags.

A.J. and his team began working on Nitrous (initially named Action.io) back in the summer of 2013 from a small shop in Singapore. The other cofounders are Peter Kim and Arun Thampi, who both studied at the National University of Singapore. While working on web and mobile apps, Arun and A.J. ran into difficulties keeping their development environments up to date for their many projects. They looked into Quora’s published explanation of their EC2 development, in an effort to see if a cloud solution might be the answer.

They found there were many configuration tools out there, but most with a steep learning curve and none built specifically for development [3]. The alternative that they devised (see a screenshot of the browser interface below) is one that has attracted a lot of attention and admiration from the development community, and from investors as well.

Nitrous raised $1 million in seed funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and other investors back in late 2012, and I’m told that since they launched their public beta in June 2013 they’ve averaged a stunning 500 new registered users per day. And in December they announced a beta ‘Nitrous for Business’ program, targeting larger teams that need a way to simplify their development and collaboration.

nitrous-jekyll — A Nitrous ruby box in the browser

The business model is very smart as well, in my view, with a number of upgrade plans (announced just yesterday) that give you access to more CPU share and virtual memory, as well as things like premium support, no automatic shutdowns (free boxes are shutdown after a period of inactivity), and direct SSH access.

But even free users can earn additional resources through Nitrous’s referral plan [4]. A.J. tells me that this strategy has served them very well so far:

The referral strategy has been a strong catalyst for growth for us – we don’t spend any money on marketing or advertisements, so all of our growth thus far has been due to our users sharing Nitrous.IO with their friends.

With an office now in the US as well as Singapore, it will be interesting to see how Nitrous progresses over the next year or so. They have made some astounding strides in a very, very short amount of time, so I think there’s really a lot of potential here. Nitrous is hiring too, for anyone out there who would like to get involved.

Expect big things.

Nitrous's US team after a go-kart outing — Nitrous’s US team after a go-kart outing

I’m sure that many experienced programmers might assert that powering through such errors is an essential part of your learning, and understanding the development environment is important. And I think that’s very true. But with more and more people learning programming on their own these days, as opposed to in a classroom, a tool like this makes the learning process a little more accessible in my view. ↩
I’m referring to Sacha Greif, and my conversation with him is upcoming in a future article. He has written an informative post about running Meteor apps using Nitrous here. ↩
They also found some big companies centralized infrastructure in place for remote development, but that was usually the exception and not the norm. ↩
I’m going to shamelessly drop my own Nitrous referral link right here. ↩

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Typeform: The prettiest survey tool on the web is about to emerge from beta

Rick Martin 2014.01.09

Recently we spoke to the folks behind Tokyo-based survey solution Creative Survey, an online survey tool that emphasizes great design as its differentiator. That design-centric approach is similar to that of Barcelona-based Typeform, whose David Okuniev we spoke recently with about their progress to date and upcoming expansion plans. David tells me that their first Typeform first came into being four years ago as a sort of accident. He and a partner were running a design/development agency, and were asked to create a form that would sit in a gallery space, displayed on three iMac computers. Of course, in a setting like that, just any old design wouldn’t be enough. So they set out to build something that had an appropriately smart design. The initial version of TypeForm was created with the movie War Games in mind. 80s movie buffs will remember the back and forth Q&A-style conversation between the computer and Matthew Broderick’s character, as seen in the clip below: David explains that the simplicity of this interaction was inspiring: We thought, let’s forget everything we know about forms and do it the best we can. Along the way we realized it was more human and that we would…

Recently we spoke to the folks behind Tokyo-based survey solution Creative Survey, an online survey tool that emphasizes great design as its differentiator. That design-centric approach is similar to that of Barcelona-based Typeform, whose David Okuniev we spoke recently with about their progress to date and upcoming expansion plans.

David tells me that their first Typeform first came into being four years ago as a sort of accident. He and a partner were running a design/development agency, and were asked to create a form that would sit in a gallery space, displayed on three iMac computers. Of course, in a setting like that, just any old design wouldn’t be enough. So they set out to build something that had an appropriately smart design.

The initial version of TypeForm was created with the movie War Games in mind. 80s movie buffs will remember the back and forth Q&A-style conversation between the computer and Matthew Broderick’s character, as seen in the clip below:

David explains that the simplicity of this interaction was inspiring:

We thought, let’s forget everything we know about forms and do it the best we can. Along the way we realized it was more human and that we would increase conversions, and we can even put in images and video.

While early prototypes of the service was done in Flash, the company quickly moved to HTML5. After they raised funding, they continued to work to make work well on mobile, with responsive design and bigger buttons, presenting one question at a time. They launched their beta release last February, with a 1.0 release coming later this month. So far Typeform has over 40,000 users, with 8000 signed up in the month of December. They’re seeing good results so far, and are looking forward to making a push once their out of beta. Currently the team is comprised of 14 members, but they’re looking to make it 30 by the end of 2014.

Does Typeform have any plans for Japan? David tells me that they already have 1500 signups from here, even though the platform is not yet localized. Typeform does, however, allow you to select Japanese as the language for your form, with Japanese options available as form responses [1].

I understand that in addition to German, Japanese will likely be one of the first two fully localized languages for Typeform. The company is keen to speak with and get to know people here in Japan, and welcome anyone who might want to get involved in their efforts.

As far as monetizing their product, they have a number of tiered pricing offerings, including a free plan, and pro features available for those willing to pay a little more.

You can view some examples that Japanese users have created here and here. I’ll refrain from providing the actual links because I don’t want these users getting bombarded with unwanted responses. ↩

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Lancers CEO Yosuke Akiyoshi on obstacles facing crowdsourcing in Japan

Takeshi Hirano 2013.12.19

This is part of our coverage of Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto 2013 See the original article in Japanese We conducted many interviews about consumer-to-consumer (C2C) businesses at the recent Infinity Ventures Summit. Today we have a conversation from that event that we had with Yosuke Akiyoshi, the CEO of Lancers, a leading startup in Japan’s crowdsourcing space. The Bridge: Here I’ve been interviewing many people from the C2C businesses. One of the hot topics among those people lately is Crowdworks’ recent fund raising. Akiyoshi: Looking back on the five years since we launched our crowdsourcing business, the space has really changed a lot. We target people with basic knowledge of the internet, and among those people, words such as ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘Lancers’ became better known. It took four years for the total number of users (workers who receive orders) to reach 100,000. The number rapidly grew to 200,000 this October, and 220,000 last month. It could surpass 300,000 early next year. But some users still feel they don’t fully understand the system. So, we need to better educate them. In that sense, the 1.1 billion yen (raised by Crowdworks) means a lot in developing the industry. The Bridge: You announced…

This is part of our coverage of Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto 2013

See the original article in Japanese

We conducted many interviews about consumer-to-consumer (C2C) businesses at the recent Infinity Ventures Summit. Today we have a conversation from that event that we had with Yosuke Akiyoshi, the CEO of Lancers, a leading startup in Japan’s crowdsourcing space.

The Bridge: Here I’ve been interviewing many people from the C2C businesses. One of the hot topics among those people lately is Crowdworks’ recent fund raising.

Akiyoshi: Looking back on the five years since we launched our crowdsourcing business, the space has really changed a lot. We target people with basic knowledge of the internet, and among those people, words such as ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘Lancers’ became better known. It took four years for the total number of users (workers who receive orders) to reach 100,000. The number rapidly grew to 200,000 this October, and 220,000 last month. It could surpass 300,000 early next year. But some users still feel they don’t fully understand the system. So, we need to better educate them. In that sense, the 1.1 billion yen (raised by Crowdworks) means a lot in developing the industry.

The Bridge: You announced today that Lancers will have partnership with GMO Epsilon Inc.

Akiyoshi: GMO Epsilon offers payment services, and lots of work opportunities will arise due to the implementation of the service. Many of such work orders will be placed on Lancers.

The Bridge: The fast-growing aspects of crowdsourcing tend to get a lot of attention. But many services struggle to build a solid culture for C2C and B2C businesses. What kind of issues do you face?

Akiyoshi: Users are increasing, and I don’t see any problem with that. The problem lies on the side of the companies. Currently, there are a core group of companies who are accustomed to the system. But the goal is for any company to use the system. And there are issues that need to be overcome.

The Bridge: I see.

Akiyoshi: First, direction. When a company places an order, it needs to divide the work. But many companies get stuck at this point.

The Bridge: For example, for a web-design work order, work needs to be divided into coding, writing, and programming, with an order made for each. We plan to solve this issue by holding seminars for companies and dividing up the process control of the system. Also, product managers who can understand and handle the process are needed. We aim to implement more training to increase the amount of such product mangers. We need to enlighten companies.

The Bridge: When you enlighten companies, so to speak, which advantages of Lancers do you emphasize?

Akiyoshi: We tell them the overall advantages in speed, cost and resources.

The Bridge: What about users who receive orders? How do you educate them? I heard you often visit local areas.

Akiyoshi: I have already visited about 15 regions. I realized it is important to have face-to-face communication and to solve such issues. … There are few jobs in local regions. Businesses in Tokyo take jobs from the local. There are few useful communities where you can find opportunities, unlike Tokyo.

The Bridge: How long do you think it will take for crowdsourcing to be accepted as a new kind of work style?

Akiyoshi: It depends on how we measure the success, although we have set a metric. Right now, there are about 200 workers who can make a living just from their Lancers work. We’d like to increase that figure to 10,000 by 2017. But it will take much longer to completely change people’s way of working.

The Bridge: It will certainly take a while. So what number or metric do you currently care about the most?

Akiyoshi: Focusing on improving the users’ experiences, we pay attention to the repeat customer rate. Of course we look at the number of the work orders and the member total at the same time.

The Bridge: Thank you for your time.

I got the impression that more workers understand the concept of crowdsourcing these days. But there are still lots of obstacles that get in the way of companies using crowdsourcing. It’s not only about speed and cost, but quality needs to be considered. And it requires more understanding from companies about how to use the system and handle the process control. That knowledge is not open enough, and it becomes an obstacle.

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Tokyo Office Tour: Zendesk gets set to serve Japan from its new space

Masaru Ikeda 2013.12.17

Our readers may recall that online customer support platform provider Zendesk established a presence in Japan back in March. The company was initially launched back in 2007 in Copenhagen, but relocated its headquarters to San Francisco to develop more global business opportunities. They have set up a branch here in Tokyo, and we were invited to their recent launching party, hosting many of their customers from the local startup community. This is the fifth regional branch for them, following London, Melbourne, Copenhagen, and Dublin. CEO Mikkel Svane was in attendance, on his way back from the Infinity Venture Summit in Kyoto. He and his country manager, Kan Kunimura, broke open a ceremonial Japanese sake barrel together to serve drinks to guests. They also hired the kind of Japanese food stall often seen at shrine festivals, where anyone can order their favorite foods out of fried noodles, beef rice balls, and the more. I was curious to see that they still have only three people at this branch despite the large office, spanning over 100 square meters. But their marketing manager Shoko Yanagisawa told me they will be hiring more people to serve better their Japanese clients, so we can expect…

zendesk-breakingbarrel — Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane (Left) and Kan Kunimura broke open a Japanese sake barrel.

Our readers may recall that online customer support platform provider Zendesk established a presence in Japan back in March. The company was initially launched back in 2007 in Copenhagen, but relocated its headquarters to San Francisco to develop more global business opportunities. They have set up a branch here in Tokyo, and we were invited to their recent launching party, hosting many of their customers from the local startup community. This is the fifth regional branch for them, following London, Melbourne, Copenhagen, and Dublin.

CEO Mikkel Svane was in attendance, on his way back from the Infinity Venture Summit in Kyoto. He and his country manager, Kan Kunimura, broke open a ceremonial Japanese sake barrel together to serve drinks to guests. They also hired the kind of Japanese food stall often seen at shrine festivals, where anyone can order their favorite foods out of fried noodles, beef rice balls, and the more.

I was curious to see that they still have only three people at this branch despite the large office, spanning over 100 square meters. But their marketing manager Shoko Yanagisawa told me they will be hiring more people to serve better their Japanese clients, so we can expect it to fill up in the not-too-distant future. For the time being, staffers at their Melbourne branch will be assisting with Japanese clients since they’re in close time zone.

Zendesk’s Tokyo office is located alongside a busy street filled with many Japanese bars and diners. If you visit them in evening, it will be easy to find a place in their neighborhood to chat over drinks.

zendesk-entrance — From the office entrance. Some guests have already started networking.

zendesk-flowers-and-bags — Flowers and foldable bags

zendesk-kickass — Who has two thumbs and apparently likes to kick ass? This guy!

zendesk-foodstall2 — Mikkel orders from a food stall.

zendesk-teammember — One of their team members celebrated his birthday as well

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With 18M global downloads, Noom CEO looks to the future of fitness tech

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.12.17

We’ve covered the New York startup Noom several times in the past. Noom is a popular diet/fitness app with over 18 million downloads globally. Back in August, the team launched its Japanese version with its Android app ‘Noom Diet Coach’. The app was updated today with a new group feature that had been available to US users since May. Based on a user’s target weight, age, sex, and location, the app automatically adds users to their groups. Because of their similar characteristics and goals, these groups can be a big motivator to Noom users. On the release of this new feature app we asked Noom CEO, Saeju Jeong, a little about team building, the challenge of launching and marketing in the Japanese market, and the future of the healthcare sector. The Bridge: Tell us a little about your background and how you ended up starting your own business. Jeong: I was raised in the country side in South Korea, and went to Seoul to study electronic engineering at HongIk University. I started my first media business, a record label at age 19, and it quickly took over the Korean music market. I moved to New York in 2005 after dropping…

We’ve covered the New York startup Noom several times in the past. Noom is a popular diet/fitness app with over 18 million downloads globally. Back in August, the team launched its Japanese version with its Android app ‘Noom Diet Coach’. The app was updated today with a new group feature that had been available to US users since May. Based on a user’s target weight, age, sex, and location, the app automatically adds users to their groups. Because of their similar characteristics and goals, these groups can be a big motivator to Noom users.

On the release of this new feature app we asked Noom CEO, Saeju Jeong, a little about team building, the challenge of launching and marketing in the Japanese market, and the future of the healthcare sector.

The Bridge: Tell us a little about your background and how you ended up starting your own business.

Jeong: I was raised in the country side in South Korea, and went to Seoul to study electronic engineering at HongIk University. I started my first media business, a record label at age 19, and it quickly took over the Korean music market. I moved to New York in 2005 after dropping out of the college so I could achieve a little more. I built my connections and a network from scratch, and ended up working as an executive producer for the broadway musical Bye Bye Birdie, hiring some of the top talent in the industry. I met my cofounder, Artem Petakov, in 2006. We cofounded WorkSmart Labs (our former company name) in 2007.

The Bridge: Was founding a company in Korea an option for you?

Jeong: No. From the start of the company, my idea was that in Korea we would fail to get the sort of top talent needed to build a truly strong global company. If I want to build a global company, its going be hard to hire the such talent in Shanghai, Korea, etc. NY was simply the best location to hire the best talent, and that would accelerate the company’s growth. I came to NY with no network, but I knew I would find something once I came here. You don’t really know until you take the risk and do it. But I see that sort of risk as an opportunity.

The Bridge: What qualities or skillsets would be ideal for entrepreneurs?

Jeong: It’s those who are always curious about new things, those who like solving problems. If you believe you can fix the problem, that represents tremendous energy to overcome future struggles and obstacles. There is no manual to fix a problem. So you just have to figure it out. Use the best knowledge you have and then move on.

The right stuff

The Bridge: What do you look for when you’re hiring for Noom?

Jeong: (cites three things)

The skillset that meets the job description (engineering, marketing, business… any position) – this is basic.
Communication skills – teamwork cannot be done without communication.
Integrity

The Bridge: What word would be the most appropriate to explain the current Noom team?

Jeong: I would say that they’re smart, open-minded, and like a family.

The Bridge: How do you go about finding talent?

Jeong: All kind of channels – we do everything to get the top talent. It’s just like dating – if you want to date someone, you try every single way to attract that person. We are open to every opportunity that will let us hire the best talent. Our bar is very high. The interview process is very long and tough, and it’s not easy to get into.

The Bridge: Who are Noom users?

Jeong: Most users are female in their 20s and 30s, and even their 40s. More than 40% of our users stay with Noom even after 2 years. Some users want to lose weight for a special occasion, others just to look better and gain confidence. Many women after having a baby, perhaps they gained weight and want to lose it.

The Bridge: What do you care most about your product?

Jeong: Results. We want to deliver a product that enables users to get good results through better habits and better lifestyles. This drives how we improve the service, through the UI, etc.

The Bridge: Why should users choose Noom over the many competitors out there?

Jeong: We are different from all those healthcare products. Noom provides intelligent nutrition/exercise coaching plus motivational support, 24/7, all available in your pocket! So it’s sustainable in the long term. We also know that logging is important, but we also know that it is hard to keep logging. So we analyze the data of users, and provide active coaching. What we are promising is very difficult. We want to build an AI and its not easy at all. We learn everyday how users are behaving and make changes to our product.

Local understanding

The Bridge: Do you localize features and the app itself to suit local markets?

Jeong: Features and designs are universally the same because our strength is our background in technology and design. We are truly proud of our talented engineers’ and designers’ work on the product so far. But we do have localized task content, the food database, etc, to serve Japanese users.

The Bridge: What do you think you need to be the most careful of when marketing to the Japanese market?

Jeong: We are a startup so we move fast, and make judgements quickly too. So we will need to stay patient, not judging the market too fast. Setting an appropriate timeline will be very important. Also, taking care of the voices of locals will be important too. The message and language towards users in the market has to be 100% local. I respect the lifestyle of Japanese people. What we are good at is providing the right technology, but we don’t want to be just a “Made in the USA technology company,” no. There is a saying that “the customer is the king” in Korea, and this applies to Japanese users too. We are from New York, but if one user is not happy about our service, we listen. That’s how we have developed our product and how we can improve the product as well.

The Bridge: How do you promote Noom?

Jeong: We always emphasize that we don’t over-market like many other weight loss service providers. In US, we have incurred no user acquisition cost, ever. We focus on service quality and interact a lot with users. We listen carefully to what they need. But we have global partners such as Curves, the world’s biggest fitness gym chain, Amore Pacific, a famous Korean cosmetic brand, as well as well institutions like the NIH (National Institution of Health) and the United Nations. Collaborating with those global partners will definitely help make our brand trusted by users, so we’d like to continue working with partners that have the same goal of helping people live healthier through diet and exercise.

The Bridge: Do you have a different approach to different markets?

Jeong: We are savvy about how people’s needs differ by country. Why people want to lose weight is different in the US, Korea, Japan, etc. So we will differentiate the messaging accordingly.

The Bridge: How do you see the mobile wellness/fitness sector in the future?

Jeong: I think wearable devices are disrupting the hardware industry. Laptop features have improved dramatically, with faster CPUs. Smart phones improve every six months. […] We started seeing wearable devices recently, not many yet, but these new devices are going to be disruptive – cheaper, durable, lighter, faster. As a software maker, we see it as an opportunity. Software makers create more fun, interesting services, and create ecosystems. There are more than 100 companies who make wearable devices like Fitbit already! We can provide a better software experience, lighter, cheaper, and faster. People will be used to seeing more of this kind of things, and the entire market will grow faster than ever.

The Bridge: Is there any interesting new service or product you think is particularly interesting?

Jeong: A food scanner, which will be on the market in two years. It scans food or drink and tells you the calories. Galaxy gear and wearable device will also be disruptive.

The Bridge: Do you expect partnerships with local companies?

Jeong: I think there are many ways to work with Japanese organizations. Medical organizations can be one. More broadly, we see potential partners in those who are focused on helping people live healthier with diet and exercise. Naturally this opens us up to a wide range of partners, so we’re exploring where’s best to begin.

The Bridge: Where will Noom be in three years?

Jeong: I think Noom will do more in the healthcare eco-system, eventually. The opportunity to improve health just by improving diet and exercise is extraordinary. Those two things alone can powerfully improve many aspects of health. Diabetes prevention, your heart, overall energy levels, not to mention the emotional benefits that come from improving physical health. The impact can be tremendous.

news

Japan and the culture of crowdsourcing: Crowdworks’ CEO Koichiro Yoshida (2/2)

Takeshi Hirano 2013.12.10

See the original article in Japanese Crowdworks, the startup behind crowdsourcing platform of the same nae, recently announced that it has raised 1.1 billion yen (or about $11 million). In the second part of our interview with the CEO, Koichi Yoshida (the first part is here), he talked about what is needed to really establish crowdsourcing in Japan, as well as the pain that inevitably comes when startups grow rapidly. The Bridge: I’m sure there are lots of obstacles to establishing a C2C or B2C working style in Japan. What will be the key to expand this new kind of work in this country? Yoshida: I think the key lies in whether the individual worker can be independent or not. Crowdsourcing first emerged 10 years ago, a new working style based on the premise that individual workers could be work responsibly for businesses. But companies too need to have somewhat mature mindset. Previously they used to place an order for work without thinking twice. They had little problems with dealing with sales reps to place an order, but that method has become less profitable. Even for a company that has never used crowdsourcing, some are now expressing interest in it….

See the original article in Japanese

Crowdworks, the startup behind crowdsourcing platform of the same nae, recently announced that it has raised 1.1 billion yen (or about $11 million). In the second part of our interview with the CEO, Koichi Yoshida (the first part is here), he talked about what is needed to really establish crowdsourcing in Japan, as well as the pain that inevitably comes when startups grow rapidly.

The Bridge: I’m sure there are lots of obstacles to establishing a C2C or B2C working style in Japan. What will be the key to expand this new kind of work in this country?

Yoshida: I think the key lies in whether the individual worker can be independent or not. Crowdsourcing first emerged 10 years ago, a new working style based on the premise that individual workers could be work responsibly for businesses. But companies too need to have somewhat mature mindset. Previously they used to place an order for work without thinking twice. They had little problems with dealing with sales reps to place an order, but that method has become less profitable. Even for a company that has never used crowdsourcing, some are now expressing interest in it.

The Bridge: You said that companies need to change their mindset. What about the workers? Does one need a specific mindset to do crowdsourced work?

Yoshida: Unlike working for a company, individual workers need to be more responsible for their own work. They need to complete it once they accept it. Some workers start at a rate of 5000 yen (about $50) for writing an article, and later the rate grows to 10,000 yen and then 20,000 yen. Those workers, who successfully build up experience, constantly receive requests for work estimates.

It will take some time until the mindset of individual workers changes dramatically. But the overall cost effectiveness could motivate companies to use crowdsourcing as “the fourth resource”, after hiring permanent workers, temporary workers, and outsourcing.

The Bridge: I think that this new working style won’t become really common unless it is accepted in more wide-ranging areas and across a wider demographic. You previously said you were willing to expand the service to smaller cities by building partnerships with local governments, such as Gifu prefecture and Minami-soma in Fukushima. Can you tell me more about this plan?

Yoshida: We will continue the partnership with local governments, focusing more on local workers. There are many workers bound to a certain region, so to speak. We will consider implementing a kind of safety net, such as offering insurance when workers are unemployed.

The Bridge: This is something we often forget, but there are still many people don’t use the internet, seniors in particular. We’ll need to serve this cluster better in order to establish a culture around crowdsourced work.

Yoshida: This is just a plan, but we are thinking to divide the market according to skills or needs. For example, we have work where a sign manufacturing company requests a worker to take pictures of broken signs. Such a task can be put in a category where no special skill is required.

The Bridge: I see. As long as the worker can use a digital camera, then he or she can do the work.

Yoshida: There are a wide variety of abilities among seniors. Some do just data entry and some design business cards with remarkable skill. If the smartphone becomes truly mainstream, more people will be online and that could spur demand for micro tasks such as data entry.

The Bridge: Still there will be people without an internet connection. Will it be possible that a third party business could use Crowdworks to matching senior workers and jobs?

Yoshida: Some workers actually delegate their work by hiring other workers. The overall concept is based on open source, so various ways to get the work done are possible.

I cannot go into too much detail here, but I talked with Yoshida-san about the difficulties that come with local expansion. I can personally relate to the local culture through my own past work experiences, and I know that it is not always so welcoming of new-comers.

I believe that the key to making crowdsourcing mainstream in Japan lies in utilizing hidden resources like seniors or people in other locales. But in this interview, I had impression that Yoshida thinks promoting companies’ use of the service and fostering an overall understanding of the process is the first thing to do.

Inside a fast-growing startup.

The Bridge: What was the most difficult time during these three year at Crowdworks?

Yoshida: To be honest, now is the most difficulty time. We have carefully built a KPI management tool before we started the service. We were united to achieve our goals. But it is not so difficult to reach your goals when you have only one metric to meet. It gets harder when the number of KPIs increase to two or three. We work under pressure.

There is a sort of difference between the original members on the team and those who joined after a while. I have to decide whether I should narrow this mental gap, or focus on moving forward.

The Bridge: You are expected to be experienced leader for your team. What approach do you take when talking to them?

Yoshida: One thing I tell members is to work for users, as opposed to the stockholders. Based on my past experiences, I believe the company who serves users will win the market eventually.

The Bridge: So the team works for users, and you work for stock holders.

Yoshida: Haha.

The Bridge: Thank you for your time today.

So what do you think about the future of crowdsourcing in Japan? Crowdworks’ success is definitely not the result of a bubble – or at least, I’d like to believe so. The scale of their business is not so large compared with other businesses like game developers. But I got a strong impression that this service is going to take time to expand. Creating a new working style is sort of analogous to establishing a culture where new graduates can consider crowdsourcing as an option for their first job, as an alternative to being employed by a company.

Due to time constraints, we didn’t have a chance to discuss the company’s competitors, like Lancers. I think a united front with competitors is necessary to establish the necessary culture, but Crowdworks needs to win this competition in order to thrive in the industry. We hope to touch on that topic next time.

news

Japan finds a new way to work: In conversation with Crowdworks’ Koichiro Yoshida

crowdworks

Takeshi Hirano 2013.12.09

See the original article in Japanese Tokyo-based Crowdworks, the startup behind the crowdsourcing platform of the same name, announced on December 2nd that it has allocated new shares to a third party, raising 1.1 billion yen in total. The company also announced that it will start a partnership with CyberAgent and Digital Garage. Crowdworks previously allocated shares to third parties in December of 2011 and in October of 2012, raising 300 million yen from Itochu Technology Ventutes, DG Incubation, and Suneight Investment. The startup’s total number of corporate clients reached 18,000 in December of 2013, and the total budget for ordered work on the platform has surpassed 5 billion yen. More than 80,000 users have already registered on the service. In total, the young startup has raised more than 1.4 billion yen within just a year and a half. But will it really change how we do work? Or is this just the result of a bubble? We interviewed Crowdworks’ CEO Koichiro Yoshida, who told more about the potential of the new working style they propose, as well as what’s happening inside the growing startup. In this first part of our interview, he talked discussed fundraising: The Bridge: 1.1 billion…

See the original article in Japanese

Tokyo-based Crowdworks, the startup behind the crowdsourcing platform of the same name, announced on December 2nd that it has allocated new shares to a third party, raising 1.1 billion yen in total. The company also announced that it will start a partnership with CyberAgent and Digital Garage.

Crowdworks previously allocated shares to third parties in December of 2011 and in October of 2012, raising 300 million yen from Itochu Technology Ventutes, DG Incubation, and Suneight Investment. The startup’s total number of corporate clients reached 18,000 in December of 2013, and the total budget for ordered work on the platform has surpassed 5 billion yen. More than 80,000 users have already registered on the service.

In total, the young startup has raised more than 1.4 billion yen within just a year and a half. But will it really change how we do work? Or is this just the result of a bubble? We interviewed Crowdworks’ CEO Koichiro Yoshida, who told more about the potential of the new working style they propose, as well as what’s happening inside the growing startup.

In this first part of our interview, he talked discussed fundraising:

The Bridge: 1.1 billion yen is really a lot of money. But the business model is quite different from a game developer that requires many engineers or a coupon model that requires big marketing resources. To what end did you raise so much money?

Yoshida: First of all, in Japan, crowdsourcing is not really common to order work from individual workers yet. It’s going to take some time. When other competitors try to get into the market, we need to expand our share in this field. We also need to add talent and step up our marketing as well.

The Bridge: I see. Have you set any metrics to measure your success?

Yoshida: At first we were looking at the amount of work ordered. But recently we look more at the matching rate with the goal of increasing user satisfaction. […] Recruit is the biggest human resources company of the 21st century in Japan, and it has access to most Japanese workers’ resumes. We are sort of an online version of Recruit. We’d like to build a database of workers.

The Bridge: What will the future be like if you succeed in building such a database?

Yoshida: We will be able to create a matrix. While a worker gets paid 20,000 yen for some spreadsheet-related work, another worker might get paid 100,000 yen for some spreadsheet work. Then we discover that the difference lies in whether the worker can create a macros or not. With this kind of data, we can come up with a new service offering learning opportunities for workers. We can have an overview of workers’ skills, and that will help companies find the right workers with the required skill set.

Individual human resources will be accumulated on the platform. Each worker’s skillset will be open for viewing, and advanced matching between workers and work will be possible. If there is any specific skills lacking, learning opportunities can pick up the slack. The idea of optimizing human resources through technology is very attractive, but it also requires capital.

The Bridge: I see. With an expanding database of workers and understanding the state of domestic human resources, the company can gain value as a public service. Then crowdsourcing will require systems such as process control for each work order. Will you assign more developer resources to build those systems?

Yoshida: We are planning to develop a process control system. At the same time, we will explore the possibilities of partnering with other developers by making our API open. Our tie-up with KDDI Web Communications that we announced recently is an example of this. From the beginning, we aim to develop our service through a kind of open source model.

The Bridge: How large are you planning to expand the company?

Yoshida: Currently we have 20 to 30 members, and that includes part-time workers. We plan to make it 50. At the same time, we will choose talent carefully. We hire a new member only when all of 4 board members agree. I heard a lot of stories from experienced entrepreneurs who have lowered the standard of hiring when the companies were in the growth stage, and they later had a problem improving the team. So I’m trying to make this decision carefully.

Crowdsourcing is a different animal in Japan than it is in North America where the concept was born. My Canadian coworker sometimes use ODesk, where crowdsourcing seems to function as more pure C2C. Whereas In Japan, you tend to pay the platform instead, which may instill more trust among clients.

Crowdsourcing can a convenient way for companies to contact workers. On the other hand, many people still see crowdsourcing as a platform for side jobs.

In the second part of our interview, Yoshida discusses how they plan to build a culture that can help expand crowdsourcing.

news

Japanese classifieds site Jmty.jp looks for light at the end of the tunnel

Takeshi Hirano 2013.12.06

This is part of our coverage of Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto 2013 See the original story in Japanese. One of the trending sectors on the Japanese internet these days is the C2C (consumer to consumer) market. This includes small-sized e-commerce platforms, flea market apps, and crowdsourcing platforms too. But in Japan, the market is not easy to grow without significant effort. In contrast with the US, many C2C players in Japan may be poorly perceived in the eyes of Japanese users, where consumers are more likely to buy from a publicly recognized company. At the venue of Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Kyoto, we saw many of the key players in the C2C sector. I had a chance to speak with Takahiro Kato, the CEO of Jmty.jp (pronounced as Jimoty). The company provides local classifieds and forums for local communities, including listings for jobs and second-hand items. The company was launched back in 2011 and raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Infinity Venture Partners (IVP), and additional funding of 150 million yen (about $1.5 million) from KDDI, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and IVP back in 2012. It also raised money from Fuji Startup Ventures last August. The story so…

This is part of our coverage of Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto 2013

See the original story in Japanese.

One of the trending sectors on the Japanese internet these days is the C2C (consumer to consumer) market. This includes small-sized e-commerce platforms, flea market apps, and crowdsourcing platforms too. But in Japan, the market is not easy to grow without significant effort. In contrast with the US, many C2C players in Japan may be poorly perceived in the eyes of Japanese users, where consumers are more likely to buy from a publicly recognized company.

At the venue of Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Kyoto, we saw many of the key players in the C2C sector. I had a chance to speak with Takahiro Kato, the CEO of Jmty.jp (pronounced as Jimoty). The company provides local classifieds and forums for local communities, including listings for jobs and second-hand items.

The company was launched back in 2011 and raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Infinity Venture Partners (IVP), and additional funding of 150 million yen (about $1.5 million) from KDDI, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and IVP back in 2012. It also raised money from Fuji Startup Ventures last August.

The story so far

The Bridge: What has happened with Jmty in the last three years?

Kato: We surpassed 1.4 million monthly visitors and 11 million monthly page views back in November. And we surpassed 1 million monthly visitors back in September.

The Bridge: So you mean your users have been rapidly increasing in the last few months?

Kato: Our service was recently featured on Mezamashi TV, a popular morning TV show. I know typically most TV appearances give only a momentary boost but not a sustained increase. However this recent feature brought us many long-standing active users.

The Bridge: Is there any improvement in user activity?

Kato: 20% or 30% of the items presented on our website are unwanted articles that users want to give away for free. When you post a message about this kind of item, you will usually get a comment from other users within 24 hours.

The Bridge: Craigslist is a very similar business to yours. Do you know how large their business is in the US?

Kato: It is said that they still have 60 million monthly visitors with 2 billion monthly page views. That’s really huge.

C2C is different in Japan

A classified platform needs to diversify its business to scale. And I thought acquiring 1.4 monthly visitors in three years was not such a big number. I asked him further about the potential of opportunities in the Japanese C2C market.

The Bridge: Compared to Craigslist, your business is still quite small. Is your growth slower than you expected?

Kato: Craiglist needed five years to surpass 10 million monthly visitors. I know several similar cases in China too. So this speed of growth is within our expectations.

The Bridge: Do you want to see a steeper increase? I think completely open C2C platforms face many obstacles in the Japanese market. For example, many users expect the operators of these platforms to assure the quality of the items they will buy on the platform.

Kato: It’s a fact that we get inquiries from some users asking how we will be responsible for a possible defective purchase. That’s why we added a notice all across our website that we will take no responsibility for any possible defects from trades between users.

The Bridge: So you need to educate users more?

Kato: By adding many notices, it encourages users to police themselves in a way. If you set up a hotline to receiving reports of defective items, many users will kindly tell us who the offending users are.

The platform was launched by Hirofumi Ono, the co-founder partner of Infinity Venture Partners. I asked him where in Jmty’s business he might find some potential to scale up.

The Bridge: When you launched Jmty.jp back in 2011, there was a big rise in classified platforms in mainland China. 58.com (NYSE:WUBA) had recently IPOed. Did these happenings have any impact on your decision to launch?

Ono: When we launched it, we thought it had lots of potential. We saw China’s 58.com and Baixing.com were rapidly growing. We actually asked Baixing.com about the key is to their success.

The Bridge: Did you get some useful advice from them?

Ono: They say it takes a long time to grow. Many C2C services in China have been running since 2005. We were also aware that we divided our topics into too many segments. Jmty.jp has many segments by region as well as by category, and that was intended to result in more accurate message postings.

But a classifieds site has to give users a simple way to interact since all users are not always so savvy. We believe that our service requires simplicity rather than pursuing an experience where topics are focused on special/niche purposes.

The light ahead

There is still a the long way to go in terms of growth for Jmty. And at the end of the interview, I asked Kato how they might emerge from this seemingly endless tunnel.

The Bridge: Will you keep making efforts to increas content topics?

Kato: We will continue to focus on diversifying content that may better suit our users. Regarding posts about jobs or second-hand items, these can be curated a minimal effort.

The Bridge: Can you share any figure on how many trades and transactions you’re facilitating?

Kato: A six-digit number has been already posted, and we’re receiving about 700 new posts every day.

The Bridge: Your service targets average people, so you will need to promote it using mass media, right?

Kato: We received investments from Fuji Startup Ventures, the investment arm of Fuji TV. So we’re planning to do something using television.

The Bridge: I know you will need a long time to achieve your goal, but how do you plan to sustain your business long term? Is there any funding plan?

Kato: We are a six-person team, and currently looking for the next funding opportunity. We hope to get funding from a business entity, rather than a pure investment firm, and partner with them to grow our business together.

The Bridge: Thank you for the time and your great insights!

The key to succeed with a service like this likely depends on how they can increase number the user-generated submissions. We’ll keep our eyes on their progress, so stay with us!

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