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What Japanese computer vision startup Edison.ai takes away from Techstars Music

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See the original story in Japanese. Brand Pit– the company that analyzes images posted on social media and provides brand companies with marketing data acquired from the brand logos in the images for gauging the popularity of their products, regional distribution, use cases, etc. It has been about 5 years since The Bridge began following them, and in the intense world of startups they have stood the test of time. To update our readers, last year Brand Pit changed its name. The new name is Edison.ai. The previously uttered joke, “the startup with a name like that famous actor…” no longer holds true. When we caught up with them recently, we learned that they are participating in an accelerator program that Techstars started last year called Techstars Music, held in Los Angeles, the home of the music business. Based on our previous image of Brand Pit, we couldn’t imagine how they would fit into the music industry, so what sort of pivot did they undertake? Techstars is a long-established accelerator based in Boulder, Colorado.. It operates Global Accelerator Network (GAN) and is entrusted with managing corporate accelerators around the world. However, unlike these corporate accelerators in their kind, Techstars Music…

The Edison.ai team participating in Techstars Music (May 2018, Los Angeles)
Image credit: Edison.ai

See the original story in Japanese.

Brand Pit– the company that analyzes images posted on social media and provides brand companies with marketing data acquired from the brand logos in the images for gauging the popularity of their products, regional distribution, use cases, etc. It has been about 5 years since The Bridge began following them, and in the intense world of startups they have stood the test of time.

To update our readers, last year Brand Pit changed its name. The new name is Edison.ai. The previously uttered joke, “the startup with a name like that famous actor…” no longer holds true. When we caught up with them recently, we learned that they are participating in an accelerator program that Techstars started last year called Techstars Music, held in Los Angeles, the home of the music business. Based on our previous image of Brand Pit, we couldn’t imagine how they would fit into the music industry, so what sort of pivot did they undertake?

Techstars is a long-established accelerator based in Boulder, Colorado.. It operates Global Accelerator Network (GAN) and is entrusted with managing corporate accelerators around the world.

However, unlike these corporate accelerators in their kind, Techstars Music is specialized in a certain vertical and sector, and it is one of the programs for which Techstars voluntarily collects and manages multiple sponsors. Along with Warner Music and Sony Music, Japan’s RecoChoku participates as a sponsor.

Founder and CEO Chu Tsz Tat (TT Chu) joined the first batch in Los Angeles from February of this year for 13 weeks (about 3 months) and explained that participating in Techstars Music was heavily involved in the company’s name change from Brand Pit to Edison.ai. Ten teams were chosen for this accelerator (11 teams selected, 10 teams graduated), and each team receives $120,000 US in financing from Techstars, however the program’s goal is not supporting user growth or funding.

It seems like the intention is not to benefit to a specific music company, but to further evolve the music industry as a whole (by involving startups). (Chu)

Even in Japan, Avex and others have started accelerators (Avex Ventures’ website appears to be closed), but it is still hard to say that the momentum is building to transform the entire music industry. It seems it will take time and effort to disrupt the conservative music industry with the power of startups, even just pursuing concessions among businesses. The goal of Techstars Music appears to be cracking the door little by little into this world.

Edison.ai

What sort of transformation has the former Brand Pit, which was largely associated with FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) brands, undergone after coming into contact with the music industry? The answer lies in the expectation that the music industry wants to know what its audience is interested in.

Music companies can probably obtain metrics of streaming or downloading music content from online music stores, and perhaps a certain amount of offline sales data can be acquired from real music stores via their point of sales systems. We can also speculate about the possibility of accumulating data from concerts and music events where artists and fans are directly interacting each other through ticket digitization.

However, even that is not enough to comprehend the full music scene. Edison.ai participated in Techstars Music under the hypothesis that its technology would be helpful in understanding where and under what circumstances, what kind of artists and which songs are getting popularity.

Chu related that Techstars Music’s Managing Director Bob Moczydlowsky launched the music division of Twitter and has a very deep understanding of data collection and analysis, so Chu’s team was very lucky to participate in the program. Other features of Techstars include finding mentors who have experienced exits and relentlessly connecting industry leaders with participating startups.

Edison.ai (formerly Brand Pit) participates in various accelerator programs such as IBM BlueHub, Kirin Accelerator, Paris-based Numa’s La FrenchTech, Hong Kong’s Swire Group, and Australia’s Global Incubator Network. For the time being, the company is more focused on technological development for applications that have expanded its target field, as well as user validation, rather than financing.

Meanwhile, it seems that Techstars is increasing its presence in Asia more and more recently. Techstars Music, mentioned above, is preparing to recruit teams for its next batch, and since the beginning of the year it has begun the Rakuten Accelerator in partnership with Rakuten. Even at the Techsauce Summit held in Bangkok this week, it will invited Techstars co-CEO David Brown as a keynote speaker, so we can get answers to the question about Techstars’ extraordinary interest in Asia.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

Brand Pit: Giving companies a clear picture of their fans

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Back in September we told you about Brand Pit, a startup which at that time won the Startup Sauna Tokyo pitch competition. It’s an analytics tool for brands that are trying to learn more about their fans, relying on image recognition technology instead of text or keyword analysis. Currently their focus is on analyzing images shared on Instagram, with some Facebook and Twitter analysis as well. By detecting brand logos in socially-shared images, any company that uses Brand Pit can gain valuable insights about who their fans and influences are, or even view a geographic heat-map of activity around their brand. In this way, they can get around the many problems associated with keyword analytics such as language barriers or spam. I had a chance to catch up with the company’s founder TT Chu (he’s the one in the video above), when they were pitching at e27’s Echelon Tokyo Satellite event last week [1]. He tells me that in the future, they plan to expand the scope of their image recognition technology in a way that will also expand its value for brands: We intend to detect more than just logos, brands and products. we are trying to extract and…

Back in September we told you about Brand Pit, a startup which at that time won the Startup Sauna Tokyo pitch competition. It’s an analytics tool for brands that are trying to learn more about their fans, relying on image recognition technology instead of text or keyword analysis.

brand pit
Brand Pit image recognition finding Starbucks logos

Currently their focus is on analyzing images shared on Instagram, with some Facebook and Twitter analysis as well. By detecting brand logos in socially-shared images, any company that uses Brand Pit can gain valuable insights about who their fans and influences are, or even view a geographic heat-map of activity around their brand. In this way, they can get around the many problems associated with keyword analytics such as language barriers or spam.

I had a chance to catch up with the company’s founder TT Chu (he’s the one in the video above), when they were pitching at e27’s Echelon Tokyo Satellite event last week [1].

He tells me that in the future, they plan to expand the scope of their image recognition technology in a way that will also expand its value for brands:

We intend to detect more than just logos, brands and products. we are trying to extract and identify other information presented in the photo, such as the environment and the objects surrounding the branded products. This peripheral information will allow us a more accurate in-sight into the real situations/conditions where the products are being used/consumed. This piece of information is critical in segmenting the customer base.

I understand that their image recognition technology has been developed in house (primarily by Chu himself), and one of its key advantages is that it can perform well even when applied to user-generated images. So even when the images are poor – either too dark, maybe obscured by another object, or even if they’re too small, that Brand Pit can detect them where other technology might not.

When it comes to detecting peripheral objects for context, Chu tells me that they can even detect low-contrast objects like wine glasses, which is certainly an impressive feat.

They’re currently looking to raise funds to take their startup to the next level. And given the size and growth of the business analytics market, and the fact that they don’t really have many competitors, I expect that it won’t be too long before we have some more good news to share about Brand Pit.

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  1. Shamefully I couldn’t quite remember where I knew him from when we met again this time. I’m horrible with faces, much to my embarrassment.  ↩

Brand Pit wins Startup Sauna Tokyo, moves on to compete in Finland

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Startup Sauna, a startup accelerator from Finland, held a pitch event here on Tokyo last night. There were a number of familiar faces from the local startup community, including Conyac, Lang–8, Terra Motors, and Locarise. But in the end it was Brand Pit that snatched first prize, with an impressive pitch from Chu Tsz Tat. They now qualify to move on to participate in Slush 2013 in Finland this November. Brand Pit offers brands the ability to see who their fans are. Not to be confused with Brad Pitt (obviously), Brand Pit makes use of image recognition technology to identify brands in pictures shared on social media. What’s perhaps most interesting about this is that it offers brands the ability to see who their fans are, both in terms of demography and geography, and it also lets them see information about their competitors’ fans. The company points out that its solution is one that can bridge even language barriers, because it depends on data obtained from images, as opposed to data obtained from text. I tried to Google ‘Brand Pit’ to find their website. As you might expect, it’s hard. But if you’re lucky, you’ll come across Brand-Pit.com, where you…

brand pit
Brand Pit pitches at Startup Sauna Tokyo

Startup Sauna, a startup accelerator from Finland, held a pitch event here on Tokyo last night. There were a number of familiar faces from the local startup community, including Conyac, Lang–8, Terra Motors, and Locarise. But in the end it was Brand Pit that snatched first prize, with an impressive pitch from Chu Tsz Tat. They now qualify to move on to participate in Slush 2013 in Finland this November.

Brand Pit offers brands the ability to see who their fans are.

Not to be confused with Brad Pitt (obviously), Brand Pit makes use of image recognition technology to identify brands in pictures shared on social media.

What’s perhaps most interesting about this is that it offers brands the ability to see who their fans are, both in terms of demography and geography, and it also lets them see information about their competitors’ fans.

The company points out that its solution is one that can bridge even language barriers, because it depends on data obtained from images, as opposed to data obtained from text.

I tried to Google ‘Brand Pit’ to find their website. As you might expect, it’s hard. But if you’re lucky, you’ll come across Brand-Pit.com, where you can read more details about the company. But no matter what the name is, this looks like a pretty clever technology, and it will be interesting to see how they fare in Finland.

Other standout startups

Capy
Masa Morishita of Capy

In addition to the aforementioned companies, there were many other notable startups participating as well. We saw Capy kick off the pitch session with Masa Morishita explaining his text-free, mobile friendly Captcha solution that readers may recall from our previous feature.

There was also social home design startup Suvaco, founded by former investment banker Takemasa Kuroki and his partner Hisashi Nakata.

Perhaps the brightest idea of the evening was NetLED, a cloud-controlled LED light solution that promises better lighting control and optimization that could bring savings of up to 80% or 90% on what we have today. It was pitched by Sherwin Faden.

There was also Pigmal, a hardware solution that itself looks to be nothing more that a few big buttons, but when integrated with smart devices they could be a game controller, or even something as simple as a buzzer at a company’s reception desk. Based out of the Samurai Incubate accelerator, they have already crowdsourced funds on CerevoDash for their first production run.

The last startup to present on the night was Mystar Japan, with its health advice service Up Health. Pitched by Satoshi Taniguchi, this solution proposes to analyze your Tweets and send you the appropriate advice to help you stay healthy.

Overall it was a really fun event, and it’s great to see organizations like Startup Sauna make an effort to come all this way to learn about Japan’s startup community. It certainly doesn’t hurt as well that Finnair got behind the initiative as a sponsor, and we thought we’d throw them a shout out for their support too.

Sébastien Béal, co-founder and CEO of Locarise
Sébastien Béal, co-founder and CEO of Locarise
Terra Motors
Terra Motors
Satoshi Taniguchi, Mystar Japan
Satoshi Taniguchi, Mystar Japan
Peter Vesterbacka of Rovio and Taizo Son of Movida Japan/Gung Ho congratulate Brand Pit
Peter Vesterbacka of Rovio and Taizo Son of Movida Japan/Gung Ho congratulate Brand Pit