Recruit Technologies, the IT company operating under Japanese human resources company Recruit Holdings, held an event called Berlin Innovation Meetup in Tokyo this week. Several entrepreneurs from Berlin presented about services they are developing and related aspects of their own startup scene back in Germany.
Berlin is one of the world’s major tech hub, and Recruit Technologies has started a collaboration project with the startup community there last year, sending its engineers to work together with startups in Berlin. Through this experience, those engineers can understand more about the entrepreneurial mindset, perhaps becoming more inventive and innovative themselves in the future.
Xyo’s CEO Zoe Adamovicz
The presentation session started with Xyo’s CEO Zoe Adamovicz. Her startup has developed an app discovery platform which gives users a new way to find mobile apps they like. HeadWave CEO Sophie Willborm presented her helmet loudspeaker device, which lets users listen to music while motorbiking, cycling, skiing, or snowboarding [1]. Peter Bihr introduced his Berlin-based hardware accelerator Hardware.co and IoT-focused conference Thingscon.
The Wye’s founder Leah Stuhltrager
Kiwi.ki is a startup that has developed a keyless entry solution using a small dongle and a smartsphone. Currently Recruit Technologies’ developer Yugo Kuzuhara is collaboratively working with the team. New York-born Leah Stuhltrager introduced her co-working space called The Wye, renovated from a historic post office in the heart of Berlin.
It will be interesting to see how this effort will bring something of value to the the startup communities in Berlin and Tokyo. If you missed out on this event but are interested, delegates will hold another meetup event at Samurai Startup Island on Monday, so please check it out.
I’m a little concerned that listening while on a street or in a public space may cause possible dangers. ↩
Here’s a fun free web tool from Japan that lets you create websites using nothing more than your smartphone’s browser. Dino (Dino.vc) is a freemium service from the folks at Revolver Inc. which has been in beta since early this month. According to the folks over at VentureNow.jp, the company has plans to roll out Dino throughout Asia. Currently it is available in Japanese only. Below is a quick walkthrough of how site creation works on a smartphone, as I just took a few minutes to test it out for myself. First fix a title and description for your site. Browse the back-end administration settings (Japanese only currently): Add one of the pre-set photos as your background (left), or upload your own background, as I did (right): Add some content (News updates, or fill our your profile): Publish, and check out the end result! Overall it’s not a bad little service. And assuming that their beta test here in Japan goes well, I think expanding around Asia would be a wise idea. In countries where PC ownership is high, I’m not sure that there’s really much of a need for a smartphone website creation solution. But in regions where people’s…
Here’s a fun free web tool from Japan that lets you create websites using nothing more than your smartphone’s browser. Dino (Dino.vc) is a freemium service from the folks at Revolver Inc. which has been in beta since early this month.
According to the folks over at VentureNow.jp, the company has plans to roll out Dino throughout Asia. Currently it is available in Japanese only.
Below is a quick walkthrough of how site creation works on a smartphone, as I just took a few minutes to test it out for myself.
First fix a title and description for your site. Browse the back-end administration settings (Japanese only currently):
Add one of the pre-set photos as your background (left), or upload your own background, as I did (right):
Add some content (News updates, or fill our your profile):
Publish, and check out the end result!
Overall it’s not a bad little service. And assuming that their beta test here in Japan goes well, I think expanding around Asia would be a wise idea. In countries where PC ownership is high, I’m not sure that there’s really much of a need for a smartphone website creation solution. But in regions where people’s only computer might be a low-cost smartphone, then a service like Dino would be very much welcome.
As for monetization, you can create your own smartphone optimized site for free as a subdomain of Dino.vc. If you’d to roll your own domain, ad free, with support for multiple admins and Google Analytics, you can enroll in their pro plan which costs 1000 yen (about $10) per month. A business plan is also available for 3000 yen per month, supporting as many as ten administrators.
Tokyo-based Voyage Group, the internet company best known for the e-commerce and shopping portal EC Navi, has announced that it has been approved for an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers market today. The company will be listed on July 2nd. Formerly known as Axiv.com, the company was initially launched back in 1999 as the online marketing arm of Japanese internet giant CyberAgent. But CEO Shinsuke Usami bought the majority of their shares from CyberAgent and made the company an independent business entity. The aforementioned EC Navi is a shopping portal where you can earn rewards by purchasing an item at a tenant’s online shop or by answering an online survey. On a related note, the company has started broadcasting TV commercials here in Japan (see an example below) in order to improve consumer awareness in selected regions in the country.
Tokyo-based Voyage Group, the internet company best known for the e-commerce and shopping portal EC Navi, has announced that it has been approved for an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers market today. The company will be listed on July 2nd.
Formerly known as Axiv.com, the company was initially launched back in 1999 as the online marketing arm of Japanese internet giant CyberAgent. But CEO Shinsuke Usami bought the majority of their shares from CyberAgent and made the company an independent business entity.
The aforementioned EC Navi is a shopping portal where you can earn rewards by purchasing an item at a tenant’s online shop or by answering an online survey.
On a related note, the company has started broadcasting TV commercials here in Japan (see an example below) in order to improve consumer awareness in selected regions in the country.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Compath.me, the startup behind family photo sharing platform Kiddy, announced today that it has raised 50 million yen (about $492,000) from Japanese internet company United. The company was originally launched back in 2011, graduating from Tokyo-based startup incubator Open Network Lab. This latest news follows its previous seed funding from DG Incubation, Architype, and Netprice.com [1]. Low birth rate, high potential business The company launched its photo sharing platform in December of 2012, and subsequently started printing and delivering photo postcards and photobooks last year. So far Kiddy has acquired 50,000 households (or families) as users and over 3 million photo and comment entries on the platform. The company’s founder and CEO Hiromichi Ando explained a little more about the funding this time around: Our service allows users to deliver printed postcards or photobooks to as many as three different locations. We learned that many customers chose three locations, typically printing photos of their children and delivering them to both sets of grandparents. As for the photobooks, we are providing a premium version (3,100 yen per photo book, excluding shipping) using silver-halide prints in addition to the lower priced offering (1,550 yen per…
Tokyo-based Compath.me, the startup behind family photo sharing platform Kiddy, announced today that it has raised 50 million yen (about $492,000) from Japanese internet company United.
The company was originally launched back in 2011, graduating from Tokyo-based startup incubator Open Network Lab. This latest news follows its previous seed funding from DG Incubation, Architype, and Netprice.com[1].
Low birth rate, high potential business
The company launched its photo sharing platform in December of 2012, and subsequently started printing and delivering photo postcards and photobooks last year. So far Kiddy has acquired 50,000 households (or families) as users and over 3 million photo and comment entries on the platform. The company’s founder and CEO Hiromichi Ando explained a little more about the funding this time around:
CEO Hiromichi Ando
Our service allows users to deliver printed postcards or photobooks to as many as three different locations. We learned that many customers chose three locations, typically printing photos of their children and delivering them to both sets of grandparents. As for the photobooks, we are providing a premium version (3,100 yen per photo book, excluding shipping) using silver-halide prints in addition to the lower priced offering (1,550 yen per book). The premium option is costly, but it’s selling well. Grandparents want to see how their grandchildren are growing even if they live far away. This motivation helps us increase our sales per customer.
In a low-birth rate society like Japan, it is said that every child has six money streams, if you count parents and grandparents. This concept helps the company be more profitable despite the fact that its user base is not as much as is typically needed for monetization.
Becoming an information platform
The startup intends to shift its platform from family photo storage to a comprehensive information platform where users learn what others family members are doing in their daily lives. Ando explained:
Three or four family members are typically connected to each other on our platform. A couple may divorce or remarry after having their child, so we’ll add a feature that allows users to control privacy about their photo or messages.
He plans to use these latest funds to hire new people and enhance the platform’s features. They are currently a four-person team, but they’ll add a COO and several engineers to accelerate system development efforts.
Global expansion
So far the company has about 20% of users, or about 10,000 families, accessing Kiddy from outside Japan. Considering this demand, they have to think about the internationalization of the platform. Ando explained how they will address the problem:
International shipping has been available only for postcards but not for our photo album products. But considering that as many as 20% of users are from outside Japan, we asked our printing and shipping companies to enable international shipping of photo album products, starting in the first week of June. Shipping charges will be higher than domestic delivery, but I think there’s a huge demand from users out there.
The service is currently available in English and Japanese. But in order to better serve its global user base, they will add French and German interfaces this July. The company has already exhibited and presented at several startup conferences in Europe, such as LeWeb in Paris and WebSummit in Dublin. Ando feels that these promotional activities has helped them build brand awareness in those regions.
In this space we’ve already seen many competitors, including Kazoc, Nicori, BabyDays, Ikumemo, and Wellnote (See this article for details). But Kiddy fares better than these competitors on the App Store in terms of number of reviews and average rating.
Moving forward Kiddy will focus on improving user satisfaction, with the end goal of having the top market share in Japan and the rest of the world. They hope to surpass a million households worldwide by the end of 2015.
Open Network Lab is the incubation arm of Japanese internet company Digital Garage. DG Incubation is the startup-focused investment arm of Digital Garage. The investment arm of NetPrice.com has been rebranded to Beenos. ↩
From KPCB’s internet trends report released yesterday, comes an interesting factoid: 60% of the top 25 tech companies [were] founded by 1st and 2nd generation Americans. (p.148, see table above) I thought this would be a good time to revisit the question we asked this time last year: As the race for high-skilled immigrants begins, does Japan want to compete? To help address that question, here’s a quote from Japanese PM Shinzo Abe from a recent TV interview, cited/translated by The Japan Times: What are immigrants? The U.S. is a country of immigrants who came from all around the world and formed the (United States). Many people have come to the country and become part of it. We won’t adopt a policy like that. That strategy may prove unwise.
from KPCB Internet Trends report (click to enlarge)
From KPCB’s internet trends report released yesterday, comes an interesting factoid:
60% of the top 25 tech companies [were] founded by 1st and 2nd generation Americans. (p.148, see table above)
I thought this would be a good time to revisit the question we asked this time last year:
To help address that question, here’s a quote from Japanese PM Shinzo Abe from a recent TV interview, cited/translated by The Japan Times:
What are immigrants? The U.S. is a country of immigrants who came from all around the world and formed the (United States). Many people have come to the country and become part of it. We won’t adopt a policy like that.
See the original story in Japanese. PocketDuino is an Android-compatible circuit board based on the Arduino prototyping platform. The product was developed by Japanese engineers and recently launched an Indiegogo campaign. What’s unique about this circuit board is the ease with which you can connect external sensor devices. For example, if you have a library to control an alcohol sensor, you can have the board obtain data from the sensor by writing as little as three-line of Java code. With PocketDuino, developers can easily add external sensors to integrate with Android handsets. The PocketDuino team wants to enable software developers to create apps linked with such sensor devices without requiring too much knowledge about hardware architecture. Similar to the Arduino, you can use a Windows, Macintosh, or Linux PC to load your code to the PocketDuino circuit board. Or you can load code from an Android handset using the Arduino development environment Codebender. The team wants to fill the gap between software and hardware with this product, enabling more people to launch their hardware products and startups. They plan to launch a business in the US if PocketDuino can successfully close this campaign, and they hope to invent more hardware…
PocketDuino is an Android-compatible circuit board based on the Arduino prototyping platform. The product was developed by Japanese engineers and recently launched an Indiegogo campaign.
What’s unique about this circuit board is the ease with which you can connect external sensor devices. For example, if you have a library to control an alcohol sensor, you can have the board obtain data from the sensor by writing as little as three-line of Java code.
With PocketDuino, developers can easily add external sensors to integrate with Android handsets. The PocketDuino team wants to enable software developers to create apps linked with such sensor devices without requiring too much knowledge about hardware architecture.
Similar to the Arduino, you can use a Windows, Macintosh, or Linux PC to load your code to the PocketDuino circuit board. Or you can load code from an Android handset using the Arduino development environment Codebender.
The team wants to fill the gap between software and hardware with this product, enabling more people to launch their hardware products and startups. They plan to launch a business in the US if PocketDuino can successfully close this campaign, and they hope to invent more hardware products addressing various problems.
The campaign will run until the end of June. You can receive e-mail updates about further product development if you invest $1 in the project. If you invest $39, you can get a PocketDuino unit, and for $55 you can get a PocketDuino with an alcohol sensor. Early bird discounts are also available.
Masaru Ikeda
Rick Martin
Yasunori Okajima
