THE BRIDGE

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The challenge of innovating the education industry [Panel]

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This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. At the New Economy Summit in Tokyo this afternoon, we had a chance to hear a panel on technology innovation in the area of education. Three speakers participated, moderated by Swimmy Minami of Bizreach: Youngme Moon, the dean of Harvard Business School’s MBA program Dennis Yang, president and CEO COO of Udemy [1] Jun Murai, dean/professor, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University Youngme opened by discussing what pointing out that most areas in our lives have been vastly changed by technology, but yet education remains relatively the same. If you compare learning years ago, and learning today, it continues to be very tedious and very uninspiring. When it comes to education, the audience is essentially captive and the teacher has little incentive to be very engaging. It is remarkably easy to get away with being a boring teacher. You just need to be an information delivery system […] and the student’s their job to absorb it. Does the system work? Sort of. But it is deeply flawed. ¶ She points to the example…

new-economy-summit-featured

This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.

At the New Economy Summit in Tokyo this afternoon, we had a chance to hear a panel on technology innovation in the area of education. Three speakers participated, moderated by Swimmy Minami of Bizreach:

  • Youngme Moon, the dean of Harvard Business School’s MBA program
  • Dennis Yang, president and CEO COO of Udemy [1]
  • Jun Murai, dean/professor, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University

Youngme opened by discussing what pointing out that most areas in our lives have been vastly changed by technology, but yet education remains relatively the same.

If you compare learning years ago, and learning today, it continues to be very tedious and very uninspiring. When it comes to education, the audience is essentially captive and the teacher has little incentive to be very engaging. It is remarkably easy to get away with being a boring teacher. You just need to be an information delivery system […] and the student’s their job to absorb it. Does the system work? Sort of. But it is deeply flawed.

Youngme Moon,
Youngme Moon,

She points to the example of MIT’s electrical circuits course, which is free online. Last year 150,000 signed up, and a year later only 5% remained. That dropout rate for online courses is typical, she said. Most of them are simple imformation delivery systems, very much like what we have offline. And for that reason, they aren’t very innovative at all. But yet she is optimistic.

These courses which are the exception to the rule are somehow managing to figure out how to make education more engaging and more immersive than ever. So I believe the real breakthough in online learning is yet to come.

Dennis Yang gave a brief introduction to his Udemy service, pointing out that in addition to delivering education to students, there is also the capability to enable more potential teachers, as opposed to just existing teachers:

At Udemy we believe that there are great teachers outside the walls of academic institutions. It could be a boss, a mentor, or a coach, and we’d like to give them a platform to teach students all around the world. I think most people identify with themselves as a student, but I encourage people to try to think of themselves as a potential teacher.

Dennis Yang
Dennis Yang

Dennis admitted that while many of the courses on Udemy skew heavily towards technological skills, that’s a reflection of the interests of the early adopters. But the platform has many new niche topics that they didn’t expect to see, such as how to pass the written exam for being a fire fighter. He says that he expects online education to continue to broaden in this way.

Jun Mirai added that there was an opportunity to make classes fit better through the use of the internet:

We all know about MOOCs these days. But one characteristic of the internet is personalization. So a matching mechanism could be [an interesting development in this space].

Jun Murai
Jun Murai

He also discussed the possibility of using online courses as a supplement to offline classes, noting that he is actually doing this at Keio University in his own class:

[For certain information] I tell my students, go check out the MOOC. I’m going to talk about different things in class. I think in this way I can then use the classroom in a more exciting way.


  1. I initially, and mistakenly, had Dennis as the president and CEO of Udemy. That’s incorrect of course, as he is the president and COO. Thanks to one of our readers for pointing this out!  ↩

Sensei Note: Japan’s new social network for teachers

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See the original article in Japanese Sensei Note, a new social network service for teachers, has officially launched in Japan. The service was originally started as an online market place for teaching materials, but it has since evolved into a closed social service for teachers. Its users are restricted to just teachers or to people who want to be a teacher. Sensei Note took over a year to launch its official website. We heard from CEO and co-founder Haruki Asatani about what took so long. I’ve visited teachers throughout Japan to speak with them face-to-face. I sometimes even stayed at their homes. I wanted to have a deep understanding about their needs, and even things not really related to their work. In the end, I realized that the problems they face cannot always be solved by sharing file-based content. And I became convinced that a community where teachers gather and share their knowledge is much more valuable than just a content sharing platform. The most common image of knowledge sharing in a teacher community is that it’s passed down by experienced teachers to new ones through word of mouth. But on Sensei Note, it is also possible for young teachers…

sensei-note_featuredimage

See the original article in Japanese

Sensei Note, a new social network service for teachers, has officially launched in Japan. The service was originally started as an online market place for teaching materials, but it has since evolved into a closed social service for teachers. Its users are restricted to just teachers or to people who want to be a teacher.

Sensei Note took over a year to launch its official website. We heard from CEO and co-founder Haruki Asatani about what took so long.

haruki-asatani
Haruki Asatani

I’ve visited teachers throughout Japan to speak with them face-to-face. I sometimes even stayed at their homes. I wanted to have a deep understanding about their needs, and even things not really related to their work.

In the end, I realized that the problems they face cannot always be solved by sharing file-based content. And I became convinced that a community where teachers gather and share their knowledge is much more valuable than just a content sharing platform.

The most common image of knowledge sharing in a teacher community is that it’s passed down by experienced teachers to new ones through word of mouth. But on Sensei Note, it is also possible for young teachers to share their knowledge with experienced ones. The relationship among users is very horizontal.

The service could potentially have a viral effect, if teachers recommend it to other their peers when gathered in a school’s teacher lounge for example.

bulletinboard
Sensei Note bulletin board

Monetizing a community

Asatani is passionate about improving the educational environment. His previous work experience at Bennese Corporation (a Japanese educational service company) and his own personal experiences have resulted in a strong interest in educational issues. He believes it is essential to build a teacher community first, and the revenue can come later. But the most important thing is to initially create solid and thriving community.

We are trying to tie up with local NPOs, many of whom have contacts with local teachers. So when we explain the concept of Sensei Note to NPOs, they happily refer teachers to us. We also approached universities so that aspiring teacher can use our platform as well. 130 universities are telling their students about Sensei Note. The service is free, so they have no reason not to recommend it to students.

If the service is free, then how do they plan to monetize it? Asatani has an idea.

There are actually many companies that want to approach teachers, students, and their parents, many of them offering information services or selling educational materials. Most of them operate through agencies, and have no channel to directly approach teachers. But Sensei Note could them reach teachers directly by letting them provide educational content on site.

For example, one company provides videos on career development for students on Sensei Note. One such video has been watched by 400 students by teachers. The content itself is free, but companies can benefit by gaining more recognition among teachers and students.

Sensei Note wants to solve other issues faced by schools and teachers, not just using its own marketing budget but also via government funding or corporate social responsibility programs.

Advice from a friend

Asatani first announced Sensei Note a year and a half ago at a Startup Weekend Tokyo event. While I wasn’t at the event myself, I recall hearing that he left Benesse right after winning the event in order to focus on Sensei Note. It struck me at the time that he has remarkable passion for his vision. About a year passed since then his team has been focusing on developing the service without external funding during that time. Nakatani elaborated on his motivation:

After I quit Benesse, I had an opportunity to go for drinks with a friend from my university. He had become a teacher, and he talked about his passion for why he had done so. Many new teachers have concerns, but they all have to manage their classes alone. I felt that I should support them, and that feeling really pushed me to build Sensei Note.

Now that Sensei Note has finally launched, I hope the team can come closer to their vision, and find fundraising opportunities in the near future.

Vocagetty: Helping you remember words with pictures

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I’ve already mentioned a few of the top ideas that came out of Aviary’s recent Photo Hack Day Japan, including ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Before the Filter’. But one of the other projects really resonated with me, as I’m a big user of flash card apps for language learning. Vocagetty was a clever sort of dictionary app proposed by the team of Atsushi Onoda, Hiroshi Kanamura, Shinichi Segawa, Yasushi Takemoto. It makes use of the Getty Images API to pull in pictures associated with the vocabulary you’re studying, and the Imagga API to generate smart crops of those pictures. The idea here is that the pictures will reinforce the word or idea, making for more a effective learning process. Overall Vocagetty impressed at the hackathon [1], taking third place and walking away with 100,000 yen (about $1000). I’m told by Atsushi Onoda that the group will continue to develop Vocagetty, with plans for an upcoming release in April. There are lots of similar learning services and apps already on the market. But it’s an interesting space because companies can choose to be either an all purpose study solution that can be used for any subject (see Anki or Memrise…

vocagetty

I’ve already mentioned a few of the top ideas that came out of Aviary’s recent Photo Hack Day Japan, including ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Before the Filter’. But one of the other projects really resonated with me, as I’m a big user of flash card apps for language learning. Vocagetty was a clever sort of dictionary app proposed by the team of Atsushi Onoda, Hiroshi Kanamura, Shinichi Segawa, Yasushi Takemoto. It makes use of the Getty Images API to pull in pictures associated with the vocabulary you’re studying, and the Imagga API to generate smart crops of those pictures.

The idea here is that the pictures will reinforce the word or idea, making for more a effective learning process. Overall Vocagetty impressed at the hackathon [1], taking third place and walking away with 100,000 yen (about $1000). I’m told by Atsushi Onoda that the group will continue to develop Vocagetty, with plans for an upcoming release in April.

There are lots of similar learning services and apps already on the market. But it’s an interesting space because companies can choose to be either an all purpose study solution that can be used for any subject (see Anki or Memrise for example), or they can target a niche like Japanese language, medical terms, or the periodic table.

I was glad to see Vocagetty incorporate an image solution, because it was a good example of how a flash card or word study service can supplement text-based information.

On a related note, I’ve recently revisited the aforementioned Anki (after a long time away from it) because I wanted to test out its support for automated audio, which can accompany vocabulary by installing one of many add-ons [2]. While many services have a audio for pre-made flash card decks, this capability to bring audio to cards you add yourself is incredibly helpful.

But I think that the one process that many companies in this space overlook is the process of creating cards from vocabulary you find in your travels on the web. This kind of word or sentence mining is a process that I have get to see really well implemented in any flash card system [3]. Ideally it would take the form of a JavaScript bookmarklet (or bookmarklets) for mobile and PC browsers, which you could then use to add new words on the fly as you learn.

It will be interesting to see in what direction Vocagetty takes its service, so stay tuned for more about them later this spring. We’d like to feature comparable services soon as well, so stay tuned.

vocagetty


  1. I should disclose here that I volunteered to act as one of the judges for this competition, as a way to lend some support for a fun community event.  ↩

  2. The one that I added was AwesomeTTS.  ↩

  3. Except maybe the rather crude but cool Surusu, a SRS project from the guy over at AJATT.  ↩

School in your pocket: Japanese startup launches iPhone app for live lecture participation

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See the original article in Japanese Schoo is a Japan-based startup that operates an online learning platform called schoo WEB-campus. The startup recently launched a handy iOS app with which users can view live broadcasted lectures on their smartphones. It’s called ‘Schoo Namahoso’, meaning ‘Schoo Live’. The app aims to provide mobile users with the same experience they can get on the website. With the app, user can check the course schedule and participate anytime and from anywhere. Upon the release of this new app, we spoke to Kenshiro Mori, the representative director of Schoo, as well as their designer Yusuke Yagi. The growing market for mobile video According to Mori, there are three main reasons why they decided to release the app at this time. The first reason and perhaps most obvious one is that more and more people watch videos on the smartphones these days. The market for both smartphones and videos are fast-growing areas, as you can see with Hulu, Youtube, or Niconico, video consumption on smartphones isincreasing. Schoo, as a online school service that uses video, needs to catch up with that trend. Until the app was released, the website was the only way to watch…

See the original article in Japanese

schoo ios

Schoo is a Japan-based startup that operates an online learning platform called schoo WEB-campus. The startup recently launched a handy iOS app with which users can view live broadcasted lectures on their smartphones. It’s called ‘Schoo Namahoso’, meaning ‘Schoo Live’.

The app aims to provide mobile users with the same experience they can get on the website. With the app, user can check the course schedule and participate anytime and from anywhere.

Upon the release of this new app, we spoke to Kenshiro Mori, the representative director of Schoo, as well as their designer Yusuke Yagi.

左:森氏 右:八木氏

The growing market for mobile video

According to Mori, there are three main reasons why they decided to release the app at this time. The first reason and perhaps most obvious one is that more and more people watch videos on the smartphones these days.

The market for both smartphones and videos are fast-growing areas, as you can see with Hulu, Youtube, or Niconico, video consumption on smartphones isincreasing. Schoo, as a online school service that uses video, needs to catch up with that trend.

Until the app was released, the website was the only way to watch live broadcasts. But when the team looked at feedback from users, they found out some commuters even went so far as to get off the train on their way back home so that they could open their laptops and watch live broadcasts. There were also comments on social media where from people who had missed the live broadcasts because they couldn’t make it in time.

So Mori thought making Schoo more easily accessible even during these small pockets of time would make a big difference.

Schoo’s vision is to build a society where people can always keep learning. The app is essential to achieving that vision, Mori says.

We’d like to build a society where learning is something people always do easily, able to attend school anytime. Make ’school’ portable is an important step in this process.

Releasing this app was an idea we had talked about for a long time. And now that the market is mature, we thought it was the right time for this app.

Driving participation on mobile

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One of the main features of Schoo is that the users can actively participate in courses and actively interact with lecturers.

Even before the app was released, access from mobile browsers was possible. But the user experience was not as same as that on the website. Designer Yagi explains:

There was traffic from mobile browsers. But the rate of user participation was low. Users could watch content from browsers, but it was difficult to participate in the course. The app tries to resolve this problem.

Yagi says that because they’re working with video content, it was critical to ensure good sound quality. He had to make sure that sound never gets interrupted. There were a few challenges to overcome such as dealing with line speed and image resolution to achieve a more comfortable user experience.

screen_iphone_classscreen_iphone_women

I thought perhaps it would be a bigger challenge for Schoo to keep users’ attention on mobile compared to on the website. But Mori had some thoughts on that:

We thought, if we want to keep users’ attention on a video for a long time, we need to drive interaction. And we put in much efforts to realize that on smartphones. Users are more likely to feel reluctant to participate in the chat from an iPhone. So instead, we implemented things like an “I got it!” button and “I am seated” button, things that are very easy to use.

In addition to the features mentioned above, other interesting additions to the app include:

  • "I want to attend this” button, with which users can register and manage courses they have an interest in.
  • Push notification to notify users before the course starts.
  • Notifications for users of newly added courses (more than 40 courses are added every month)

As for an Android version, they will consider having their engineers work on that. Also, Mori thinks that video content is especially compatible with tablet devices, and so he is planning to build a team to work on serving tablet users, adding that he’d like to develop “a special user experience on tablets, something different from smartphones.

Schoo will continue its challenge through experiments and improvements in 2014, with the aim of achieving membership of one million by the end of this year.

schoo ui

Popular Japanese code learning platform ‘Dotinstall’ launches premium service

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See the original article in Japanese If you regularly read The Bridge, it’s not unlikely that you might be a programmer or have at least some peripheral interest in coding. You may have also heard of the Japanese website Dotinstall, where you can find many resources to help you learn to code. This service was launched by the well-known blogger, Gen Taguchi (@taguchi), who runs popular weblogs like 100SHIKI and IDEA*IDEA. Dotinstall offers short three-minute tutorial videos for beginners. The service is very popular, surpassing 100,000 members in October of 2013. Now two years since its initial launch, Dotinstall recently announced it that it will add a premium service as part of its monetization. This premium service allows users to read the text captions of videos and also to read and search through related source code. The differences between this and the regular service is described in the following table. The premium service comes with many benefits, such as the ability to overview contents without watching the entire video, or skip forward to key points. The monthly fee for the new service is 880 yen (about $9), which is lower than many similar services from overseas. We have previously reported…

dotinstall

See the original article in Japanese

If you regularly read The Bridge, it’s not unlikely that you might be a programmer or have at least some peripheral interest in coding. You may have also heard of the Japanese website Dotinstall, where you can find many resources to help you learn to code. This service was launched by the well-known blogger, Gen Taguchi (@taguchi), who runs popular weblogs like 100SHIKI and IDEA*IDEA.

Dotinstall offers short three-minute tutorial videos for beginners. The service is very popular, surpassing 100,000 members in October of 2013.

Now two years since its initial launch, Dotinstall recently announced it that it will add a premium service as part of its monetization. This premium service allows users to read the text captions of videos and also to read and search through related source code. The differences between this and the regular service is described in the following table.

new-table-no-errors

The premium service comes with many benefits, such as the ability to overview contents without watching the entire video, or skip forward to key points. The monthly fee for the new service is 880 yen (about $9), which is lower than many similar services from overseas.

We have previously reported (on our Japanese site) about a high school that provides programming classes. In Japan, as with everywhere else, coding can be a great asset to just about anyone.

If Dotinstall succeeds in the monetizing its premium service, it will be possible to add even more educational content. I am sure this will be a welcome service to aspiring programmers in this country.

Japanese startup Smart Education begins global expansion with a new app

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See the original article in Japanese Education for kids is one of the hottest trends in Silicon Valley. Yet, there is no clear leading player in the global market. The situation is similar in Japan. But one standout app publisher is Smart Education, an educational smartphone app developer that creates applications for kids. The company reached the impressive milestone of five million downloads on 17th November. After hitting 4.5 million downloads back on October 8th, they added half a million more in the next month as part of a rapid growth spurt. It took the company two years total to hit five million downloads since the its first app Rhythm Book was released in 2011. The next step for Smart Education is expansion to overseas markets. To that end they have launched a new app series called Gocco, with the goal of marketing their services abroad. On November 21st, they launched the first app in the series, Gocco Zoo. The app will be globally available on the App Store, but especially directed at the North American market. To find our more we spoke with Daigo Ikeya, the president of Smart Education, and Kei Otagaki, producer in charge of Gocco. Otagaki…

ZOO01_iPad_E2

See the original article in Japanese

Education for kids is one of the hottest trends in Silicon Valley. Yet, there is no clear leading player in the global market. The situation is similar in Japan. But one standout app publisher is Smart Education, an educational smartphone app developer that creates applications for kids. The company reached the impressive milestone of five million downloads on 17th November.

After hitting 4.5 million downloads back on October 8th, they added half a million more in the next month as part of a rapid growth spurt. It took the company two years total to hit five million downloads since the its first app Rhythm Book was released in 2011.

130605_smarteducation_184x138

The next step for Smart Education is expansion to overseas markets. To that end they have launched a new app series called Gocco, with the goal of marketing their services abroad. On November 21st, they launched the first app in the series, Gocco Zoo. The app will be globally available on the App Store, but especially directed at the North American market.

To find our more we spoke with Daigo Ikeya, the president of Smart Education, and Kei Otagaki, producer in charge of Gocco. Otagaki previously worked at DeNA, and since 2011, he has been working as a producer and game design advisor at several overseas offices. In May of 2013, he joined Smart Education.

When Otagaki worked in San Francisco, he often visited the home of his coworkers, many of whom have kids. That experience made him start thinking about developing something for kids. Otagaki explained:

I was playing with the idea of developing apps for kids and considered different choices. But I decided to focus on developing something fast. I knew Ikeya and spoke with him about my idea. I realized that I could make what I want as part of Smart Education, so I decided to join the team.

Ikeya talked about that difference between the overseas and Japanese markets:

We hold the lion’s share of educational apps for kids in Japan, but the share by Japanese companies in the global market is only around 5%. We are just number one among this 5%. There are bigger players in the global market. […] We’ve been watching Swedish company, Toca Boca, who recently hit 50 million downloads. Their monthly sales is about 150 million to 200 million yen, about 10 times more than us. The difference of the market size reflects this gap. But this area has not been monopolized yet, and there’s still room to improve contents. We still have so much room to grow. In the Japanese market, we plan to provide a service with high-quality apps and a monthly subscription, building partnerships with powerful content-providers like NHK.

In order to expand globally, they need a competitive product, which they hope Gocco can be. Ootagaki says:

I’ve opened studios at different locations all over the world when I worked at DeNA. At the time, I realized that Japanese craftsmanship and attention to details is really high, and I thought it could be a competitive advantage globally. We’d like to present that through Gocco.

So why did they name the app Gocco? Ootagaki explained:

We had many name ideas, but in the end we decided to name it “Gocco“ after “Gocco-asobi”, meaning ”role-playing" in Japanese. We wanted something that sounds good and stays in people’s mind. When I got positive feedback from my friends in San Francisco, we decided on the name. We have already applied for the trademark in the US.

Their first app “Gocco Zoo” is a zoo- themed drawing app. Kids first select an animal which they can feed in the Care Room, after which the animal will change color. Kids can color the animal whatever color they want, and move to the next room and to color more animals.

ZOO02_iPad_E

Kids can also take picture of the drawing they made. While there is no function to share on social media, pictures can be saved on the device so that kids or parents can show friends.

He wanted to make the app totally text free, adding:

I put a high importance on UI from the beginning. I carefully considered how kids can navigate the app without confusing them. During this process, I let kids play with the app and observed where they had issues. This really helped me improve the app.

He notes that once a kid-friendly interface is finalized, it doesn’t require much adaptation for overseas markets.

It’s a freemium app, and users can pay for additional animals or drawing tools. In order to keep kids from accidentally buy them, they made the payment process a little complicated, requiring the user has to push the purchase button for more than 3 seconds to process the order. Otagaki says:

ZOO03_iPad_E

With iOS7, a kids category was added to the app store, and we applied in that category. Apple is currently improving this category, with specific points in their screening process, such as enforcing a clear statement on charging and privacy policies. We have cleared those conditions.

Smart Education has developed another app called Gocco Doodle, another drawing app. Pictures can be published on the internet for other kids to see, sort of like a kindergarten pin board.

Smart Education is planning to release Gocco for other subjects and themes like doctor or fireman. Ootagaki said:

We’d like to provide kids with virtual experiences in real society though playing with the app and expressing themselves creatively.

rakugaKIDS_1

They will focus on marketing Gocco in English-speaking countries, first seeing how customers in the US respond. They think that Gocco Zoo could have as many as a half million downloads monthly. Ikeya thinks this figure can even go higher, adding:

When we first released Rhythm Book in Japan, the number of downloads was higher than expected. If we continue to add new apps and make a synergistic effect, that number can go much higher. In Japan, we could increase the number of download this way without other promotions. Toca Boca uses a similar strategy to increase downloads, I think we can establish a similar eco-system.

If we are able to release new apps at constant pace, like twice a quarter or once a month, we can consider implementing a subscription system. Since Apple doesn’t allow game apps to charge users by subscription at present, we cannot implement such a system. But when Gocco builds a reputation, there may be more possibility of starting a subscription system.

Otagaki says that his plan of implementing a subscription system, which has been successful in Japanese market, is following the model of an online platform like Kodomo Mode, increase awareness and cross promotion among apps.

It will be interesting to see how Smart Education can challenge in this emerging educational app space.

rakugaKIDS_2

Japan’s top education app teaches English with ‘Super Subtitles’

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We’ve written about a number of services in the past that help Japanese people study English. For example, language learning startup Rarejob raised $3.3 million this year to help continue its efforts in providing English lessons over Skype. Choujimaku is a popular English learning software, published by Source Next Corporation in Japan. It helps students learn English by watching movies, referring to English and Japanese subtitles as they go (hence the name, which translates as ‘Super Subtitles’). Back in 2011 the company moved into the app space with its Choujimaku movie app for iOS. And thanks to a new promotional campaign, the app is now number one in the education category in the Japanese App Store. Movies are currently priced at ¥1200 (or about $12), which is a promotional discount from the regular ¥1800. But like much online media in Japan, the movies are still painfully overpriced in my view, even with the added value of bilingual subtitles and the useful dictionary. That’s about the same price as an evening at the cinema, or two months worth of Hulu Plus (which in Japan includes subtitled movies and TV). But nevertheless, it might hit a sweet spot for busy folks who…

choujimaku

We’ve written about a number of services in the past that help Japanese people study English. For example, language learning startup Rarejob raised $3.3 million this year to help continue its efforts in providing English lessons over Skype.

Choujimaku is a popular English learning software, published by Source Next Corporation in Japan. It helps students learn English by watching movies, referring to English and Japanese subtitles as they go (hence the name, which translates as ‘Super Subtitles’). Back in 2011 the company moved into the app space with its Choujimaku movie app for iOS. And thanks to a new promotional campaign, the app is now number one in the education category in the Japanese App Store.

choujimaki

Movies are currently priced at ¥1200 (or about $12), which is a promotional discount from the regular ¥1800. But like much online media in Japan, the movies are still painfully overpriced in my view, even with the added value of bilingual subtitles and the useful dictionary. That’s about the same price as an evening at the cinema, or two months worth of Hulu Plus (which in Japan includes subtitled movies and TV).

But nevertheless, it might hit a sweet spot for busy folks who don’t have time to mess around with organizing their own study through movies. The controls are pretty handy with the ability to toggle either language off or on. There’s also a dictionary function that lets users dig deeper and find out the meaning of individual words.

If you’d like to check it out, you can pick it up over on the App Store as a free download. There’s a sample movie if you’d like to try it out before moving on to the 200+ in-app movie purchases available.

Japanese skills marketplace Coconala fundraises $1.5 million

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See the original story in Japanese Coconala is a website where you can buy and sell knowledge, skills and, experience from users who are willing to teach. Tokyo-based Welself, the startup behind the service, announced today that it has fundraised 150 million yen ($1.5 million) from Nissay Capital, Opt, Adways, and Tetsuro Yoshimatsu, the CEO of Japanese cosmetic site iStyle. Coconala was originally launched back in July of 2012. Users don’t need to pay any sign-up or monthly fee, but they do need to pay a 500 yen ($5) commission for a purchase. To date the startup has acquired 63,000 users, 10,400 knowledge ‘items’ for sale (i.e. their expertise or skills), and it has transacted more than 43,000 deals using the marketplace. The startup’s CEO Akiyuki Minami has an interesting background. He began his career at Sumitomo Mitsui Bank, and subsequently conducted five investment projects at an M&A firm. In 2009, he graduated from the business school at Oxford University and then launched his own startup. He has also been involved in some NPOs. Many people want to help others, and Coconala wants to help them do so in their spare time. This community-building concept is the main idea that…

coconala

See the original story in Japanese

Coconala is a website where you can buy and sell knowledge, skills and, experience from users who are willing to teach. Tokyo-based Welself, the startup behind the service, announced today that it has fundraised 150 million yen ($1.5 million) from Nissay Capital, Opt, Adways, and Tetsuro Yoshimatsu, the CEO of Japanese cosmetic site iStyle.

Coconala was originally launched back in July of 2012. Users don’t need to pay any sign-up or monthly fee, but they do need to pay a 500 yen ($5) commission for a purchase. To date the startup has acquired 63,000 users, 10,400 knowledge ‘items’ for sale (i.e. their expertise or skills), and it has transacted more than 43,000 deals using the marketplace.

The startup’s CEO Akiyuki Minami has an interesting background. He began his career at Sumitomo Mitsui Bank, and subsequently conducted five investment projects at an M&A firm. In 2009, he graduated from the business school at Oxford University and then launched his own startup. He has also been involved in some NPOs.

Many people want to help others, and Coconala wants to help them do so in their spare time.

This community-building concept is the main idea that the startup aspires to project. Otherwise users would likely use the platform just for making money, and items would be sold for a conventional market price – thus making them far less appealing and affordable. The company branded itself to avoid that scenario, building a platform that provides high quality services by implementing a flat-rate price system.

Sellers recognize that they are helping users who pay to learn their skills or expertise. And for buyers, they can get more benefits than they’ve paid for. These surprises on both ends is what the startup really wants to provide.

welself-coconala

Most startups usually contemplate how they can maximize their value and growth, and Welself is no exception. Through one year of operation, the startup found that there was value enough for users, and they could foresee the potential of further growth. This naturally led them towards this most recent fundraising.

With these new funds, the startup will bolster its engineering team. They will also add a new feature that allows high-profile users to set an optional price for their sale items.

Coconala will also launch apps for a few different platforms, and that will allow users to consult sellers over the phone.

It will be interesting to see how the company will evolve in this unexplored business field, so stay tuned!

Japan-based language learning startup Rarejob raises $3.3M from three VC firms

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Japan’s language learning service Rarejob announced today it has fundraised 330 million yen (approximately $3.3 million) from KDDI Open Innovation Fund, YJ Capital, and CyberAgent [1]. This follows its previous funding of about 20 million yen, which came from Tokyo-based VC firm Global Brain back in April of 2008. Rarejob was launched in 2007, and has been providing conversational English-language learning at affordable rates, doing remote conversation lessons with people in the Philippines over Skype. According to the startup, they have acquired more than 170,000 Japanese users in total. Most of their teachers are attending or have graduated from the University of the Philippines, the highest profile university in the country. With this funding, the startup plans to improve the quality of the service and developing some other new businesses. The startup aspires to develop a platform and more optimized lesson programs, which may motivate its users to learn more foreign languages. KDDI Open Innovation Fund is jointly managed by KDDI and Global Brain. YJ Capital is, of course, the investment arm of Yahoo Japan.  ↩

rarejob_screenshot

Japan’s language learning service Rarejob announced today it has fundraised 330 million yen (approximately $3.3 million) from KDDI Open Innovation Fund, YJ Capital, and CyberAgent [1]. This follows its previous funding of about 20 million yen, which came from Tokyo-based VC firm Global Brain back in April of 2008.

Rarejob was launched in 2007, and has been providing conversational English-language learning at affordable rates, doing remote conversation lessons with people in the Philippines over Skype. According to the startup, they have acquired more than 170,000 Japanese users in total. Most of their teachers are attending or have graduated from the University of the Philippines, the highest profile university in the country.

With this funding, the startup plans to improve the quality of the service and developing some other new businesses. The startup aspires to develop a platform and more optimized lesson programs, which may motivate its users to learn more foreign languages.


  1. KDDI Open Innovation Fund is jointly managed by KDDI and Global Brain. YJ Capital is, of course, the investment arm of Yahoo Japan.  ↩

Japanese child education app developer raises $3.5M in series B funding

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See the original story in Japanese. Japanese startup Smart Education, best known as a developer of educational smartphone apps for kids, announced today that it has raised 75.32 million yen (approximately $748,000) from Shinsei Corporate Investment, the investment arm of Japan’s Shinsei Bank. Prior to this funding, the startup raised 200 million yen (about $2 million) from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and Infinity Venture Partners back in December of 2012, and 75 million yen ($750,000) from Fuji Startup Ventures[1] and CyberAgent Ventures back in April. Thus far, the consolidated amount in its seed B funding is now a total of 350 million yen ($3.5 million). The combination of smart devices and kids education is attracting lots of expectations among investors recently. Smart Education itself has developed nine such apps, which have racked up more than 3.7 million downloads and 800,000 monthly active users. The company points out that almost 50% of all mothers who own smart devices in Japan use these apps. The company’s monetization model is based on selling picture-book or music content via in-app purchasing. For Android users, you can choose a subscription-based membership which charges on a monthly basis. They have already started overseas business expansion, and the…

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese startup Smart Education, best known as a developer of educational smartphone apps for kids, announced today that it has raised 75.32 million yen (approximately $748,000) from Shinsei Corporate Investment, the investment arm of Japan’s Shinsei Bank.

Prior to this funding, the startup raised 200 million yen (about $2 million) from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and Infinity Venture Partners back in December of 2012, and 75 million yen ($750,000) from Fuji Startup Ventures[1] and CyberAgent Ventures back in April. Thus far, the consolidated amount in its seed B funding is now a total of 350 million yen ($3.5 million).

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Kindergarten students using the Smart Education apps.
The startup is testing the apps at many kindergartens using 25 tablet devices.

The combination of smart devices and kids education is attracting lots of expectations among investors recently. Smart Education itself has developed nine such apps, which have racked up more than 3.7 million downloads and 800,000 monthly active users. The company points out that almost 50% of all mothers who own smart devices in Japan use these apps.

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Smart Education’s growth: app downloads (gray), monthly active users (red), and revenue (green).

The company’s monetization model is based on selling picture-book or music content via in-app purchasing. For Android users, you can choose a subscription-based membership which charges on a monthly basis. They have already started overseas business expansion, and the startup’s managing director Yusuke Kusakabe explains their localization efforts in Korea is showing good numbers. As mentioned I recently mentioned, there are few competitors in this space, when you compare it to other app categories.

The startup’s directors include members who previously worked at CA Mobile, the mobile-focused subsidiary of CyberAgent. With this funding, the startup will accelerate its overseas expansions and bring in some new employees to help with that effort.

In addition to developing smart device apps, they are developing something like a platform where knowledge regarding kids education can be shared among users.


  1. Fuji Startup Ventures is the investment arm of Japan’s largest private TV network Fuji Television.  ↩