See the original story in Japanese. Here a new young entrepreneur has taken another step forward. Gunosy (TSE:6047), the Japanese company behind a news curation app under ths same name, in December announced an agreement to take over Game8, one of Japan’s leading game strategy wiki guides, from its parent company Labit. Gunosy will acquire a 100% in Game8 and turn it into a subsidiary. Game8 started as a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Labit which had developed a schedule app for university students called Sugoi Jikanwari. After transferring the app business to Japan’s Job Direct in 2014, the firm started its game media business led by an employee, Kentaro Nishio, and it showed strong performance. At the stage of recruiting human resources, the game business was spun-off as Game8 where Nishio became CEO. See also: A new service gives Japanese students key info about their classes and profs For a year and four months since its launch, Game8 has grown into a sizeable media with more than 10 million monthly unique users. Looking ahead to further growth, the firm has made the decision to become affiliated by Gunosy. Nishio explained: I could not decide between IPO and M&A, but in the…
Here a new young entrepreneur has taken another step forward.
Gunosy (TSE:6047), the Japanese company behind a news curation app under ths same name, in December announced an agreement to take over Game8, one of Japan’s leading game strategy wiki guides, from its parent company Labit. Gunosy will acquire a 100% in Game8 and turn it into a subsidiary.
Game8 started as a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Labit which had developed a schedule app for university students called Sugoi Jikanwari. After transferring the app business to Japan’s Job Direct in 2014, the firm started its game media business led by an employee, Kentaro Nishio, and it showed strong performance. At the stage of recruiting human resources, the game business was spun-off as Game8 where Nishio became CEO.
For a year and four months since its launch, Game8 has grown into a sizeable media with more than 10 million monthly unique users. Looking ahead to further growth, the firm has made the decision to become affiliated by Gunosy.
Nishio explained:
I could not decide between IPO and M&A, but in the end I chose M&A. As a reason for that, what we need is not funding but resources for our business growth or management.
Game8 has already achieved profitability in a single month based on the ad network as its main profit center. On the other hand, website development is handled almost exclusively by Nishio himself, and is facing development resource shortage.
Through this acquisition and becoming able to utilize development resources, not only improved development speed but also enhanced back office environment or joint development of ad products can be expected. Game8 will leverage Gunosy’s accumulated know-how about ad business, while Gunosy aims to acquire new ad clients from the gaming industry.
L to R: Gunosy Executive Officer Tetsuya Nagashima, Game8 CEO Kentaro Nishio
With this buyout, Gunosy CEO Yoshinori Fukushima and CFO Mitsushige Ito will join the management board of Game8. While Nishio continues to lead Game8 as its CEO, he joins Gunosy to supervise the web media gunosy.com.
Nishio elaborated:
I am thinking of a way to utilize the data obtained from apps to web media. There has been no service successful for both app and web. Examining the data, I will look for a way under the trial-and-error method. An integration plan of both growth teams has been suggested, so that I think I am supposed to use my time at Game8 and Gunosy equally.
Tstsuya Nagashima, Executive Officer at Gunosy, commented on this acquisition:
We won’t just paste ad banners but will adopt various measures that are beneficial to each user by sharing technical and advertisement know-how.
Gunosy earlier on acquired shares in Pikicast, a Korean startup offering a mobile content curation platform under the same name. Gunosy made clear its intention to continue investing in media having as many monthly active users as Game8.
In the game industry, not only content development but also other related activities including media, video distribution and e-sports have been gaining momentum recently. How will Game8 act in such an environment?
Nishio replied for this question:
I feel that the social status of the game industry is regarded as being lower than other entertainment sectors such as music or fashion. Game8 intends to improve this situation to a level equal to others.
To do so, we must spend more time on it to realize this. While running a web media that’s easy to expand at present, we may need to run other types of business in the future so are preparing teams to do that. We want to build a resilient system that matches our vision.
Nishio has steadily been expanding his media; let us see what further plans he has, what he will do next.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Telepathy Japan, Japanese subsidiary of Sunnyvale-based wearable device startup Telepathy, unveiled a new product called Telepathy Walker at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas this week. The company plans to start selling it for $699 from summer, but they will accept pre-orders at crowdfunding sites for consumers in Japan, the US and Canada. Almost a year ago the company announced Telepathy Jumper, a smartglasses product primarily intended for business use leveraging the cloud feature. However, Telepathy Walker, the new product, is being marketed to feature use of location-based augmented reality (LBS-AR), which indicates that they are shifting business focus to daily and entertainment use for individuals. Telepathy was founded by Takahito Iguchi, who became global with his Sekai Camera app but is running a robotic startup now called Doki Doki. If we don’t count Telepathy One as their product because it didn’t come to market, Telepathy Walker is the second product for the company following Telepathy Jumper. Our readers may have a strange feeling that Telepathy Walker emphasizes its LBS-AR use which the Sekai Camera app had been pursuing from before. Telepathy Japan is hosting a booth at CES in association with Osaka-based…
Telepathy Japan, Japanese subsidiary of Sunnyvale-based wearable device startup Telepathy, unveiled a new product called Telepathy Walker at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas this week. The company plans to start selling it for $699 from summer, but they will accept pre-orders at crowdfunding sites for consumers in Japan, the US and Canada.
Almost a year ago the company announced Telepathy Jumper, a smartglasses product primarily intended for business use leveraging the cloud feature. However, Telepathy Walker, the new product, is being marketed to feature use of location-based augmented reality (LBS-AR), which indicates that they are shifting business focus to daily and entertainment use for individuals.
Telepathy was founded by Takahito Iguchi, who became global with his Sekai Camera app but is running a robotic startup now called Doki Doki. If we don’t count Telepathy One as their product because it didn’t come to market, Telepathy Walker is the second product for the company following Telepathy Jumper. Our readers may have a strange feeling that Telepathy Walker emphasizes its LBS-AR use which the Sekai Camera app had been pursuing from before.
Telepathy Japan is hosting a booth at CES in association with Osaka-based Brilliant Service, the developer of the Mirama gesture controllable smartglasses. Commemorating this collaboration, the two companies showed the world that Telepathy Walker or Mirama wants to realize a concept movie developed by Japanese popular anime studio Production I.G (see below). It will be interesting to see how they will attract many backers from among anime and game freaks worldwide with the upcoming crowdfunding campaign.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Moff, offering a wearable smart toy Moff Band, showcased a preview of ‘Pac-Man Powered by Moff’ to be launched this spring, jointly developed with Japan’s major game developer, Bandai Namco Entertainment (TSE:7832). This preview is given this week at CES 2016 in Las Vegas. This is the first app by Moff based on its gamified fitness platform. This preview version allows users wearing the Moff Band connected with Bluetooth to play Pac-Man remotely. For the official version, fitness elements will be added, while the basic game design of Pac-Man where players evade ghosts or eat power-cookies will be kept. The launch of the game at this time, which is associated with the well-known Pac-Man character, should boost Moff’s name recognition in the US. The app was developed through a cooperative business arrangement between the two companies, subsequent to Bandai Namco Entertainment’s investment in Moff last September. Moff CEO Akinori Takahagi said: PAC-MAN Powered by Moff brings a brand-new user experience, while allowing enjoyment of games from olden days and exercising actively for families including children. Our aim is to build new relationships between families and wearable technologies by leveraging our gamified fitness technology…
Tokyo-based Moff, offering a wearable smart toy Moff Band, showcased a preview of ‘Pac-Man Powered by Moff’ to be launched this spring, jointly developed with Japan’s major game developer, Bandai Namco Entertainment (TSE:7832). This preview is given this week at CES 2016 in Las Vegas. This is the first app by Moff based on its gamified fitness platform.
This preview version allows users wearing the Moff Band connected with Bluetooth to play Pac-Man remotely. For the official version, fitness elements will be added, while the basic game design of Pac-Man where players evade ghosts or eat power-cookies will be kept.
The launch of the game at this time, which is associated with the well-known Pac-Man character, should boost Moff’s name recognition in the US. The app was developed through a cooperative business arrangement between the two companies, subsequent to Bandai Namco Entertainment’s investment in Moff last September.
Moff CEO Akinori Takahagi said:
PAC-MAN Powered by Moff brings a brand-new user experience, while allowing enjoyment of games from olden days and exercising actively for families including children. Our aim is to build new relationships between families and wearable technologies by leveraging our gamified fitness technology through cooperation with leading companies in the entertainment field.
See the original story in Japanese. The creator of the Ring wearable device, Silicon Valley- / Tokyo-based startup LogBar, has just unveiled a new product called ‘iLi‘ at CES 2016 in Las Vegas. The iLi is a pendant worn around the neck that will translate between English, Japanese, and Chinese. Thanks to a built-in engine for speech recognition/synthesis and translation, Wi-Fi or other Internet connections are not needed to use iLi. The device has a button on its surface, which looks like the fingerprint sensor design on the iPhone. Users have to push it before speaking so that the device can recognize their speech and synthesize its translated result. The product price has not been announced, but it is said to be “affordable” as it opens up for pre-orders in March or April. The second version of iLi will handle French, Thai, and Korean, and the third version will add Spanish, Italian, and Arabic options. In addition to product sales, LogBar is exploring establishing a business network leveraging the device as a business model. The company may partner with travel agencies, hotels, transport operators, and car rental services, which cater to tourists and business travelers. Since the device specs have…
The creator of the Ring wearable device, Silicon Valley- / Tokyo-based startup LogBar, has just unveiled a new product called ‘iLi‘ at CES 2016 in Las Vegas. The iLi is a pendant worn around the neck that will translate between English, Japanese, and Chinese. Thanks to a built-in engine for speech recognition/synthesis and translation, Wi-Fi or other Internet connections are not needed to use iLi.
The device has a button on its surface, which looks like the fingerprint sensor design on the iPhone. Users have to push it before speaking so that the device can recognize their speech and synthesize its translated result. The product price has not been announced, but it is said to be “affordable” as it opens up for pre-orders in March or April. The second version of iLi will handle French, Thai, and Korean, and the third version will add Spanish, Italian, and Arabic options. In addition to product sales, LogBar is exploring establishing a business network leveraging the device as a business model. The company may partner with travel agencies, hotels, transport operators, and car rental services, which cater to tourists and business travelers.
Since the device specs have yet to be unveiled, it is uncertain whether or not the device is technically possible, or just vaporware. However, this is definitely the thing that turns ‘Honyaku Konyaku’ or translation jelly, a popular Sci-Fi gadget seen in the Doraemon Japanese comic series, into a reality. Following Jeplan which has recently developed the real De Lorean dream car from the Back to the Future movie, we are looking forward to the success of a Japanese startup attempting to turn Sci-Fi gadgets into a reality.
See the original story in Japanese. AirCloset is an outstanding startup in the Japanese fashion rental industry. Launched back in February of 2015, the company has been providing a subscription-based fashion item rental service for females under the same name. Its users combined surpasses 70,000 for now, which rapidly grew from 65,000 users in October of 2015. AirCloset announced today that it has fundraised slightly less than 1 billion yen (about $8 million) from several companies. Participating investors in this round include Jafco (TSE:8595, investment firm), Nakazono Holdings (operator of “White Kyubin” laundry shop chain), Saison Ventures (investment arm of credit card company Credit Saison), and Terrada Warehouse. With funding from such major companies, AirCloset will strengthen its structure by securing the financial base and maximizing business synergies between the warehouse management and laundry service businesses. Looking at what kind of synergies can be achieved with aforementioned investors, Terrada Warehouse, for examples, runs Minikura, a subscription-based box storage service which can be managed on the web. AirCloset partnered with the warehouse company slightly after launch, followed by securing funds from it in April of 2015. Going forward, the two companies will work together to streamline the logistics operations of accepting,…
AirCloset is an outstanding startup in the Japanese fashion rental industry. Launched back in February of 2015, the company has been providing a subscription-based fashion item rental service for females under the same name. Its users combined surpasses 70,000 for now, which rapidly grew from 65,000 users in October of 2015.
AirCloset announced today that it has fundraised slightly less than 1 billion yen (about $8 million) from several companies. Participating investors in this round include Jafco (TSE:8595, investment firm), Nakazono Holdings (operator of “White Kyubin” laundry shop chain), Saison Ventures (investment arm of credit card company Credit Saison), and Terrada Warehouse. With funding from such major companies, AirCloset will strengthen its structure by securing the financial base and maximizing business synergies between the warehouse management and laundry service businesses.
Looking at what kind of synergies can be achieved with aforementioned investors, Terrada Warehouse, for examples, runs Minikura, a subscription-based box storage service which can be managed on the web. AirCloset partnered with the warehouse company slightly after launch, followed by securing funds from it in April of 2015. Going forward, the two companies will work together to streamline the logistics operations of accepting, storing, managing, and shipping items, aiming to provide customers with improved services. In partnership with Nakazono Holdings running 8,500 laundry shops nationwide in Japan, AirCloset will work on strengthening its service operations.
AirCloset was founded by Satoshi Amanuma, Yusuke Maekawa, and Shoichi Kotani 18 months ago. The service has attracted many users since its pre-registration launch in late October of 2014, steadily growing its user base. It delivers a new endeavor with a surprise to our daily lives upon enjoying fashion. Having powerful supporters onboard, we cannot but keep our eyes on how AirCloset will fare from now on.
Translated by Masaru Ikeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Medley announced in December that it had fundraised a total of 230 million yen (about $1.9 million) from Nikkei Business Publications (Nikkei BP), East Ventures, and Japanese angel investor Yuzuru Honda. East Ventures have invested in Medley in the past while Honda is the CEO of Japanese adtech company FreakOut (TSE:6094). The latest funding follows the company’s previous round in June of 2015, having raised 300 million yen (about $2.5 million) from Mitsui Sumitomo Insuarance Capital, MRT (TSE:6034, medical human resource), and Gree (TSE:3632, mobile gaming), as well as other angel investors. Medley provides an online job board for medical professionals, called Job Medley, as well as an online disease encyclopedia called Medley. Coinciding with the latest funds, Medley will partner with Nikkei BP to integrate Job Medley with Nikkei Medical Online, the publisher’s comprehensive information portal site for medical professionals. By utilizing the mutual strengths of both companies, they are looking to develop new services for 510,000 registered users of the portal site, encompassing 130,000 medical doctors. Medley CEO Kohei Takiguchi explained: Combining Nikkei Medical Online with our strength that engineers and medical professionals provide our services, I believe that both…
The Medley team: CEO Kohei Takiguchi stands third from left, Co-CEO/medical doctor Goichiro Toyoda stands on right.
Tokyo-based startup Medley announced in December that it had fundraised a total of 230 million yen (about $1.9 million) from Nikkei Business Publications (Nikkei BP), East Ventures, and Japanese angel investor Yuzuru Honda. East Ventures have invested in Medley in the past while Honda is the CEO of Japanese adtech company FreakOut (TSE:6094). The latest funding follows the company’s previous round in June of 2015, having raised 300 million yen (about $2.5 million) from Mitsui Sumitomo Insuarance Capital, MRT (TSE:6034, medical human resource), and Gree (TSE:3632, mobile gaming), as well as other angel investors.
Medley provides an online job board for medical professionals, called Job Medley, as well as an online disease encyclopedia called Medley. Coinciding with the latest funds, Medley will partner with Nikkei BP to integrate Job Medley with Nikkei Medical Online, the publisher’s comprehensive information portal site for medical professionals. By utilizing the mutual strengths of both companies, they are looking to develop new services for 510,000 registered users of the portal site, encompassing 130,000 medical doctors.
Medley CEO Kohei Takiguchi explained:
Combining Nikkei Medical Online with our strength that engineers and medical professionals provide our services, I believe that both companies can better grow their businesses leveraging the mutual strengths.
The capital raised from this fundraising will be used to develop new collaborative services and for their operation. Although there is no official release of service content, they are creating brand new content for healthcare professionals.
We were told that the funds will be used to develop and operate a new service. Details of that are not yet disclosed but the company claimed that it will be something new for medical professionals.
The Job Medley platform has been steadily growing to date, building a sold revenue base for the company. It lists 47,055 positions for job-seeking medical professionals as of this writing. Instead of such a huge number of job postings, however, Takiguchi says that his team have fulfilled only about 10% of their objective which expects to list all positions available online.
Medley, the online medical resource, has attempted to enhance its service coverage, by adding a special feature page for prevention of influenza as well as a hospital search according to symptoms or the method of treatment. These efforts are based on the team’s intention to improve accessibility to existing medical database services for the public.
Takiguchi added:
Since existing medical database services are incomplete, we needed to build our own from scratch. It took more than expected to complete, but we have almost completed gathering and organizing symptoms, medical supplies, hospitals, and other related metadata information. We think that the next step is to provide users value based on our database. Using the symptom-based disease search function as well as the infection risk prediction model, we will explore new types of online medical services for users in 2016.
Medley has been receiving huge funding throughout 2015. The company has been devoted to developing the Job Medley platform to enhance the business prospects while developing the Medley database service to better serve users. They are steadily moving forward to disrupt the medical industry by inventing new online services.
Translated by Mariko Kobayashi via Mother First Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Skyland Ventures, a VC firm focusing on seed-stage startups, announced the launch of its second fund today. The fund of $1.2 billion yen ($10 million) will be for investment in about 30 startups. See also: Up-and-coming investor hosts startup event in Tokyo, encourages global entrepreneurship Skyland Ventures CEO Yoshihiko Kinoshita says their typical scheme consists of a 15 million yen ($125,000) initial investment in a startup in a seed round with a potential follow-up investment of 5 million yen to 50 million yen ($42,000 to $420,000). Based on the scheme, Skyland Ventures wants to hold a 10% stake in the startup after its second round funding. Kinoshita says that his fund will make investments in several batches rather than doing a one-time major investment, in order to reduce the risk that the fund’s large stake in a startup may make it harder to get follow-up funding from other investors. Kinoshita has been conducting 15-minute mentoring sessions for acting and aspiring entrepreneurs every Wednesday. Through this effort, he has made investments in 20 startups in the last 40 months. The new fund will invest in startups in virtual reality, artificial intelligence, movie communication, smart…
Skyland Ventures’ Yoshihiko Kinoshita (middle) and other members
Tokyo-based Skyland Ventures, a VC firm focusing on seed-stage startups, announced the launch of its second fund today. The fund of $1.2 billion yen ($10 million) will be for investment in about 30 startups.
Skyland Ventures CEO Yoshihiko Kinoshita says their typical scheme consists of a 15 million yen ($125,000) initial investment in a startup in a seed round with a potential follow-up investment of 5 million yen to 50 million yen ($42,000 to $420,000). Based on the scheme, Skyland Ventures wants to hold a 10% stake in the startup after its second round funding.
Kinoshita says that his fund will make investments in several batches rather than doing a one-time major investment, in order to reduce the risk that the fund’s large stake in a startup may make it harder to get follow-up funding from other investors.
Kinoshita has been conducting 15-minute mentoring sessions for acting and aspiring entrepreneurs every Wednesday. Through this effort, he has made investments in 20 startups in the last 40 months.
The new fund will invest in startups in virtual reality, artificial intelligence, movie communication, smart robotics, and other Internet sectors. Combining with portfolio startups in the previous fund, Skyland Ventures expects to have invested in 50 startups within two years.
Coinciding with the announcement, Skyland Ventures unveiled that they have invested in the following six startups:
See the original story in Japanese. There are many startups that develop great technologies and have a great team spirit, yet fail to promote their products or services because they lack user experience (UX) or good marketing skills. The Heart Catch program helps those foundering startups by matchmaking professional designers and marketers as their mentors during a period of two months. On this very first showcasing event organized by the program, five participating startups presented their results. On stage, each team gave a pitch of their improvement by comparing their project before and after the mentoring sessions. Then, team members discussed in detail the mentoring process with their mentors. In this article, I summarized how each team improved through this program (Hotaru, one of these five teams, is excluded because they are still in a stealth mode as of this writing). Mana.bo Mana.bo provides a private tutoring service via smartphones or tablets. Students can ask questions on their platform, which will be answered by tutors. In this way, students can take charge of their learning by asking freely what they don’t understand, which would be difficult to do in a classroom where teachers usually teach many students in their own…
There are many startups that develop great technologies and have a great team spirit, yet fail to promote their products or services because they lack user experience (UX) or good marketing skills. The Heart Catch program helps those foundering startups by matchmaking professional designers and marketers as their mentors during a period of two months. On this very first showcasing event organized by the program, five participating startups presented their results.
On stage, each team gave a pitch of their improvement by comparing their project before and after the mentoring sessions. Then, team members discussed in detail the mentoring process with their mentors. In this article, I summarized how each team improved through this program (Hotaru, one of these five teams, is excluded because they are still in a stealth mode as of this writing).
Mana.bo
Mana.bo CFO Koichi Tsunoda
Mana.bo provides a private tutoring service via smartphones or tablets. Students can ask questions on their platform, which will be answered by tutors. In this way, students can take charge of their learning by asking freely what they don’t understand, which would be difficult to do in a classroom where teachers usually teach many students in their own pace. In order for this project to succeed, it would be crucial for student users to ask many questions on the platform.
Mentors asked the Mana.bo team to redefine whom the target users are and what kind of message they wish to convey. After some reflection, they realized that although all users are students, their true targets are their mothers who make the final decision of paying for this service. Therefore, while creating an attractive interface to students, the team needs to convince their mothers that this is a solid service that helps their children.
Then, the team made one-year, three-year and five-year plans concerning what kind of service they want to provide, whether they should provide business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) service, and the estimated conversion rates. Breaking down these steps helped them understand how to improve user interface (UI). As a result, one important factor of key performance indicator (KPI) concerning the probability of trial users to ask the first question has increased from 25% to 64%; the probability improved 2.5 times. It contributed directly to users’ conversion to the service, since once a question is asked it will lead to second and third questions.
Mentors:
Yasuhiro Yano (CEO, Bloom & Co.)
Takayuki Fukatsu (Interactive Designer, The Guild)
Sommnie by Neurospace
Neurospace CEO Takanori Kobayashi
Neurospace is a startup specializing in sleep. In order to stay healthy, we need to eat well, exercise and have a good night’s sleep. We usually ask nutritionists about what kind of food we should eat or ask gym instructors for efficient exercise programs. Yet we don’t often ask specialists about how to sleep well. In fact, there are various methods available for measuring how much food is consumed or how much exercise is done. If we wish to measure how long and how deep one sleeps, on the other hand, we need an electroencephalograph (EEG) to measure brainwaves, which is not easy to do.
Specializing in EEG technologies, Neurospace has teamed up with Tsukuba University to develop an easy-to-use portable EEG for commercialization. By allowing users to record brainwave data on their smartphone or on the cloud, the team started developing a service for observing and improving the sleeping habit without any help of sleeping pills.
Prior to the mentoring program, the company contemplated marketing this service to taxi companies for improving sleeping habits of drivers. They also thought that professional athletes would need their service for improving their performances by sleeping better. After investigating during the Heart Catch program, they discovered that there are other potential marketing B2B and B2C targets. In fact, IT companies are consciously worried about the lack of sleep for its employees due to huge workloads. Companies in the restaurant industry have a hard time recruiting due to its negative image of irregular shift hours. Furthermore, career-oriented working women around 30 also suffer from sleep deprivation, especially if they are team leaders or managers at a company.
With this new information about other potential targets, the team concluded that a device has to be wearable and comfortable. As a result, they have successfully developed the prototype of a wearable EEG device in the form of a nightcap. From now on, they will provide services to companies by creating online support systems for improving sleeping habits of employees, by asking about and analyzing their sleeping problems. As soon as the nightcap supply logistics is settled, they will also start providing services to individual customers.
Rosa Uchima (Product Designer, TBWA\HAKUHODO\QUANTUM)
Nobu Takenaka (Marketing, TBWA\HAKUHODO\QUANTUM)
D Free by Triple W Japan
Triple W Japan “Organizer” Atsushi Nakanishi
After successfully launching a crowdfunding campaign in Japan this year, Triple W Japan will start shipping its wearable device which predicts the timing of bowel movement, called D Free, from next year. The company’s “organizer” Atsushi Nakanishi told us that he didn’t know how to promote this product that has so many potential applications.
They started by elucidating three problems to be solved: 1. Price range, 2. Wearability and 3. Potential use cases.
First of all, according to some studies, 62.5% of all seniors, living alone or living under assisted conditions, have experienced bowel control issues. For those potential customers, the estimated price range of around 20,000 yen (about $170) is affordable. They are contemplating other types of sales plans, including monthly subscriptions.
Second, wearability is an important UX aspect upon marketing the device. The company has concluded that the actual form of the device won’t bother seniors both who are actively living and who need assistance. On the other hand, the device must have “cool” design, if they are to expand their market to the beauty, health and sport industries.
Third of all, potential target user base may include women seeking not only outer beauty but also inner beauty in addition to elderly people, as the company expands to the beauty, health, and sport industries as mentioned above. Since many women suffer from constipation, the company envisages the possibility of using the device to propose bowel improvement plans, by generating healthy and natural digestive habits without taking laxatives or suppliments.
As D Free has many potential applications, mentors suggested that it would help companies to clarify the context by pondering whose life they wish to improve with this product. Nakanishi said that he was reminded of how important designing and marketing is for business through this program.
Mentors:
Hiroto Ebata (CMO, IMJ – Professor, Graduate School of Project Design – Ambassador, World Marketing Summit)
Mie Hommura (The Guild – Sleepytiger)
Yukiya Okuda (ALUMICAN.NET – IROZA – Part-time instructor, Tama Art University – Designer and Programmer)
Quiver
Quiver producer Jessop Petroski
Originally from New Zealand, this startup first appeared on The Bridge during B Dash Camp Osaka in 2013. Relocating the base to Japan, which is one of the Quiver’s biggest markets, the company has steadily gained in reputation by attending international events and obtaining media coverage. Since they don’t know the Japanese market well enough, they have always worried whether their products fits into the Japanese market. By participating in the Heart Catch program, they succeeded in evolving their products by implementing Japanese users’ voices.
Quiver (formally known as colAR) created an augmented reality (AR) tool that allows any colored drawing to be changed into 3D animation, just by taking a picture on the Quiver app using a smartphone or tablet. Developing this idea, they also created a technology to combine real objects with 3D animation by putting markers on the object. As one possibility of the business plan of this product, they propose collaborating with airline companies to create special services for children to play on airplanes with a tablet. This product has promising potentials in the children’s market.
Quiver possesses high technology of recognizing 2D drawing pictures and turning them into 3D animation. Like D Free introduced above, this technology also has many application potentials. Therefore it’s important to clarify what kind of UX the company wants to provide and who their potential marketing targets are. As Quiver can easily promote this product to adults beyond children, they will more need to cultivate potential use cases.
Mentors:
Nobu Takenaka (Marketing, TBWA\HAKUHODO\QUANTUM)
Niya Sherif (Interactive Designer)
Translated by Moto Tsujino via Mother First Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Crowd Cast, a startup offering expense balancing apps such as BizNote for Yayoi Online and Staple, announced earlier this month that they have secured series B round funding from Saison Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Japanese leading credit card company Credit Saison (TSE:8253), and IMJ Investment Partners (henceforth IMJ-IP). While the particulars of this investment have yet to be made clear, funding is thought to reach into the tens of millions of yen (hundreds of thousands of dollars). As the series B round has not yet closed, Crowd Cast will continue inviting further investment from other companies, eventually looking to raise funding in the ballpark of about 1 million yen ($830,000). Crowd Cast also secured an undisclosed amount of series A round funding from IMJ-IP in 2014. As for their investments from business firms thus far, this round’s investment from Saison Ventures comes after a $210,000 seed round contribution in May of 2013 from major Japanese accounting software developer Yayoi. Crowd Cast began providing their expense balancing app for startups and mid-sized companies, Staple, in September of last year, but with this financial partnering with Saison Ventures, they are focusing on…
Tokyo-based Crowd Cast, a startup offering expense balancing apps such as BizNote for Yayoi Online and Staple, announced earlier this month that they have secured series B round funding from Saison Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Japanese leading credit card company Credit Saison (TSE:8253), and IMJ Investment Partners (henceforth IMJ-IP). While the particulars of this investment have yet to be made clear, funding is thought to reach into the tens of millions of yen (hundreds of thousands of dollars). As the series B round has not yet closed, Crowd Cast will continue inviting further investment from other companies, eventually looking to raise funding in the ballpark of about 1 million yen ($830,000).
Crowd Cast also secured an undisclosed amount of series A round funding from IMJ-IP in 2014. As for their investments from business firms thus far, this round’s investment from Saison Ventures comes after a $210,000 seed round contribution in May of 2013 from major Japanese accounting software developer Yayoi.
Crowd Cast began providing their expense balancing app for startups and mid-sized companies, Staple, in September of last year, but with this financial partnering with Saison Ventures, they are focusing on expanding Staple’s features and increasing users in cooperation with Credit Saison and their 35 million registered credit card user base. Concretely speaking, the methods of inputting expenses into Staple have been either manual input from receipts and invoices, etc., or by importing IC card use history data. In the future, however, it is expected that we will see functionality for connecting to online credit card use history data for Saison credit card users.
Crowd Cast CEO Takashi Hoshikawa spoke to The Bridge about this recent investment:
CEO Takashi Hoshikawa
This year we did IC smart card use history reading through NFC (near field communication), so next we want to implement an OCR (optical character recognition) feature for importing receipts. We’ll be expanding our features in the direction of the Electronic Books Maintenance Act of Japan. Also we’re looking to strengthen our back-end infrastructure as well as integration with credit card systems.
He continued:
With our corporate-aimed Staple Team, we’ve come to see the types of industries where our service will be made particularly necessary: advertising firms, real estate companies, and other industries with large numbers of employees. Especially in companies with many locations and large numbers of staff who aren’t supplied with computers for work, (expenses can be balanced using smartphones so) Staple Team is going to be an invaluable tool.
According to Hoshikawa, Crowd Cast has currently placed Staple Team in the research phase while they gather more information about the users’ needs, after which they will be proceeding with monetization. Moving into 2016, as many accounting type services will be boasting support for Japan’s new “my number” system, Crowd Cast says they aren’t particularly concerned with “my number” support. One reason for that might be that, rather than aiming to be a total accounting service, Crowd Cast are concentrating the focus of their solutions on expense balancing. In addition, they are currently considering the possibility of integrating their services with third party payroll management platforms.
Crowd Cast’s app designed for private-use, Staple, is free to use, but their commercial version built for team-based management, Staple Team, starts at 600 yen (about $5) a month. They have, however, began offering a “startup program” which makes Staple Team available to use for free for companies that are less than five years old, student entrepreneurs, as well as NPOs, so for startups in the early stages who don’t yet have a dedicated staff member handling accounting, this might be a good opportunity to try Staple Team.
See the original story in Japanese.This is part of our coverage of Global Brain Alliance Forum 2015. Tokyo-based VC firm Global Brain this month held an annual startup conference event called Global Brain Alliance Forum (GBAF) in Tokyo. As a part of GBAF, a startup pitch event called the Global Startups Pitch Battle was held, where 10 startups from Japan and the other Asian countries competed. Japan’s Stellasia LED won the top award. The judges were: Shigeyuki Tsuchida, Senior Executive Officer, Innovation Network Corporation of Japan Ken Matsui, Project Manager, Mitsui Fudosan Venture Co-Creation Project, a.k.a. 31 Ventures Takashi Shibayama, Director of Content and Media Business, Furyu Chester Jungseok Roh, CSO, Reality Reflection The top prize winner: Stellasia LED (Japan) Stellasia LED is developing an AC-driven LED lamp for industrial use, in contrast to typical LED lamps driven by AC. Stellasia LED’s design eliminates the use of easily malfunctioning electric components, such as aluminum electrolytic capacitors in AC-driven LED, thus reducing failure rates, energy consumption, and noise. Although voltage differs by country, the AC-driven LED will enable standardizing circuits in products and unified production lines, thus reducing manufacturing costs. The team is planning to start new businesses, such as smart…
Tokyo-based VC firm Global Brain this month held an annual startup conference event called Global Brain Alliance Forum (GBAF) in Tokyo.
As a part of GBAF, a startup pitch event called the Global Startups Pitch Battle was held, where 10 startups from Japan and the other Asian countries competed. Japan’s Stellasia LED won the top award.
Stellasia CEO Richard Matsuura (left) receives the award from judge Ken Matsui.
Stellasia LED is developing an AC-driven LED lamp for industrial use, in contrast to typical LED lamps driven by AC. Stellasia LED’s design eliminates the use of easily malfunctioning electric components, such as aluminum electrolytic capacitors in AC-driven LED, thus reducing failure rates, energy consumption, and noise.
Although voltage differs by country, the AC-driven LED will enable standardizing circuits in products and unified production lines, thus reducing manufacturing costs. The team is planning to start new businesses, such as smart lighting.
The Global Brain award winner: Kacific (Singapore)
Singapore-based Kacific aims to use communication satellites to provide broadband Internet service to isolated islands of countries in the Asia-Pacific region such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. Leveraging existing technologies, it plans to provide an internet connection service of 50Mbps at cheaper rates than other services.
The satellites will be ordered in 2016 and launches will commence in 2018. The total investment is estimated to be $182 million. Fees will be collected by the wholesaling of the service to ISP or the government in each country. The control center for the satellites and the service will be in Japan.
Thailand-based Eatigo offers a mobile app for dining deals and restaurant reservations under the same name, attracting customers by providing discount information in off-peak hours. It launched domestically in June 2014, and is being developed for Singapore.
In comparison with typical customer services such as hotels or airlines having 73% and 74% of the usage rate for each, that for restaurants is only 35%. To lower vacancy rates of restaurants, this service supports user restaurants to shape their customer traffic.
Eatigo is developing a mobile app for Japan and India. Also, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Indonesia are targeted as future markets.
Eatigo CEO Michael Cluzel
The audience award winner: Axelspace (Japan)
Axelspace CEO Yuya Nakamura (right) receives the award from judge Takashi Shibayama.
Japan’s Axelspace was established as a spin-off from the University of Tokyo in 2008. The team developed a micro-satellite only 50 centimeters square and 60 kilograms in weight. It will launch satellites for Japan’s weather information service Weathernews (TSE:4825). Starting from three satellites in 2017, it will launch ten satellites every year from 2018, to construct a system of 50 low-earth orbit satellites for data collection of weather or topography. The data will be sold to public agencies or private companies. The launch of a typical satellite can cost several tens of millions dollars, however, the micro-satellite can be launched for about $8 million.
Junya Mori
Masaru Ikeda
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Shintaro Eguchi
Takeshi Hirano
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Translated by Moto Tsujino via 
