Adways Interactive, a San Francisco-based subsidiary of Japanese internet company Adways (TSE:2489), announced last week that it has released the beta version of a pre-registration platform in the US, called PreLaunch Party. The platform is aimed to serve mid-core Android game developers and help them improve their user retention rate, ARPU (average revenue per user) as well as LTV (user lifetime value).
From a user perspective, pre-registration platforms make you register before the launch of a game title, and subsequently can get rewards when the title finally launches. You can get not only the latest game information but also rewards such as rare items or draw gacha rewards for free which typical users need to pay for. In this way, game developers can help promoting their titles and reach potential users before its launch.
PreLaunch Party was launched in 2013 in Japan under the name of Yoyaku Top 10, and has expanded to Korea, China, and Taiwan to date. Currently used by 500,000 registered users, it has recorded LTV and retention rate of over 1.5 times higher than that of organic users.
In Japan, there are several pre-registration platforms available now, which are obviously competitors for PreLaunch Party, including Ichihaya, Flying Gatcha, and Game Gift.
This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2014 in Kyoto, Japan. See the original story in Japanese. At the Infinity Ventures Summit in Kyoto last week, 13 startups showcased their products to an audience of investors and entrepreneurs. Osaka-based Galaxy Agency, the company behind parking lot sharing platform Akippa, won the top prize. The top five winners and finalists were: 1st prize winner: Akippa (by Galaxy Agency) Akippa is an online peer-to-peer parking lot sharing platform. Launched in Osaka, the service is available all across Japan and it allows users to park their car for up to 500 yen ($4) a day. They recently launched a valet parking service at selected locations, called Akippa Plus. See also: Japan’s parking lot sharing platform Akippa secures additional funding from DeNA Japan’s Airbnb for parking spaces ‘Akippa’ fundraises from DeNA and angel investors Japan’s Akippa and Uber teamed up, proposing park-and-ride option for car owners 2nd prize winner: PopSlide (by Yoyo Holdings) PopSlide is one of the largest mobile reward platforms in Southeast Asia. The platform distributes news, weather forecasts, and other updates to your smartphone lock screen. In return for viewing such information, users receive rewards for free…
At the Infinity Ventures Summit in Kyoto last week, 13 startups showcased their products to an audience of investors and entrepreneurs. Osaka-based Galaxy Agency, the company behind parking lot sharing platform Akippa, won the top prize. The top five winners and finalists were:
1st prize winner: Akippa (by Galaxy Agency)
Akippa’s mobile app
Akippa is an online peer-to-peer parking lot sharing platform. Launched in Osaka, the service is available all across Japan and it allows users to park their car for up to 500 yen ($4) a day. They recently launched a valet parking service at selected locations, called Akippa Plus.
PopSlide is one of the largest mobile reward platforms in Southeast Asia. The platform distributes news, weather forecasts, and other updates to your smartphone lock screen. In return for viewing such information, users receive rewards for free Internet access on their smartphone.
Designed for dairy and stock farmers, Farmnote helps farmers manage livestock such as the early detection of disease and optimum breeding time for livestock. The mobile app can record livestock activity and store the data on the cloud as well as monitor a farm or a ranch.
4th prize winner: Karte (by Plaid)
Karte is a real-time customer behavior analytics platform for e-commerce sites. The platform provides insight into the demographics of typical e-commerce customers visiting a site, and it automates promotion efforts in order to gain conversion rates for opportunities such as user registration or item purchases.
5th prize winner: Mamorio (by Otoshimono.com)
Mamorio is the world’s smallest tracking tag that helps people find lost items using crowdsourced forces. The Otoshimono.com team launched a crowdfunding campaign for the tracking tag device on Japanese crowdfunding site Motion Gallery, and raised 3 million yen ($24,800) in a target bid of 1.5 million yen ($12,400).
Below are the startups selected as finalists.
Match: Battle-type study workbook app for high school students (by Baton)
Match is an app that aims to make the studying of Japanese history fun for high school students. The app is comprised of 2,000 questions from textbooks and university entrance exams.
Smaoku: Real-time flash auction app (by Zawatt)
Launched back in early 2013, this mobile auction app targets women in their 20s and 30s. Smaoku deals in luxury brand items, which is a key differentiator from other flea market apps and auction sites. In July, the company partnered with Mobaoku, a DeNA subsidiary behind an auction service.
Bizer lets users crowdsource documentation tasks to business consultants, such as certified tax accountants, labor consultants, notary publics, and judicial scriveners, for a flat monthly subscription fee of 2,980 yen ($30). Accountants offer their free time and provide advice to SME owners via the platform.
Flipdesk: Promotion platform for e-commerce owners (by Socket)
Flipdesk is an e-commerce promotion platform targeting smartphone users. With the platform, e-commerce owners can give a different promotion reward to every customer; such as distributing optimized discount coupons or promotional messages similar to face-to-face sales efforts at a real store. The service has been deployed to Tokyu Hands Net Store, an online storefront by one of Japan’s largest variety store chains.
OpenLogi: Outsourced logistics service for small/medium-sized companies and freelancers
No Initial fee nor monthly fee needed. OpenLogi provides SMEs and freelancers with inspection at warehouse, storage in warehouse, shipping distribution, and management of returned merchandise are available for affordable rates.
Circuit: ‘Deep link’ optimization platform for mobile app developers (by Fukurou Labo)
Deep link means the link that lets users jump to a specific page on a mobile app rather than its top page. By using the Circuit platform and embedding its JavaScript tag on your website, it allows users to show them your content via your mobile app rather than a web browser if users have already installed your app into their handsets.
Wovn.io: Adding multilingual support for websites with single script code (by Minimal Technologies)
Wovn.io provides multilingual support for your website or blog by adding a single JavaScript code to a website source. When you register an URL of your website on Wovn.io, the platform will cut out texts and transfer them to Microsoft’s machine translation service. Translated results can be adjusted using the Wovn.io dashboard.
Sekai Lab: Crowdsourced offshore app development service (by Sekai Lab Pte. Ltd.)
Sekai Lab allows Japanese companies to crowdsource their app development tasks at affordable rates from crowdsourced engineers in China, Vietnam, and other Asian countries. The platform helps users communicate with crowdsourced engineers in Japanese, aiming to help the Japanese IT industry despite a lack of engineers.
See the original story in Japanese. The Bridge learned earlier this week that Warrantee, an Osaka-based startup that aims to digitalize product warranties, announced that Japanese recipe site Cookpad has taken a 16% stake in the former company. Details of the investment has not been disclosed but it’s likely to be a seed funding worth six-digits in US dollars. Warrantee proposes a one-stop process, registering personal data in advance on their service. In this way warranties for a specified user can be quickly registered regardless of products or companies. There are many cases where retail stores offer additional paid warranties, so the startup plans to earn a service charge from retailers by motivating users to opt into such additional warranties. Another business opportunity lies in tying up with retailers, allowing them to utilize user data accumulated on Warrantee for the retailer promotions. Warrantee CEO Yusuke Shono elaborated their business potential: By collecting warranty data users, we can learn when and what they have bought as well as predict their next replacement period. With warranty data inputs of multiple home appliances rather than a single one, we can even estimate how they use these appliances in their lives. Such information was out of reach for appliance manufacturers despite extensive partnering efforts with retailers. He thinks…
The Bridge learned earlier this week that Warrantee, an Osaka-based startup that aims to digitalize product warranties, announced that Japanese recipe site Cookpad has taken a 16% stake in the former company. Details of the investment has not been disclosed but it’s likely to be a seed funding worth six-digits in US dollars.
Warrantee proposes a one-stop process, registering personal data in advance on their service. In this way warranties for a specified user can be quickly registered regardless of products or companies. There are many cases where retail stores offer additional paid warranties, so the startup plans to earn a service charge from retailers by motivating users to opt into such additional warranties. Another business opportunity lies in tying up with retailers, allowing them to utilize user data accumulated on Warrantee for the retailer promotions.
Warrantee CEO Yusuke Shono elaborated their business potential:
By collecting warranty data users, we can learn when and what they have bought as well as predict their next replacement period. With warranty data inputs of multiple home appliances rather than a single one, we can even estimate how they use these appliances in their lives. Such information was out of reach for appliance manufacturers despite extensive partnering efforts with retailers.
He thinks that one possibility with the platform is proposing interior styling and decoration to potential furniture buyers.
See the original story in Japanese. Madrid’s IE Business School and the Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University (KMD) jointly held their second Venture Day event for entrepreneurs in Tokyo. This year’s event took place at Keio Mita Campus and attracted a large audience of investors, entrepreneurs, and mentors from Japan and Europe. See also: Madrid’s IE Business School and Keio University hold joint entrepreneur event in Tokyo While 10 teams from Europe, Japan, and KMD students competed in a pitch session, Tokyo-based MakeLeaps, a startup that provides a cloud-based invoicing solution, won the top prize. As we have seen familiar faces of MakeLeaps’ people at many events in the local startup scene, it would be better to call them an authority rather than a startup. However, in view of the small number of B2B startups providing SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions in Tokyo, MakeLeaps has been boldly challenging and aiming to better serve local businesses, which won over the judges. MakeLeaps fundraised $600,000 from 500 Startups and AngelList in August. MakeLeaps CEO Jason Winder said they are planning to integrate other services like customer relationship management next year. Makeleaps’ won two roundtrip tickets between Tokyo and…
While 10 teams from Europe, Japan, and KMD students competed in a pitch session, Tokyo-based MakeLeaps, a startup that provides a cloud-based invoicing solution, won the top prize. As we have seen familiar faces of MakeLeaps’ people at many events in the local startup scene, it would be better to call them an authority rather than a startup. However, in view of the small number of B2B startups providing SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions in Tokyo, MakeLeaps has been boldly challenging and aiming to better serve local businesses, which won over the judges.
MakeLeaps CEO Jason Winder (left) receiving prizes.
Makeleaps’ won two roundtrip tickets between Tokyo and Madrid from Turkish Airlines, as well as a complimentary three-month residency at Venture Generation, a co-working and incubation space near Tokyo station.
2nd prize winner: Wovn.io
Jeff Sandford, co-founder of Minimal Technologies, the company behind Wovn.io (left)
Wovn.io provides multilingual support for your website or blog, bringing your content to the world. Site visitors can quickly toggle between languages using the Wovn.io widget. All editing and management of your translated content can be done from the convenience of your browser. By adding a single JavaScript code to a website source, Wovn.io instantly turns a website into a multilingual environment. It is available in 11 languages including Chinese, English, and French.
According to co-founder Jeff Sandford, almost 70% of Internet users in the world are non-English speakers. Operators of websites in English can reach almost double the number of users by turning their website into a multilingual environment. Wovn.io has translated six million web pages to date. Some 30% of their users are in the US and 29% are in Japan.
Wovn.io won a roundtrip ticket between Tokyo and Madrid from Turkish Airlines, as well as a complimentary three-month residency at Venture Generation.
3rd prize winner: Breezy not Wheezy
The ‘Breezy not Wheezy’ team
The Breezy not Wheezy team was selected from a KMD session. Asthma is a common affliction among children around the world. One of the co-founders of Breezy not Wheezy has suffered from it since she was a child, and this inspired the team to develop Breezy not Wheezy.
A peak flow meter is a device used to measure lung air flow and is effective for asthma management. The Breezy not Wheezy team connected a peak flow meter to a smartphone to record peak patterns on the cloud. This information will help parents to better manage their child’s asthma by leveraging a med companion connected to the solution.
Breezy not Wheezy won a complimentary three-month residency at Venture Generation.
IE Business School is headquartered in Mardid, Spain, and it is counted as one of top five business schools in line up with other institutions like INSEAD in France. Their Venture Day events have seen a rapid worldwide expansion, being held in over 20 countries to date, with 16 events in 2014 alone.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based School With, the company behind a buzz site that shares buzz and reviews on language studies abroad, announced that it has fundraised an undisclosed sum from Japanese seed VC fund East Ventures. School With launched a review site under the same name in April 2013, and was incorporated in July 2013. Since the launch, they have focused on English studies abroad and buzz and reviews on over 100 language schools in the Philippines. School With CEO Hideki Ota visited the Philippines to study English a few years ago, and the experience inspired him to launch the business. He plans to expand the coverage of language schools in Australia and Canada in 2015. School With had been running its operations in a bootstrapping mode via grants from Japanese governmental business support initiative SME Support, Japan. While exploring funding opportunities to put more energy into the business, they received a funding offer from East Ventures in November.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.
Tokyo-based School With, the company behind a buzz site that shares buzz and reviews on language studies abroad, announced that it has fundraised an undisclosed sum from Japanese seed VC fund East Ventures.
School With launched a review site under the same name in April 2013, and was incorporated in July 2013. Since the launch, they have focused on English studies abroad and buzz and reviews on over 100 language schools in the Philippines.
School With CEO Hideki Ota visited the Philippines to study English a few years ago, and the experience inspired him to launch the business. He plans to expand the coverage of language schools in Australia and Canada in 2015.
School With had been running its operations in a bootstrapping mode via grants from Japanese governmental business support initiative SME Support, Japan. While exploring funding opportunities to put more energy into the business, they received a funding offer from East Ventures in November.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based Active Sonar, the startup behind luxury brand consignment app Reclo, announced today that it has fundraised 245 million yen (about $2 million) from B Dash Ventures and Future Investment. Coinciding with the funds, the company unveiled that it will set up their information distribution channel in Japanese news curation app Gunosy with aiming to better reach their potential customers. In addition, Reclo announced today that it will launch an app called Flip on December 9th. Flip is a 48-hour flash sales app for mobile users, providing time-limited deals on trending and affordable items. According to Active Sonar CEO Koji Aoki, the company has acquired 170,000 dowonloads of the mobile app since its launch six months ago. They boast a high repeat customer ratio, where almost a half of their users have come back to the app again to buy another item. Aoki explained why their users are well satisfied: The main reason is obviously we provide luxury brand items for overwhelmingly low prices. We give 60% to 90% discounts for selected items. In consignment business, a key issue is how to fill an inventory with collected items from…
Active Sonar CEO Koji Aoki
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.
Tokyo-based Active Sonar, the startup behind luxury brand consignment app Reclo, announced today that it has fundraised 245 million yen (about $2 million) from B Dash Ventures and Future Investment.
Coinciding with the funds, the company unveiled that it will set up their information distribution channel in Japanese news curation app Gunosy with aiming to better reach their potential customers.
In addition, Reclo announced today that it will launch an app called Flip on December 9th. Flip is a 48-hour flash sales app for mobile users, providing time-limited deals on trending and affordable items.
According to Active Sonar CEO Koji Aoki, the company has acquired 170,000 dowonloads of the mobile app since its launch six months ago. They boast a high repeat customer ratio, where almost a half of their users have come back to the app again to buy another item. Aoki explained why their users are well satisfied:
The main reason is obviously we provide luxury brand items for overwhelmingly low prices. We give 60% to 90% discounts for selected items.
Reclo
In consignment business, a key issue is how to fill an inventory with collected items from the market. Reclo serves more than 2,500 items for now. They had been buying items from second-hand distributors at their launch, but now over a half of their inventory is being submitted from users.
I have heard that a massive and continuous community development is very important to encourage individuals to sell their luxury items via online consignment services such as TheRealReal Japan. With this kind of continuous efforts, Aoki thinks that they can expand their business from luxury fashion clothing beyond to furniture. Almost 80% of their users come from mobile, mostly females in around the age of 30 or 40.
While they are steadily growing in both app downloads and user acquisition, they need some more gimmick for overwhelming growth. So they focused on Gunosy because of its high user traffic and partnered for creating the Recro channel in the Gunosy app. However, given that a unique user demographics on the Recro app, they will have to add something more to boost their growth.
That’s why they decided to develop flash sales app Flip. Their team has some former Groupon Japan employees who have many experiences on flash marketing. Aoki elaborated:
On Flip, we will sell items which are unlikely to let users decide whether or not buy. As described in the name, we will list new items fast and furiously.
Prior to launching Active Sonar in 2012, the company’s CEO Aoki has been previously running a mineral water distribution company. He quit the previous company to launch Active Sonar with aiming to create a new business at his own risk.
Masaru Ikeda
Takeshi Hirano
Shintaro Eguchi
Junya Mori
