Startup Sauna is a startup accelerator from Helsinki Finland, now touring 25 cities around the world, with an upcoming stop here in Tokyo on September 17th at Open Network Lab.
The event will feature a panel including Taizo Son, the CEO of Movida Japan and founder/chairman of GungHo ; Peter Vesterbacka, the chief marketing officer of Rovio ; Hironao Kunimitsu, the founder and CEO of Gumi, and Naoki Aoyagi, the CEO of GREE International. But many of our readers will be pleased to hear that there will be a pitch event as well, with the winner receiving an invitations as well as free airfare (courtesy of the event sponsor Finnair) to attend Slush 2013 in November in Helsinki. That two-day event is expected to host 1,000 startups 5,000 attendees, and more than 600 international investors. So it certainly looks like a great opportunity.
Miki Kuusi, the director of Startup Sauna, noted in the event announcement:
Our two countries [Japan and Finland] have always had a lot in common. We share strong educational institutions that produce leading technical talent, a culture that has yet to warm to neither entrepreneurship nor failure, plus economies that must lessen their dependency on established electronics industries and seize huge opportunities in fast-moving companies.
If you’d like to apply to pitch at the event, you can do so here. The last day to apply is September 13th. Good luck!
Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister of Finland Jyrki Katainen visited Startup Sauna’s entrepreneurial co-working space
Japan has always valued attention to detail, and that spirit has delivered many wonderfully designed products to the world. Here are just a few modern designs from Japan that we’ve stumbled upon recently. These kind of creations really show that Japan’s still got it when it comes to inspired product design. Ori-Crane This is a single earring made in the shape of an origami crane. These cranes have many meanings, such as a wish for a speedy recovery in times of poor health, or simply a wish safety in general. Ori-Crane was designed by Kana Muraki can be purchased for 2,625 yen here. Banboo Bamboo is an important symbol in Japanese ‘Wa’ culture, and is common in many locations around the country including the bamboo forest in Kyoto. This glass brings that breathtaking bamboo right into the palm of your hands. These drinking glasses come in both clear and green, though I think the green makes for a more authentic bamboo look. The set of three is available for 6,300 yen. TOUCH DOG Retriever Here’s a cute tablet pen that takes the shape of a retriever or dachshund. The tiny dog comes in three colors: yellow, pink, and white. The…
Japan has always valued attention to detail, and that spirit has delivered many wonderfully designed products to the world. Here are just a few modern designs from Japan that we’ve stumbled upon recently. These kind of creations really show that Japan’s still got it when it comes to inspired product design.
Ori-Crane
This is a single earring made in the shape of an origami crane. These cranes have many meanings, such as a wish for a speedy recovery in times of poor health, or simply a wish safety in general. Ori-Crane was designed by Kana Muraki can be purchased for 2,625 yen here.
Banboo
Bamboo is an important symbol in Japanese ‘Wa’ culture, and is common in many locations around the country including the bamboo forest in Kyoto. This glass brings that breathtaking bamboo right into the palm of your hands. These drinking glasses come in both clear and green, though I think the green makes for a more authentic bamboo look. The set of three is available for 6,300 yen.
TOUCH DOG Retriever
Here’s a cute tablet pen that takes the shape of a retriever or dachshund. The tiny dog comes in three colors: yellow, pink, and white. The dog’s neck bracelet can be inserted into the an iPhone or iPad earphone jack, letting you bring your dog for a walk wherever you are. The product can be purchased for 1,260 yen over on the Tent Stores.jp shop.
Ashiato Foot-Print Sandals
Kids will love this one. These geta (tradional Japanese footwear normally worn with kimono) makes unusual footprints on sand, imitating the footprints of dogs, cats, or even dinosaurs. They are available over on AplusRstore for about $32.
Photo via. AplusRstore
Tabisuru Sekken
This next item looks like yummy caramels, but it is actually mini-soap that you can bring when you travel. These lavender scented soap cubes will make for a cute gift too. Tabisuru Sekken (meaning ‘traveling soap’) can be purchased for 1,050 yen plus shipping over on Rakuten.
Book on Book
Don’t you hate it when a book doesn’t stay open, and you have to keep folding it backwards? This problem can be solved by this neat ‘Book on Book’ transparent paperweight that keeps your page open at all times. Designed by Tent, this item can be purchased over on Stores.jp for 5,880 yen. Overseas users can buy the product here.
Keora Keora Smartphone Case
This fluffy smartphone cover, makes it look like you’re carrying a cute stuffed animal. The case comes in both dog and cat forms, satisfying both dog and cat people! it’s available for 3,000 yen over on Maindish.
Hiracle
When soy sauce is poured into this soy sauce dish, a beautiful sakura flower appears. The size of the flower depends on the amount you pour in, but whether it’s a little or a lot it looks great. This famous porcelain craftsmanship is called Kutaniyaki, and it has a 350-year history. Hiracle is available on Rakuten shop for 1,500 yen each.
Cable Reel
This earphone cable reel takes form of traditional Japanese sweets ‘Taiyaki’ and ‘Dorayaki’. They both have sweetened mashed red beans inside and are popular with Japanese people young and old. Cable Reel is available for 420 yen over on Rakuten shop.
Saki-Nerune Light
This clever light actually consists of two lights, one on the right and one on the left. Your partner can be sound asleep in darkness, while you’re still finishing up reading your mystery novel. Saki-Nerune roughly means ‘I’m going to bed first’, an appropriate moniker for such a product. You can check more photos over on the company’s Tent’s website.
Today a really neat service for busy mothers was released here in Japan. My Chef is a website that brings professional chefs to people’s home for a reasonable price. Whether you’re throwing a home party or just craving a delicious meal for dinner, the chefs come right to your door to cook at your house. The site limits its users to females only, and requires login via Facebook authentication. On the website users can enter the train station nearest to their location, as well as the date when they would like to use the service. After that it will provide a list of available chefs. After a chef is chosen the site sends out a short questionnaire, and based on the answers the chef will create a menu that suits the user’s preferences. The chef takes care of everything including buying the necessary ingredients, cooking, and even cleaning up afterwards. All of this can be enjoyed for a very affordable price, starting at 3,000 yen (or about $30), which is the minimum order for four people. My Chef is available in bigger cities in the Kanto area like Tokyo, Yokohama, Kawasaki, and Saitama. At the time of release, the number…
Today a really neat service for busy mothers was released here in Japan. My Chef is a website that brings professional chefs to people’s home for a reasonable price. Whether you’re throwing a home party or just craving a delicious meal for dinner, the chefs come right to your door to cook at your house.
The site limits its users to females only, and requires login via Facebook authentication. On the website users can enter the train station nearest to their location, as well as the date when they would like to use the service. After that it will provide a list of available chefs. After a chef is chosen the site sends out a short questionnaire, and based on the answers the chef will create a menu that suits the user’s preferences. The chef takes care of everything including buying the necessary ingredients, cooking, and even cleaning up afterwards. All of this can be enjoyed for a very affordable price, starting at 3,000 yen (or about $30), which is the minimum order for four people.
My Chef is available in bigger cities in the Kanto area like Tokyo, Yokohama, Kawasaki, and Saitama. At the time of release, the number of chefs registered on the site is still limited to roughly 30, but we can expect this number to grow as the service expands. There are a variety of professional chefs on the site, including some restaurant chefs and cooking class Instructors.
Women’s lives change enormously after they have kids, with fewer opportunities to go out and enjoy meals. My Chef was started as a solution for such women to enable them to experience great food in the comfort of their own home. My Chef hopes to make this new dining experience a viable and affordable option for a wide user base in less than three years.
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 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.
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!
The number and variety of websites on the net are practically endless. Looking at the top trafficked sites for Japan, we see internet giants like Yahoo, Google, Youtube, Amazon, and Rakuten. But the beauty of the internet is that there is always room for more, and so even niche websites can find a strong following. I recently came across a fun list of such websites, a collection of Japanese photo sites dedicated to different kinds of girls. Here are some of the more notable websites we found in the list, in no particular order. 1. TwinTail The name of this website says it all. Its concept is to make Japanese women more beautiful, more ‘energetic’, and more fun by the power of twintails, or pig-tails. Twintails was a bit of a trend for fashionable young girls, particularly those that hang out in the famous Harajuku district. Japanese anime likely heavily impacts this trend, as famous characters like Sailor Moon and Hatsune-Miku have their hair up in twintails. Of course, if pig-tails aren’t your thing, there is a site for ponytails too. 2. Megane Joshi ‘Megane Joshi’ means ‘girls with glasses’ in Japanese. This website exists as an inbound-marketing tool for…
The number and variety of websites on the net are practically endless. Looking at the top trafficked sites for Japan, we see internet giants like Yahoo, Google, Youtube, Amazon, and Rakuten. But the beauty of the internet is that there is always room for more, and so even niche websites can find a strong following.
I recently came across a fun list of such websites, a collection of Japanese photo sites dedicated to different kinds of girls. Here are some of the more notable websites we found in the list, in no particular order.
1. TwinTail
The name of this website says it all. Its concept is to make Japanese women more beautiful, more ‘energetic’, and more fun by the power of twintails, or pig-tails. Twintails was a bit of a trend for fashionable young girls, particularly those that hang out in the famous Harajuku district. Japanese anime likely heavily impacts this trend, as famous characters like Sailor Moon and Hatsune-Miku have their hair up in twintails. Of course, if pig-tails aren’t your thing, there is a site for ponytails too.
2. Megane Joshi
‘Megane Joshi’ means ‘girls with glasses’ in Japanese. This website exists as an inbound-marketing tool for glasses manufacturer Alook. Of course, all of the glasses that the models are wearing can be purchased at the store, and there is event-related content that lets you to find glasses to match your fashion. For every Megane Joshi, there is a video, here’s one example:
3. Icecco
Icecco is a website that showcases photos of girls eating popsicles. The site is pretty simple, consisting of photos of the girls and their personal profiles. In the profile section the girls share their top three favorite kinds of ice cream. The photos are taken by various photographers. The picture below is Chihiro Fujiwara, and her favorite ice creams are Giant Cone, Yukimi Daifuku, and Ice-no-mi.
4. Hitomebore
Hitomebore is filled with photos of girls with an eye-patch. Fundamentally, the word ‘hitomebore’ means love at first sight in Japanese. But ‘Hitomi’ also means eyes, and ‘hito’ can mean one, making the website title a playful label for girls wearing eye-patch. Seiichi Sakakibara is the photographer behind these pictures, who believes that the covered eye can stir the imagination.
5. Necogirl
Necogirl’s tagline says, ‘Are you a cat person or a dog person? We’re cat people.’ On Necogirl, you can find photos of girls wearing cat-ear headsets, or girls who have their hair up the similar way. The site claims that this is an actual fashion style and introduces many ways to add Neco (or cat) taste into your fashion.
6. Hanagirl
Girls are beautiful and so are flowers. Hanagirl puts these two beautiful things together and introduces them as a photo gallery. Each girl can be viewed in photos as well as in a video. The girl below is Yui Matsumoto, and you can check out her video here.
7. Ringo-a-me
‘Ringo-a-me’ means “candy apple” in Japanese. The purpose of the website remains mysterious, but the theme is girls and candy apples. The photos are very high in quality and there are a bunch of photos where girls are dressed in yukata, a casual summer kimono commonly worn in summer festivals. And at street stalls for such events, candy apples are a common treat.
The phenomenon of virtual assistants is one of the more fascinating developments of the internet age, in a world made flat by rapid communication developments. Such assistants, often working from some remote location, can be an invaluable asset to busy people. Japan is known for having an abundance of busy people, and one Tokyo startup is hoping that this translates into a direct need for virtual assistants in the country. Kaori-san is web-based virtual assistant that allows you to submit a certain amount of requests per month and get results back quickly. It’s amazingly expensive to try and hire part time staff in Japan, the fees are insane. This initiative is led by Ejovi Nuwere, who with a very small team of three (including himself) is running this new virtual service. It enlists the help of about a dozen bilingual, remote assistants in Tokyo and Osaka, typically former or part-time office ladies. I submitted a couple of Kaori-san requests using the free trial, and I was pretty happy with the results [1]. Given that the cheapest plan is 2,980 yen per month (about $30), one request works out to be about $6 – which I think is a pretty fair…
The phenomenon of virtual assistants is one of the more fascinating developments of the internet age, in a world made flat by rapid communication developments. Such assistants, often working from some remote location, can be an invaluable asset to busy people. Japan is known for having an abundance of busy people, and one Tokyo startup is hoping that this translates into a direct need for virtual assistants in the country. Kaori-san is web-based virtual assistant that allows you to submit a certain amount of requests per month and get results back quickly.
It’s amazingly expensive to try and hire part time staff in Japan, the fees are insane.
This initiative is led by Ejovi Nuwere, who with a very small team of three (including himself) is running this new virtual service. It enlists the help of about a dozen bilingual, remote assistants in Tokyo and Osaka, typically former or part-time office ladies.
I submitted a couple of Kaori-san requests using the free trial, and I was pretty happy with the results [1]. Given that the cheapest plan is 2,980 yen per month (about $30), one request works out to be about $6 – which I think is a pretty fair price for the work that was done. Other examples of Kaori-san requests include things like finding and booking a car to take you to the airport, or tracking down a photo studio under a given budget [2].
So who uses Kaori-san? While Ejovi couldn’t disclose any user numbers, he did say that it’s still under 500. But they do see a big opportunity in serving both small businesses and busy executives:
The small business market in Japan is one of the largest in the world. There is big market opportunity within the sub five-person startup. It’s a market totally ignored by large recruiting firms, but it’s our focus. And we really understand that market because we are that market! It’s amazingly expensive to try and hire part time staff in Japan, the fees are insane. Its almost like recruiting firms don’t want to work with startups.
When I tried the service, the interface looked very much like a tech support system, where you log a support ticket and it remains open until you get an answer. And just as with those systems, you can then provide feedback, or close the ticket if you are satisfied.
It’s all very, very simple.
User dashboard is simple and mobile friendly
So I was curious to read the claim on the Kaori-san website that “Using technology
we can provide a personalized experience for a reasonable price.”
But where is this technology? I mean, couldn’t this sort of simple ticketing be conducted with even a web form, a spreadsheet, and a group of competent Googlers? I asked Ejovi about this, and he elaborated about what happens behind the scenes:
From a technology standpoint as we have more customers we gradually build a database of common internal request, vendors related to specific request types, vendor reviews and communication tools that make our responses faster and more accurate with time. We also keep logs on customer preferences, so even with 100 assistants the experience for the customer will always feel personal. And the more the customer uses the service, the more personal it feels.
He also points out that Kaori-san features integration with services like Evernote and Gengo, and there is also a payments system that lets them pay third-party vendors on behalf of users. And there are even more integrations to come down the road.
If we can’t build something people are willing to pay for on day one, it’s not interesting to me
Currently Ejovi keeps office space at Venture Generation, noting he sold a small amount of equity to J-Seed and David Dacus as angels, since he valued their advice and wanted them involved. But he notes that he believes strongly in organic growth, saying “If we can’t build something people are willing to pay for on day one, it’s not interesting to me”. In the first three to six months, he adds, the only thing that is important is getting – and keeping – customers.
I’m told that in the future, they plan to increase the services they offer for startups and busy executives, with some new features on the way in the next three months. While he couldn’t elaborate too much on this, Ejovi noted that “assistants are only the beginning.”
As it exists right now, Kaori-san is an interesting offering. It may not be entirely obvious to some potential users how they might take advantage of the service, but if you are a busy person being slowed down by some tedious tasks, I encourage you to give it a try and see if it’s a good fit for you.
Using Kaori-san’s free trial, I made one request for a list of Japanese edu-tech companies and their URLs. This is actually something we’ve been looking into ourselves. The results were pretty quick, and turned up a few companies that we were not aware of. ↩
Currently Kaori-san is available with three monthly pricing plans: 2,980 yen for 5 requests, 8,980 yen for 15 requests, and 14,980 yen for 25 requests. ↩
Rick Martin
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Junya Mori
