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Japan’s ‘little satellite that could,’ 27cm³, launches into space

Rick Martin 2013.11.21

Our readers may remember a feature that we did on Japan’s Weathernews (TSE:4825) back in April. The company has made a major business in the area of weather information, and now has offices in 27 cites across 13 countries. Recently the company has been working to develop a sort of ‘polar routing’ service, to help marine traffic navigate icy Arctic waters. To date, they have relied on data from government satellites, but in order to get their service going they need a dedicated satellite. To that end, Japanese startup Axelspace has been enlisted to help with the project, as a company offering micro-satellites whom Weathernews deemed preferable to outsourcing to the government or a large manufacturer. They’ve produced an ultra-compact satellite that is 27 cubic centimeters, and weighs just 10kg. Dubbed the WNISAT–1, the tiny satellite launched today from Yasny Cosmodrome in Russia, piggybacking on top of a Dnepr–1 rocket [1]. According to the Axelspace blog this evening the launch was successful, and the satellite’s signal was successfully received. It is expected to pass over Japan at 20:40 tonight. The device will make 15 orbits of the earth every day, equipped with optical and infrared cameras, which it will use…

Our readers may remember a feature that we did on Japan’s Weathernews (TSE:4825) back in April. The company has made a major business in the area of weather information, and now has offices in 27 cites across 13 countries.

Recently the company has been working to develop a sort of ‘polar routing’ service, to help marine traffic navigate icy Arctic waters. To date, they have relied on data from government satellites, but in order to get their service going they need a dedicated satellite.

To that end, Japanese startup Axelspace has been enlisted to help with the project, as a company offering micro-satellites whom Weathernews deemed preferable to outsourcing to the government or a large manufacturer. They’ve produced an ultra-compact satellite that is 27 cubic centimeters, and weighs just 10kg. Dubbed the WNISAT–1, the tiny satellite launched today from Yasny Cosmodrome in Russia, piggybacking on top of a Dnepr–1 rocket [1]. According to the Axelspace blog this evening the launch was successful, and the satellite’s signal was successfully received. It is expected to pass over Japan at 20:40 tonight.

The device will make 15 orbits of the earth every day, equipped with optical and infrared cameras, which it will use to take shots covering 500km² of the Arctic Seas ice. These images will be sent back to Weathernews’ own Global Ice Center where they will be analyzed and put to use as part of their polar routing system. It’s expected that the WNISAT–1 will have a lifespan of one to three years.

As a provider of micro-satellites, Axelspace is an interesting company. They’re capable of producing these tiny satellites at a fraction of the cost, also using just a fraction of the development time necessary with conventional satellites. They design their satellites specifically to their customer’s needs as well, which is another competitive advantage.

Amazingly, this is not the only startup to venture into space recently. Back in October we’ve also seen San Francisco-based startup Elysium Space roll out its space burial service here in Japan, following its initial US-launch in August.

[Written with contributions from Tsutoha Izumisawa]

The launch was originally intended to take place back in September, but was postposed until today. ↩

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Japan’s CyberAgent jumps into market for mothers with crowdsourcing site

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.11.20

Back in May, CyberAgent announced the launch of a business that would be specifically for mothers here in Japan. This is a natural and smart step for its Ameba platform, considering that many of its top Ameba bloggers are female celebrities with children. Mothers mean business. For mothers, Ameba chose a crowdsourcing website as its first business, calling it Mama & Crowd. Although crowdsourcing is a busy market with existing players like Crowdworks and Lancers, Mama & Crowd will focus on mothers as its work force, and will provide work that doesn’t require such specialized skills — simple jobs like responding to questionnaires or writing short articles fo the web. Mama & Crowd will officially launch in late December, but it already begun its pre-registration on November 19th. Here in Japan, we are seeing more and more apps and services for the mothers demographic. Prima is another example, a flea market mobile app for mothers. The app can be used to sell and buy used clothes and items for kids under 12. The app recently enabled of payment through national convenient stores. According to a survey conducted by CyberAgent through its own flea market app ‘Maifri’, the numbers indicated that…

Back in May, CyberAgent announced the launch of a business that would be specifically for mothers here in Japan. This is a natural and smart step for its Ameba platform, considering that many of its top Ameba bloggers are female celebrities with children. Mothers mean business.

For mothers, Ameba chose a crowdsourcing website as its first business, calling it Mama & Crowd. Although crowdsourcing is a busy market with existing players like Crowdworks and Lancers, Mama & Crowd will focus on mothers as its work force, and will provide work that doesn’t require such specialized skills — simple jobs like responding to questionnaires or writing short articles fo the web. Mama & Crowd will officially launch in late December, but it already begun its pre-registration on November 19th.

Here in Japan, we are seeing more and more apps and services for the mothers demographic. Prima is another example, a flea market mobile app for mothers. The app can be used to sell and buy used clothes and items for kids under 12. The app recently enabled of payment through national convenient stores.

According to a survey conducted by CyberAgent through its own flea market app ‘Maifri’, the numbers indicated that more businesses should enter this market. Female respondents between the ages of 20 to 30 with children were asked about their mobile phone usage. When asked whether smartphones have changed how they doing housework and raising children, 77% of respondents said that it has. Some examples of how mothers use their phones include searching for food recipes for cooking, and showing videos to kids when they’re crying in public. Almost 90% of mothers answered that the smartphone is a useful tool for them.

With smartphone becoming an essential part of motherhood, we can expect to see more apps targeting this particular segement in the future.

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Singapore’s DropMySite secures partnership with Japanese hosting provider Paperboy & co.

Masaru Ikeda 2013.11.20

See the original story in Japanese. Singapore-based DropMySite, a startup providing cloud-based website and database backup solutions, recently announced that it has partnered with Japanese hosting provider Paperboy&co. as a solution provider. Paperboy is a subsidiary of Japanese internet conglomerate GMO Internet Group. For DropMySite, this partnership in Japan follows a previous partnership with GMO Cloud, another GMO service. We had a chance to speak with DropMySite’s CEO Charif El-Ansari in Tokyo, recently appointed to this position in late October. Before joining the team, he previously worked at Google as the head of its business development team in the South East Asian region. The Bridge: Congratulations on your taking up the new post and for the partnership with Paperboy&co. Why did the company change its CEO? Charif: Our previous CEO John Fearon moved to Gilcrux Holding, which owns multiple companies including DropMySite. He’s good at creating a new business from the scratch and raising money from investors. I was appointed since our business is in the growth phase. But John will be still involved in the business as a strategic consultant. John and I complement each other in terms of our skills. The Bridge:: A large company like GMO Internet…

charif_el-ansari_and_kentaro_sato — From the left: Paperboy&co. CEO Kentaro Sato, DropMySite CEO Charif El-Ansari

See the original story in Japanese.

Singapore-based DropMySite, a startup providing cloud-based website and database backup solutions, recently announced that it has partnered with Japanese hosting provider Paperboy&co. as a solution provider. Paperboy is a subsidiary of Japanese internet conglomerate GMO Internet Group.

For DropMySite, this partnership in Japan follows a previous partnership with GMO Cloud, another GMO service. We had a chance to speak with DropMySite’s CEO Charif El-Ansari in Tokyo, recently appointed to this position in late October. Before joining the team, he previously worked at Google as the head of its business development team in the South East Asian region.

The Bridge: Congratulations on your taking up the new post and for the partnership with Paperboy&co. Why did the company change its CEO?

Charif: Our previous CEO John Fearon moved to Gilcrux Holding, which owns multiple companies including DropMySite. He’s good at creating a new business from the scratch and raising money from investors. I was appointed since our business is in the growth phase. But John will be still involved in the business as a strategic consultant. John and I complement each other in terms of our skills.

The Bridge:: A large company like GMO Internet can develop backup solutions by themselves. Why did they choose yours?

Charif: We have acquired our own knowledge especially in this space. In comparison to development from the scratch, they judged it would be better to take our white-label service.

The Bridge: When I visited DropMySite headquarters in Singapore, John showed me a service called E-mail Insights, which was under development. How is that service coming along?

Charif: Yes, E-mail Insights enhances our e-mail backup features, and helps you easier analyze how your employees are interacting with their colleagues and customers. This is very useful for management especially with the current BYOD trend where employees do work on their own devices. This service can be used as a sort of CRM solutions, where you can easily hand over an interaction with a customer to a sales representative, even if someone quits your team suddenly. Our backup solutions and E-mail Insights will come together to help companies in their business operations.

The Bridge: Are you currently working on anything new?

Charif: We’re currently a new service called DropMyMobile. It’s an Android app that is currently in the alpha stage, and we can introduce it publicly in the middle of December. This app will allow you to backup your history of sent and received calls, contacts, SMS, media, calendar, apps, and app data from your smartphone to our cloud. This will be also convenient when you buy a new handset and need to copy data from your old one. In contrast with DropMyEmail and DropMySite, we may be partnering with mobile carriers to promote DropMyMobile.

The company is developing their systems in Singapore, but has been working closely with engineers from Paperboy&co. in Tokyo and Fukuoka through a number of teleconferences. This kind of partnership with a big hosting provider will help the startup acquire more engineering and operational experiences. It is another good example in terms of a Japanese internet company helping a startup in the South East Asian region boost its business.

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Japan’s AirIntern helps startups improve their branding, hire new staff

AirIntern

Junya Mori 2013.11.19

See the original story in Japanese. Startups are typically shorthanded when it comes to man-power. But if your brand is not very popular yet, and you may have a tough time hiring new talent. Tokyo-based startup Humandyne launched a new service today which might be a good answer for startups struggling with this the issue. The service is called AirIntern, but it’s not actually focused on getting interns. Rather it introduces your company by showcasing company profiles, the working environment, voices from your employees, and job descriptions. In comparison with conventional recruiting sites, AirIntern contains rich content like pictures from offices and video interviews with employees (In this way, it seems more like US-based The Muse). You can see an example below, featuring an interview with Kazuo Ikari, the CEO of Whyteboard, a startup that operates a flea market app Listor. These video clips are created around positive feedback from people like executives, hiring personnel, and public relations staff at a company. The startup plans to stand out from competitors by using rich media content to clearly describe a company’s culture. To make shooting video interviews efficient, the company plans to enlist available cameramen and writers using a cloud-based system….

See the original story in Japanese.

Startups are typically shorthanded when it comes to man-power. But if your brand is not very popular yet, and you may have a tough time hiring new talent. Tokyo-based startup Humandyne launched a new service today which might be a good answer for startups struggling with this the issue.

The service is called AirIntern, but it’s not actually focused on getting interns. Rather it introduces your company by showcasing company profiles, the working environment, voices from your employees, and job descriptions. In comparison with conventional recruiting sites, AirIntern contains rich content like pictures from offices and video interviews with employees (In this way, it seems more like US-based The Muse). You can see an example below, featuring an interview with Kazuo Ikari, the CEO of Whyteboard, a startup that operates a flea market app Listor.

These video clips are created around positive feedback from people like executives, hiring personnel, and public relations staff at a company. The startup plans to stand out from competitors by using rich media content to clearly describe a company’s culture.

To make shooting video interviews efficient, the company plans to enlist available cameramen and writers using a cloud-based system. This is similar to AirBnB which uses available cameramen to shoot accommodation spaces for its website.

Employer Branding

crowdworks — Crowdworks’ hiring page on AirIntern

AirIntern is intended to help companies improve their ’employer branding’ efforts. Employer branding is seen as a key part of a corporate branding, telling potential employers the attractions of your company. Like many established companies, startups can also benefit from such efforts to hire strong talent.

The website focuses on how much user traffic it can drive to your hiring application form. The company will charge you on a monthly basis, for content production and advertising, depending on how many positions you are hiring for. You can add available job descriptions to the website at any time. In many ways, the service is an extension of your hiring page rather than a recruiting site.

The company is also planning to add a user profile feature soon. This will allow users to keep updated on available positions from companies they like. The aim here is to create a pool of job seekers.

Job seekers can stop looking when they are hired, but the website encourages them to keep looking for opportunities even when they are satisfied with their current position. This is sort of similar to LinkedIn.

Humandyne’s CEO Taichi Ebitani says:

We want to give people more employment options. If you are interested in joining emerging businesses or startups, I think you should. By providing more options, we hope that working at startups could be considered mainstream rather than just an escape from working at an established company.

AirIntern aspires to enlist over 100 companies to the platform by next March.

news

As Angry Birds x Puzzle & Dragons collab goes live, will Japan warm to Rovio?

Rick Martin 2013.11.18

We previously told you that Japanese gaming giant GungHo Online Entertainment would be working with Rovio’s iconic Angry Birds on a Puzzle & Dragons collaboration. The results of that collaboration just went live in the P&D app today, as a special in game event showcasing a special ‘Piggy Island’ dungeon. As you can see in our video above, the special level includes most of the same Angry Birds characters that many of us know so well. For me, the most interesting part of how this was presented was that the Angry Birds theme music is featured in the collaboration. It was a pleasant surprise [1]. Of course it’s Rovio’s hope that by featuring their feathered friends inside Japan’s most popular mobile game, that they can get a little more exposure to the lucrative Japanese mobile games market. So far it looks to be working, and as I write this Angry Birds is ranked 69th overall in the Japanese iOS app store. It was ranked 432nd the same time yesterday (see picture below)[2]. Typically these collaborations result in a rather temporary spike in this way. But for Rovio, I expect they’ll be quite happy to find another channel through which to…

We previously told you that Japanese gaming giant GungHo Online Entertainment would be working with Rovio’s iconic Angry Birds on a Puzzle & Dragons collaboration. The results of that collaboration just went live in the P&D app today, as a special in game event showcasing a special ‘Piggy Island’ dungeon.

As you can see in our video above, the special level includes most of the same Angry Birds characters that many of us know so well. For me, the most interesting part of how this was presented was that the Angry Birds theme music is featured in the collaboration. It was a pleasant surprise [1].

Of course it’s Rovio’s hope that by featuring their feathered friends inside Japan’s most popular mobile game, that they can get a little more exposure to the lucrative Japanese mobile games market. So far it looks to be working, and as I write this Angry Birds is ranked 69th overall in the Japanese iOS app store. It was ranked 432nd the same time yesterday (see picture below)[2]. Typically these collaborations result in a rather temporary spike in this way. But for Rovio, I expect they’ll be quite happy to find another channel through which to connect with fans in Japan.

The Finnish company appears to have found Japan relatively difficult to crack in comparison to other markets, with so many other strong character brands to go up against. Although when we spoke with Rovio representatives earlier in the year, they emphasized that they wanted to take things slow. Japan is a hard nut to crack, but this is a good step.

angry-birds-puzzle-dragon-collab — Source: App Annie

As with past P&D collaborations (see Batman: Arkham Origins), Clash of Clans), players can collect special themed monsters to power up and evolve. Some of these special monsters have been less than great in the past, but the Angry Birds characters I’ve collected so far (surprisingly) do not suck. ↩
For 9pm Japan time. ↩

news

New app helps Japanese women looking to get pregnant

SCORE 2,098

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.11.16

In addition to photo sharing and decoration apps, a genre of apps popular among women here in Japan is the utility category. Specifically, many of these are apps that provide a convenient way for women to track their menstrual cycles. Apps like Luna Luna and Lalu are particularly popular with Japanese users. Luna Luna began as a dedicated feature phone service, and it had more than 4.5 million users as of April 2013. Lalu is a product by Ateam, a company located in Nagoya, Aichi prefecture. This app had over one million users as of Feburary of 2013. Ateam recently released a new community app for the same target demographic. It’s called Urara. This particular community is aimed at women who want to get pregnant or those in fertility treatment. The app was born out of a growing need seen among the existing users of Lalu. Although the app’s main users are women, partners or spouses can register to use the app. Users can find answers to their questions thanks to contributions from other community members. This is especially useful since many such users may not feel comfortable discussing this sort of topic openly with friends. Within the app, users…

In addition to photo sharing and decoration apps, a genre of apps popular among women here in Japan is the utility category. Specifically, many of these are apps that provide a convenient way for women to track their menstrual cycles. Apps like Luna Luna and Lalu are particularly popular with Japanese users. Luna Luna began as a dedicated feature phone service, and it had more than 4.5 million users as of April 2013. Lalu is a product by Ateam, a company located in Nagoya, Aichi prefecture. This app had over one million users as of Feburary of 2013.

Ateam recently released a new community app for the same target demographic. It’s called Urara. This particular community is aimed at women who want to get pregnant or those in fertility treatment. The app was born out of a growing need seen among the existing users of Lalu. Although the app’s main users are women, partners or spouses can register to use the app.

Users can find answers to their questions thanks to contributions from other community members. This is especially useful since many such users may not feel comfortable discussing this sort of topic openly with friends. Within the app, users can also turn to professional counselors to receive monthly advice. Other content, such as recipes that may help with fertility, are available in the app.

According to data from the Japanese Ministry of Health, the amount of financial aid provided for fertility treatment has grown by six times when compared to seven years ago. This is, of course, part of the reason behind the country’s aging population, and Urara aspires to provide a solution for this very urgent problem.

Urara is available for download over on Google Play and will cost a monthly fee of 350 yen. (or about $3.50)

news

Japan’s Metaps partners with KakaoTalk, helps Korean developers monetize apps

metaps

Junya Mori 2013.11.15

See the original story in Japanese. Japanese app monetization platform Metaps announced today that it has partnered with Kakao Corporation, the company behind the popular messaging app KakaoTalk, with the intention of intensifying its market expansion in Korea. KakaoTalk initially launched back in 2010, and now provides its messaging platform in 13 languages in 230 countries. It has acquired over 100 million users worldwide so far. With this latest partnership, both companies expect to help third-party developers using the Kakao Game platform to monetize and market their apps. As we recently reported, more and more global developers are getting into the Korean market these days. This trend also includes many Japanese startups as well.

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese app monetization platform Metaps announced today that it has partnered with Kakao Corporation, the company behind the popular messaging app KakaoTalk, with the intention of intensifying its market expansion in Korea.

KakaoTalk initially launched back in 2010, and now provides its messaging platform in 13 languages in 230 countries. It has acquired over 100 million users worldwide so far.

With this latest partnership, both companies expect to help third-party developers using the Kakao Game platform to monetize and market their apps. As we recently reported, more and more global developers are getting into the Korean market these days. This trend also includes many Japanese startups as well.

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Schoo: Japanese e-learning startup strives for excellence in content (Part 2 of 2)

Schoo

Junya Mori 2013.11.15

We recently featured Japanese startup Schoo, and its effort to remake online learning through its web lectures platform. Today we bring you the second part of that discussion, this time with more focus on the efforts of the startup’s editorial team. One of the goals of Japanese startups Schoo is that its users can realize the platforms potential for learning. To that end, the company intends to build interaction between users and lecturers in real-time streaming. Takayuki Nakanishi, the director of the content management department, explained: The abstract of the content is mostly clarified when we set the framework. Then we design with the lecture how to implement interaction with users. Lectures on Schoo are not just one-way talks by lecturers. They implement some interaction, sort of like a quiz. The UI is also designed to enhance interaction and communication among users. They can not only post their comments and questions, but other interaction features such as an “I got it!” button to show that users understand a given point. Nakanishi adds: Without interaction features, users will not come back to the site, and if that happens we cannot accomplish our vision. So we place great importance on user participation….

We recently featured Japanese startup Schoo, and its effort to remake online learning through its web lectures platform. Today we bring you the second part of that discussion, this time with more focus on the efforts of the startup’s editorial team.

One of the goals of Japanese startups Schoo is that its users can realize the platforms potential for learning. To that end, the company intends to build interaction between users and lecturers in real-time streaming. Takayuki Nakanishi, the director of the content management department, explained:

The abstract of the content is mostly clarified when we set the framework. Then we design with the lecture how to implement interaction with users.

Lectures on Schoo are not just one-way talks by lecturers. They implement some interaction, sort of like a quiz.

The UI is also designed to enhance interaction and communication among users. They can not only post their comments and questions, but other interaction features such as an “I got it!” button to show that users understand a given point. Nakanishi adds:

Without interaction features, users will not come back to the site, and if that happens we cannot accomplish our vision. So we place great importance on user participation.

Satoshi Maruyama at Venture United, a previous lecturer on Schoo, describes the learning experience as a sort of ‘matsuri’, or a Japanese festival where participants share the joy of the experience. He also noted that the broadcasting team at Schoo is really pushing for operational excellence. The members I interviewed this time aren’t involved in this process, but the overall satisfaction level among lectures is quite high, they said. Nakanishi adds:

The broadcasting team improves the quality of broadcast by finding problems and making tweaks when needed. Lecturers are very satisfied overall with the quality of the broadcasts. We regard the process as a part of content as well.

Nakanishi and content director Takuya Koroku both have editorial backgrounds. This experience naturally helps them with content creation. But on the other hand, when adding interaction to the courses, other expertise such as web design are advantageous. I asked what kind of skills they are looking for in the prospective members. Koroku explains:

We’d like to build a team with different kinds of knowledge, and then share that knowledge across the team. Someone who has experience making TV programs, social games, or creative ads would be interesting to work with. We’d like to utilize different kinds of skill and make unique content as a result.

Kokuro says he joined Schoo because the whole team, team including designers and engineers, care about content creation.

The company’s representative director, Kenshiro Mori, underscored their vision in closing:

We’d really like to set the standard for online learning by developing interesting content focused around users’ experience.

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Leading Mark raises 50 million yen, launches online platform for recruiting

Masaru Ikeda 2013.11.15

See the original article in Japanese Tokyo-based startup Leading Mark, announced on November 5th that it has launched an alpha version of Recme, an online platform that aims to create a more efficient recruitment process. The company also announced that it has raised 50 million yen from CyberAgent Ventures. Leading Mark is a startup that Yuji Iida founded while he was a student at Tokyo University. The company organizes recruitment fairs, having succeeded in attracting more than 15,000 students from prestigious universities in Japan and China, with about 1000 students for each event. Their clients include major companies, providing them with recruitment consulting services as well. According to a survey, the rate of the university students’ satisfaction with their employer at the time of their job offer is 82.6%. But that drops to 16.6% after start working at the companies [1]. In Japan, the average number of companies that students approach during their job hunt is over 100. That means for recruiters less than 1% of students they meet will actually join the company. Leading Mark aims to reduce this mismatching between recruiters and students by providing a platform for students to showcase their strengths through video. We call this…

See the original article in Japanese

Tokyo-based startup Leading Mark, announced on November 5th that it has launched an alpha version of Recme, an online platform that aims to create a more efficient recruitment process. The company also announced that it has raised 50 million yen from CyberAgent Ventures.

Leading Mark is a startup that Yuji Iida founded while he was a student at Tokyo University. The company organizes recruitment fairs, having succeeded in attracting more than 15,000 students from prestigious universities in Japan and China, with about 1000 students for each event. Their clients include major companies, providing them with recruitment consulting services as well.

According to a survey, the rate of the university students’ satisfaction with their employer at the time of their job offer is 82.6%. But that drops to 16.6% after start working at the companies [1]. In Japan, the average number of companies that students approach during their job hunt is over 100. That means for recruiters less than 1% of students they meet will actually join the company. Leading Mark aims to reduce this mismatching between recruiters and students by providing a platform for students to showcase their strengths through video.

We call this new style of job-hunting with a video ‘Dokatsu’ [2]. We don’t think Dokatsu can replace the entire recruitment processes, because certainly companies need to meet the applicants in person eventually. However, we believe Dokatsu can play a role during the first and second interviews. We think applicants’ videos will help hiring teams find some characteristics that they don’t notice when they screen paper applications. Students can either make videos that feature their strengths and then submit them to companies, or create videos on demand from companies.

The rate for corporate clients for each successfully matched student is 600,000 yen. They also offer clients white-label ASP products at the rate of 30,000 yen. They will start their service on December 1, the usual start date for job-hunting by university students in Japan. They plan get 50 startups and 25 major large companies on Recme.

There are similar businesses outside Japan, such as HireVue (see below), a popular service in the United States. That company raised 53 million dollars from 2009 till 2013. In Japan, so we expect there should be more room for growth as companies increasingly turn to video for recruiting. Rakuten, aiming at expanding in the global market, is one of them.

Leading Mark wants to have 100 corporate clients and 10,000 student users in its first year.

Image from the video for HireVue. — HireVue

The survey was conducted by Mynavi Career Support in 2012. The latter figure is taken from the Annual Health, Labour and Welfare Report 2008 by Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare ↩
“Dokatsu” is a combination of two Japanese words, “doga” which means video and “Shukatsu” which means the Japanese job-hunting system. ↩

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Tokyo Entrepreneurs United: Upcoming event aims to bring them all together

Rick Martin 2013.11.14

We get a chance to attend quite a few technology and startup related events here in Tokyo. This week TechCrunch Tokyo was the big one, and we were pleased to see many of the country’s upcoming startups in attendance. But on the horizon later this month is an evening that aspires to bring together some diverse entrepreneurial initiatives and communities. The folks from Mobile Monday are spearheading what looks to be a fun networking event dubbed Tokyo Startups United, taking place on the night of Wednesday, November 27. It comes on the heels of Startup Weekend and will be ‘the’ after-party following Global Entrepreneurship Week. Judging by the partnering groups, it looks like it’s going to be a diverse crowd, and we’re delighted to be able to come along as a media partner for such a worthwhile event. It’s especially interesting for us because I think some of the challenges facing the Japanese startup community could be remedied by more cultural cross-pollination [1]. For all the details, and advance registration, do check out the DoorKeeper announcement, or jump on over to the Facebook event page. If you have a fun startup that you’d like to tell us about, do get…

We get a chance to attend quite a few technology and startup related events here in Tokyo. This week TechCrunch Tokyo was the big one, and we were pleased to see many of the country’s upcoming startups in attendance. But on the horizon later this month is an evening that aspires to bring together some diverse entrepreneurial initiatives and communities.

The folks from Mobile Monday are spearheading what looks to be a fun networking event dubbed Tokyo Startups United, taking place on the night of Wednesday, November 27. It comes on the heels of Startup Weekend and will be ‘the’ after-party following Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Judging by the partnering groups, it looks like it’s going to be a diverse crowd, and we’re delighted to be able to come along as a media partner for such a worthwhile event. It’s especially interesting for us because I think some of the challenges facing the Japanese startup community could be remedied by more cultural cross-pollination [1].

For all the details, and advance registration, do check out the DoorKeeper announcement, or jump on over to the Facebook event page.

If you have a fun startup that you’d like to tell us about, do get in touch with us as we’d love to see you there.

See our recent piece on unfortunate Japanese startup names, as well as @randomwire’s awesome piece on why Japanese web design is so different, of which we published a Japanese translation today. ↩

News

Japan’s ‘little satellite that could,’ 27cm³, launches into space

Japan’s CyberAgent jumps into market for mothers with crowdsourcing site

Singapore’s DropMySite secures partnership with Japanese hosting provider Paperboy & co.

Japan’s AirIntern helps startups improve their branding, hire new staff

Employer Branding

As Angry Birds x Puzzle & Dragons collab goes live, will Japan warm to Rovio?

New app helps Japanese women looking to get pregnant

Japan’s Metaps partners with KakaoTalk, helps Korean developers monetize apps

Schoo: Japanese e-learning startup strives for excellence in content (Part 2 of 2)

Leading Mark raises 50 million yen, launches online platform for recruiting

Tokyo Entrepreneurs United: Upcoming event aims to bring them all together

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