Japanese game developer Gumi’s IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange was approved today. The company will be listed on 9 December.
Gumi was launched in June 2007 to provide a feature phone-based social network service under the same name. Subsequently they entered the mobile game development business and introduced notable titles via DeNA, Gree, and other app distribution channels.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. Kyoto- and Silicon Valley-based Nota, the company that provides screen capture and cloud storage platform Gyazo, announced today that it has fundraised $2 million from Japanese Internet company Opt, as well as two VC firms; YJ Capital and Miyako Capital. Gyazo allows users to capture a screenshot and share it with other users via a simple URL. Since its release in 2011, the service has acquired 3.75 million monthly unique users and about 13 million monthly uploads of screenshots. The service is available for free, but premium membership menu for corporate users provides additional features like enabling access privilege for their files, user support, as well as integration with Microsoft Office applications. In a view of geographical distribution, Nota has about 3,000 premium and freemium users – North America (33%), Europe (37%), Japan (14%), and Russia (4%). Prior to launching Gyazo, Nota developed a book search engine called Calil that allows users to make retrievals across libraries in Japan. CEO Isshu Rakusai started programming when he was 12. He has introduced news clipping software Kamicopi and has been approved as a “super creator” by the Japanese governmental IT promotion authority,…
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.
Kyoto- and Silicon Valley-based Nota, the company that provides screen capture and cloud storage platform Gyazo, announced today that it has fundraised $2 million from Japanese Internet company Opt, as well as two VC firms; YJ Capital and Miyako Capital.
Gyazo allows users to capture a screenshot and share it with other users via a simple URL. Since its release in 2011, the service has acquired 3.75 million monthly unique users and about 13 million monthly uploads of screenshots.
The service is available for free, but premium membership menu for corporate users provides additional features like enabling access privilege for their files, user support, as well as integration with Microsoft Office applications. In a view of geographical distribution, Nota has about 3,000 premium and freemium users – North America (33%), Europe (37%), Japan (14%), and Russia (4%).
Prior to launching Gyazo, Nota developed a book search engine called Calil that allows users to make retrievals across libraries in Japan. CEO Isshu Rakusai started programming when he was 12. He has introduced news clipping software Kamicopi and has been approved as a “super creator” by the Japanese governmental IT promotion authority, IPA in 2003.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Colorful Board released a fashion coordination app called Sensy on 7 November. The app will “learn” (store in memory) an individual’s fashion preference using artificial intelligence and propose outfits to one’s likings. The Sensy app shows several items, and one can choose “like” or “not like” for each of these. By continuing this process, the artificial intelligence in the app learns one’s preference and generally improves a recommendation’s accuracy. If one finds any favorite fashion item to buy in the recommendation, a person may easily jump into an online store via the app selling that item. The company has allied with over 1,600 fashion brands including those which have not yet been introduced in Japan, so users can gain recommendations regarding a wide variety of available items. Through the machine learning process, the app will come to obtain a fashion sense similar to the one an individual has. By adding “sophistication” from fashion models and stylists to it, the app will assist in the selection of appropriate items, called the Sense Link function. Colorful Board has been developing the core technology using artificial intelligence in partnership with Keio University Professor Dr. Eitaro Aiyoshi and Chiba University Professor Dr. Takashi Okamoto. Patents for this…
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.
Tokyo-based startup Colorful Board released a fashion coordination app called Sensy on 7 November. The app will “learn” (store in memory) an individual’s fashion preference using artificial intelligence and propose outfits to one’s likings.
The Sensy app shows several items, and one can choose “like” or “not like” for each of these. By continuing this process, the artificial intelligence in the app learns one’s preference and generally improves a recommendation’s accuracy. If one finds any favorite fashion item to buy in the recommendation, a person may easily jump into an online store via the app selling that item. The company has allied with over 1,600 fashion brands including those which have not yet been introduced in Japan, so users can gain recommendations regarding a wide variety of available items.
Through the machine learning process, the app will come to obtain a fashion sense similar to the one an individual has. By adding “sophistication” from fashion models and stylists to it, the app will assist in the selection of appropriate items, called the Sense Link function.
Colorful Board has been developing the core technology using artificial intelligence in partnership with Keio University Professor Dr. Eitaro Aiyoshi and Chiba University Professor Dr. Takashi Okamoto. Patents for this technology are pending in the U.S.
Conventional recommendation systems like those adopted on Amazon uses the collaborative filtering approach to produce recommendations, which makes proposals based on preference sets of those who are similar to a user in profile. In contrast, the Sensy app will make recommendations based on one’s preference only so the method will work properly even when recommending brand new or niche items, which are unlikely to be found in the preference sets of other users.
The app design was directed by Daito Manabe, an artist from “video jockey” group Rhizomatiks. This prominent VJ team is known for producing music videos for J-pop music idol unit Perfume.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Creema, the startup behind a C2C marketplace for handmade items, announced 7 November that it has introduced an iOS app for the service. The company fundraised 100 million yen ($1 million) from KDDI Open Innovation Fund in June and has developed the app using the funds with the aim to improve accessibility for their mobile users. Since its launch in 2010, Creema has listed over 650,000 handmade items and acquired over two million monthly visitors. Their monthly transaction volume is seeing good growth and has doubled in comparison with five months ago when they partnered with Japanese telco KDDI coinciding, with the aforementioned funding. In differentiation with other C2C marketplaces like Mercari and Fril, Creema is focused on handmade items, allowing users to interact with creators and order their custom-made items as well as listed items. While this version of the app allows buyers to browse and purchase items only, a new version, which is scheduled to go live mid-November, will support the function that enables sellers to submit their items to the marketplace. In this space Taiwan-born handmade marketplace Pinkoi, which is backed by Japan’s Infinity Venture Partners, has been expanding into Japanese where they have adopted the “Mobile First” strategy. Pinkoi has released its localized Android and iOS apps for Japanese users, so the…
Tokyo-based Creema, the startup behind a C2C marketplace for handmade items, announced 7 November that it has introduced an iOS app for the service. The company fundraised 100 million yen ($1 million) from KDDI Open Innovation Fund in June and has developed the app using the funds with the aim to improve accessibility for their mobile users.
Since its launch in 2010, Creema has listed over 650,000 handmade items and acquired over two million monthly visitors. Their monthly transaction volume is seeing good growth and has doubled in comparison with five months ago when they partnered with Japanese telco KDDI coinciding, with the aforementioned funding. In differentiation with other C2C marketplaces like Mercari and Fril, Creema is focused on handmade items, allowing users to interact with creators and order their custom-made items as well as listed items.
While this version of the app allows buyers to browse and purchase items only, a new version, which is scheduled to go live mid-November, will support the function that enables sellers to submit their items to the marketplace.
In this space Taiwan-born handmade marketplace Pinkoi, which is backed by Japan’s Infinity Venture Partners, has been expanding into Japanese where they have adopted the “Mobile First” strategy. Pinkoi has released its localized Android and iOS apps for Japanese users, so the launch of Creema’s mobile app at this time means that the Japanese company is ready for a battle with the Taiwanese competitor.
The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) announced today that it has approved CrowdWorks, the Japanese company that provides crowdsourcing platform under the same name, for an IPO on the TSE Mothers Market. The company will be listed on 12 December. Since its launch in 2011, CrowdWorks has been providing a crowdsourcing plaform for engineers, writers, designers, and other freelance workers, as well as running collaborated businesses with established companies like Yahoo Japan and Japanese education company Benesse Corporation. The company saw 51 million yen ($446,000) in revenue with an ordinary loss of 158 million yen ($1.4 million) and a net loss of 159 million yen ($1.4 million), so they have been showing a loss since the launch. In our recent interview with CrowdWorks founder and CEO Koichiro Yoshida, he said that the annual transaction volume of crowdsourced jobs dealt with by the platform will reach over 2 billion yen ($17.4 million) this year. See also: Japanese startups find creativity at Crowdworks Can crowdsourcing startups change Japan’s employment landscape? In Japan, some seniors turn to crowdsourcing job platforms for work Japanese crowdsourcing platform ‘Crowdworks’ raises $10.7 million Japan finds a new way to work: In conversation with Crowdworks’ Koichiro Yoshida Japan and…
CrowdWorks founder and CEO Koichiro Yoshida
The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) announced today that it has approved CrowdWorks, the Japanese company that provides crowdsourcing platform under the same name, for an IPO on the TSE Mothers Market. The company will be listed on 12 December.
Since its launch in 2011, CrowdWorks has been providing a crowdsourcing plaform for engineers, writers, designers, and other freelance workers, as well as running collaborated businesses with established companies like Yahoo Japan and Japanese education company Benesse Corporation.
The company saw 51 million yen ($446,000) in revenue with an ordinary loss of 158 million yen ($1.4 million) and a net loss of 159 million yen ($1.4 million), so they have been showing a loss since the launch.
In our recent interview with CrowdWorks founder and CEO Koichiro Yoshida, he said that the annual transaction volume of crowdsourced jobs dealt with by the platform will reach over 2 billion yen ($17.4 million) this year.
See the original story in Japanese. Unda is a mobile video messaging app brought from 500 Startups incubator last year. It will rebrand as VideoSelfie this week. The app allows users to take a video clip with a smartphone, add animated filters and music to it, and share it with other users. Tokyo-based Pocket Supernova, the company behind the app, has $1.2 million in a seed round from East Ventures, Klab Ventures, CyberAgent Ventures, and other investors. See also: Could the next wave in mobile messaging be video? 500 Startups’ Unda hopes so. Focused on real-time editing The Unda messaging app was developed for the exchange of video messages. But the team realized it would be a matter before the market was saturated, so they began differentiating themselves with new technology, according to Pocket Supernova CEO and co-founder Oscar Yasser Noriega. Since early 2014, the team has been focusing on adding real-time editing to the app, which allows users to add animated GIFs to selfie videos and share them with friends or other users via social network services. In addition, users can communicate with each other in the VideoSelfie community, which is similar to Instagram. Noriega explained: Many users take…
Unda is a mobile video messaging app brought from 500 Startups incubator last year. It will rebrand as VideoSelfie this week.
The app allows users to take a video clip with a smartphone, add animated filters and music to it, and share it with other users. Tokyo-based Pocket Supernova, the company behind the app, has $1.2 million in a seed round from East Ventures, Klab Ventures, CyberAgent Ventures, and other investors.
The Unda messaging app was developed for the exchange of video messages. But the team realized it would be a matter before the market was saturated, so they began differentiating themselves with new technology, according to Pocket Supernova CEO and co-founder Oscar Yasser Noriega.
Since early 2014, the team has been focusing on adding real-time editing to the app, which allows users to add animated GIFs to selfie videos and share them with friends or other users via social network services. In addition, users can communicate with each other in the VideoSelfie community, which is similar to Instagram.
Noriega explained:
CEO Oscar Yasser Noriega
Many users take a video clip with their smartphone and send it a friend with a message. While video editing is getting popular, most apps have yet to adopt traditional ways, which lets users follow a step-by-step process for recording, editing, and adding filters. But VideoSelfie allows you to manage all these tasks in real-time in one screen and share the completed video clip instantly.
The VideoSelfie app is available in English, Japanese, and Spanish. Some 50% of their users are in North America, 25% from Southeast Asia, and the rest from other regions. While the app provides the same functions regardless of geographical conditions, some content or functions may be offered in specific markets. They will share a function focused on the Japanese market when it becomes available.
Taking selfie videos like ‘purikura’ photos
Looking at their user demographics, girls aged from 12 to 19 years are the majority. The penetration of the “selfie culture” varies from market to market. Selfies are popular in North America and Southeast Asia, but not in Japan. To be widely accepted, the team believes that they need to educate people so that they will take selfie videos like they do in taking purikura photos with friends.
The team plans to generate revenue by selling additional filters and effects as in-app purchases, but it could also license its technology to bigger companies as another avenue for monetization.
With the real-time editing, the VideoSelfie app may lower the psychological hurdle that a user might have in conventional video editing methods. The app may become popular among young Japanese girls if they can easily create cute video clips with it.
Takeshi Hirano
Shintaro Eguchi
Junya Mori
Masaru Ikeda
Yukari Mitsuhashi
