Tokyo-based Social Recruiting, the startup that provides consultation about recruitment using social media services, announced today that it has fundraised from Japanese investment firm Global Brain. Details of the investment were not disclosed but it’s likely worth around several million US dollars.
The company was launched back in 2011 and subsequently secured a seed funding from Tokyo-based seed startup incubator Samurai Incubate. They have been serving about 400 companies and helping their recruitment activities. In terms of the size of their user base, the company has acquired more than 200,000 annual users which accounts for about one-third of all new graduates looking for jobs in Japan.
The company’s CEO Hirofumi Kasuga explained that they plan to use the funds raised this time for their global business expansion, especially focused on the Southeast Asian region.
See the original story in Japanese. Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic and the head of the WordPress project, visited Japan last week. He visited Tokyo on a promotion tour in the APAC region, following Korea, Indonesia, and Singapore. After attending their meet-up event with the local WordPress community where we spoke with him, he planed to visit Osaka, the Philippines, New Zealand, and Australia. He explained: We have an office in SoMA, San Francisco, but I’ve not been there in the past four months. When you are in San Francisco, feel free to visit our office. But I may or may not be there when you visit us. Because we can work anywhere in the world. I can tell our headquarters is where I am. When he visited Japan last time five years ago, he saw many people using i-mode with their feature phone handsets, which is totally different from the current situation where smartphones are well penetrated. When we asked about the state of the WordPress community here in Japan, he said the blogging platform is still only for early adopters, which is very similar to the state of the WordPress community in the US back in 2005…
Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic and the head of the WordPress project, visited Japan last week. He visited Tokyo on a promotion tour in the APAC region, following Korea, Indonesia, and Singapore.
After attending their meet-up event with the local WordPress community where we spoke with him, he planed to visit Osaka, the Philippines, New Zealand, and Australia. He explained:
We have an office in SoMA, San Francisco, but I’ve not been there in the past four months. When you are in San Francisco, feel free to visit our office. But I may or may not be there when you visit us. Because we can work anywhere in the world. I can tell our headquarters is where I am.
When he visited Japan last time five years ago, he saw many people using i-mode with their feature phone handsets, which is totally different from the current situation where smartphones are well penetrated. When we asked about the state of the WordPress community here in Japan, he said the blogging platform is still only for early adopters, which is very similar to the state of the WordPress community in the US back in 2005 or 2006. He added:
If you compare the state of the community to a baseball game, it’s still one inning. So we want to more penetrate WordPress in Japan. That’s why we want to hire good people from Japan. That’s one of biggest reasons why I visited Japan this time.
Among their 250-person team, about one-third of them are committed to user support while the rest of them are engineers, designers and administration staff. ‘Working from everywhere’ is certainly one of their uniquenesses, so only 15 people are working in their headquarters in San Francisco. They have no Japanese employee other than Naoko Takano, their ‘globalizer‘ personnel based in Tokyo.
English would be one of obstacles when typical Japanese people work with them. However, Matt told us with laughter that “You will need to read English but no need to speak in English.” (since internal communication in his company is entirely web-based.) It is obvious that Matt is eager to hire more people from Japan to better serve the local WordPress community comprising of more than a few WordPress users.
We raised a larger amount of money than typical IPOs. We want to control our company by ourselves and have no need of an IPO for now. WordPress became eleven years old two months ago. The money raised this time is to prepare for our next ten years.
We understand that the company plans to use the funds to intensify system developments, especially for mobile optimization for iPhone and Android handsets. In a view of that, his intention hiring Japanese engineers is quite natural since Japan is more advanced in mobile than any western countries.
It is told that websites using WordPress as their platform account for over 20% in all sites in the world. With a limited number of 250 employees, they have generated such a big traffic share larger than that from internet giants like Facebook and Google. It will be interesting to see how their future employees from Japan and the rest of the world will bring WordPress beyond a blogging environment or a content management system to an entirely new concept.
Tokyo-based Metaps, the startup that operates mobile monetization platform for app developers, launched a flea market app called Spike Box yesterday. The app is available in English and Japanese for Android and was developed as a sister app of their freemium payments platform Spike launched back in April. It allows you to set your item in one of four statuses – for sale, trade, rent, or giveaway – and post it with a hashtag on Facebook for sharing with your friends. In this way, you don’t need to waste your unused item but can help other people obtain it from you without buying a new one. Busy people are unlikely to use auction sites because they consider submitting their items to these sites to be time-consuming. That’s why the company has developed this app and enables facilitated trading of items via Facebook social graph. Via Venture Now
Tokyo-based Metaps, the startup that operates mobile monetization platform for app developers, launched a flea market app called Spike Box yesterday. The app is available in English and Japanese for Android and was developed as a sister app of their freemium payments platform Spike launched back in April.
It allows you to set your item in one of four statuses – for sale, trade, rent, or giveaway – and post it with a hashtag on Facebook for sharing with your friends. In this way, you don’t need to waste your unused item but can help other people obtain it from you without buying a new one.
Busy people are unlikely to use auction sites because they consider submitting their items to these sites to be time-consuming. That’s why the company has developed this app and enables facilitated trading of items via Facebook social graph.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo Otaku Mode, the startup behind the Japanese subculture site of the same name, started accepting custom orders for replica Japanese samurai swords last week, where you can order your preferred design of a sword from over 580,000 combination patterns by choosing its nine components such as hilt binding and blade types. This was made possible in collaboration with Kyoto-based replica sword producer Kotoya. According to the company, this is the first time that e-commerce retailers accept custom orders for authentic replica swords in the world. A sword is available for $279.99 including shipping fee. The product will be delivered in about three weeks after placing the order. In our recent interview with the company, they explained that high-ticket items are selling well on their e-commerce channel because of their user demographics. Replica swords are as expensive as nearly $300, but it will be relatively easy to sell these items to their users since they have many big fans of Japanese anime like Rurouni Kenshin and cosplay performances. The company’s co-founder Takuya Akiyama shared that they have already received many orders from outside Japan. On a related note, he told us that these replica…
Tokyo Otaku Mode, the startup behind the Japanese subculture site of the same name, started accepting custom orders for replica Japanese samurai swords last week, where you can order your preferred design of a sword from over 580,000 combination patterns by choosing its nine components such as hilt binding and blade types. This was made possible in collaboration with Kyoto-based replica sword producer Kotoya.
According to the company, this is the first time that e-commerce retailers accept custom orders for authentic replica swords in the world. A sword is available for $279.99 including shipping fee. The product will be delivered in about three weeks after placing the order.
In our recent interview with the company, they explained that high-ticket items are selling well on their e-commerce channel because of their user demographics.
Replica swords are as expensive as nearly $300, but it will be relatively easy to sell these items to their users since they have many big fans of Japanese anime like Rurouni Kenshin and cosplay performances. The company’s co-founder Takuya Akiyama shared that they have already received many orders from outside Japan.
On a related note, he told us that these replica swords can be smoothly delivered to anywhere in the world by reporting as a ‘toy sword’ to customs. When their users receive their sword, they will be able to share a picture of themselves wearing it, which will help promoting its sales as well. It will be interesting to see how they fare from now on.
Tokyo-based Creema, the startup behind the C2C marketplace for handmade items, announced today that it has raised 100 million yen (about $1 million) from KDDI Open Innovation Fund. The company plans to use the funds for system development efforts to give users better experience. In this space, we’ve seen many startups like Etsy (US), Creatty (Japan), and Pinkoi (Taiwan). But Creema is one of the oldest companies among them. Since its launch back in June of 2010, the company has acquired 18,000 creators and they have submitted over 500,000 items on the platform. Their founder and CEO Kotaro Marubayashi explained why they have grown their platform business spending a long time: I think this kind of websites usually takes time to make users understand what’s interesting. That’s why we’ve been carefully developing this community. What makes us unique from other similar services is that most of our creators are making a living by selling their items here. Their items are completely different from what people create as their hobby in their spare time. In order to gain people’s awareness for handmade products, the company holds an exhibition called ‘HandMade in Japan Fes‘ every year as well as has a real…
Tokyo-based Creema, the startup behind the C2C marketplace for handmade items, announced today that it has raised 100 million yen (about $1 million) from KDDI Open Innovation Fund. The company plans to use the funds for system development efforts to give users better experience.
In this space, we’ve seen many startups like Etsy (US), Creatty (Japan), and Pinkoi (Taiwan). But Creema is one of the oldest companies among them. Since its launch back in June of 2010, the company has acquired 18,000 creators and they have submitted over 500,000 items on the platform.
Their founder and CEO Kotaro Marubayashi explained why they have grown their platform business spending a long time:
I think this kind of websites usually takes time to make users understand what’s interesting. That’s why we’ve been carefully developing this community. What makes us unique from other similar services is that most of our creators are making a living by selling their items here. Their items are completely different from what people create as their hobby in their spare time.
Creema’s flagship store in Shinjuku
In order to gain people’s awareness for handmade products, the company holds an exhibition called ‘HandMade in Japan Fes‘ every year as well as has a real flagship store in the Shinjuku Lumine department store. As a result of these efforts, they have surpassed 15 million monthly page views, and the amount of transactions through their platform grows at a pace of 400% every year. Some creators earn more than $10,000 a month despite the fact that most of items are one-off originals.
Coinciding the funding, the company drives user traffic from Au Smart Pass, the unlimited app download service by KDDI, planning to add several payment methods for KDDI’s smartphone subscribers. Marubayashi added:
We’ve been developing our service diligently and steadily. We have a good revenue stream but we can try out something new using the money raised this time. But we’re not interested in increasing page views using ads. We believe there’s a huge potential in the manufacturing culture. We’ll focus on improving our system infrastructure to better serve our users.
In view of the Japanese C2C market, this handmade item market can create new values while second-hand platforms are saturated with mobile apps like Mercari and Fril. Since Japanese manufactured items are favorably rated among foreign consumers, we can expect this marketplace to meet demands from outside the country as well.
Tokyo-based startup incubator Movida Japan held a Demo Day event on Tuesday, showcasing 13 startups from the 5th batch of its incubation program. This is the part 2 of our quick rundown (See this article for part 1). Let’s have a look at the last six presenters and how they have cultivated as well as executed their ideas over the past several months. Movie Lovie There are many events like public viewing or group jogging where you can share your fun time with other participants. But Movie Lovie founder Keisuke Nakamura wondered how we can share an experience with others when we watch a movie at a cinema theater. There are difficulties in “sharing” because the experience is heavily dependent on the content of the movie. Movie Lovie is an online platform and allows you to create a bulletin board for a movie you like, where you can enjoy interactions with other users before watching the movie. Movie distributors or theater owners can also create their boards online for encouraging consumers to come and watch their movies. The service will go live next month. Combinator Combinator is an online job site for startups which allows them to find their potential employees…
Tokyo-based startup incubator Movida Japan held a Demo Day event on Tuesday, showcasing 13 startups from the 5th batch of its incubation program.
This is the part 2 of our quick rundown (See this article for part 1). Let’s have a look at the last six presenters and how they have cultivated as well as executed their ideas over the past several months.
Movie Lovie
Keisuke Nakamura
There are many events like public viewing or group jogging where you can share your fun time with other participants. But Movie Lovie founder Keisuke Nakamura wondered how we can share an experience with others when we watch a movie at a cinema theater. There are difficulties in “sharing” because the experience is heavily dependent on the content of the movie.
Movie Lovie is an online platform and allows you to create a bulletin board for a movie you like, where you can enjoy interactions with other users before watching the movie. Movie distributors or theater owners can also create their boards online for encouraging consumers to come and watch their movies. The service will go live next month.
Combinator
Takumi Shimizu
Combinator is an online job site for startups which allows them to find their potential employees from a pool of people who have their current jobs and are not aggressively finding their next jobs. For engineers, you can sign up for the service and tag yourself with your skill sets so that other users can easily touch base with you.
Since the launch of its alpha version back in late March, notable startups such as Vinclu and Wizpra have succeeded in hiring eleven workers in total. The hiring platform has currently 72 projects and 2,000 users registered.
What differentiates it from other similar platforms is that it encourages users to switch to work for a new company by attracting such users to one of the company’s projects rather than the company itself.
Tabi no Tatsujin
Tabi no Tausjin (literally meaning ‘travel experts’ in Japanese) is an online marketplace for international travel, aiming to connect Japanese travelers with Japanese locals living in foreign travel destinations.
In terms of startups giving users similar experience, we’ve seen many startups including Meetrip, but most of these services require you to communicate with locals in English or their languages. So it will be difficult to use for Japanese users who are not good at speaking in unfamiliar languages.
With the service, their guides can help keep the traveler from being nervous while better enjoying their travel, even for those less familiar with local culture at the destination or worried about safety conditions there. The company has 150 select guides in 12 cities worldwide based on qualification checks via online interviews.
4meee!
Arisa Sakanashi
Women are always looking for tips regarding clothing dress-up or make-up. They used to get information from magazines but now they depend on online media. There are many curation sites offering useful tips for them, but these typically require much time to finish reading. That’s why Arisa Sakanashi and her team invented 4meee!, a user-generated content site in a four-panel comic strip style, specifically targeting teenage girls and women in their 20s.
They plan to monetize it by advertising, publishing advertorial posts, and embedding affiliate links to e-commerce sites. As of this writing, they have published 1,000 articles and surpassed 1 million monthly pageviews. They are currently planning to translate all articles into Chinese and start serving the Chinese markets.
Aorb
Jumpei Ikeda
Aorb is a mobile app that allows users to present two pictures and ask others to choose the best one. For example, when you can’t decided between two outfits, you can take pictures and upload them using the app. Subsequently, you will be able to see a list of responses from other users.
Every question posted gets 70 answers on average. Almost a half of their users are teenagers, and about 60% of them are females. So their primary users are high school girls. They have acquired users from 20 countries around the world because the app uses pictures, requiring no verbal communication. In view of a huge user base from the Asian regions, they are planning to add an English interface by the end of this month.
Hima Switch
Takuya Moriguchi
When you have spare time, this app helps you interact with other users who are also free. Takuya Moriguchi, the inventor of this app, had difficulty in finding someone who has time to spare via Facebook. The app allows you to chat using as short as 10 Japanese characters, while storing as little as past five sets of interactions.
They are planning to add a new feature of simple games this coming weekend (June 7-8). In order to improve their 7-day user retention rate to over 80%, they also plan to roll out a new gamification feature – the more you enjoy chatting with other users using the app, the more characters you are allowed to use in the chat feature – as well as proposing topics to discuss so as to keep them using the app.
Masaru Ikeda
Takeshi Hirano
