Ryohin Keikaku, the Japanese company best known for its consumer goods-focused retail chain Muji, recently introduced a sleep-inducing app called ‘Muji to Sleep‘. It is available in several different languages for Android and iOS.
The company introduced a series of neck cushion products last year, which have been getting a good reputation, especially from frequent travelers who take long-haul flights. The mobile app was recently introduced as a sister product of the cushion products.
Muji to Sleep offers six different relaxing natural sounds recorded around Japan using the binaural recording method, where the audio frequency gap between left-ear and right-ear channels syncs with the brainwave cycle and induces a sound sleep.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based KDDI Mugen Labo, the tech incubator of Japan’s second largest telco, hosted a demo day event today, where five startups that graduated from the fifth batch of the incubator’s program showcased their achievements over the last several months. MistCDN, a P2P-based content distribution network leveraging the WebRTC technology, won the top prize at the event. Here’s a quick rundown on what the five teams have been working on. MistCDN by Mist Technologies (The best prize and the ‘best engineer’ prize winner) MistCDN is a content distribution network designed to distribute rich content. Unlike conventional CDN services, it obtains content from another user nearby in the network topology browsing the same content that you want to browse, so it requires no edge server or network. The company launched a live streaming service using the MistCDN technology today. Filme by Coto-Coto (The ‘Family Ties’ prize and the ‘Audience’ prize winner) Mothers like to videotape their children, but many complain that they have no time to edit and share the videos. To address this issue, Filme edits your video clips, creates a DVD, and delivers it to you or other family members periodically. All you have…
Tokyo-based KDDI Mugen Labo, the tech incubator of Japan’s second largest telco, hosted a demo day event today, where five startups that graduated from the fifth batch of the incubator’s program showcased their achievements over the last several months.
MistCDN, a P2P-based content distribution network leveraging the WebRTC technology, won the top prize at the event. Here’s a quick rundown on what the five teams have been working on.
MistCDN by Mist Technologies (The best prize and the ‘best engineer’ prize winner)
Shintaro Tanaka
MistCDN is a content distribution network designed to distribute rich content. Unlike conventional CDN services, it obtains content from another user nearby in the network topology browsing the same content that you want to browse, so it requires no edge server or network. The company launched a live streaming service using the MistCDN technology today.
Filme by Coto-Coto (The ‘Family Ties’ prize and the ‘Audience’ prize winner)
Shingo Kadomatsu
Mothers like to videotape their children, but many complain that they have no time to edit and share the videos. To address this issue, Filme edits your video clips, creates a DVD, and delivers it to you or other family members periodically. All you have to do is videotape a 30-second clip every day and upload it to the Filme website. We consider this a version of the Kiddy family photo delivery service.
QuaQua by Ducklings (The ‘New Workstyle’ prize winner)
Norikazu Takagi
QuaQua is a marketplace for handmade jewelry. Users post a photo of their designs before manufacturing it. Once a design earns enough votes to make a profit, a user can start making, thus reducing the loss risk. While QuaQua initially aimed to establish a marketplace for general handmade crafts, they pivoted to jewelry because of potential competition.
Macaron by SPWTECH (The ‘Key of Beauty’ prize winner)
Keita Yoshida
Macaron is a fashion and beauty information-focused curation app for young females. Curated by 12 female university students, the app provides useful tips for women on how to be more fashionable and attractive. Its iOS app will be released soon, and its Android app will be out by year-end.
Repro (The ‘Global Create’ prize)
Yusuke Hirata
Repro is an analytics solution that allows game developers to improve their apps to increase user retention rates. By integrating the Repro SDK, developers can see how users play their app as well as how they look during game play. Twelve developers have adopted Repro’s analytics solution for 16 apps.
Along with this event, KDDI Mugen Labo announced it now accepting applications for the 7th batch of its incubation program. The deadline is August 15th. Apply here.
Japan’s Nikkei reported today that Japan’s second largest telco KDDI will join forces with 13 Japanese established companies to launch a startup incubation initiative. The initiative will choose five candidates for the next batch of KDDI’s entrepreneurship program Mugen Labo. Participating companies include Seven & i Holding (parent company of Seven Eleven convenience store chain and Ito Yokado supermarkets), Mitsui & Co. (trading), Kokuyo (stationery manufacturing), Dai Nippon Printing, Bandai Namco Holdings (game), Tokyu Corporation (railway), Mitsui Fudosan (real estate), Plus (stationery manufacturing), Kintetsu International (travel agency), Softfront, Parco (department store), TV Asahi, and Toppan Printing. They will give qualified startups not only funds but also intangible resources through the program, such as sales marketing data (Seven & i) or design knowledge to develop products (Kokuyo). Because this is in addition to Open Innovation Fund, the company plans to form a new fund to invest in high-profile startups born out of the new initiative.
Japan’s Nikkei reported today that Japan’s second largest telco KDDI will join forces with 13 Japanese established companies to launch a startup incubation initiative. The initiative will choose five candidates for the next batch of KDDI’s entrepreneurship program Mugen Labo.
Because this is in addition to Open Innovation Fund, the company plans to form a new fund to invest in high-profile startups born out of the new initiative.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. Viling Venture Partners, the investment arm of Japanese educational business company Viling Holdings, and human resource company Slogan jointly launched startup acceleration program ‘Slogan Viling Ventures‘ on Friday. The first batch of the program will start at the end of this month. Qualified startups or entrepreneurs can participate in the program for three months, and their demo day will take place in late October. Villing Holding CEO Shuhei Morofuji explained why they launched the program: The education industry has big room to improve with information technology. As we understand, education is to encourage people to keep living actively together with our society. However, many public and private education initiatives are making efforts toward an unintended direction. We are developing several approaches to make the Japanese educational system much better, including launching our own kindergartens or schools and developing educational products. Through this development process, we learned many players want to disrupt this industry using information technology. By supporting them, we will have a greater impact on the market. That’s why we launched Viling Venture Partners. Participants can obtain the following benefits by participating in the acceleration program: Up to…
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.
The first batch of the program will start at the end of this month. Qualified startups or entrepreneurs can participate in the program for three months, and their demo day will take place in late October.
Villing Holding CEO Shuhei Morofuji explained why they launched the program:
The education industry has big room to improve with information technology. As we understand, education is to encourage people to keep living actively together with our society. However, many public and private education initiatives are making efforts toward an unintended direction.
We are developing several approaches to make the Japanese educational system much better, including launching our own kindergartens or schools and developing educational products. Through this development process, we learned many players want to disrupt this industry using information technology. By supporting them, we will have a greater impact on the market. That’s why we launched Viling Venture Partners.
Participants can obtain the following benefits by participating in the acceleration program:
Up to 200,000 yen ($2,000) grants
Complimentary usage of a co-working space
Support for hiring new people
Access to advisors, mentors, and other talented people
Experience and knowledge for scale-up your business from scratch
Polishing up an educational business plan, introducing potential partners
Advice for global business expansion
They will take a hands-on approach rather than funding in helping startups and entrepreneurs, but we understand that Slogan Viling Ventures may invest in high-profile startups at the time of the demo day opportunity.
This acceleration program is intended for Japanese startups and entrepreneurs who are developing services for the Japanese market. The application deadline for the first batch is July 25, 2014.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based BitGather, the startup that operates viral content site Curazy, announced earlier this week that it has fundraised 100 million yen (approximately $1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures, DeNA, and Skyland Ventures. Coinciding with this announcement, the company rebranded its company name from BitGather to Laugh Tech. They will use the fund to hire new writers and editors, and are also planning to introduce a mobile app for iOS and Android in mid-August. Curazy has been focused on curating funny news topics from around the world. Since its launch in January, it has acquired over 5 million monthly unique users and over 19 million monthly page views. According to Laugh Tech’s co-founder and CEO Shinnosuke Ito, what’s unique about them is that they have a primary base of readers in their 30′s, and its male to female ratio is almost 50/50. He elaborated: We aim to deliver content that can be a substitute to TV variety shows. We have a bit more female readers than male readers. I assume that’s because we are not dependent on indecent topics to generate user traffic. Our traffic peak comes after 8pm on weekdays, especially around 10pm. For curation…
Tokyo-based BitGather, the startup that operates viral content site Curazy, announced earlier this week that it has fundraised 100 million yen (approximately $1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures, DeNA, and Skyland Ventures. Coinciding with this announcement, the company rebranded its company name from BitGather to Laugh Tech. They will use the fund to hire new writers and editors, and are also planning to introduce a mobile app for iOS and Android in mid-August.
Curazy has been focused on curating funny news topics from around the world. Since its launch in January, it has acquired over 5 million monthly unique users and over 19 million monthly page views. According to Laugh Tech’s co-founder and CEO Shinnosuke Ito, what’s unique about them is that they have a primary base of readers in their 30′s, and its male to female ratio is almost 50/50. He elaborated:
Shinsuke Ito
We aim to deliver content that can be a substitute to TV variety shows. We have a bit more female readers than male readers. I assume that’s because we are not dependent on indecent topics to generate user traffic. Our traffic peak comes after 8pm on weekdays, especially around 10pm.
For curation sites like Curazy, a big problem is operating costs, which are likely to increase in proportion to the growth of their business. Curazy has a several-person team for content curation. To publish more articles and differentiate themselves from other viral content sites, hiring writers and saving operating costs are key issues for the company.
Laugh Tech is developing an analytics tool called Hot Pages. Metrics from this are based on the number of Facebook likes or retweets that published articles earn. It is unclear how they can analyze quantitatively these metrics by associating them with elements in an article, but they say it helps figure out the kind of articles that are more likely to attract readers and contribute to traffic growth. With this foolproof system, even the “humorless” can curate humorous news, allowing the company to hire new curators from a larger pool of “less capable yet cheaper” personnel.
I think the business model of viral content sites is similar to that of private TV networks in Japan, which have been pursuing this business model for the last 60 years. A typical broadcaster creates a number of TV programs to attract as many viewers as possible for the lowest production costs with the aim of consuming as much time of viewers as possible.
It will be interesting to see how Curazy can make the most of their strength in this space.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Handsshare, the startup behind construction industry-focused job matching platform Tsukulink, announced today that it has fundraised about 50 million yen (about $500,000) from Japanese investment firm Nissay Capital. The platform lists jobs like those of skilled laborers in the construction industry such as carpenters, builders and the like for corporate and individual construction developers. Since its beta launch in May 2013, the company has acquired about 650 developers and lists about 300 construction projects. While the platform is something like a bulletin board, the company will use the funds to develop the platform so that participating construction developers can use it to market to potential customers. I’ve known the platform for some time, and I initially thought that it would be difficult to monetize it because many people in such industries as food, retailing, and construction are digitally challenged. However, Tsukulink CEO Minoru Saito launched this business because resources and workloads are not appropriately allocated and he wanted to improve the situation. Co-founder Tatsuo Uchiyama knows this fact very well because he’s been working as a steeplejack for over ten years. Saito explained: Uchiyama’s friend and fellow construction worker died of overwork. While…
Tokyo-based Handsshare, the startup behind construction industry-focused job matching platform Tsukulink, announced today that it has fundraised about 50 million yen (about $500,000) from Japanese investment firm Nissay Capital.
The platform lists jobs like those of skilled laborers in the construction industry such as carpenters, builders and the like for corporate and individual construction developers. Since its beta launch in May 2013, the company has acquired about 650 developers and lists about 300 construction projects.
While the platform is something like a bulletin board, the company will use the funds to develop the platform so that participating construction developers can use it to market to potential customers. I’ve known the platform for some time, and I initially thought that it would be difficult to monetize it because many people in such industries as food, retailing, and construction are digitally challenged.
However, Tsukulink CEO Minoru Saito launched this business because resources and workloads are not appropriately allocated and he wanted to improve the situation. Co-founder Tatsuo Uchiyama knows this fact very well because he’s been working as a steeplejack for over ten years. Saito explained:
Uchiyama’s friend and fellow construction worker died of overwork. While some people break down from overwork, others suffer from a lack of work and have to find part-time work to make a living.
He told us that the growing penetration of smart phones has helped improve the use of digital tools in this industry because a smart phone is easier to use than a PC.
I think the digitalization of labor industries will be a major trend in the next few years, because we’ve seen good examples of it like Toreta (restaurant), LeNet (laundry), Raksul (printing), and Cyta.jp (private schools).
Masaru Ikeda
Junya Mori
Takeshi Hirano
