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Cooori: A web-based spaced repetition system for learning Japanese

Rick Martin 2013.10.16

There have been many Japanese language learning software systems that have emerged over the years, but I think the most effective ones are the ones that take the SRS (spaced repetition system) approach. Systems like iKnow [1], and the iOS software Anki – these systems team to take the planning out of your study, and let you focus on learning the language. One of the more interesting of these is Cooori, which we saw takes third place in the recent SF Japan night startup competition here in Tokyo. Cooori is a web-based flash card system that caters to all levels of Japanese study, finding material that corresponds to JLPT testing, as well as popular curriculum like Minna no Nihongo. It also gives you the ability to create your own word lists if you choose. I gave Cooori a quick test using his trial, which is restricted to 25 words only, and I was encouraged to see that the system works well across all platforms including mobile. If you want to use Cooori, it doesn’t come super cheap at $17 per month, although if you are a student there is a discounted $11 per month rate [2]. Of course figuring out…

There have been many Japanese language learning software systems that have emerged over the years, but I think the most effective ones are the ones that take the SRS (spaced repetition system) approach. Systems like iKnow [1], and the iOS software Anki – these systems team to take the planning out of your study, and let you focus on learning the language. One of the more interesting of these is Cooori, which we saw takes third place in the recent SF Japan night startup competition here in Tokyo.

Cooori is a web-based flash card system that caters to all levels of Japanese study, finding material that corresponds to JLPT testing, as well as popular curriculum like Minna no Nihongo. It also gives you the ability to create your own word lists if you choose. I gave Cooori a quick test using his trial, which is restricted to 25 words only, and I was encouraged to see that the system works well across all platforms including mobile.

Cooori, pitched at SF Japan Night this month

If you want to use Cooori, it doesn’t come super cheap at $17 per month, although if you are a student there is a discounted $11 per month rate [2]. Of course figuring out an effective way to study language is quite difficult, so I think this will be money well spent for anyone looking to study Japanese seriously.

The flash card system looks very good, with audio available to listen to if you want to check to see how words and sentences are pronounced. One clever feature is the daily reminders function, which is something that I know I would really use, because it’s important to keep study consistent, rather than just checking in whenever you have time. (I always struggle with that!)

None of what Cooori does is completely new, I think. But as far as I can see so far, it’s appears to have nailed all the important things that an SRS should do [3]

If you’d like to give Cooori a try, you can test it out for free over on their website, Cooori.com. The company also has a handy Japanese-English dictionary for iOS and Android that you can download for free. Overall I think the service looks very promising, and I’m looking forward to spending more time with it.

I used to be a huge fan of iKnow, but their transition from a free service to a paid one was – shall we say – less than graceful, and not entirely respectful of their users’ past contributions. I won’t be going back. ↩
You’ll need to send in a picture of your student card to prove that you really are a student. There were also referral discounts, so that if you get your friends to sign up you get a cheaper rate (I’m shamelessly going to put my referral link here, although I haven’t quite decided if I’m going to subscribe yet). ↩
Although I’m still waiting on an SRS that lets me do word/sentence mining with a javascript bookmarklet or browser extension as I find new phrases on the web. It would be nice to be able to quickly add those to own my study list. ↩

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Ietty fundraises $500,000, aiming to disrupt Japanese home rental industry

Junya Mori 2013.10.16

Based on our original story in Japanese. Ietty is a Japanese startup that provides an alternative to conventional househunting. The startup announced yesterday it has raised 50 million yen (approximately $500,000) from I Mercury Capital, the investment arm of Japanese social network Mixi [1]. Since its launch back in February of 2012, the company has been developing its service in stealth mode. But it seems that, coinciding with these new funds raised, they are turning up at many showcasing opportunities like Graph Hack Award 2013. Ietty, the platform that the startup provides under its company name, aims to solve problems for both homeseekers and property agents. When you use conventional home finder sites, you need to enter lots of criteria to find something to fit your preference. But Ietty uses your Facebook user profile, and agents propose some available options via the platform based on criteria you have entered in advance. Property agents will pay a commission to the platform on a performance basis, so they have no risk in signing up. The platform was launched back in June in beta, and has partnered with eight different agents to date. The startup’s CEO Taihei Ogawa explained what makes the platform…

Based on our original story in Japanese.

Ietty is a Japanese startup that provides an alternative to conventional househunting. The startup announced yesterday it has raised 50 million yen (approximately $500,000) from I Mercury Capital, the investment arm of Japanese social network Mixi ^[1]. Since its launch back in February of 2012, the company has been developing its service in stealth mode. But it seems that, coinciding with these new funds raised, they are turning up at many showcasing opportunities like Graph Hack Award 2013.

Ietty, the platform that the startup provides under its company name, aims to solve problems for both homeseekers and property agents. When you use conventional home finder sites, you need to enter lots of criteria to find something to fit your preference. But Ietty uses your Facebook user profile, and agents propose some available options via the platform based on criteria you have entered in advance.

Property agents will pay a commission to the platform on a performance basis, so they have no risk in signing up. The platform was launched back in June in beta, and has partnered with eight different agents to date. The startup’s CEO Taihei Ogawa explained what makes the platform different from conventional services.

The property agent business connects homeseekers and landlords through a property. For users, even if you can find no property that fits your preference, we can help you connect to appropriate agents likely to introduce a good one for your search.

From an agent’s perspective, the more users the platform has, the more likely an agent is to close deals. For the users who receive no manual contact from agents, the platform has a recommendation engine that automatically proposes a set of available apartments based on your preference.

ietty-ogawa — Ietty founder/CEO Taihei Ogawa

Prior to launching the platform, the startup’s CEO Ogawa previously worked at Sumitomo Realty & Development, a well-established Japanese property agents. When he determined to launch a startup, he started studying about business models in the IT industry and participated in Incubate Camp, the program run by Japanese startup incubator Incubate Fund. Ogawa explains:

I’ve never seen any other industry where customer satisfaction so extremely low. That’s why this market is worth disrupting. … By boosting our business, I believe the market can become more competitive and more transparent in how it presents information to consumers.

It will be interesting to see how this startup will might evolve such an old-fashioned industry, where consumers have been paying high incidental expenses for house relocation.

The company’s name comes from the Japanese word for home ‘ie’, which they are apparenty turning into an adjective somehow.↩

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Japanese personal finance app Moneytree raises $1.5 million

Junya Mori 2013.10.16

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Moneytree, a startup that provides a personal finance app, announced yesterday it that has raised 150 million yen ($1.5 million) from DG Incubation and other investors [1]. Users can register back accounts and credit accounts, and the app lets you aggregate up-to-date balances and expenses, browsing them in a single view. The app was launched back in April and quickly reached 130,000 downloads by August. Coinciding with the funding, the company also announced that it has surpassed 200,000 downloads. Looking at similar apps such as ReceReco and Zaim which both recently passes 1 million downloads, the Moneytree app still has much room to grow. With the funds raised this time around, the company is planning to integrate with more banks or financial institutions so that their users will be also able to use the app to check their balances. Upcoming plans also include adding new features, introducing a desktop and iPad version, and developing a new platform. We will follow up with an interview to hear more about what they have planned, so stay tuned. DG Incubation is the incubation arm of Japanese web conglomerate Digital Garage.↩

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Moneytree, a startup that provides a personal finance app, announced yesterday it that has raised 150 million yen ($1.5 million) from DG Incubation and other investors ^[1].

Users can register back accounts and credit accounts, and the app lets you aggregate up-to-date balances and expenses, browsing them in a single view. The app was launched back in April and quickly reached 130,000 downloads by August. Coinciding with the funding, the company also announced that it has surpassed 200,000 downloads. Looking at similar apps such as ReceReco and Zaim which both recently passes 1 million downloads, the Moneytree app still has much room to grow.

With the funds raised this time around, the company is planning to integrate with more banks or financial institutions so that their users will be also able to use the app to check their balances. Upcoming plans also include adding new features, introducing a desktop and iPad version, and developing a new platform.

We will follow up with an interview to hear more about what they have planned, so stay tuned.

moneytree-spending-group-1

DG Incubation is the incubation arm of Japanese web conglomerate Digital Garage.↩

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Shopping points service Smapo joins forces with Rakuten

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.10.15

Back in Feburary, we wrote about Smapo, the Japanese equivalent of Shopkick. Today, the company announced that it has joined Rakuten group, giving it access to Rakuten’s 80 million+ members. Smapo was initially launched back in September of 2011. By checking into physical stores, users receive points (one point is worth one yen), which can be exchanged to rewards such as gift certificates and dinner tickets. Smapo can be used at over 700 participating stores and over 90 brands. Stores are required to pay comission on a pay-per-performance basis. Joining the Rakuten family will empower Smapo to expand its partnerships with stores. As we wrote in a previous article, what differentiates Smapo from its US counterpart is that it uses a sort of inaudible audio signal to detect users walking in, via the required in-store hardware which is about the size of a matchbox. There are many tech companies trying to tackle the same O2O market, such as Showcase Gig. But the type of technology leveraged by Smapo is a notable advantage. Yo Shibata, the CEO of Spotlight (the company behind Smapo), elaborates on the new partnership with Rakuten: Smapo began under the mission of bringing surprises and discoveries to…

Back in Feburary, we wrote about Smapo, the Japanese equivalent of Shopkick. Today, the company announced that it has joined Rakuten group, giving it access to Rakuten’s 80 million+ members.

Smapo was initially launched back in September of 2011. By checking into physical stores, users receive points (one point is worth one yen), which can be exchanged to rewards such as gift certificates and dinner tickets. Smapo can be used at over 700 participating stores and over 90 brands. Stores are required to pay comission on a pay-per-performance basis.

Joining the Rakuten family will empower Smapo to expand its partnerships with stores.

As we wrote in a previous article, what differentiates Smapo from its US counterpart is that it uses a sort of inaudible audio signal to detect users walking in, via the required in-store hardware which is about the size of a matchbox. There are many tech companies trying to tackle the same O2O market, such as Showcase Gig. But the type of technology leveraged by Smapo is a notable advantage.

Yo Shibata, the CEO of Spotlight (the company behind Smapo), elaborates on the new partnership with Rakuten:

Smapo began under the mission of bringing surprises and discoveries to people’s everyday shopping experience. As the very first smarphone-based points service, we have accomplished to tremendous growth in the past two years. The spread of smartphones is truly changing the way we shop. By becoming a part of the Rakuten group, Spotlight, will continue to innovate on people’s shopping experiences.

Smapo is available for download on both iOS and Android.

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Japanese ecommerce service boasts 70% returning users

factelier

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.10.15

Japanese fashion e-commerce website Factelier just celebrated its one year anniversary. As we have mentioned in a previous post, Factelier creates made-in-Japan quality apparel products by partnering directly with well-established Japanese factories. By skipping middlemen such as distributors and retailors, these high quality products are made available to consumers at affordable price. To mark its one year anniversary, Factelier shared an impressive statistic: 70% of people using its service are returning users. That’s an amazing number for any type of e-commerce. The company has formed partnerships with five different factories in Japan to date. On the website, there are special contents dedicated to its one year annivesary, where it features the voices of participating factories. Factelier has built its name by collaborating with companies old and new. Back in December of 2012, the startup joined forces with a Japanese factory Kuska, a location three hours away from Kyoto. The beauty of Kusaka’s products is that they are completely hand-made. This time-consuming process only allows a few pattern variations to be produced. However, the resulting high-quality silk ties are one of a kind. Factelier has also made original products in collaboration with Zozotown, and it has opened its first show-room to showcase…

Japanese fashion e-commerce website Factelier just celebrated its one year anniversary. As we have mentioned in a previous post, Factelier creates made-in-Japan quality apparel products by partnering directly with well-established Japanese factories. By skipping middlemen such as distributors and retailors, these high quality products are made available to consumers at affordable price.

To mark its one year anniversary, Factelier shared an impressive statistic: 70% of people using its service are returning users. That’s an amazing number for any type of e-commerce.

The company has formed partnerships with five different factories in Japan to date. On the website, there are special contents dedicated to its one year annivesary, where it features the voices of participating factories.

Factelier has built its name by collaborating with companies old and new. Back in December of 2012, the startup joined forces with a Japanese factory Kuska, a location three hours away from Kyoto. The beauty of Kusaka’s products is that they are completely hand-made. This time-consuming process only allows a few pattern variations to be produced. However, the resulting high-quality silk ties are one of a kind. Factelier has also made original products in collaboration with Zozotown, and it has opened its first show-room to showcase quality apparel products to potential customers.

It will be interesting to see how the company progresses from here, as it continues to connect factories and consumers.

rising-expo-factelier_2 — Factelier founder Toshio Yamada

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With 1M people using her Zaim finance app, founder Takako Kansai has more plans ahead

Rick Martin 2013.10.15

It has been a while since we checked in on Japanese personal finance app Zaim. So I was surprised and delighted to bump into the service’s creator Takako Kansai at an event in Osaka last week. In addition to being a mainstay app on my mobile, letting me scan my receipts and track my spending, Zaim also has one of the best founder stories ever, as Takako developed her app during her subway commute to and from work. She informed me that Zaim has recently surpassed one million downloads, and is expected to reach two million sometime next year. Takako says that their relationship with Cookpad, after raising 42 million yen from the company, is “very good”. She adds that when you use Zaim to scan a receipt with your mobile, the supermarket information is saved to their database. But they can also connect to the Cookpad database, and get more information from there to serve their users as well. In this way, users are provided special bargains or promotions about local supermarkets via Cookpad’s bargain search service. When I asked what the next step is for Zaim, Takako could only say that it was a secret. So we know…

It has been a while since we checked in on Japanese personal finance app Zaim. So I was surprised and delighted to bump into the service’s creator Takako Kansai at an event in Osaka last week. In addition to being a mainstay app on my mobile, letting me scan my receipts and track my spending, Zaim also has one of the best founder stories ever, as Takako developed her app during her subway commute to and from work.

She informed me that Zaim has recently surpassed one million downloads, and is expected to reach two million sometime next year. Takako says that their relationship with Cookpad, after raising 42 million yen from the company, is “very good”. She adds that when you use Zaim to scan a receipt with your mobile, the supermarket information is saved to their database. But they can also connect to the Cookpad database, and get more information from there to serve their users as well. In this way, users are provided special bargains or promotions about local supermarkets via Cookpad’s bargain search service.

When I asked what the next step is for Zaim, Takako could only say that it was a secret. So we know there’s something, although it’s hard to guess what that might be. So far the app has been focused on slow incremental improvements, but thankfully it has managed to retain the simplicity and ease-of-use that made it strong to start with. Given Zaim’s continued focus on the user, I expect that any upcoming new features will make it easier to use, and help solidify it’s foothold as one of Japan’s dominant finance apps.

You can check out our short interview with Takako in the video above. And if you have yet to check out Zaim, you can get it for iOS, Android, and on the web.

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Two young Japanese entrepreneurs discuss their recent buyouts

Takeshi Hirano 2013.10.15

See the original story in Japanese. This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013. Two Japanese startups that have experienced an strong growth in the last several months are Coach United, the startup behind private lesson portal Cyta.jp, and Bracket, which operates instant e-commerce platform STORES.jp. On day two of B Dash Camp Osaka last week, we had a chance to hear from Coach United CEO Nobuhiro Ariyasu and Bracket CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto. Also on the panel were Rakuten executive officer Takeshi Homma, and KDDI general manager Shigeki Matsuno. This year Ariyasu sold his startup to Japanese recipe site Cookpad, and Mitsumoto sold his startup to leading Japanese fashion commerce company Start Today. Moderator Hiroyuki Watanabe started the sessions with asking about their recent exits. When did you start preparing for buyouts? Ariyasu explained: When we launched our company back in 2007, I had no idea about funding or M&As. We couldn’t help but enjoy developing our product at that time. Two or three years later, we finally could make our business profitable, and had a chance to receive offers from some people [1]. The company kept using bank loans but were exploring funding opportunities…

bracket-fril — Bracket CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto and Coach United CEO Nobuhiro Ariyasu

See the original story in Japanese.

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013.

Two Japanese startups that have experienced an strong growth in the last several months are Coach United, the startup behind private lesson portal Cyta.jp, and Bracket, which operates instant e-commerce platform STORES.jp. On day two of B Dash Camp Osaka last week, we had a chance to hear from Coach United CEO Nobuhiro Ariyasu and Bracket CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto. Also on the panel were Rakuten executive officer Takeshi Homma, and KDDI general manager Shigeki Matsuno.

This year Ariyasu sold his startup to Japanese recipe site Cookpad, and Mitsumoto sold his startup to leading Japanese fashion commerce company Start Today. Moderator Hiroyuki Watanabe started the sessions with asking about their recent exits.

When did you start preparing for buyouts?

Ariyasu explained:

When we launched our company back in 2007, I had no idea about funding or M&As. We couldn’t help but enjoy developing our product at that time. Two or three years later, we finally could make our business profitable, and had a chance to receive offers from some people ^[1].

The company kept using bank loans but were exploring funding opportunities for the next stretch.

Bracket is not an old company but has been running a number of businesses for about five years. In contrast to his past businesses, Mitsumoto was aggressively exploring funding opportunities to boost their e-commerce platform. He attributes this to the many competitors in that space ^[2].

What’s the most impressed in the entire session was the following interaction between the pair.

Ariyasu asked Mitsumoto,

If Base (Bracket’s main competitor) wasn’t around, would you still sell your startup to Startup Today?

Mitsumoto answered, saying:

Without them, we probably might have not achieved the revenue we have.

Why not aim for an IPO?

Since these two startups were rapidly growing but self-funded, their founders could probably consider IPOs as possible options. But they emphasized a good match with the companies that acquired them.

Ariyasu explains:

I’m not really a person who drives after an IPO. It’s all up to you to determine whether an IPO and an M&A is a better choice for you. … I actually got an offer from Murakami (Livesense CEO) but I think it was not so aggressive. I’m close with him, and we have been fishing together. The reason why we partnered with Cookpad was I thought the both companies have something common in their corporate culture.

In a explanation about how Bracket’s Mitsumoto decided to sell his startup, he unveiled it was finally decided over the phone with Start Today’s CEO Yusaku Maezawa, which surprised the audience.

bdash-camp-buyout-mitsumoto — Bracket CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto

The decision was surprisingly smooth. I’ve been in touch with Maezawa for almost three years since he sent us an inquiry via our website. … I’ve handled four different businesses in the past, and I finally managed to find success in my fifth. The recent announcement that Yahoo Japan made of making its e-commerce platform free this year will be a big turning point in the Japanese e-commerce industry, where more players will make more bold decisions to defeat competitors.

Buyer’s perspective, seller’s perspective

KDDI’s Matsuno was involved in Mediba’s ^[3] acquisitions of startups such as Nobot and Scaleout. In a response to moderator Watanabe’s question about criteria around M&As, he says:

You probably need the perspectives of both a buyer and a seller. When your company is acquired by 100%, you will totally lose your ownership. In an extreme case, you might lose your position as the CEO. When you think of a company that you could sell your business to, you will need to build a good relationship of mutual trust (not to be asked to step down).

Rakuten’s Homma concluded the session with saying that:

Both for a seller and a buyer, the more experience you have, the better you can understand how you should proceed.

We previously featured Ariyasu and Cyta in this article.↩
Our readers may recall that we visited the Bracket office just last month, and had a chance to speak more with Mitsumoto about Stores.jp.)↩
Mediba is a mobile advertising-focused subsidiary of KDDI.↩

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Japanese music composer community Creofuga launches crowdsourcing platform

Masaru Ikeda 2013.10.14

Creofuga is a startup from Japan’s western city of Okayama which has been providing an online community platform for amateur or semi-professional music composers. The company recently announced that it will launch a crowdsourcing and licensing platform for soundtracks, sound effects, and other audio. It’s called AudioStock and it is expected to launch later this month, serving social game developers. Notable clients will include SummerTime Studio, Nagisa, Tokyo Tower, and Fuji TV. Since the company started back in 2007, it has enlisted over 10,000 amateur music composers, and has partnered with Bandai Namco Games and a Japanese record company to help them promote a game title and music artist. For game developers who intend to use soundtracks or effects composed by the third parties in your apps, it may be a challenge obtain rights from license holders. But with this platform, you can buy exclusive rights for the reproduction of a music piece for 2,000 yen ($20) each or nonexclusive rights for 500 yen ($5) each. At the time of the launch, there will be 10,000 pieces of music available, varying from soundtracks to narrated samples. In addition to these, you can have your narration or music tasks crowdsourced among…

Creofuga is a startup from Japan’s western city of Okayama which has been providing an online community platform for amateur or semi-professional music composers.

The company recently announced that it will launch a crowdsourcing and licensing platform for soundtracks, sound effects, and other audio. It’s called AudioStock and it is expected to launch later this month, serving social game developers. Notable clients will include SummerTime Studio, Nagisa, Tokyo Tower, and Fuji TV.

Since the company started back in 2007, it has enlisted over 10,000 amateur music composers, and has partnered with Bandai Namco Games and a Japanese record company to help them promote a game title and music artist.

For game developers who intend to use soundtracks or effects composed by the third parties in your apps, it may be a challenge obtain rights from license holders. But with this platform, you can buy exclusive rights for the reproduction of a music piece for 2,000 yen ($20) each or nonexclusive rights for 500 yen ($5) each. At the time of the launch, there will be 10,000 pieces of music available, varying from soundtracks to narrated samples. In addition to these, you can have your narration or music tasks crowdsourced among workers on the platform. When a deal is closed between you and a worker, the startup will take a 30% commission and the rest goes to the worker.

The company has also partnered with Japanese stock photo giant Amana Images, and will use them as a sales channel to better reach potential clients in need of music and sound effects. Regarding the platform’s global expansions, the startup’s CEO Shuichiro Nishio unveiled that his team is currently developing an English version expected to launch by the end of this year. He says there’s likely to be huge potential in the overseas market since many foreign developers also are in need of high quality music from Japan.

Also in this space, there is Tokyo-based Grood, the startup behind Voip, which launched its voice acting crowdsourcing platform back in February and announced international service expansions in May.

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Japan’s PlayLife proposes better ways to enjoy your free time

Takeshi Hirano 2013.10.12

See the original story in Japanese. I’m not sure why, but recently we’ve heard about many online box-office or event reservation services. We’ve also seen many sites that let users arrange travel plans with destination locals, such as Trippiece, Meetrip, Kitchhike, and Voyagin.com. On Thursday, a new company has popped up in this space. Japanese startup Playlife launched an online portal that aims to help you better entertain yourself. The website lets you to share what you’ve experienced on weekends or in your leisure time, focusing on what’s happening in your local neighborhood rather than the aforementioned travel planning sites. I have a sort of deja vu feeling about this kind of service. Several years ago, more than a few startups promised to help you share things around you, ranging from your purchase history to the outfits in your closet. Most of us have probably seen something similar to Playlike several years ago. But I still look forward to seeing how the startup will evolve since its founder/CEO Taichi Sato is such an impressive personality. Sato is one of those post-80s entrepreneurs. He elaborated on his unique career thusly: When attending Aoyama Gakuin University, I was a leader of the…

See the original story in Japanese.

I’m not sure why, but recently we’ve heard about many online box-office or event reservation services. We’ve also seen many sites that let users arrange travel plans with destination locals, such as Trippiece, Meetrip, Kitchhike, and Voyagin.com.

On Thursday, a new company has popped up in this space. Japanese startup Playlife launched an online portal that aims to help you better entertain yourself. The website lets you to share what you’ve experienced on weekends or in your leisure time, focusing on what’s happening in your local neighborhood rather than the aforementioned travel planning sites.

I have a sort of deja vu feeling about this kind of service. Several years ago, more than a few startups promised to help you share things around you, ranging from your purchase history to the outfits in your closet. Most of us have probably seen something similar to Playlike several years ago. But I still look forward to seeing how the startup will evolve since its founder/CEO Taichi Sato is such an impressive personality.

Sato is one of those post-80s entrepreneurs. He elaborated on his unique career thusly:

When attending Aoyama Gakuin University, I was a leader of the Shibuya Chapter in the Guardian Angels, an international organization of volunteer crime patrollers. I was interested to know what gangster teenagers were interested in. It’s a wonderful experience to work on something with your colleagues, even at the risk of your life [1].

Hospital bed perspective

And it was indeed a risky endeavor. While patrolling the town Sato also even got beat up and suffered a fractured rib.

But would go on to graduate school in the US to learn about the national security issues. He was aspiring to be a UN official but decided against it when he later realized the job description was much more clerical than he had expected.

After graduating from the school, in order to discover what he really wanted to do, he moved around to many jobs, including a consulting firm, DeNA, and Accenture. As a result of these busy posts, he was tired from overwork back in June of 2011.

When I felt sick, I was thinking what’s most important in my life. Then I realized it’s probably the moments having fun with my friends.

He created his concept for Playlife. And after leaving the hospital, he went to the US and spent two years and four months to launch the service.

I think the service still has much room to be improved. It is said that a web service depends on the personal character of the founder than how mature your idea is. So it will be interesting to see how this one fares.

Sato, above all, hopes to give people a chance to explore what’s the most important in their own lives too.

This might be a Japanese value, and working on something at the risk of your life is a virtue for typical Japanese. Perhaps in the spirit of Samurai.↩

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CyberAgent subsidiary Sirok rolls out mobile debugging solution

Takeshi Hirano 2013.10.11

See the original story in Japanese. At B Dash Camp earlier this week, Kaizen Platform, the Tokyo-based startup behind A/B testing tool PlanBCD, won the top prize. But interestingly, there are a number of other development tools that are popping up here in Japan. Testing tool Fello, for example, has exceeded 100 corporate users in its first month. And yesterday, another Japanese startup gave us something new as well. Tokyo-based Sirok, the CyberAgent subsidiary behind camera app My365, introduced a comprehensive service package that helps developers debug their mobile apps. It is called Growth Debug. The new service is a complementary product positioned along side Growth Push, a testing tool focused on gaining user retention which they introduced back in August. Fierce competition Sirok CEO Yuto Mukaiyama explains: I thought the market was sort of ‘Blue Ocean’, but seems like it’s turning red [1]. But a surge in this market is something worth appreciating though. When the testing tool was launched back in August, he wanted to see it used by 1,000 apps, delivering 10 million testing notifications in three months. So how are they doing now? Mukaiyama responded: For the target about the number of apps using our service,…

See the original story in Japanese.

At B Dash Camp earlier this week, Kaizen Platform, the Tokyo-based startup behind A/B testing tool PlanBCD, won the top prize. But interestingly, there are a number of other development tools that are popping up here in Japan. Testing tool Fello, for example, has exceeded 100 corporate users in its first month.

And yesterday, another Japanese startup gave us something new as well. Tokyo-based Sirok, the CyberAgent subsidiary behind camera app My365, introduced a comprehensive service package that helps developers debug their mobile apps. It is called Growth Debug.

The new service is a complementary product positioned along side Growth Push, a testing tool focused on gaining user retention which they introduced back in August.

Fierce competition

Sirok CEO Yuto Mukaiyama explains:

I thought the market was sort of ‘Blue Ocean’, but seems like it’s turning red [1]. But a surge in this market is something worth appreciating though.

When the testing tool was launched back in August, he wanted to see it used by 1,000 apps, delivering 10 million testing notifications in three months. So how are they doing now? Mukaiyama responded:

For the target about the number of apps using our service, we’re still struggling. But we’ll probably be able to surpass 10 million notifications pretty soon. We don’t yet provide our service to foreign developers though. In terms of demographics, many of our users are social gaming developers, and casual gaming and community apps follow.

The company also expects to make see the platform used by all 200 Ameba mobile apps (iOS / Android) from CyberAgent, which they expect to account for 20% of their three-month target.

He also explained a little how how their platform can contribute to a better user retention rate:

We are using the platform to improve user retention on our own My365 app, and it is gaining 1.2 to 1.5 times in the number of daily active users on average.

The problem of debugging mobile apps

Growth Debug, their new service, provides developers with improvements in quality and efficiency by taking a different approach.

The company not only gives you the tools, but also provides personnel who can understand how to eliminate bugs.

Unlike conventional tools like Excel, when you find a bug in your app you can record and manage it via an online tool. This lets you submit an issue to management tools such as JIRA and Redmine, including a screen capture, a handset terminal ID, and a log. Mukaiyama explains how it differes from conventional debugging solutions:

We used to create a script to automate text inputs in testing a sign-up process in an app. But this doesn’t work at all on mobile apps where an enormous number of minor adjustments are usually implemented. As a result, these developers are forced to input texts manually when testing.

Finding bugs and extracting testing cases is very important, but the quality of this process depends on who is involved. An engineer many need to ask a debugger to find clarify some meaning in a list of bugs or testing cases. For social gaming developers, a bug related to in-app purchases may have a great impact on how much money you can make. That’s why we developed a tool that allows you to easily submit a defect as soon as you find it by connecting a desktop and a smartphone device.

Mukaiyama explains their another advantage they have is their strong network of debuggers:

Our parent company CyberAgent has developed a number of apps, and their experience will help our users debug more efficiently. We aim to help developers improve their apps with a combination of a tool and professionals.

In contrast with PlanBCD, their aforementioned competitor which uses crowdsourced workers to help users improve user experience, Sirok has partnered with about ten temporary employment agencies and ask them to send the company staffers when needed.

When they used their debugging package to improving some Ameba mobile apps, debugging time was shortened by about 30%.

We recently wrote about Query Eye as our readers may recall.↩

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