U-Note CEO Yuto Koide pitches at Infinity Ventures Summit
Last Friday at the Infinity Ventures Summit LaunchPad event, Tokyo-based startup U-Note pitched a web solution for taking notes at public events.
The company’s CEO, Yuto Koide, explained that they want to transfer event memos online. He says that while many people want to attend local events, they can’t possibly make it to every one – either due to time or money constraints. But U-Note provides user accounts of high profile events on its site, a valuable resource to those who cannot make it in person.
In terms of the technology, the interface looks very much like Storify.com, allowing users to drag and drop rich media elements like Tweets, photos, videos, and more, in addition to text content. As for mobile note-taking, they have an Android app already released, and one for iPhone on the way.
U-Note has nine categories of events on site, such as talks from celebrities, or startup events just like this one [1].
So far the platform is seeing good progress, and May saw 250% growth over the previous month, says Koide. As for monetization, they have editorial ads that they sell for 150,000 yen. They want the user to enjoy the contents, so the editorial ads aspire to be more interesting so that users are more receptive to them.
The content business is a tough one, but U-Note’s tool is certainly useful, capitalizing on Japan’s love of creating ‘matome’ or list posts. And assuming that people use it frequently enough. The U-Note page could prove a useful destination for event coverage.
U-Note publishing interface
In fact, someone on U-Note actually put together a roundup of the startups competing at the LaunchPad event. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. Below is a condensed, translated version. For startups in their launching phase, sometimes the founders may have interpersonal issues, and the team may fall apart as a result. In order to find some insight from some of Japan’s more successful companies, we recently heard from the executives of three Japanese internet giants, giving us a behind-the-scenes look at their management systems. The panel, which took place at last week’s Infinity Ventures Summit, included: Yoshikazu Tanaka, CEO at GREE Kotaro Yamagishi, executive vice president at GREE Yusuke Hidaka, vice president at CyberAgent Tetesuhito Soyama, managing director at CyberAgent Yasuhiro Hagino, managing director at Mixi Yuichi Kawasaki, executive officer at Mixi Moderator: Etsuko Okajima, CEO at Pronova Most executives at GREE have been working together for a long time. Yoshikazu Tanaka, the company’s CEO explains: GREE’s Tanaka: At some companies, growth heavily relies on the founder’s effort. I previously worked at Rakuten where I saw how Hiroshi Mikitani managed the company, I sometimes wanted to work in a way that followed his management style. From my perspective, mobility of personnel is not essential as long as the company keeps growing. But for a startup founder, if…
For startups in their launching phase, sometimes the founders may have interpersonal issues, and the team may fall apart as a result. In order to find some insight from some of Japan’s more successful companies, we recently heard from the executives of three Japanese internet giants, giving us a behind-the-scenes look at their management systems. The panel, which took place at last week’s Infinity Ventures Summit, included:
Most executives at GREE have been working together for a long time. Yoshikazu Tanaka, the company’s CEO explains:
GREE’s Tanaka: At some companies, growth heavily relies on the founder’s effort. I previously worked at Rakuten where I saw how Hiroshi Mikitani managed the company, I sometimes wanted to work in a way that followed his management style. From my perspective, mobility of personnel is not essential as long as the company keeps growing. But for a startup founder, if you still keep a large stake in your company, your management board does not work anymore – because all the other board members do is just follow your judgment.
To avoid this particular issue, GREE is working on adding external people to its board of directors.
GREE’s Yamagishi: Our business has been rapidly expanding in the last few years, we actually have many issues to address in our management process. Recently we invited someone new to our board of directors, and asked him to provide some general business advice. He’s 65 years old but has been working in the global manufacturing business.
CEO Tanaka described the external director as a sort of mirror, since he can restrain himself based on things that person points out. When asked by the moderator about a possible change of board members, Tanaka responded he would add more people as the company becomes larger.
In a contrast with GREE, CyberAgent takes a different approach to deliver a improved and efficient management. The system is called CA8, and changes the board members every two years. This was deployed to eliminate employees’ anxiety that they might have no chance to join the board of directors in the future.
CyberAgent’s Hidaka: Our CEO Fujita has alone decided everything about the CA8 system. He said we would create the rules of personnel management and employee welfare from the scratch. If a rule works appropriately, we’ll keep using it in the company. To be honest, the system has some negative effects, but the positive aspects surpass the negative one.
A person from the audience asked if the company has any intention to invite a non-employee to become an executive at a future subsidiary. In response, Hidaka explained:
CyberAgent’s Hidaka: For an entrepreneur running a startup, if you can understand our corporate culture, we can acquire your startup and invite you to our team, which will work well. We haven’t yet done this because we haven’t found such a high-potential talent or startup. We are used to growing a business with our own employees rather than acquiring new business from outside the company. This trend will continue.
Perhaps by this he means that the company requires no drastic changes as long as its business keeps growing.
Mixi’s Ogino: Unlike the other two companies, our growth is in a crucial stage right now. In this situation, some of our employees started to stand in the way of their most competitive colleagues. That is unfortunate. In the beginning of 2010, my previous company was acquired and I joined the team. At that time our people were always following what their boss said, and they had no interest in competing with other internet companies or aiming for the top in the global markets.
In the crucial moments for management or executives, unless you change your mind significantly, your people are likely to see that you are not seriously determined to make things happen. But I learned the entire company may change if a small number of people change their mind.
Mixi acquired Naked Technology back in 2011, and Kamado in 2012. Those startups’ co-founders Yusuke Asakura and Yuichi Kawasaki joined Mixi, and now its board is filled with experienced entrepreneurs.
See the original story in Japanese. The anime business consists of many fundamental tasks, such as rough drawing, storyboard writing, and painting. Even for digitalized anime productions, these tasks still exist. It’s not the most efficient process, and can result in a harsh work environment for many who are employed in the industry. But now there’s a startup that may change all that. It’s called Mugenup. In our recent interview with its CEO Ryota Ichioka, he told us the company has acquired several thousands of crowdsourced workers, and with rapid growth thus far, it could hit 20,000 by the end of this year. The emergence of vertical crowdsourcing sites Japan’s crowdsourcing market is pretty hot right now. Crowdworks is showing good numbers, and Lancers recently completed a big funding round. We asked Ichioka to share some figures on their business, and while he couldn’t go into specifics, he says they are generating revenue in the tens of thousands of dollars every month. This is despite the fact that the startup is less than one year old. In contrast with general-purposed crowdsourcing sites like Crowdworks or Lancers, Mugenup is far more niche with its focus on anime. It functions as an…
The anime business consists of many fundamental tasks, such as rough drawing, storyboard writing, and painting. Even for digitalized anime productions, these tasks still exist. It’s not the most efficient process, and can result in a harsh work environment for many who are employed in the industry. But now there’s a startup that may change all that. It’s called Mugenup.
In our recent interview with its CEO Ryota Ichioka, he told us the company has acquired several thousands of crowdsourced workers, and with rapid growth thus far, it could hit 20,000 by the end of this year.
The emergence of vertical crowdsourcing sites
Japan’s crowdsourcing market is pretty hot right now. Crowdworks is showing good numbers, and Lancers recently completed a big funding round. We asked Ichioka to share some figures on their business, and while he couldn’t go into specifics, he says they are generating revenue in the tens of thousands of dollars every month. This is despite the fact that the startup is less than one year old.
Some artwork on the Mugenup website
In contrast with general-purposed crowdsourcing sites like Crowdworks or Lancers, Mugenup is far more niche with its focus on anime. It functions as an intermediary between clients and crowdsourced workers, helping both parties match up with the other much easier than they could before.
Until March of 2012, the startup was developing social gaming apps. But unfortunately that plan didn’t work so well. So they shifted their target client slightly to focus more on mobile game developers.
Most of the projects they’ve dealt with have been single-picture illustrations, but it’s gradually changing to character designs or 2D drawings for Unity, a gaming app integration environment for smartphone.
Things are tough for mobile game studios recently, and most would like to avoid to increase their amount of full-time workers, which means they have to rely on freelance animators or outsourced illustrators. But while most gaming studios typically have in-house programmers, they usually have just a few animators or artists. Ichioka adds:
In addition to individual workers, about 50 studios are registered on our service to receive crowdsourced orders from us, they typically create content for pachinko machines or animated films, but they usually work on our crowdsourced projects during their downtime. In terms of making the most of that downtime, our business model is sort of similar to Raksul, a discount printing startup that makes use of printing factories during their downtime.
Mugenup is a 30-person team for now, and about 20 of those are professional art directors, all comfortable providing directions to crowdsourced animators or illustrators.
For many crowdsourcing sites, what’s the most important is how to create an environment where clients and crowdsourced workers can efficiently work on projects together. At Mugenup, directors use a chat system to communicate with crowdsourced workers, monitor the production process, and give workers revision requests if needed. Surprisingly, production management processes are standardized and workers’ skill sets are well managed.
Their retention rate for such crowdsourced workers is as much as 60%, which indicates they are highly motivated. Mugenup plans extend its business beyond Japan and to start receiving orders from publishing companies or cartoonists later on.
Some project tasks are difficult to split among different crowdsourced workers. Such tasks include rough sketches or storyboard writing, which are typically an important step to determine the overall character design. To get past this obstacle, the startup asks clients to pick their favorite crowdsourced animators before placing an order, one who fits their taste exactly.
Mugenup has each client fill out a checklist, recording why they have chosen a certain animator. This process helps when placing future orders, because if a client complains that an outcome is not what they expected, they are asked to update form to give better results that can more accurately fit their preference. This process takes some time, but it definitely helps business proceed more efficiently overall. Ichioka further adds:
We believe possible to make our business more scalable, and we’ll be extending our offerings to include three-dimensional or characters in motion as well. […] In this internet era, we are aspiring to build up a new business that leverages fine Japanese craftsmanship.
He hopes that his company can go public in a few years. And given his success so far, it will certainly be a company to watch in the future.
Mugenup was launched in June of 2011, received a seed funding from Incubate Fund in December of 2011, subsequently fundraised 100 million yen (approximately $1 milllion) from Nissay Capital.
This is part of our cute Japanese apps series (RSS), examining a trend of ‘kawaii‘ success stories emerging from Japan’s mobile space. About a month ago we wrote about StickerMe, a fun iPhone app from Japan that lets you create stickers for use in your mobile chats. As you surely know by now, stickers are big business in the Asian mobile space in particular, with companies like Line leading the way, and even international giants like Path and Facebook have followed. StickerMe, developed by Tokyo-based development studio Motion Portrait, has capitalized on the widespread public interest in stickers, achieving great success in the Asia region especially since its release. Currently it is the top free iOS app in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao, and number three in Malaysia. It’s doing fairly well in China, where it is ranked third in the entertainment category. Update, May 30: StickerMe has announced that it has passed 1 million downloads. That’s pretty impressive for an app which has just been released for a little over a month. (Motion Portrait via VS Media) The app’s success in the greater China region is especially remarkable because to my knowledge its interface has not yet been localized…
This is part of our cute Japanese apps series (RSS), examining a trend of ‘kawaii‘ success stories emerging from Japan’s mobile space.
About a month ago we wrote about StickerMe, a fun iPhone app from Japan that lets you create stickers for use in your mobile chats. As you surely know by now, stickers are bigbusiness in the Asian mobile space in particular, with companies like Line leading the way, and even international giants like Path and Facebook have followed.
StickerMe, developed by Tokyo-based development studio Motion Portrait, has capitalized on the widespread public interest in stickers, achieving great success in the Asia region especially since its release. Currently it is the top free iOS app in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao, and number three in Malaysia. It’s doing fairly well in China, where it is ranked third in the entertainment category.
Update, May 30: StickerMe has announced that it has passed 1 million downloads. That’s pretty impressive for an app which has just been released for a little over a month. (Motion Portrait via VS Media)
The app’s success in the greater China region is especially remarkable because to my knowledge its interface has not yet been localized for simplified or traditional Chinese.
This is just the latest example of a cute Japanese photo app proving itself to be a successful export. Other notable apps that have achieved similar popularity overseas include Snapeee and Decopic to name just a few.
To learn more about StickerMe, check out our video walk-through of the app below.
Civic startups, or startups that try to achieve some social good, are especially rare in Japan. But at the Infinity Ventures Summit LaunchPad event last week, we saw a pitch from Trapro proposing a sort of Wikipedia for social issues. The startup is an interesting one that plans and organizes tours around important social issues, and helps people interested in those issues to participate in a tour related to that issue. So that could mean a 10-person tour of a local NPO, where each person pays 5000 yen, or about $50. So if an NPO were to conduct such a tour several times a month, it could represent a significant revenue stream for them. The tours will take place on the weekend so as to not interrupt the NPO’s business. Of course the big knock against civic startups is that they don’t often make much money. Trapro hopes to give 70% of the your earnings to the NPO, so there’s still a decent chunk left for them. Whether or not it enough to be sustainable remains to be seen. Founder Toshiki Abe explains: This is something that people have trouble finding out about, so I want to make a system…
Toshiki Abe pitches Trapro
Civic startups, or startups that try to achieve some social good, are especially rare in Japan. But at the Infinity Ventures Summit LaunchPad event last week, we saw a pitch from Trapro proposing a sort of Wikipedia for social issues.
The startup is an interesting one that plans and organizes tours around important social issues, and helps people interested in those issues to participate in a tour related to that issue. So that could mean a 10-person tour of a local NPO, where each person pays 5000 yen, or about $50. So if an NPO were to conduct such a tour several times a month, it could represent a significant revenue stream for them. The tours will take place on the weekend so as to not interrupt the NPO’s business.
Of course the big knock against civic startups is that they don’t often make much money. Trapro hopes to give 70% of the your earnings to the NPO, so there’s still a decent chunk left for them. Whether or not it enough to be sustainable remains to be seen. Founder Toshiki Abe explains:
This is something that people have trouble finding out about, so I want to make a system that makes it easier. There are some things you can’t understand unless you go in person. When you come back from a trip, you can write your impressions and add photos, thus raising awareness of that issue. ¶
So far Trapro has had over 60 such social issue tours with more than 2000 participants. They hope to involve public schools as well. Currently Tokyo University students can earn credit by planning these trips. The startup plans to have people go on issue-related tours around the world and have fun learning about them.
Trapro tied for fifth place at the LaunchPad pitch event, but it was one of my favorites as founder Toshiki Abe gave an enthusiastic and convincing pitch. We’ve often spoke about how difficult it is to be an entrepreneur in risk-averse Japan, and I think it requires an extra large pair to do a idealistic, socially-minded startup like this one. I sincerely hope it does well.
Japanese startup Plusadd has released an iPhone version of its popular digital music score platform PiaScore. The iPad version was released back in December of 2010, and has been downloaded over 100,000 times, counting professional musicians and educators among its fans. The digital music score platform aspires to bring music scores to the hands of people all over the world. Both the iPhone and iPad version of PiaScore are provided for free, with features that allows users to view music scores and make notes on them during practice. PiaScore’s ‘Realistic Display Mode’ makes these digital music scores appear as though they are on paper. Plusadd has also developed what they claim is the world’s fastest page rendering features. Classical music scores can be downloaded for free within the app, however, features such as recording, keyboard, and tone tuner costs 250 yen. Another key feature of the app is its Cloud Play which supports Dropbox. With Cloud Play, users can download over 57,000 scores by 7,800 composers directly from International Music Score Library. The CEO of Plus-Add, Hiroyuki Koike, is an ex-Sony engineer. He explained how he came up with the service: I was not a professional musician, but I used…
Japanese startup Plusadd has released an iPhone version of its popular digital music score platform PiaScore. The iPad version was released back in December of 2010, and has been downloaded over 100,000 times, counting professional musicians and educators among its fans.
The digital music score platform aspires to bring music scores to the hands of people all over the world. Both the iPhone and iPad version of PiaScore are provided for free, with features that allows users to view music scores and make notes on them during practice. PiaScore’s ‘Realistic Display Mode’ makes these digital music scores appear as though they are on paper. Plusadd has also developed what they claim is the world’s fastest page rendering features.
Classical music scores can be downloaded for free within the app, however, features such as recording, keyboard, and tone tuner costs 250 yen. Another key feature of the app is its Cloud Play which supports Dropbox. With Cloud Play, users can download over 57,000 scores by 7,800 composers directly from International Music Score Library.
The CEO of Plus-Add, Hiroyuki Koike, is an ex-Sony engineer. He explained how he came up with the service:
I was not a professional musician, but I used to play the piano as a child growing up. During club activities and concerts, I discovered many problems that musicians encounter. One major problem was that it was a lot of work to carrying around and manage music scores. I built PiaScore as a solution to this very problem. ¶
In the near future, PiaScore plans to develop auto page turning features, and logging and managing of music scores. The company is also looking for possible collborative partners such as music education institutions to help realize this new type of communication through music.
PiaScore previously won the Distinguished Honoree award at the International Business Awards in 2011, and was chosen as a finalist at Japan’s prestigious IVS in spring of 2012. If you want to read our reports about IVS 2013, you can find them here.
Rick Martin
Takeshi Hirano
Yukari Mitsuhashi
