We’re written about the success of Japanese homescreen customization app CocoPPa on this site many times in the past. Now it seems that Japan’s Line Corporation wants a piece of that action, today announcing its own homescreen decoration app called Line Deco:
LINE DECO allows users to add a personal touch to the home screen of their smartphones by using customizable wallpapers, icons, and more. In addition to offering items based on LINE characters, the service also allows users to upload and use original decoration items they create themselves.
Sound familiar? Yes, I’m sure CocoPPa thinks so too.
The app is available for both iOS and Android, in English, Japanese, and Korean to start. 3000+ decoration items will be free until the end of April, to celebrate the app’s launch.
The Hello World Open is world programming competition that takes the form of a virtual race, with teams participating from all around the world. Organized by Finland based creative firm Reaktor and game developer Supercell, the race will require teams to program an artificial intelligence to drive the race faster than the competition, hopefully without any serious crashes! [1] Teams can include one to three members from the same country, but the same person can only participate on one team. Sign ups are accepted starting today (as of 1900 JST), and will run until April 7th. The actual coding goes from April 15th to the 29th, with regional qualifying rounds to follow in May (see map below). Six teams will travel to Helsinki, Finland (all expenses paid) for the finals. I’m really hoping we can see many entrants here from Japan, but I have a sneaking suspicion that won’t be the case [2]. But the folks from Reaktor were kind enough to pass along a Japanese translation of their announcement, which you can find below. Please check out out and sign up if you think you can outrun the competition to the (ahem) Finnish line! ハローワールドオープン : 史上初のコーディング世界選手権への申し込み受付が始まります。 この春は、コード裏に隠れた未来のスーパースターを見い出すチャンスです。ハローワールドオープンでは、史上初のコーディング世界選手権にて、トップコーダー達が自国の名誉をかけて挑みます。 創造力に富んだテクノロジー企業…
The Hello World Open is world programming competition that takes the form of a virtual race, with teams participating from all around the world. Organized by Finland based creative firm Reaktor and game developer Supercell, the race will require teams to program an artificial intelligence to drive the race faster than the competition, hopefully without any serious crashes! [1]
Teams can include one to three members from the same country, but the same person can only participate on one team.
Sign ups are accepted starting today (as of 1900 JST), and will run until April 7th. The actual coding goes from April 15th to the 29th, with regional qualifying rounds to follow in May (see map below). Six teams will travel to Helsinki, Finland (all expenses paid) for the finals.
I’m really hoping we can see many entrants here from Japan, but I have a sneaking suspicion that won’t be the case [2].
But the folks from Reaktor were kind enough to pass along a Japanese translation of their announcement, which you can find below. Please check out out and sign up if you think you can outrun the competition to the (ahem) Finnish line!
「コーディングのような掴みにくいコンセプトを簡潔化することによって、コーディングにアピール力を与え、一般の人々も楽しめるレベルに持ってくるのが意図です」と語るのはハローワールドオープンの主催者、Reaktor社の Ville Valtonenです。「我々の狙いはコーディングにおけるセバスチャン・ヴェッテルやジェフ・ゴードン、つまり尊敬に値する国民的スーパーヒーローを作り上げることです。観客の皆さんには自国の競合者に誇りをもち、勝利に向かって彼らを応援していただきたいのです。」
Besides this website, I’m not sure if there will be many ways for Japanese programmers to learn about this event, unless they read English news regularly. ↩
Here’s a fun photo project from the folks over at Cinemacraft, as their Qixshr collage creation platform can now create interesting collages based on any of your Facebook albums [1]. I’m told by Cinemacraft founder Sandeep Casi that the service selects the top seven photos based on likes and comments, and then creates a collage based on computed areas of interest (with priority given to focus) in the photo. The crop wasn’t always perfect for me (see my zoo collage, maybe my focus was off?), but its certainly a fun and powerful service for anyone who wants to create collages from an event album. I understand that it’s already gaining some traction on Facebook, and with Twitter’s new photo features, it could potentially do well on that platform too. Check it out at Qixshr.me. Qixshr was previously released as a B2B service, but this time they’re focused on consumers. ↩
Here’s a fun photo project from the folks over at Cinemacraft, as their Qixshr collage creation platform can now create interesting collages based on any of your Facebook albums [1]. I’m told by Cinemacraft founder Sandeep Casi that the service selects the top seven photos based on likes and comments, and then creates a collage based on computed areas of interest (with priority given to focus) in the photo.
The crop wasn’t always perfect for me (see my zoo collage, maybe my focus was off?), but its certainly a fun and powerful service for anyone who wants to create collages from an event album. I understand that it’s already gaining some traction on Facebook, and with Twitter’s new photo features, it could potentially do well on that platform too. Check it out at Qixshr.me.
Qixshr was previously released as a B2B service, but this time they’re focused on consumers. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Catarizm, the startup behind online leisure booking site Asoview, announced today that it has raised about 200 million yen (or approximately $1.95 million) from Globis Capital Partners and Jafco. The startup will use the funds to enhance its booking management system and add call center representatives. Since its official launch back in April [1], the company has been providing booking services for weekend leisure activities like skydiving, rafting, and many others. The company secured a partnership with Yahoo Japan’s travel portal back in October, and we were told at that time that they had listed 1,500 excursion activities on site from over 460 companies. That figure has since grown to about 2,150 activities available from 775 companies. They also launched a finder app for sightseeing spot called Holipple back in December. Their potential competitors include Trippiece and PlayLife here in Japan, as well as San Francisco-based startup Peek which secured funding of $5 million earlier this month. What’s interesting about this space is how large the market size is. Catarizm’s CEO Tomohisa Yamano told us that the Japanese travel industry alone is worth about $17.5 billion. But if you factor in the leisure…
Tokyo-based Catarizm, the startup behind online leisure booking site Asoview, announced today that it has raised about 200 million yen (or approximately $1.95 million) from Globis Capital Partners and Jafco. The startup will use the funds to enhance its booking management system and add call center representatives.
Since its official launch back in April [1], the company has been providing booking services for weekend leisure activities like skydiving, rafting, and many others. The company secured a partnership with Yahoo Japan’s travel portal back in October, and we were told at that time that they had listed 1,500 excursion activities on site from over 460 companies. That figure has since grown to about 2,150 activities available from 775 companies. They also launched a finder app for sightseeing spot called Holipple back in December.
Their potential competitors include Trippiece and PlayLife here in Japan, as well as San Francisco-based startup Peek which secured funding of $5 million earlier this month.
What’s interesting about this space is how large the market size is. Catarizm’s CEO Tomohisa Yamano told us that the Japanese travel industry alone is worth about $17.5 billion. But if you factor in the leisure industry as well, it’s as large as $622.6 billion. These figures include sales beyond just the reservation business they are focused on, but you get the idea.
I asked Yamano if he could be more precise about how they foresee their market potential. He responded by pointing out that Tokyo Disney Land had 2.75 million annual visitors back in 2012, and he expects they can acquire a similar volume of paying users.
So far the company headcount is less than 20 people, but they will grow to become a 40-person team as they pursue their sales target.
This particular article/summary is written with many Japanese tech companies and startups in mind. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Kaizen Platform, the startup behind the user interface A/B testing platform PlanBCD, announced today that it has secured $5 million from Fidelity Growth Partners Japan and Gree Ventures. With the funds, the company expects to add more engineers to help with platform development. Co-founder and CEO Kenji Sudo will be focused on launching the company’s international business, preparing to launch offices in San Francisco and New York. Sudo explained: We’ll use these funds to enhance our service so it can help companies grow their online businesses, rather than just serve as an A/B testing tool as it is now. We have invited Jun Ogawa (the former ad sales head at Google Japan) as country manager and Yugo Takino (former gaming platform head at GREE) as a product manager, which will allow me to focus more on launching our US operations. Beyond A/B testing As Kaizen’s interface improvement solutions combine a testing tool with crowdsourcing, and it has been embraced by many web app development companies in Japan. Their enterprise edition of PlanBCD has acquired more than 30 corporate users since its launch last August. And on online edition of their service has been…
Tokyo-based Kaizen Platform, the startup behind the user interface A/B testing platform PlanBCD, announced today that it has secured $5 million from Fidelity Growth Partners Japan and Gree Ventures. With the funds, the company expects to add more engineers to help with platform development.
Co-founder and CEO Kenji Sudo will be focused on launching the company’s international business, preparing to launch offices in San Francisco and New York. Sudo explained:
We’ll use these funds to enhance our service so it can help companies grow their online businesses, rather than just serve as an A/B testing tool as it is now. We have invited Jun Ogawa (the former ad sales head at Google Japan) as country manager and Yugo Takino (former gaming platform head at GREE) as a product manager, which will allow me to focus more on launching our US operations.
Beyond A/B testing
As Kaizen’s interface improvement solutions combine a testing tool with crowdsourcing, and it has been embraced by many web app development companies in Japan. Their enterprise edition of PlanBCD has acquired more than 30 corporate users since its launch last August. And on online edition of their service has been adopted by 500 companies in 15 countries worldwide. According to Sudo, many of their users are non-internet companies who can’t pay much attention to typical growth hacking techniques for their websites. Kaizen aims to help both less-knowledgeable companies as well as experienced users improve conversions and user acquisitions. He explained:
However well you can run an ad promotion, you can’t expect conversions without improved content on the landing page. We’re planning to build a dashboard feature that helps users understand which part of their websites should be improved for better conversions by showing them metrics.
He gave me a quick look at the dashboard, which lists improvement points with numerical indicators, essentially empowering webmasters to ask crowdsourced workers to make an improvements with just the press of a button.
While things have been good for Kaizen so far, their business still has a problem to resolve. They have about 400 crowdsourced workers who can help with client work, but they still need more. To address this need, they are exploring the possibility of finding workers in more remote areas.
Through partnerships with local governments, we would like to provide work opportunities for people like university students, especially in remote areas.
Corporate websites are often being updated and promoted, especially during new seasons or when new products are released. So if Kaizen can introduced a better version of its platform, it should be an invaluable tool for website maintenance and improvement not only in Japan but also around the world. Let’s stay tuned and see how they do!
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Mercari, the startup behind the mobile flea market app of the same name, announced today it has raised 1.45 billion yen (approximately $14.1 million) from Global Brain, Globis Capital Partners, Itochu Technology Ventures, GMO Venture Partners, and other unnamed investors. Coinciding with this funding, Fumiaki Koizumi, who had been serving as a part-time director, was appointed as a full-time officer. In addition, Shinichi Takamiya, the chief strategy officer at Globis Capital Partners has joined the board of directors. Since the service’s launch back in July, the Mercari app has surpassed one million listed items, growing at a pace of 10,000 items every day (as of last December). Their daily submissions recently grew to tens of thousand of items, and total transactions on the platform also reached several million of US dollars. The app has seen 1.5 million downloads to date. Furthermore, the company is planning to launch a subsidiary in the US to begin its international business operations. Mercari co-founder Ryo Ishizuka, former senior architect at Rock You, will be appointed as a representative for the US company. The company’s CEO Shintaro Yamada told us a little about who their typical users are,…
Coinciding with this funding, Fumiaki Koizumi, who had been serving as a part-time director, was appointed as a full-time officer. In addition, Shinichi Takamiya, the chief strategy officer at Globis Capital Partners has joined the board of directors.
Since the service’s launch back in July, the Mercari app has surpassed one million listed items, growing at a pace of 10,000 items every day (as of last December). Their daily submissions recently grew to tens of thousand of items, and total transactions on the platform also reached several million of US dollars. The app has seen 1.5 million downloads to date.
Furthermore, the company is planning to launch a subsidiary in the US to begin its international business operations. Mercari co-founder Ryo Ishizuka, former senior architect at Rock You, will be appointed as a representative for the US company.
From the left: Director Fumiaki Koizumi and co-founder/CEO Shintaro Yamada
The company’s CEO Shintaro Yamada told us a little about who their typical users are, and how those users behave:
Ladies and kids apparel account for the majority of items traded in the app, comprising about 70%. Our typical users are housewives living in remote areas. They sell unnecessary items to earn spending money, and they often buy a new item with the app.
Many expensive items, like consumer electronics for example, are submitted these days, and he expects to make Mercari a more comprehensive flea market platform.
So how are other flea market apps and auction services doing these days in comparison? Yahoo Auction leads this space in Japan, transacting over $500 million a month. Yamada expects his Mercari to eventually account for about 40% of the entire online flea market industry in Japan.
If that’s the case, we can estimate the leading C2C platform in Japan can transact about $200 million a month. Mercari still has a small share but has the potential to beat its competitors. Yamada expects to acquire new users on smartphone rather than going after users that live in other existing buy-and-sell platforms. The company is currently a 40-person team, with about half of those dedicated to user support.
Of course, if the company only does business in Japan, the market ceiling would be hundreds of millions of dollars. Yamada and his team often visit the U.S., and it seems they’ve been preparing international expansion since their launch. They have already started hiring in San Francisco. According to Yamada, the company figures to launch a service from a scratch in the U.S., rather than making use of what they’ve learned and built in Japan.
Rick Martin
Takeshi Hirano
