Tokyo-based FiNC is taking the lead in Japan’s healthcare startup community. The company has been providing online weight-loss advice solutions since March of 2014, allowing users to receive a 60-day dietary program from experts via smartphone.
The company announced today that it has fundraised 650 million yen (about $5.3 million) as loans from financial institutions including Mizuho Bank and Japan Finance Corporation, as well as receiving funds from angel investors. This follows the company’s previous funding in September of 2014.
New angel investors joining this time include former Japan national soccer team coach Takeshi Okada, Japanese mobile telco eAccess founder Sachio Senmoto, former Yahoo Japan COO Hiroaki Kitano, and Tokyo-based business consultancy Pronova CEO Etsuko Okajima. [1] FiNC will use the funds to strengthen hiring new people and develop wearable devices as well as other solutions using artificial intelligence (AI).
Coinciding with this, FiNC announced that it has launched a 60-day group weight-loss program in partnership with Wellness Frontier, the company behind the Joyfit sports club chain in Japan, where users can use any branch of the chain for two months. The program lets users join a mobile app group where they can encourage each others on their efforts to reduce weight.
FiNC has acquired a variety of directors and shareholders from across industries, perhaps indicating high expectations from the Japanese society, not only for the startup but also for the entire healthcare startup community. It will be interesting to see what kind of devices or solutions will be introduced by this company in the future.
Translated by Masaru Ikeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
eAccess was acquired by Softbank in 2012. Hiroaki Kitano is currently Senior Vice President of Softbank Mobile. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. These days e-commerce sites are commonplace, with almost everything available for purchase online with a click on a button. Since its launch back in August of 2004, Sotoasobi has been offering carefully-selected outdoor leisure packages for anyone including occasional adventure seekers. The company has fundraised 200 million yen (about $1.6 million) from Tokyo-based B Dash Ventures. Carefully-selected lineup We previously featured Sotoasobi back in July last year when the company rolled out a new website and appointed former Gaiax COO Yu Nakajima as new CEO. More than a year has passed since then, with the pace of bookings through the website doubled and over a thousand leisure plans from 30 kinds of activities available today. Regardless of the increased variety of tour plans readied, nothing has changed as to the concept of their business. Including Sotoasobi co-founder Takayoshi Yamamoto who has 15 years’ experience in the outdoor leisure industry as well as being a qualified guide for horse riding and rafting, the company has acquired mountain guides and round-the-world cyclists as curators to select and introduce interesting leisure plans. These curators actually visit leisure destinations to hear from plan organizers and publish articles about…
These days e-commerce sites are commonplace, with almost everything available for purchase online with a click on a button. Since its launch back in August of 2004, Sotoasobi has been offering carefully-selected outdoor leisure packages for anyone including occasional adventure seekers. The company has fundraised 200 million yen (about $1.6 million) from Tokyo-based B Dash Ventures.
Carefully-selected lineup
From a snorkeling tour in Okinawa arranged via Sotoasobi.
We previously featured Sotoasobi back in July last year when the company rolled out a new website and appointed former Gaiax COO Yu Nakajima as new CEO. More than a year has passed since then, with the pace of bookings through the website doubled and over a thousand leisure plans from 30 kinds of activities available today.
Regardless of the increased variety of tour plans readied, nothing has changed as to the concept of their business. Including Sotoasobi co-founder Takayoshi Yamamoto who has 15 years’ experience in the outdoor leisure industry as well as being a qualified guide for horse riding and rafting, the company has acquired mountain guides and round-the-world cyclists as curators to select and introduce interesting leisure plans. These curators actually visit leisure destinations to hear from plan organizers and publish articles about them in their own words and photos.
In order to provide good tour plans, Nakajima told us that knowing destinations like the back of one’s hand and having leisure activity professionals are key elements.
When it comes to outdoors, many people may have an image that excursion participants have to move about a lot while getting sweaty. However, there are also other types of plans, which let users enjoy nature with their senses on weekends in comfort. Examples include plans that allow one to ride a horse or go out to a treehouse for coffee there, in addition to a plan which takes one to an uninhabited island by sea kayak for BBQ and snorkeling. Our site offers the exceptional experiences one cannot find anywhere else.
Age-specific search interface
Since the content is well curated on the Sotoasobi website, it helps even outdoor beginners to find preferable tour plans regardless of background knowledge. That’s why their users are diverse generationwise, with particular concentration from singles in their 20s and 30s as well as family households. Elderly participants are also increasing, such as an 80-year-old member experiencing one’s first horse ride as well as an elderly couple who have been eager to fly in the sky together with a paraglider.
After Nakajima joined the team, Sotoasobi has been making great efforts to improve user interfaces. The company rolled out a new website design twice over the past year, adding an advanced search function so that users can more easily find a relevant tour option matching their needs.
The new search function is designed for family users, enabling them to find tour plans by specifying the minimum age of an accompanying minor, such as ranging from 0 year old to older than 16 years of age. In response to the recent increase in elderly users, the company has also added checkboxes in the search menu, such as ‘Participants aged over 60 allowed’ or ‘single participants allowed’ not to mention ‘pets allowed’ so that participants can better find their optimal options.
Strengthening human resources
The Sotoasobi team. Yu Nakajima stands in the upper left.
Sotoasobi will use the latest funds to strengthen recruiting new curators and further improve their website plus develop a booking management tool which will be availed to leisure plan providers. The company plans to double the number of their curators, while polishing up the expertise of neighborhood guides and outdoor activities.
As part of their main portal, the company recently launched a new blog site called Outfitter. It provides visitors with useful information such as the most-recommended trekking shoes for female mountaineers and the best gears for sea kayaking.
They comprise a ten-person team which includes curators, but they are hiring designers and engineers as well as someone who can keep updating the aforementioned blog site. Looking forward, they aim to expand services to help more people enjoy nature.
This is a guest post authored by Connor Kirk. He is a Kyoto-based writer/translator specializing in tech and startups. Orphe is an LED smart-shoe hardware development project from Tokyo-based startup “no new folk studio”. We’ve featured this project here on The Bridge a few times in the Japanese edition, but this will be the first article in English. Starting with a little background, Orphe is a light up shoe designed primarily for performers and artists that uses 9-axis sensors and high-density LED strips built into the soles of the shoes to produce a variety of colors and patterns that react to the movements of the wearer. Coupled with a free app, the color of the lights and other settings can be manipulated over bluetooth. Prototypes of the shoe were developed at the shared hardware development incubation lab DMM.make AKIBA which was established last year in Akihabara, Tokyo. A crowdfunding campaign was launched on Indiegogo in March 2015 and was 214% funded by May. They now have a new teaser site and are accepting pre-orders. Shipment of pre-orders and perks to backers of the project has been given a February 2016 estimate. With wearables becoming more prevalent, and the entry into…
This is a guest post authored by Connor Kirk. He is a Kyoto-based writer/translator specializing in tech and startups.
Orphe is an LED smart-shoe hardware development project from Tokyo-based startup “no new folk studio”. We’ve featured this project here on The Bridge a few times in the Japanese edition, but this will be the first article in English.
Starting with a little background, Orphe is a light up shoe designed primarily for performers and artists that uses 9-axis sensors and high-density LED strips built into the soles of the shoes to produce a variety of colors and patterns that react to the movements of the wearer. Coupled with a free app, the color of the lights and other settings can be manipulated over bluetooth. Prototypes of the shoe were developed at the shared hardware development incubation lab DMM.make AKIBA which was established last year in Akihabara, Tokyo. A crowdfunding campaign was launched on Indiegogo in March 2015 and was 214% funded by May. They now have a new teaser site and are accepting pre-orders. Shipment of pre-orders and perks to backers of the project has been given a February 2016 estimate.
With wearables becoming more prevalent, and the entry into the hardware development field becoming more and more accessible, the competition is strong for small startups like “no new folk studio” in the wearable technology field. This year alone we’ve seen a quite a few products operating on a similar concept: wearables or other products with LEDs that can be controlled with a smart device, so what will make Orphe stand out from the crowd?
There are a few things that stand out to me. One of them is the open source aspect of the project. When you buy the shoes, what you get with them is not only the downloadable app, but also an SDK for developing your own applications using the Orphe hardware. They’ve suggested that the hardware could potentially be used as a videogame controller or a musical instrument. One of the first that comes to mind is potential partnerships with developers of rhythm games like DDR, or Bemani games. In their most recent video update, they demonstrated that kicking with the left foot and right foot can trigger different sounds, and that tilt and speed data collected by the 9-axis sensors can be used to manipulate sound in other ways. Just having shoes that can change colors when you move around is fun for a little while, but what I’m really interested in is seeing what kinds of other uses will come out of this. Exactly when the SDK will be released hasn’t been announced yet, but they have said that it is a planned feature of Orphe.
Light up shoes are of course not a new idea. Most of us who grew up in the 90’s probably wore or knew someone who wore L.A. Lights, the hugely popular light up shoe brand that eventually dissolved largely due to their controversial use of poisonous mercury in the tilt switches that powered the LEDs embedded in the children’s shoes. Seeing as Orphe’s Indiegogo page actually references an article about the history of L.A. Lights, we can assume they understand some of the potential pitfalls that exist in the light up shoe field. I haven’t seen any mention so far as to what type of rubber is being used for Orphe’s soles, or how it’s holding up to testing, but seeing as how a pair of these shoes will set you back at least $270 I’d expect that the soles are high quality and won’t fall apart after repeated use like L.A. Lights did. Also, they’ve said that the battery used in the prototype lasts for 3 hours of continuous use, but they are looking at other battery options as well.
I’ve heard from a lot of friends and acquaintances that running a crowdfunding campaign can be one of the most stressful things you can imagine. We’ve all seen the stories of successfully funded projects that never actually delivered what they promised. From the looks of it though, I don’t think Orphe will be one of those, but with hundreds of backers anxiously waiting to receive their pre-orders, I can imagine the 10-person “no new folk studio” team is feeling the pressure as they move into the production stage.
See the original story in Japanese. Serving 500,000 students around the country Clear is a study notes organizer app and has attracted over 500,000 students in Japan. Tokyo-based Arcterus, the company behind the app, has fundraised 130 million yen (about $1 million) from Japanese system integration company Startia (TSE:3303), Dentsu Digital Fund, Korea’s BonAngels, and others. The company will use the funds to add new app functions as well as aiming to expand globally. Students have started adapting their smartphone for their studies. Japan’s Recruit Marketing Partners recently unveiled a list of trending keywords that includes the Japanese word “sumaben” meaning studying via smartphone. Over 3 million notes are published and shared The Clear app allows students to publish their handwritten study notes and share them with other users. There are over 3 million published notes available on the platform so far. Clear has two main usage styles: When students get something they can’t understand at school classes, they can try to figure out by looking at notes by classmates rather than relying on Google search or study-aid books. Finding well-summarized notes to better understand materials upon preparing for exams at school. Goichiro Arai, CEO of Arcterus, says that the…
Clear is a study notes organizer app and has attracted over 500,000 students in Japan. Tokyo-based Arcterus, the company behind the app, has fundraised 130 million yen (about $1 million) from Japanese system integration company Startia (TSE:3303), Dentsu Digital Fund, Korea’s BonAngels, and others. The company will use the funds to add new app functions as well as aiming to expand globally.
Students have started adapting their smartphone for their studies. Japan’s Recruit Marketing Partners recently unveiled a list of trending keywords that includes the Japanese word “sumaben” meaning studying via smartphone.
Over 3 million notes are published and shared
The Clear app allows students to publish their handwritten study notes and share them with other users. There are over 3 million published notes available on the platform so far. Clear has two main usage styles:
When students get something they can’t understand at school classes, they can try to figure out by looking at notes by classmates rather than relying on Google search or study-aid books.
Finding well-summarized notes to better understand materials upon preparing for exams at school.
Goichiro Arai, CEO of Arcterus, says that the Clear app aims to be a study notes version of GitHub or online recipe app Cookpad. Compared to being taught by teachers, private tutors, or study-aid books, the app helps students enrich their understanding of their studies.
The company gets feedback from students such as: “The app has motivated me to study harder,” and “It has lowered a psychological hurdle in studying.”
The app helps to connect and motivate students across the country by allowing them to share and comment on handwritten study notes.
Expanding into Southeast Asia and North America
Arcterus wants to liven up the learning field with the app while ensuring the quality and boosting the sharing of study notes. In addition to serving students in Japan, the company wants to expand into other Asian countries in 2015, followed by expansion into North and South American markets in 2016. They launched the Clear app in Thailand back in April, receiving positive responses from the market as the number of users and shared study notes have been both increasing.
In a previous interview with the team of Penpal Schools, a Texan online penpal-based studying platform that has acquired over 7 million students from more than 70 countries, I was so surprised to learn that many students feel lonely studying at school even when they study together in a classroom. Arai agreed and said that is why many students come together at a diner and study together after school.
Arai concluded:
Studying for exams is likely to make you feel lonely. In class, you need to concentrate on grasping a new concept, which can be a lonely task. By compiling an extensive database of shared study notes, we aim to help students from around the world succeed in their studies.
Translated by Chieko Frost via Mother First Edited by Masaru Ikeda and Kurt Hanson
Proofread by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. This is part of our ‘Tokyo Office Tour’ series (RSS), a modest attempt to better understand how folks in the local startup scene are working every day. The town of Shibuya is said to be constantly producing new trends but actually is in contrast surprisingly old. Go down any narrow alley and you will find decades-old crowded office space buildings crammed together in rows. In Shibuya, the center of Bit Valley, fresh out of the gate startups are many, but as these companies grow they often relocate to surrounding areas such as Ebisu or Yoyogi. It seems that the rather unique office condition in Shibuya might also have an effect on this. In Shibuya, meeting and co-working spaces aren’t scarce per se, but finding a place that can accommodate large numbers of people is difficult. If you’re planning on holding a modestly large event, you could of course borrow a conference room at a big company, but the majority of those will be thoroughly managed modern office buildings making it difficult to freely allow guests to come and go as they please. I payed a visit to the new event and community space ‘dots.’,…
This is part of our ‘Tokyo Office Tour’ series (RSS), a modest attempt to better understand how folks in the local startup scene are working every day.
The town of Shibuya is said to be constantly producing new trends but actually is in contrast surprisingly old. Go down any narrow alley and you will find decades-old crowded office space buildings crammed together in rows. In Shibuya, the center of Bit Valley, fresh out of the gate startups are many, but as these companies grow they often relocate to surrounding areas such as Ebisu or Yoyogi. It seems that the rather unique office condition in Shibuya might also have an effect on this.
In Shibuya, meeting and co-working spaces aren’t scarce per se, but finding a place that can accommodate large numbers of people is difficult. If you’re planning on holding a modestly large event, you could of course borrow a conference room at a big company, but the majority of those will be thoroughly managed modern office buildings making it difficult to freely allow guests to come and go as they please.
I payed a visit to the new event and community space ‘dots.’, which opened on the 1st of August near the intersection of Fire Street and Park Street in Shibuya. The first thing I was surprised by was how open it was and how nicely the space was laid out in terms of visibility, and in spite of the 126 square foot interior, there are no pillars or anything obstructing your view. This what’s called a supportless open space floor plan, characteristic of new construction methods. The space can accommodate 200 to 250 people seated and, if you were holding a lecture, even people in the very back of the room would probably be able to make direct eye contact with the speaker.
I was able to ask dots. producer Yuko Narukama about the reasoning behind the creation of this space.
A year after we started up our engineer event information service dots., we were doing 2 to 4 events a month. We rented a company seminar room and were managing it, but it started becoming a real hassle negotiating renting the space, setting everything up, and dealing with security management and stuff, so that’s when we decided to make our own event space.
In addition to dots. functioning as a work space, they often hold hands-on programming study sessions geared towards engineers on weeknights and weekends. The space is laid out so that there are a lot of large panel displays installed around the room, so wherever you are seated you can clearly see the code that the lecturer is explaining while being able to follow along.
In my experience, when selecting a venue to hold a programming study session for engineers, the space should be able to hold at least 150 participants; dots. can accommodate more than 200. Another feature of dots. is that the event space and the co-working space are connected, so for example it’s possible for people who are co-working at dots. to casually jump into an ongoing study session or event they’re interested in without having necessarily registered for the event beforehand.
Going forward we want to make it so that high quality events and output continue being hosted here.
Narukama and community manager Hiromi Ozawa have also begun offering various event series drawing on their social network and knowhow accumulated over more than a year of event organizing experience. One event series features discussions with and talks from the CTOs of famous companies over lunch called “Lunch with a CTO”. Another series, “Allstars”, features hints and tips from top runners in many different technology fields such as iOS, HTML5, big data, Android, and more.
I wondered if operating such a luxurious open space in Shibuya, one of most premium areas of Tokyo, wasn’t a little over optimistic, but with dots. fees running at 500 yen/hour or 2,500 yen/day for their co-working space, and also with personnel hiring opportunities, seminars for IT company branding, sales promotion exhibitions for IT vendor business, displaying videos and merchandise from sponsor companies, and more, it seems like they can at least expect to break even.
Use of dots. co-working space is free of charge during their August promotion, so if you happen to be in the Shibuya area we hope you’ll stop by and check it out.
Translated by Connor Kirk
People were working on their own projects respectively while a hands-on workshop for Docker, a container virtualization technology, was underway in the back of the room.A variety of coffee drinks are available for 100 yen each.A showcase at the reception is full of their original goods.The monthly event schedule can be found on the side of the entrance. Producer Narukama’s mom completes this with her beautiful handwriting.
This is a guest post authored by Connor Kirk. He is a Kyoto-based writer/translator specializing in tech and startups. All pictures in this post are courtesy of Chihiro Taniguchi. Startup Weekend, the 54-hour event series bringing together entrepreneurs, developers, and designers to pitch ideas, form teams, and build new products and services, began as the creation of writer and entrpreneur Andrew Hyde and is now a Google and Microsoft-sponsored Seattle-based NPO that has come to hold more than 1,500 events in 726 cities around the world. This month, Kyoto’s 5th Startup Weekend was held at the Kyoto Research Park with a lively group of young entrepreneurs, coaches, and industry professionals in attendance. The event followed the standard structure laid out by Startup Weekend, featuring rounds of pitching, beer drinking, voting, and development. The first round of pitches were held to a strict 60-second time limit in which participants frantically and sometimes theatrically explained their concepts, with focuses on merit, feasibility, and potential economic value of their ideas. Quite a few of the participants were surprisingly young with several college freshman and even one 3rd-year highschool student stepping behind the microphone. After the first round of pitching there was a vote,…
This is a guest post authored by Connor Kirk. He is a Kyoto-based writer/translator specializing in tech and startups. All pictures in this post are courtesy of Chihiro Taniguchi.
Startup Weekend, the 54-hour event series bringing together entrepreneurs, developers, and designers to pitch ideas, form teams, and build new products and services, began as the creation of writer and entrpreneur Andrew Hyde and is now a Google and Microsoft-sponsored Seattle-based NPO that has come to hold more than 1,500 events in 726 cities around the world.
This month, Kyoto’s 5th Startup Weekend was held at the Kyoto Research Park with a lively group of young entrepreneurs, coaches, and industry professionals in attendance. The event followed the standard structure laid out by Startup Weekend, featuring rounds of pitching, beer drinking, voting, and development. The first round of pitches were held to a strict 60-second time limit in which participants frantically and sometimes theatrically explained their concepts, with focuses on merit, feasibility, and potential economic value of their ideas. Quite a few of the participants were surprisingly young with several college freshman and even one 3rd-year highschool student stepping behind the microphone.
After the first round of pitching there was a vote, and the top few ideas were singled out. 15 minutes were then allotted for the creation of teams in which the five groups scrambled to form a group with as balanced a skillset as possible. The remaining time was given to development, designing, and coaching, culminating in the final presentations of each group’s MVP (minimum viable product), followed by feedback and final judgement from this year’s judges Questetra CEO Genichi Imamura and Lockon CEO Susumu Iwata.
The following are brief statements given by each of the four teams’ leaders explaining their services, starting with this year’s winning team, WithYou.
WithYou is an app and a platform that allows travelers to virtually connect with crowdsourced bilingual locals who can help them out with translation / interpretation, navigation, or even cultural explanations. Imagine sitting in a restaurant with no English menu and no one who speaks your language, trying to take meditation lessons from a Japanese monk, or getting your haircut from one of Paris’s best hair stylists. What are you going to do? Don’t let language be the barrier to your adventures. Connect with locals, expand your horizons.
Team: Masaki Tominami, Rio Fujimoto, Kouki Onishi, and ‘Taro’ Urashima
1mile is an app for getting recommendations on a variety of different restaurants, shops, and businesses within walking distance of your location, thus the name “1mile”. Designed for people who either have trouble finding good stores, feel that searching around is a pain, or aren’t normally the adventurous type, our service helps you discover great businesses and enjoy what your area has to offer!
Team: Yoshinori Ashikaga, Souichiro Tsue, and Taiki Sugino
What is the value of hearing someone’s painful story? It can be funny, or teach some kind of valuable lesson, or maybe even reveal a business opportunity. “Let’s make the world a better place by bringing together the stories of those who have tried and failed.” That was the concept that we tried to build this startup around.
Gamey
Startup name: Gamey
Team: Shingo Yonemura, Midori Harada, Naoto Ando, Yuta Goseki, and Eiji Iwatani
Gamey is an online platform offering a variety of afterschool programs for elementary school children relating to sports, culture, nutrition and more, with professional instructors, for a monthly fee of 5,000 yen. Hundreds of different types of programs will be available through the website which parents can choose from along with their preferred day, time, and location, and have their kids participate in valuable learning activities.
While I did find the scarcity of actual programmers in participation seemed to pose a noticeable imbalance in team structure, each team worked tirelessly through the weekend to present their products with a surprisingly high level of professionality and completion. I think the Kyoto startup scene needs more events like these, and seeing as how Startup Weekends are now being held in Tokyo as often as once a month, I think we can expect these events will only continue to grow in popularity in the future.
Yukari Mitsuhashi
The Bridge
Masaru Ikeda
