Venture United and its parent company United, the company best known for homescreen app CocoPPa, have already invested in many startups, including Lifenet Insurance, Enigmo, Unoh (acquired by Zynga back in 2010), and Nobot (acquired by Mediba, a KDDI company).
We spoke with the company’s chief venture capitalist Satoshi Maruyama to find what entrepreneurs and service sectors they are planning to invest in.
Satoshi Maruyama
We expect to invest in entrepreneurs with a big vision, typically those who want to change the world or create a business that can work in the global market.
As smartphone use has grown, broadband internet is available to us anywhere. So our communication might be more active. So the sectors where we will look for potential investees will be commerce, O2O (online-to-offline), and omni-channel retailing. Following this strategy, we invested in Whyteboard, the startup behind the mobile flea market app Listor last April. We also invested in U-Note, and we aim to help them invent a new form of media.
MomentCam is one of the more unique photo effects applications that I’ve seen in a long time. Using just a photo of your face, it creates amazing faux hand-drawn portraits of you in a range of fun situations. The key to the process is the app’s facial recognition, which will usually place your eyes and mouth correctly before face-swapping your head onto many different designs. This process works best when you take the initial photo of your face from the front, because when you do so from the side, your ear or hair might get in the way of the processed composition. Currently there are are themed designs available including a set corresponding to the animals of the Chinese zodiac, but there are more available for download if you choose. The app also has a emoticon-creation function, turning your face into animated emoticons (like those below) that can be shared to various social networks or messaging apps (most based in China, since the company is based in Beijing). I managed to get a brief comment from the company’s co-founder Steven Huang about the success of their app so far. Amazingly, he claims that their progress to date has come without…
MomentCam is one of the more unique photo effects applications that I’ve seen in a long time. Using just a photo of your face, it creates amazing faux hand-drawn portraits of you in a range of fun situations.
The key to the process is the app’s facial recognition, which will usually place your eyes and mouth correctly before face-swapping your head onto many different designs. This process works best when you take the initial photo of your face from the front, because when you do so from the side, your ear or hair might get in the way of the processed composition.
Currently there are are themed designs available including a set corresponding to the animals of the Chinese zodiac, but there are more available for download if you choose.
The app also has a emoticon-creation function, turning your face into animated emoticons (like those below) that can be shared to various social networks or messaging apps (most based in China, since the company is based in Beijing).
I managed to get a brief comment from the company’s co-founder Steven Huang about the success of their app so far. Amazingly, he claims that their progress to date has come without any active promotions on their part:
Our app [has grown] purely on word of mouth. No marketing at all. Our users have reached 70 million around the world since it was launched in the China market in early July and opened to world market on October 22. Our user base is 45% Chinese and 55% overseas users.
The company has reportedly raised 20 million RMB in series A funding, so it will be interesting to see where they take their app from here.
If you’re looking for a fun new avatar to start the year off fresh, I encourage you to check out MomentCam over on the App Store or on Google Play1.
I am a little puzzled as to why there are so many similar looking apps also by the name of MomentCam on Google Play. As far as I can tell from previous China-based reports, this one is the original. Although I’ve asked Steven about the duplicates and I await his reply. ↩
See the original article in Japanese In Japan people will often split the bill when they eat out with friends. But the default calculator app on your iPhone is a little over-complicated for this task, and it’s a little ugly too. But Kamakura-based design studio KSKT had made something better. Its app, appropriately named Split Bill, was made just for this purpose. And it’s beautiful. It is minimalist in its feature set, allowing the user to just add and divide a given amount of money. Its smart design uses color gradation in a manner that leaves a lasting impression. Split Bill is currently available for 100 yen ($0.99), in Japanese, English, German, Korean, and Chinese. KSKT has previously designed apps for many startups, many of which we have already covered here on The Bridge. The company designed for the iPhone app for e-commerce startup Base, the logo and iPhone app for photo book service Niiice, and the logo, website design, and branding for PocketConcierge. When I looked at Split Bill, I started wondering about what kind of benefit a design studio gets when it develops its own service or app, as opposed to designing one for a client. For example,…
In Japan people will often split the bill when they eat out with friends. But the default calculator app on your iPhone is a little over-complicated for this task, and it’s a little ugly too. But Kamakura-based design studio KSKT had made something better. Its app, appropriately named Split Bill, was made just for this purpose.
And it’s beautiful.
It is minimalist in its feature set, allowing the user to just add and divide a given amount of money. Its smart design uses color gradation in a manner that leaves a lasting impression.
Split Bill is currently available for 100 yen ($0.99), in Japanese, English, German, Korean, and Chinese.
KSKT has previously designed apps for many startups, many of which we have already covered here on The Bridge. The company designed for the iPhone app for e-commerce startup Base, the logo and iPhone app for photo book service Niiice, and the logo, website design, and branding for PocketConcierge.
When I looked at Split Bill, I started wondering about what kind of benefit a design studio gets when it develops its own service or app, as opposed to designing one for a client. For example, we recently reported on about design studio AQ who will soon launch a subscription coffee service. But they also do client work, and I assume these efforts developing their own products have an effect on their work for third parties as well.
When it comes to developing web-services or applications, your work is rarely complete upon launch. Updates, improvements and maintenance are typically needed after release. Perhaps when a design studio develops its own applications or web-services it can gain more insights on this post-launch phase of the product life-cycle.
If you are an entrepreneur looking to launch a web-service or an application, you might consider finding a designer (such as those mentioned above) that has actual experience operating web services. It will likely result in a better overall product.
One of the more interesting aspects of the mobile messaging space, particularly here in Asia with Line, WeChat/Weixin, and KakaoTalk, is the games that they offer users. Given that WindRunner [1] has been a popular game on both the Line and Kakao platforms (see our past review from last February), it makes sense that China’s Tencent – a company known to occasionally copy from others [2] — would try to follow their lead. That looks to be the intention behind GunZ Dash, a new mobile game launched on January 7, the global/English version of its Chinese language game Tiantian Kupao released back in September 2013. In terms of gameplay, GunZ Dash is virtually identical to WindRunner, as you can see in our comparison video above. While it doesn’t surprise me that Tencent would release a Chinese-language copycat of a game, I’m a little surprised that they’d roll this title out to their global users too. But because WindRunner is such a good game, GunZ Dash is really fun too because it is a really quality copy. The Chinese version of the game has been among China’s top five grossing iOS apps since its release (see chart below), so clearly its…
One of the more interesting aspects of the mobile messaging space, particularly here in Asia with Line, WeChat/Weixin, and KakaoTalk, is the games that they offer users. Given that WindRunner [1] has been a popular game on both the Line and Kakao platforms (see our past review from last February), it makes sense that China’s Tencent – a company known to occasionally copy from others [2] — would try to follow their lead.
That looks to be the intention behind GunZ Dash, a new mobile game launched on January 7, the global/English version of its Chinese language game Tiantian Kupao released back in September 2013.
In terms of gameplay, GunZ Dash is virtually identical to WindRunner, as you can see in our comparison video above. While it doesn’t surprise me that Tencent would release a Chinese-language copycat of a game, I’m a little surprised that they’d roll this title out to their global users too. But because WindRunner is such a good game, GunZ Dash is really fun too because it is a really quality copy.
The Chinese version of the game has been among China’s top five grossing iOS apps since its release (see chart below), so clearly its copy-to-China strategy is a smart one from a business perspective. But it’s interesting to see a copy-to-China game now being marketed abroad. As far as I can recall, that hasn’t happened so much in the past.
But Tencent has marketed WeChat in a number of Southeast Asian nations, including Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand, so maybe those are the gamers they are trying to attract here. Tencent will continue to do well pushing its services in emerging markets especially, continuing to mask that its services are made-in-China.
So where am I going with all this? Speaking in very general terms, I guess I’m just a little discouraged that one of China’s biggest internet success stories is such a ‘me-too’ company. As big as Tencent is, not many in the international media pay attention to it, and perhaps that’s why they can continue to do this sort of thing.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Lang-8, which runs a language learning platform based on peer corrections, announced today that it has raised funding from CyberAgent Ventures. The exact details of the funding were not disclosed. Lang-8 has acquired over 730,000 users from 219 countries and regions around the world, with about 70% coming from outside Japan. According to the company’s CEO Yangyang Xi, they plan to use these funds to develop a new service, and add three more engineers to their current three-person team. Xi initially launched the language learning platform when he was attending Kyoto University. Seven years have passed since then up until this funding. He notes that he has received much assistance from other entrepreneurs: Many people gave me advice for fundraising, including, Kensuke Furukawa (Nanapi), Ryusuke Matsumoto (Community Factory), Kiyo Kobayashi (serial entrepreneur, ex-CEO of Nobot), and Taku Harada (Peatix). But since I was running a service with a small team, I wanted to keep doing it ourselves without fundraising. But we started to explore funding opportunities back last July, and got a good response. When I met with Koichiro Yoshida (Crowdworks), he told me to meet with all available VC firms around…
Tokyo-based startup Lang-8, which runs a language learning platform based on peer corrections, announced today that it has raised funding from CyberAgent Ventures. The exact details of the funding were not disclosed.
Lang-8 has acquired over 730,000 users from 219 countries and regions around the world, with about 70% coming from outside Japan. According to the company’s CEO Yangyang Xi, they plan to use these funds to develop a new service, and add three more engineers to their current three-person team.
Xi initially launched the language learning platform when he was attending Kyoto University. Seven years have passed since then up until this funding. He notes that he has received much assistance from other entrepreneurs:
Many people gave me advice for fundraising, including, Kensuke Furukawa (Nanapi), Ryusuke Matsumoto (Community Factory), Kiyo Kobayashi (serial entrepreneur, ex-CEO of Nobot), and Taku Harada (Peatix). But since I was running a service with a small team, I wanted to keep doing it ourselves without fundraising. But we started to explore funding opportunities back last July, and got a good response. When I met with Koichiro Yoshida (Crowdworks), he told me to meet with all available VC firms around him and try to raise funds.
Takanori Yokoi (Increments) also gave me sound advice. I’ve been sticking to metrics and logic, but he told me I should speak with more courage and not sweat the small stuff.
Every time I talked with Xi, he tended to be a little nervous about doing something new, despite the fact that his service has great potential. If he kept going in this way, I think he wouldn’t be able to create a disruptive service. After this new fundraising, perhaps he will be more aggressive.
And while I can’t disclose too much at this time, he actually is preparing to launch a new service. We’ll take a further look at it when the time comes.
See the original article in Japanese On the Japanese edition of The Bridge, we recently reported about the launch of video-curation site Dropout. It follows the same sort of viral media strategy as Upworthy, a trend currently drawing attention in Japan as a new style of web media. And now Grood, the Japanese startup behind the voice crowdsourcing service Voip, has launched a viral media site called Animal Buzz, specializing in animal-related content. Yuuya Haraguchi, the CEO of Grood, said he decided to launch Animal Buzz since he thought the idea had much potential and possibilities to create positive business synergies in the future. He added: I think there are a few things very important concerning viral media. For example, if the title and the thumbnail image has enough impact to catch viewers’ attention, it has a better chance of being shared often as long as the content drives people to share and the topic is based on universal interests. Viral media is a field quite easy for many businesses to enter. In Japan, six viral media focused sites have been already released. I think that the number will grow even more. Narrowing the theme is important when it comes…
On the Japanese edition of The Bridge, we recently reported about the launch of video-curation site Dropout. It follows the same sort of viral media strategy as Upworthy, a trend currently drawing attention in Japan as a new style of web media. And now Grood, the Japanese startup behind the voice crowdsourcing service Voip, has launched a viral media site called Animal Buzz, specializing in animal-related content.
Yuuya Haraguchi, the CEO of Grood, said he decided to launch Animal Buzz since he thought the idea had much potential and possibilities to create positive business synergies in the future. He added:
I think there are a few things very important concerning viral media. For example, if the title and the thumbnail image has enough impact to catch viewers’ attention, it has a better chance of being shared often as long as the content drives people to share and the topic is based on universal interests.
Viral media is a field quite easy for many businesses to enter. In Japan, six viral media focused sites have been already released. I think that the number will grow even more. Narrowing the theme is important when it comes to launching viral media on your own. After I conducted a survey, I decided to go for with animal-focused media based on three reasons: 1) animal-related content is very popular when it comes to video, 2) a lot of people share such content with others, and 3) this content is relaxing and fun.
Animal Buzz aims to achieve 10 million page views per month within a half year.
Junya Mori
Rick Martin
Takeshi Hirano
