Tokyo-based Yaraku, the startup that provides translation platforms WorldJumper and FontTrans, announced today that it has launched a business-oriented translation platform called YarakuZen. In contrast with their conventional services designed for website translation, YarakuZen is more business-focused and available for translation in 17 languages.
YarakuZen allows you to submit translation requests via file formats like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as well as text files, or even using an API. It outsources your translation orders to third-party crowdsourced translation services like Conyac or Gengo, but it also accumulates frequently-used translation requests and results in its database for future reference. This database is shared in multiple accounts of your colleagues under your company, which helps keep translation costs down and improve quality over time at a business scene.
YarakuZen was launched in beta several months ago, and we saw they were presenting it at ICT Spring 2014, a startup conference taking place in Luxembourg in early July (see video below).
See the original story in Japanese. We heard from folks at Rovio Entertainment when they set up a Japan office early last year. If you are a resident in the startup community here in Tokyo, you may have seen their Japan country manager Antti Sonninen more than a few times. Yesterday was the last chance where we could see him wearing a red Angry Birds sweatshirt. It’s because Sonninen joined a new startup today. Tokyo-based Beatrobo, the startup best known for its smartphone-enabled small gadget PlugAir, announced today that Sonninnen joined their team as COO. Beatrobo has been led by their co-founder and CEO Hiroshi Asaeda since its launch in 2011. Upon Sonninen’s joining the team, they expect to strengthen the globalization efforts in their business operations. From global gaming giant to Japanese startup Sonninen has been serving Rovio as Japan country manager for more than a year. Since joining the company in Finland back in 2011, he has been seeing rapid growth for over three years. When he joined Rovio, their entire headcount was about 70, but it has been grown up to 900 to date. In a response to my question about why he joins Beatrobo at this…
We heard from folks at Rovio Entertainment when they set up a Japan office early last year. If you are a resident in the startup community here in Tokyo, you may have seen their Japan country manager Antti Sonninen more than a few times.
Yesterday was the last chance where we could see him wearing a red Angry Birds sweatshirt. It’s because Sonninen joined a new startup today. Tokyo-based Beatrobo, the startup best known for its smartphone-enabled small gadget PlugAir, announced today that Sonninnen joined their team as COO.
Beatrobo has been led by their co-founder and CEO Hiroshi Asaeda since its launch in 2011. Upon Sonninen’s joining the team, they expect to strengthen the globalization efforts in their business operations.
From global gaming giant to Japanese startup
Sonninen has been serving Rovio as Japan country manager for more than a year. Since joining the company in Finland back in 2011, he has been seeing rapid growth for over three years. When he joined Rovio, their entire headcount was about 70, but it has been grown up to 900 to date. In a response to my question about why he joins Beatrobo at this time, Sonninen explained:
I’ve seen my colleagues establishing local Rovio offices in Korea and China. I think Rovio will keep growing. I’d love to put myself in an early-stage startup. And I’d love to do what only I can do.
Prior to joining Rovio, Sonninen was running a startup providing a social network platform, which focused on helping non-governmental organizations coordinate their operations with each others in developing countries. So he should be called an entrepreneur rather than a businessperson, and we can understand he wants to put himself in an environment which has a great potential in making a successful leap.
Sonninen added:
Beatrobo fundraised from Lawson HMV Entertainment in April. At that time, I had a chance to see Asaeda and we were jestingly talking, wondering if we could work together. But this talk has turned into reality.
Sonninen understands what a country manager or a local office for a startup is required to do in its global operations. Upon his experience as a country manager at Rovio, Sonninen will focus on embarking on a global expansion strategy and addressing issues around these business operations.
What globalization means for Beatrobo
Beatrobo partnered with American mixture band Linkin Park and LA-based creative thinktank Makeshop late last year. Comparing to typical Japanese startups, Beatrobo is going steps ahead on globalization.
What does globalization mean for Beatrobo? The company’s CEO Asaeda shared an interesting story that their corporate culture started changing after Sonninen started appearing regularly at the office a short while ago:
With Antti’s joining as a trigger, we changed the language we use in our regular meeting to English. When we started it, nobody could speak nor understand and this made little sense. However, we kept doing it for four weeks, and our members finally became able to articulate about what they are thinking about.
While Asaeda is bilingual and Sonninen can speak Finnish, English and Japanese, that doesn’t mean their company is global because their entire team has to understand what their global users in the world really want. Asaeda continued:
At a typical Japanese company, its management thinks only of the Japanese domestic market and their overseas department cares for international businesses. The overseas department is usually positioned in the same level with business development or system development departments in the company’s hierarchy, so it will be difficult for the overseas department to transfer feedback from users to these other departments. Hence, whether or not a startup can become globalized depends on whether its management has a global perspective on business.
Once a company has formed an organization structure to target the domestic market, it is more unlikely to change it to fit global operations later on. So if you started preparing for global operations after acquiring market share in the domestic market, that would be usually too late. So now you can recall that Taizo Son, founder of Tokyo-based incubator Movida Japan, has revealed an entrepreneur should start developing the English version first before the Japanese version (Beatrobo graudated from the forth batch of Movida Japan’s incubation program).
Asaeda added:
Whether or not we have an overseas office doesn’t matter for our globalization. We’re a seven-person team but don’t have to work apart each others yet, so we all are based at our Tokyo office. When we feel the necessity, we’ll consider setting up an overseas office.
Boosting hiring
Five people at Beatrobo excluding Asaeda are all engineers. Considering a scale of a startup like Beatrobo, support personnel for every function will be needed. However, they haven’t hired any people other than engineers, and Asaeda has been handling all other back-office operations.
Asaeda explained why they haven’t hire non-engineers to date:
We can afford to hire support personnel. But once we hire them, we need to give them a position where they are willing to keep working in addition to supporting my tasks. I thought that was difficult so I’ve been doing all other tasks.
Upon Antti’s joining the team, I’d like to be more focused on better managing or facilitating our team. I think Antti knows that point much better, so there will be so many things that I can learn from him.
Asaeda revealed that they will more focus on hiring new people regardless of their nationality. As the team is now ready for hiring new people upon Sonninen’s joining the team, they started receiving applications for new positions like business development, product development as well as interns. If they can succeed in acquiring good global human resources, we can see their new product soon following their social music player product Beatrobo and content-sharing gadget PlugAir.
See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s Nikkei reported this morning that Tokyo-based Uzabase, the startup behind curated news app NewsPicks and company/industry database service Speeda, will announce on September 1st that it has fundraised 470 million yen (or about $4.5 million) in a round led by Itochu Techology Ventures. Other participating investors in this round are YJ Capital, Kodansha (publishing company), Globis Capital Partners, SMBC Venture Capital, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Shinsei Bank, GMO Venture Partners, and Monex Ventures (investment arm of Monex Securities). Uzabase has started providing content from Kodansha’s Gendai Business e-magazine on the NewsPicks app. Upon this investment, Uzabase will add Courier Japon, Kodansha’s monthly magazine focused on global issues, to NewsPicks’ content lineup. See also: Japan’s Uzabase introduces business news curation app NewsPicks was launched in September 2013 and is available on desktop as well as for iOS and Android. Uzabase has differentiated NewsPicks from other similar apps by curating news topics by notable economics news outlets. While the company has not disclosed the app’s download count, users have been actively using the app and some news topics have received comment numbers in the three-digit range. Uzabase started a paying subscription service on a trial basis…
Japan’s Nikkei reported this morning that Tokyo-based Uzabase, the startup behind curated news app NewsPicks and company/industry database service Speeda, will announce on September 1st that it has fundraised 470 million yen (or about $4.5 million) in a round led by Itochu Techology Ventures.
Uzabase has started providing content from Kodansha’s Gendai Business e-magazine on the NewsPicks app. Upon this investment, Uzabase will add Courier Japon, Kodansha’s monthly magazine focused on global issues, to NewsPicks’ content lineup.
NewsPicks was launched in September 2013 and is available on desktop as well as for iOS and Android. Uzabase has differentiated NewsPicks from other similar apps by curating news topics by notable economics news outlets. While the company has not disclosed the app’s download count, users have been actively using the app and some news topics have received comment numbers in the three-digit range.
Uzabase started a paying subscription service on a trial basis in February, where users can read articles from eight newspapers and magazines including Dow Jones Business News for a flat-rate monthly fee of 1,500 yen ($15).
To strengthen the publishing of original content, Uzabase recently appointed former Toyo Keizai Online editor-in-chief Norihiko Sasaki as the editor-in-chief of the NewsPicks service, which shows that they use a different strategy versus other curated news apps that use machine-based curation technology such as Gunosy or SmartNews.
See the original story in Japanese. HalalMinds is a mobile app that can scan bar codes to see if a food is halal compliant, or permissible for Muslims to eat. When we featured it in April, they only had an Android version but have subsequently released an iOS version. They recently released version 2.0, which allows halal scanning of the bar code of drugs, cosmetics, and food products. In addition, the new version allows for scanning of E numbers —codes for food additives used in European countries. Meanwhile, the HalalMinds team won a pre-startup award at Global TIC 2014, Taiwan’s largest business plan competition event which took place in Taipei on August 17–22. HalalMinds is the first award-winning team from Japan at this event. Leveraging this exposure, the team aims to accelerate Asian expansion, including enhancing the app so users can find halal restaurants and halal foods in China, South Korea, and Taiwan. The app was developed by Indonesian student Agung Pambudi, a member of Kyushu Lab who has lived in Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Finland. KyushuLab is a software development community based on the southernmost of the four main islands in the Japanese archipelago.
HalalMinds is a mobile app that can scan bar codes to see if a food is halal compliant, or permissible for Muslims to eat. When we featured it in April, they only had an Android version but have subsequently released an iOS version. They recently released version 2.0, which allows halal scanning of the bar code of drugs, cosmetics, and food products. In addition, the new version allows for scanning of E numbers —codes for food additives used in European countries.
Meanwhile, the HalalMinds team won a pre-startup award at Global TIC 2014, Taiwan’s largest business plan competition event which took place in Taipei on August 17–22. HalalMinds is the first award-winning team from Japan at this event. Leveraging this exposure, the team aims to accelerate Asian expansion, including enhancing the app so users can find halal restaurants and halal foods in China, South Korea, and Taiwan.
The app was developed by Indonesian student Agung Pambudi, a member of Kyushu Lab who has lived in Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Finland. KyushuLab is a software development community based on the southernmost of the four main islands in the Japanese archipelago.
Tokyo-based MakeLeaps, the startup behind a cloud-based invoicing platform under the same name, announced today that it has raised $600,000 through AngelList. Participating investors in this round include Naval Ravikant (AngelList), Richard Chen (Hatena) and Dave McClure (500 Startups). Since its launch in October 2011 by Australian serial entrepreneur Jason Winder, MakeLeaps provides an invoicing platform that targets freelancers as well as small/medium-sized enterprises, having acquired over 15,000 users. According to the company, the service saw a 20% user revenue growth rate in three months from April to June. MakeLeaps plans to use the funding to enhance the service and integrate it with other enterprise resource planning or B2B payment services so that more big companies will be able to put the platform into their in-house invoicing operations. In addition, MakeLeaps said it will increase sales representatives in order to boost marketing of the service to enterprise users.
Tokyo-based MakeLeaps, the startup behind a cloud-based invoicing platform under the same name, announced today that it has raised $600,000 through AngelList. Participating investors in this round include Naval Ravikant (AngelList), Richard Chen (Hatena) and Dave McClure (500 Startups).
Since its launch in October 2011 by Australian serial entrepreneur Jason Winder, MakeLeaps provides an invoicing platform that targets freelancers as well as small/medium-sized enterprises, having acquired over 15,000 users. According to the company, the service saw a 20% user revenue growth rate in three months from April to June.
MakeLeaps plans to use the funding to enhance the service and integrate it with other enterprise resource planning or B2B payment services so that more big companies will be able to put the platform into their in-house invoicing operations. In addition, MakeLeaps said it will increase sales representatives in order to boost marketing of the service to enterprise users.
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese startup Eureka has an office in Ebisu, Tokyo. Since its launch in 2008, the company has provided mobile apps like Pairs and Couples. We recently visited the office to hear from the company’s CEO Yu Akasaka and COO Jun Nishikawa. Boasting over 1.3 million users In July, Akasaka and Nishikawa co-founded a company focused on incubating and investing in startups in Japan and the rest of the world, called Eureka Ventures. In association with DeNA and other companies, Eureka Ventures participated in a $500,000 investment round in East Meet East, a New York-based online dating service for Asian people. Eureka expects that the partnership through this investment help their business grow further while exploring a business synergy between the North American and Asian markets. Since its launch two years ago, the Pairs app has acquired over 1.3 million downloads from the Japanese and Taiwanese markets to date, with about 500,000 users users coming from Taiwan. Given the high penetration rate of Facebook and a pro-Japanese attitude, they attempted to focus on marketing in Taiwan, becoming a big success. Akasaka explained what prompted them to start developing the Pairs app: There are many online…
Japanese startup Eureka has an office in Ebisu, Tokyo. Since its launch in 2008, the company has provided mobile apps like Pairs and Couples. We recently visited the office to hear from the company’s CEO Yu Akasaka and COO Jun Nishikawa.
Boasting over 1.3 million users
In July, Akasaka and Nishikawa co-founded a company focused on incubating and investing in startups in Japan and the rest of the world, called Eureka Ventures. In association with DeNA and other companies, Eureka Ventures participated in a $500,000 investment round in East Meet East, a New York-based online dating service for Asian people. Eureka expects that the partnership through this investment help their business grow further while exploring a business synergy between the North American and Asian markets.
Since its launch two years ago, the Pairs app has acquired over 1.3 million downloads from the Japanese and Taiwanese markets to date, with about 500,000 users users coming from Taiwan. Given the high penetration rate of Facebook and a pro-Japanese attitude, they attempted to focus on marketing in Taiwan, becoming a big success.
Akasaka explained what prompted them to start developing the Pairs app:
There are many online dating services in the North American and North European markets. But we thought this sector is not yet well established and still had much space for growth. Typical online dating sites may give you a negative impression, so we understood the importance of changing the culture to improve it.
After shutting down two mobile apps
Eureka has actually introduced four apps to date: Online dating and marriage hunting app Pairs, memory sharing app Couples, app discovery app Peepapp and its antecedent Pickie. But the latter two services have already been shut down.
Following other users, Peepapps allowed you to peep what apps they were using. But it was too early because there was no trend among people exploring a new app on a social basis. Regardless of support from a big company or a big promotion budget, we learned through our experience that a service not in step with the times would be never accepted.
After shutting down the two services, Eureka had been exploring the next business to take on while handling cultivation of contracted software development businesses. Nishikawa subsequently came up with an idea for an online dating service:
When it comes to a new business idea, we wanted to create one which is obviously monetizable. The online dating sector is becoming integrated and has a solid revenue model. I believed a huge potential is out there because I saw many friends around me using such service when I was abroad to study.
Adopting a data-driven approach
Despite the fact that the Asian region is considered a ‘Blue Ocean’ market for them, there are many competitors in the online dating sector. What is a key advantage behind their steady growth?
The two co-founders have strong backgrounds in marketing through their experience working with e-commerce businesses. They attach much importance to metrics like customer acquisition cost, lifetime value or conversion rate, and are adjusting the service in line with the data-driven approach that they have learned from their previous business experiences. Akasaka elaborated:
We keep seeing metrics and improving the app every day. In addition to various metrics and user feedback, we’re sharing figures like how many times the app has crashed in our entire team so we can run a PDCA cycle very quickly.
Improving user experience to satisfy user needs
Akasaka pointed out that both the product itself and the promotion effort combined make a big success. These are directly linked with behavior which they have been developing the app toward, from the user’s perspective.
Akasaka explained how they are making efforts to improve the app:
We launched a new version of the Pairs app for iOS and Android on August 21, where we rolled out various improvements. For example, typical online dating apps show you square-shaped profile photos but we changed it to round-shaped ones, which shows less numbers of candidates in a first view screen. This is a very minor change but creates a world view different from that of conventional dating sites, which makes users easier to sign up.
Nishikawa added:
While our desktop version looks like Facebook, the iOS app has adopted a similar interface to Line. Considering apps that our users are using most often, we are improving interfaces of the service for devices accordingly.
We can see their thoughtfulness in the well-designed interface. For example, they use an elaborate design in the app screen so you will not have to worry about a peep even when you are using the app in a crowded train. That’s from considering Japanese women’s typical concern that they hate anyone knowing about them using an online dating app.
Educational activities needed in any markets
The Pairs has acquired over 8 million Facebook likes, over 1 million monthly active users, and matched over 4 million couples in total.
However, once a user finds a good partner on the Pairs app, he or she will quit the app shortly. How did the team address this issue? In a response to my question, Akasaka explained:
It doesn’t matter. If a couple step into the next phase, they will start another of our apps, Couples. Even if their relationship doesn’t work out, they will get back to us and start using the Pairs app again.
As Akasaka now thinks that they can grow the service tenfold, he aims to educate people and improve their negative stereotype about encounters through online dating services. Nishikawa explained how they will proceed from here:
We invested in New York-based online dating service East Meet East a month ago. In a recent discussion with the team, they told us even Western couples are not willing to unveil that they have met each others using an online dating service. So this education process will be needed globally. We’ll be devoting ourselves to it.