THE BRIDGE

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

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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…

Noom-Saeju-Jeong

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.

noom

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)

  1. The skillset that meets the job description (engineering, marketing, business… any position) – this is basic.
  2. Communication skills – teamwork cannot be done without communication.
  3. 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.

Noom-team

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.

Handie: An affordable, functional prosthetic hand, made in Japan with 3D printing

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See the original article in Japanese Before we go any further, please check out the movie above. What you’re looking at is one of the many prototype devices developed for the recent Gugen hardware contest held in Tokyo on December 7th. Its developers are a team of three (a software engineer, a mechanical engineer, and a designer) who came together for this contest and developed this device. Users can create a functioning prosthetic arm by connecting the device with a smartphone, sensors, and a 3D printer. Affectionately named ‘Handie’, the prosthetic arm won contest. Gugen is an event focused on identifying business-oriented hardware prototypes, and provides reward to top talent. A member of its executive committee, Yasunori Okajima, says the number of entries reached almost 200 this year. Before participants were mostly those who enjoy creating electronics as a hobby. But this time, however, I see many more participants creating things that are business-oriented. ‘Makers’ is more than just a buzzword Chris Anderson is a genius at creating buzzwords. He finds the structure of latest trends, and expresses that trend with one powerful word to facilitate an entire movement. When he published the books The Long tail and Free, even…

See the original article in Japanese

Before we go any further, please check out the movie above. What you’re looking at is one of the many prototype devices developed for the recent Gugen hardware contest held in Tokyo on December 7th. Its developers are a team of three (a software engineer, a mechanical engineer, and a designer) who came together for this contest and developed this device. Users can create a functioning prosthetic arm by connecting the device with a smartphone, sensors, and a 3D printer. Affectionately named ‘Handie’, the prosthetic arm won contest.

Gugen is an event focused on identifying business-oriented hardware prototypes, and provides reward to top talent. A member of its executive committee, Yasunori Okajima, says the number of entries reached almost 200 this year.

Before participants were mostly those who enjoy creating electronics as a hobby. But this time, however, I see many more participants creating things that are business-oriented.

image_9

‘Makers’ is more than just a buzzword

Chris Anderson is a genius at creating buzzwords. He finds the structure of latest trends, and expresses that trend with one powerful word to facilitate an entire movement. When he published the books The Long tail and Free, even though the concepts were not brand new, many businesses then followed those trends. His most recent work, Makers, is no exception. Here in Tokyo, 3D printers appeared in many places all of a sudden, and media too have begun paying attention to this trend. A Makers boom suddenly started, but it soon cooled off.

What we need is not just a temporary trend or buzzword, but more initiatives like Gugen that try to tap into the inherent potential of the concept.

Three components for hardware creation

There are three components typically associated with developing hardware or electronics:

  • Create molding: exterior design.
  • Create software: the fusion of online and built-in software
  • Create electronics: open-source hardware such as Arduino

image

Because we can easily see and touch exteriors, 3D printers quickly became a sort of symbol for Makers. And this process of creating something from scratch is definitely exciting.

Handie’s exterior can be created at a reasonable price thanks to 3D printers. With data and printers, Handie can be created anywhere. However, there are two other important factors involved in building Handie:

  • All the software is smartphone apps, which cuts down the cost.
  • Motors and sensors are not customized parts. By putting general parts together, the team could create this device much faster.

Of course, Handie is not the kind of device anyone can develop. The most amazing part is its mechanical design. While multiple motors are typically needed to move fingers, the team managed to do it with only one motor.

And while not everyone can develop this level of device, as long as the developer has the core idea and the experience, they can create advanced devices like Handie.

image_1

Potential for business

Why is this new way of creating hardware and electronics getting so much attention right now? One of the reasons is that it represent significant potential for business expansion. When it comes to creating something entirely, the important thing to keep in mind is this notion of expansion.

Handie could never have been built without smartphone software. Yet with only smartphone apps Handie cannot be built. This is what I mean when I talk about expansion. As a result of such ideas, the shift from two dimensions to three dimensions has now accelerated.

For those who are interested in what kind of hardware can be developed by individuals, we’d like to list some of the other entries in the Gugen contest 1.

Squama

Squama is a screen that lets users can control transparency. At the contest, the developer mentioned that the panel can make an office more open while it also protecting privacy. In addition, it has an energy-saving effect in heated rooms.

写真 2013-12-07 17 24 21

Universal Earphones

This earphone automatically recognizes if it was put into your left of right ear, and then proceeds to play the right sounds.

写真 2013-12-07 16 01 04

Handie

As mentioned above, it aims to provide reasonably priced prosthetic arms using just a 3D printer and smartphone apps. It’s only for the people who lost a hand or the finger, it could be used as “a third arm” for everyone in the future.

写真 2013-12-07 16 02 13

Telemba

Telemba is a video-chat Robot created by connecting android devices and other electronic parts with a Roomba (robotic vacuum cleaner). It was quite amazing to watch the team members participated in the awards ceremony through Telemba.

写真 2013-12-07 16 06 35

PocoPoco

PocoPoco is an intuitive and sophisticated music interface. Each part was carefully chosen to realize elegant movement of the interface. PocoPoco played a short performance at the event, drawing a significant the audience.

写真 2013-12-07 17 08 59


  1. You can see the whole list of entries on their website.  ↩

Swingmail: A new app from Japan to better manage email and social messages

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Many business people struggle to find the time to manage their email. And if you have social media accounts, you might have difficulty keeping up with those messages too. Tokyo-based BHI has introduced a new messaging application today that lets you check and respond to e-mails or private messages on social media, all in one app. It’s called Swingmail, and it’s available for free on the App Store. While it doesn’t have any function to create new messages, it prioritizes and sorts received messages based on various metrics, such as how many times you’ve exchanged messages with a sender in a certain period of time, for example. The company expects that you’ll keep using your own preferred e-mail app on desktop or mobile. Marketing director Jun Inoue emphasizes that they don’t intend for Swingmail to replace existing e-mail apps. They are also working on a contact list app as well, giving you a list of contacts in order of priority. The default contact app on your mobile just presents contacts in alphabetical order, but this new app will determine priority based on your current location (i.e. whose office you’re currently close to) and how many times you’ve exchanged messages contacts…

swingmail_featuredimage

Many business people struggle to find the time to manage their email. And if you have social media accounts, you might have difficulty keeping up with those messages too. Tokyo-based BHI has introduced a new messaging application today that lets you check and respond to e-mails or private messages on social media, all in one app. It’s called Swingmail, and it’s available for free on the App Store. While it doesn’t have any function to create new messages, it prioritizes and sorts received messages based on various metrics, such as how many times you’ve exchanged messages with a sender in a certain period of time, for example.

The company expects that you’ll keep using your own preferred e-mail app on desktop or mobile. Marketing director Jun Inoue emphasizes that they don’t intend for Swingmail to replace existing e-mail apps.

They are also working on a contact list app as well, giving you a list of contacts in order of priority. The default contact app on your mobile just presents contacts in alphabetical order, but this new app will determine priority based on your current location (i.e. whose office you’re currently close to) and how many times you’ve exchanged messages contacts through the messaging app. This new contacts app will be launched early next year.

BHI is based out of the Tokyo startup incubation space Samurai Startup Island and recently invited former Google Japan president Koichiro Tsujino to get involved as their advisor.

swingmail_at_booth
The BHI team at ICT Spring Luxembourg, June 2013.

Tokyo Office Tour: Find your dream job with friends on Wantedly

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We recently featured Tokyo-based startup Wantedly as one of the nominees in last week’s CNet Japan Startup Awards. The company has taken an innovative approach to helping people in their job search, providing a platform that leverages your social graph to ensure you find a better fitting job. The ideas is, that by being introduced to jobs by friends and mutual friends, you have a higher chance if finding a job that you’ll love. So far the platform has over 60,000 users and 1800 clients, which is not bad considering that they are just a year and a half old. Their team is growing, and they like to point out that they have brought on new members using the Wantedly platform. In addition to their multi-talented CEO, Akiko Naka, some of folks that I spoke to seem to have ridiculously impressive pedigrees, many coming from places like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, or Goldman Sachs [1]. Wantedly just recently moved into a new office on Meguro, and they were nice enough to allow me to bring my camera by and take some pictures. The office sits just adjacent to a beautiful park, giving the staff a pretty inspiring view, especially at this…

Wantedly CEO Akiko Naka
Wantedly CEO Akiko Naka

We recently featured Tokyo-based startup Wantedly as one of the nominees in last week’s CNet Japan Startup Awards. The company has taken an innovative approach to helping people in their job search, providing a platform that leverages your social graph to ensure you find a better fitting job. The ideas is, that by being introduced to jobs by friends and mutual friends, you have a higher chance if finding a job that you’ll love.

So far the platform has over 60,000 users and 1800 clients, which is not bad considering that they are just a year and a half old. Their team is growing, and they like to point out that they have brought on new members using the Wantedly platform. In addition to their multi-talented CEO, Akiko Naka, some of folks that I spoke to seem to have ridiculously impressive pedigrees, many coming from places like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, or Goldman Sachs [1].

Wantedly just recently moved into a new office on Meguro, and they were nice enough to allow me to bring my camera by and take some pictures. The office sits just adjacent to a beautiful park, giving the staff a pretty inspiring view, especially at this time of year with all the fall foliage still hanging around.

It will be interesting to see what kind of ideas they hatch from this new space. Given that there’s lots of English on their front page right now, I think we can expect Wantedly to make an overseas push in 2014 (or a push to neighboring Asian markets), although for the time being they aren’t saying much on that point. The team has more than a few fluent English speakers, so I think they’ll be far better prepared to go global than most other Japanese startups.

You can check out some of the photos below for a better idea of the layout of their new space, as well as a short video intro from the CEO [2].

wantedly-01
Wantedly office entrance: Ring the bell to say hi
wantedly-03
lounge space
Engineers at work
Engineers at work
wantedly-02
I’ve seen this dog somewhere before…
Engineers at work
More engineers at work
Engineer's super-keyboard of the future
Engineer’s super-keyboard of the future
Busy in the meeting room
Busy in the meeting room

  1. Akiko herself is ex-Facebook. But overall she’s a pretty remarkable talent, who in addition to being a programmer, has also dabbled with making her own manga. As we talked in her office, one of her paintings was propped against the sofa.  ↩

  2. It was really cool of her to give this video a try in English. Not many Japanese startups have dared to do that so far in our series.  ↩

The Global Brain Alliance Forum: Highlights from the pitches and panels in Tokyo

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Tokyo-based investment company Global Brain held its annual startup conference event in Tokyo this past Friday, the Global Brain Alliance Forum, or GBAF for short. Let’s have a quick rundown on the top three winners out of nine nominees at the startup competition session, before looking at the other talks that took place during the event. 1st place: Triibe (Singapore) Triibe is a customer feedback management tool for physical retail stores, developed by Singapore-based startup Ascriber. They have deployed the app at over 300 retail stores and restaurant chains, mainly in Singapore. After visiting a merchant, if you rate them in the app and then share to Facebook, you can receive 10% off when you visit them next time. For retailers, the platform gives you an analytics dashboard page when you can browse metrics from customers about their satisfaction and experience. One of their key features is a realtime alert system. When the platform receives negative feedback from a customer, your store manager can be notified via SMS or e-mail at once, which helps you address the needs of that customer as soon as possible. There are already more than a few competitors in the space, but Triibe is expecting…

Tokyo-based investment company Global Brain held its annual startup conference event in Tokyo this past Friday, the Global Brain Alliance Forum, or GBAF for short. Let’s have a quick rundown on the top three winners out of nine nominees at the startup competition session, before looking at the other talks that took place during the event.

1st place: Triibe (Singapore)

gbaf-triibe-pitch

Triibe is a customer feedback management tool for physical retail stores, developed by Singapore-based startup Ascriber. They have deployed the app at over 300 retail stores and restaurant chains, mainly in Singapore. After visiting a merchant, if you rate them in the app and then share to Facebook, you can receive 10% off when you visit them next time.

For retailers, the platform gives you an analytics dashboard page when you can browse metrics from customers about their satisfaction and experience. One of their key features is a realtime alert system. When the platform receives negative feedback from a customer, your store manager can be notified via SMS or e-mail at once, which helps you address the needs of that customer as soon as possible.

There are already more than a few competitors in the space, but Triibe is expecting to differentiate with several features and expanded operations in Japan and the rest of Asia.

2nd place: Monaca (Japan)

gbaf-monaca-pitch

Monaca is a cross-platform mobile application development platform offered by Japanese company Asial. It helps non-tech-savvy users to develop native apps using web standards like HTML5, JavaScript and CSS.

When I previously met with the company’s CEO Masahiro Tanaka at ICT Spring in Luxembourg, he told me that this scene has been getting popular around the world since it requires no license or installation fee, and it allows computer vocational schools to give their students opportunities to easily develop an app.

3rd place: Whoscall (Taiwan)

gbaf-whoscall-pitch

Whoscall is a spam call-block and caller-detection app for the iOS and Android platforms. They have accumulated over 600 million profiles of telephone numbers and callers in their database, and can show you a caller’s name when you get an incoming call.

Earlier this month, Gogolook, the startup behind the app, reportedly secured an disclosed sum of funding from Korean search engine company Naver. I had a chance to talk with the company’s CEO Jeff Kuo, but he was unwilling to talk much about it. My guess is that he wants to prevent the perception that the investment would narrow their partnership opportunities with other companies, despite the fact that they are opened to partnering with any company, in addition to the Korean search engine.

Prior to these funds, the company raised $500,000 from angel investors, and an undisclosed sum from Trinity Venture Capital. In this space, we have already seen several competitors like Number Guru and TrueCaller.

Panel: Techstars on US trends and Asian opportunities

gbaf-techstars-on-stage
From the left: Techstars president David Brown and managing partner Mark Solon, and Global Brain Katsuyuki Hasegawa (moderator)

In a session introducing trends in recent US incubation, Global Brain’s Katsuyuki Hasegawa moderated a panel with Techstars president David Brown and managing partner Mark Solon.

The incubator launched way back in 2002 in Boulder, Colorado. Mark says their long-term efforts helped the city emerge as the nation’s fourth startup city, following Silicon Valley, New York City, and Boston.

According to Solon, they are partnering with many established companies to provide mentorships for their incubatees, including US-based telco Sprint, UK-based Barclays, and sporting goods company Nike. Many companies like these know they need to encourage more open innovation, and many will no longer depend so much on their internal business and engineering development efforts.

David explained that they want to expand their presence in Asia, but they have still no local accelerator from Japan participating in their global alliance network. So far, it’s only JFDI Asia in Singapore. I asked him if they’re interested in partnering with any Japanese incubator as part of the network. He replied by noting that the network has certain criteria to approve new members. But he says they are pleased to collaboratively work with local accelerators and incubators in Japan and the rest of the world.

What’s new with Global Brain?

gbaf-incj-masujima-on-stage
From the left: Yasuhiko Yurimoto (Global Brain), Shigeyuki Tsuchida (INCJ), and Masakazu Masujima (Mori Hamada & Matsumoto legal office)

In the opening remarks of the event, Global Brain’s founder and CEO Yasuhiko Yurimoto said:

I have big news to share with you today. Our company will be reborn to serve startups and entrepreneurs much better.

The details of that teaser would emerge later as he moderated a panel discussion with Shigeyuki Tsuchida, INCJ’s [1] strategic investment group chief Shigeyuki Tsuchida, and lawyer Masakazu Masujima, announcing that his company would remove a redemption clause in the term sheets of startups in which they invest, strengthening his team so it could finish due diligence in as little as one or two weeks.

If you are an entrepreneur who has experienced the fundraising process, you know how this clause can be a headache to your business. Typical VC firms can take more than a couple of months to determine their valuation of your company. So the roll out will be welcomed by potential investees. He also revealed the company will publicly disclose term sheet templates, and he hopes to encourage other investment firms can eliminate constraints so that entrepreneurs can more easily find fundraising opportunities.

gbaf-winners-on-stage
From the left: Yasuhiko Yurimoto (CEO, Global Brain), Vinnie Lauria (Partner, Golden Gate Ventures), Chester Jungseok Roh (CSO, 5rocks), Mark Hsu (CEO, TMI), Ryoichi Tsukada (Director, Asial), Jeff Kuo (CEO, Gogolook), Clark Chun Kiat Chua (Co-founder, Ascribr)

  1. For those who are not familiar, INCJ is Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, the country’s state-run initiative for investing innovative activities and companies. The governmental company recently announced it has invested 10 billion yen ($97 million) in a startup-focused fund managed by Global Brain.

GungHo’s Dokuro is a mobile hit in Japan and China

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Hitting number one in Japan and China this week was a game called Dokuro, a fun puzzle scroller from mobile game giant GungHo Online Entertainment. Already a popular title on PlayStation Vita, the game just hit the top overall spot on the Android here in Japan after being released last week. On iOS, it was also the country’s top app for a few days this week [1]. Interestingly, it also became China’s iOS top app/game on December 7th, a position it still holds now as I write this. For those not familiar with the title, it stylistically has the same sort of whitewashed macabre cartoon art as The Nightmare before Christmas, with a similar skull-headed hero. The story has our rescuing the princess from the Dark Lord’s castle, after he kidnapped and locked her in a dungeon. This boney, but sympathetic, henchman guard decides to escort the princess through elaborate stages, employing a number of tools and strategies to bring her safely past treacherous obstacles and traps. The princess is far from the model of an independent woman, walking mindlessly forward like a lemming, depending on you to clear the path. The hero can move boxes, pull levers and push…

Hitting number one in Japan and China this week was a game called Dokuro, a fun puzzle scroller from mobile game giant GungHo Online Entertainment. Already a popular title on PlayStation Vita, the game just hit the top overall spot on the Android here in Japan after being released last week. On iOS, it was also the country’s top app for a few days this week [1].

Interestingly, it also became China’s iOS top app/game on December 7th, a position it still holds now as I write this.

For those not familiar with the title, it stylistically has the same sort of whitewashed macabre cartoon art as The Nightmare before Christmas, with a similar skull-headed hero. The story has our rescuing the princess from the Dark Lord’s castle, after he kidnapped and locked her in a dungeon.

dokuro-0

This boney, but sympathetic, henchman guard decides to escort the princess through elaborate stages, employing a number of tools and strategies to bring her safely past treacherous obstacles and traps. The princess is far from the model of an independent woman, walking mindlessly forward like a lemming, depending on you to clear the path. The hero can move boxes, pull levers and push buttons to toggle gates, and even drink a potion to temporarily transform into a swashbuckling prince.

I’ve been playing the game for a few days now, and it seems to stay fresh as you go along with lots of new tactics and tools as the game progresses. The stages are short enough that you can pick up the game and try a new stage at any time during your day, sort of the same kind of mini challenge as Angry Birds in a way. So it will be interesting to see if Japan’s legion of on-train smartphone gamers latch on to this one or not.

Dokuro has some merchandising potential as well, with many of the early reviews here in Japan commenting on how cute the characters are. The game isn’t dependent in language in any way, so it’s a pretty accessible title that anyone can enjoy.

If you’d like to try out Dokuro, you can pick it up for 100 yen over on the App Store or for 105 yen on Google Play.

dokuro-1

dokuro-15


  1. Until at Dragon Quest VIII knocked it out of the top spot today.  ↩

Cooliris courts photo-crazed Japan with new localization

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Occasionally the folks from Palo Alto-based Cooliris swing through Tokyo as part of efforts to promote their photo sharing service in Asia. Our readers may recall that we spoke with them back in March, when they were making good progress in China with an early partnerships with social service Renren. So I was curious to see how Cooliris has progressed since then, both in China and Japan, and in surrounding Asian regions. CEO Soujanya Bhumkar tells me that China has seen particularly solid growth, with a 30% increase in downloads in the last quarter making the Middle Kingdom their number two install base after the US. They’ve made significant localization efforts in China, now with Sina Weibo on board as a connected service. Users can browse Weibo photos using the slick Cooliris interface, diving deep to explore pictures from various users, as well as those from people they follow or are followed by. Tencent Weibo and Baidu Yun are now also supported Cooliris services, having been added over the past year. Interestingly, India has been a new growth market for them thanks to increased smartphone adoption there, now suddenly a top ten country for Cooliris. Japan, which previously was Cooliris’s…

Occasionally the folks from Palo Alto-based Cooliris swing through Tokyo as part of efforts to promote their photo sharing service in Asia. Our readers may recall that we spoke with them back in March, when they were making good progress in China with an early partnerships with social service Renren. So I was curious to see how Cooliris has progressed since then, both in China and Japan, and in surrounding Asian regions.

CEO Soujanya Bhumkar tells me that China has seen particularly solid growth, with a 30% increase in downloads in the last quarter making the Middle Kingdom their number two install base after the US. They’ve made significant localization efforts in China, now with Sina Weibo on board as a connected service. Users can browse Weibo photos using the slick Cooliris interface, diving deep to explore pictures from various users, as well as those from people they follow or are followed by. Tencent Weibo and Baidu Yun are now also supported Cooliris services, having been added over the past year.

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Japanese interface

Interestingly, India has been a new growth market for them thanks to increased smartphone adoption there, now suddenly a top ten country for Cooliris.

Japan, which previously was Cooliris’s second biggest market, still remains one of their top five markets. But with the latest update of the Cooliris iOS app, Japanese localization has been added. I understand that the company isn’t going to be making significant marketing efforts, but the localization at least makes it more accessible here. They’ll continue to try to serve Japanese users in later versions.

Considering that Cooliris now supports integration with so many social services, the missing puzzle piece for the company here in Japan is obviously Line. The team couldn’t tell me too much on this point, but obviously users here would definitely like to see such an integration. So Line users should keep their fingers crossed, and stay tuned [1].

The Cooliris app has a few other significant changes recently, as Soujanya and his VP of business development Sebastian Blum (he’s the guy in the video above) inform me that the app’s group function is now the number one driver of user acquisition and user retention. Groups could be as small as just two people sharing photos privately, or it could be many more. Groups can be based around certain activities like weddings, vacations, with discussion happening on Cooliris even before that event takes place.

As I was speaking with Soujanya, I happened to have Yammer open on my Mac, as that’s one of the collaborative tools that we use here at The Bridge. He pointed out to me that while there are many corporate collaborative tools like this, there are few collaborate options for consumers. People’s photo experience is typically fragmented across multiple service and multiple friends, and Cooliris gives people a chance to bring them together in one place.

In total they have seen over 3 billion photos brought into the Cooliris app, and over 1 billion photo engagements [2]. And for those who share photos in many different online places, it will continue to be a useful service. Whether it can pick up some more steam in photo-crazy Japan remains to be seen, but this new localization is an encouraging first step.

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  1. I confess, I used Cooliris for a while this year, but eventually drifted away from it. My mobile photo use is primarily restricted to Notabli, a family-focused photo app. I use Flickr as storage for pictures taken with my DSLR, but the majority of them are private. But I can see the potential of Cooliris for people more social than myself.  ↩

  2. I understand that an engagement is when you tap on a photo and view it in higher resolution.  ↩

Salaryman turned online star: This Japanese YouTuber has 2.3M subscribers

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Youtube recently unveiled its Youtube Rewind 2013, a look back at some of the most viewed videos and YouTubers on the site. In Japan, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu nabbed a bunch of top spots (first, third and fourth place) among all music videos. Looking at the top ten Youtube channels overall in Japan, we can see huge entertainment entities like the agency Avex and idol supergroup AKB48. But surprisingly the fifth spot is occupied by the only individual performer to make the list, Hikakin TV. He is a 24-year-old human beatbox performer who has been active on YouTube since 2006. His channel now has over 2.3 million subscribers with a whopping 400 million total views. Although he initially began performing just his human beatbox routine and techniques (which you can check out in the video below), Hikakin now broadcasts a variety of short performances on four different channels. One YouTube channel is dedicated a live report of himself playing games called HikakinGames. Considering that the majority of his fans are young digital natives who also play games, this sort of content makes sense. His online popularity eventually led to appearances on TV and other media. His published book, entitled My Job…

HikakinTV
Youtube recently unveiled its Youtube Rewind 2013, a look back at some of the most viewed videos and YouTubers on the site. In Japan, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu nabbed a bunch of top spots (first, third and fourth place) among all music videos.

Looking at the top ten Youtube channels overall in Japan, we can see huge entertainment entities like the agency Avex and idol supergroup AKB48. But surprisingly the fifth spot is occupied by the only individual performer to make the list, Hikakin TV. He is a 24-year-old human beatbox performer who has been active on YouTube since 2006.

His channel now has over 2.3 million subscribers with a whopping 400 million total views. Although he initially began performing just his human beatbox routine and techniques (which you can check out in the video below), Hikakin now broadcasts a variety of short performances on four different channels.

One YouTube channel is dedicated a live report of himself playing games called HikakinGames. Considering that the majority of his fans are young digital natives who also play games, this sort of content makes sense.

His online popularity eventually led to appearances on TV and other media. His published book, entitled My Job is Youtube, came out back in July. Hikakin has also released an Android app,HikakinBeat, which lets anyone become a creative and platful DJ.

His is the story of a salaryman turned into an online star. Hikakin is definitely a digital pioneer, whose online popularity gave him the chance to expand to traditional media.

Here he is making Super Mario beatbox sounds in the video below.

Circuit board design tool ‘Quadcept’ wins Innovation Weekend Grand Finale in Tokyo

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Innovation Weekend is a monthly showcase and meet-up event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator Sunbridge Global Ventures. Every December there is a big one, where the monthly winners from the year compete in a pitch session. This year, Osaka-based startup Quadcept won the finale with its printed circuit board design solutions. Quadcept – Top prize winner Typical factories in the electronics manufacturing industry have to purchase a tool for designing printed circuit boards, usually provided in the form of packaged software, with costs of up to $80,000 for the initial fee and as much as $10,000 for annual fees per user license. But many factories don’t have the budget to distribute that kind of package to all their employees. And collectively, that problem can slow the entire industry. Quadcept looked to the cloud for a solution. Pricing depends on how many licenses you need in your company, with payment possible on a yearly or monthly basis, requiring no initial fee. Quadcept proposes that you only pay for the licenses you need, when you need them, and not waste money on idle seat licenses. The startup wants to be aggressive in helping device makers by sponsoring events like Maker Faire and…

winner-at-innovation-weekend-grand-finale-2013

Innovation Weekend is a monthly showcase and meet-up event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator Sunbridge Global Ventures. Every December there is a big one, where the monthly winners from the year compete in a pitch session. This year, Osaka-based startup Quadcept won the finale with its printed circuit board design solutions.

Quadcept – Top prize winner

Typical factories in the electronics manufacturing industry have to purchase a tool for designing printed circuit boards, usually provided in the form of packaged software, with costs of up to $80,000 for the initial fee and as much as $10,000 for annual fees per user license. But many factories don’t have the budget to distribute that kind of package to all their employees. And collectively, that problem can slow the entire industry.

Quadcept looked to the cloud for a solution. Pricing depends on how many licenses you need in your company, with payment possible on a yearly or monthly basis, requiring no initial fee. Quadcept proposes that you only pay for the licenses you need, when you need them, and not waste money on idle seat licenses. The startup wants to be aggressive in helping device makers by sponsoring events like Maker Faire and Gugen. They expects to start global business expansion next year.

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Quadcept

More than a dozen startups from Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand pitched their apps and services to a crowd from in Tokyo. Here is a quick rundown on some of the new faces.

VisasQ

VisasQ is a platform for consulting that takes advantage of relationships in your social graph, letting users get advice from experts. The company’s founder, Eiko Hashiba, is very experienced, including time working as an investment banker. The concept is inspired by Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG for short), a company providing consultation and advice from over 250,000 subject matter experts worldwide. Hashiba aims to provide such ‘spot consulting’ services for as little as 1% of the price of conventional services. Their team includes engineers from notable Japanese groupware solution Rakumo.

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VisasQ

Pathee

When you want to hang out at a karaoke bar in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, you might first turn to Google Search or Google Maps, inputting keywords like ‘karaoke’ and ‘Shibuya’. But that typically yields irrelevant information like a list of shops you don’t really care about.

But Tokyo-based startup Tritrue has developed a ‘spatial search engine’ called Pathee, which provides more relevant information by narrowing results to buildings within a five-minute walk from where you are, and to certain trending topics as well. So for example, when you arrive at a train/subway station near an event venue, you check how to get there by just entering the name of the event, with no need for the address. The startup is based at Samurai Incubate’s startup space, Startup Island.

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Pathee

ClickonCake

ClickonCake delivers birthday cakes to any part of Japan, based on orders collected from their website. The company’s founder is Shintaro Naganuma, whose family business is a confectionery based in northern Japan. To make the business more profitable, he rolled out a delivery service specializing in birthday cakes. It currently earns 8 million yen ($80,000) in revenue every month.

Typical cake buyers will purchase a cake for someone on or near their birthday. And with this in mind, Naganuma’s team is planning to establish distribution centers all across the Tokyo metropolitan area. He has also invented a frozen type of cake that can be preserved at these centers. In this way, they can give users the option of same-day delivery cakes with unique designs. That would certainly pose stiff competition to conventional cake shops around town.

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ClickonCake

Waygoapp

Waygooapp is a mobile translation application that uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology. For western visitors who come to Asia, one of biggest obstacles is typically reading Chinese characters, since signs and menus usually aren’t in English. And checking them on mobile is hard too, if you haven’t mastered the input method.

But with this app, all you need is to place your phone’s camera over it and let the app figure it out. You will see then English subtitles overlaid on the image. The app is currently available only for Chinese-to-English translation on iOS, but an Android version and Japanese-to-English version will follow soon.

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Waygoapp

Other guests from the overseas

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At a panel on Singapore’s startup ecosystem. From the left: Yuji Horiguchi (IMJ Fenox), Kenny Lew (Entreport Asia), Vinnie Lauria (Golden Gate Ventures), and Ikuo Hiraishi (Sunbridge Global Ventures)
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At a panel on how to launch a global startup. From the left: Yusuke Takahashi (AppSocially) and Tak Harada (Peatix)

From tech startup to media company: Videogram evolves, with smart TV on the horizon

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We’ve written about Cinemacraft’s Videogram solution a few times before here on The Bridge. It is a player that lies of top of existing web video, giving a visual paneled preview of different portions of that video. The startup received investment from 500 Startups, and this year began working with Turner Broadcasting by way of its 12-week Media Camp, and subsequently when it became an investor as well. Founder Sandeep Casi explained to me that although they started out strictly as a technology company, they have now grown to become more of a media company. And not just any media company either. Recently they were one of five TVOT nominees for the best TV and video user interface / user experience, right alongside the likes of Netflix, Dish Network, and Showtime Network. They’re building for the future too, announcing Leap Motion integration today. Much of their recent progress, says Sandeep, has come about thanks to the alliance with Turner. “Turner has been fantastic,” he explains. He says that the connection with Turner really helped them get official embed status for Twitter, their player now white-listed for viewing. What that means is that now Videogram clips can be shared in the…

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Videogram is now Leap Motion enabled

We’ve written about Cinemacraft’s Videogram solution a few times before here on The Bridge. It is a player that lies of top of existing web video, giving a visual paneled preview of different portions of that video. The startup received investment from 500 Startups, and this year began working with Turner Broadcasting by way of its 12-week Media Camp, and subsequently when it became an investor as well. Founder Sandeep Casi explained to me that although they started out strictly as a technology company, they have now grown to become more of a media company.

And not just any media company either. Recently they were one of five TVOT nominees for the best TV and video user interface / user experience, right alongside the likes of Netflix, Dish Network, and Showtime Network. They’re building for the future too, announcing Leap Motion integration today. Much of their recent progress, says Sandeep, has come about thanks to the alliance with Turner.

“Turner has been fantastic,” he explains. He says that the connection with Turner really helped them get official embed status for Twitter, their player now white-listed for viewing. What that means is that now Videogram clips can be shared in the Twitterstream, and function as they normally would.

Having made solid progress with presentation of video on the web, Sandeep is looking ahead to what he says was his vision all along: Television. He’d like to make electronic program guides more interactive, and Videogram can be a pathway to doing that. By integrating their service into smart TVs, not only do you bring the paneled functionality of Videogram, but you also bring the capability to socially share portions of television shows in a more granular manner via the sharing function on those panels. You can check out some Videogram Smart TV interfaces here if you’d like to learn more.

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As for the business side of things, Videogram panels also enable banner ad placement within videos for advertisers. Sandeep showed me an example using an NBA clip (see below), where panels visually previewed highlights of a Knicks game, with one panel showing a banner ad for a basketball shoe. That banner, when clicked, gave an option to buy via the Nike website [1]. Obviously this sort of hyper-relevant product placement holds a lot of potential in the video advertising space, especially for TV. Sandeep explains:

We’re trying to make the industry think about engagement, not views. For advertisers this is important, because they now know their video is being eyeballed.

When I talked with Sandeep, he showed me a number of Videogram mockups and samples for a wide range of notable entertainment properties. To be honest, it was hard to keep up with which companies were already clients, and which ones were just mockups. But it’s hard not to admire Videogram having the confidence to overhaul a given company’s online video presence on spec, and take it to their offices to sell them on its potential. Sandeep adds:

This is our business development scheme. This is what we do. And I really can’t believe that more startups don’t do it. Clients get it immediately. We give them a link, and they can convince internally with that link.

Videogram’s iOS app has come a long was as well, recently getting an upgrade that lets users capture multiple clips, combining them as a composite video. This is a function we see in many video apps these days, but the technique lends itself especially well to Videogram since different clips could be represented by different panel previews.

Cinemacraft has already deployed Videogram across a number of properties, including CBS, ABC, FOX , Sony, and even in India’s Bollywood. I expect NTT group will also be assisting the company to reel in some big fish here in Japan as well. I’m told that their service has grown in popularity in Korea as well, so I look forward to hearing news from that front too.


  1. There’s also a play button, so buy link appears to be not too intrusive.  ↩