The cities of Fukuoka and Bordeaux (France) recently agreed to encourage startup activities in the drone field, including interaction of startups or business mapping as a part of a three-year cooperation plan which starts from 2017.
In Bordeaux, flourishing startups activities in the drone field can be seen, such as the largest drone event in Europe called UAV SHOW which is held in every October. In addition, a Bordeaux City’s extra-departmental organization Bordeaux Technowest manages four large-scale areas especially for drones’ test-flying, providing an ideal environment to promote growth of drone startups.
Due to the conclusion of the cooperative relationship, Fukuoka-based TrueBizon, providing consulting service utilizing drone, will be invited to UAV SHOW 2016 being held from October 12th to 13th. Truebizon had been chosen to a Fukuoka startup support program for overseas development named Global Challenge! STARTUP TEAM FUKUOKA also, and will take part in a startup tour including a visit to San Francisco from later this October to November.
Prior to this cooperation, Kyusyu Drone Consortium was established within Fukuoka Directive Council (commonly known as Fukuoka D.C.), which is an industry / academia / public-sector / government / private-sector platform located near the Fukuoka urban area. In the consortium wherein TrueBizon participates along with QTNet, NEXCO-West, FAS Eco Energy, Aso and DJI Japan, various efforts to drive drone utilization or business creation are seen being carried out, such as drone operator development including training of controlling out-of-sight drones, demonstration of drone IoT (Internet of Things) network including utilization of experimental radio base stations, and establishment of a cooperation system during disaster conditions.
The content of this article first appeared on Disrupting Japan. It has been reproduced by The Bridge with the approval of Disrupting Japan and the article’s author Tim Romero. Tim is a Tokyo-based entrepreneur, podcaster and author who has started four companies and led Japan market entry for others since coming to Japan more than 20 years ago. Tim hosts the Disrupting Japan podcast and is deeply involved in Japan’s startup community as an investor, founder and mentor. Kaneto Kanemoto founded OKWave to address a problem that was unique to the Japanese internet in the mid-1990’s. Most of the country felt the situation was inevitable, even natural, but Kanemoto-san knew it had to change. Although Japanese people are exceptionally polite in day-to-day interaction, due to the anonymous nature of the Internet, people behaved very differently online. In the early days, the mood was one of bullying, hostility and exclusion. Kanemoto-san founded OKWave to address these problems on the Internet in particular and in society in general, and he has succeeded remarkably at both. The Internet is a far more helpful and much more welcoming place thanks to him and OKWave. Tim: For those who don’t know, can you explain what…
Tim Romero
The content of this article first appeared on Disrupting Japan. It has been reproduced by The Bridge with the approval of Disrupting Japan and the article’s author Tim Romero.
Tim is a Tokyo-based entrepreneur, podcaster and author who has started four companies and led Japan market entry for others since coming to Japan more than 20 years ago. Tim hosts the Disrupting Japan podcast and is deeply involved in Japan’s startup community as an investor, founder and mentor.
OKWave founder Kaneto Kanemoto
Kaneto Kanemoto founded OKWave to address a problem that was unique to the Japanese internet in the mid-1990’s. Most of the country felt the situation was inevitable, even natural, but Kanemoto-san knew it had to change.
Although Japanese people are exceptionally polite in day-to-day interaction, due to the anonymous nature of the Internet, people behaved very differently online. In the early days, the mood was one of bullying, hostility and exclusion.
Kanemoto-san founded OKWave to address these problems on the Internet in particular and in society in general, and he has succeeded remarkably at both. The Internet is a far more helpful and much more welcoming place thanks to him and OKWave.
Tim: For those who don’t know, can you explain what OKWave does?
OKWave is Japan’s largest Q&A community. We have over 40 million active users who come to ask and answer questions about work and life, and even about love.
Tim: Really, people talk about their love life?
Sure. People ask “I’m in love with my boss. What should I do?” or “I’m having trouble getting pregnant, what can I do?” When we first started, we had a lot of IT-based questions, but as more and more non-technical people started using the Internet, there were more and more questions about everyday life.
Tim: OKWave is doing very well today, and you went from founding to IPO in only six years, but most people don’t realize what a hard time you had building the company.
I think my company built me as much as I built my company. I’m Japanese, but I was born in Japan with Korean nationality. No one knew or said anything about it until my parents changed my nationality in childhood. After that happened, my classmates leaned that I was not a natural-born Japanese, and I have a very hard time. I was bullied badly, even by kids that I thought were my good friends.
Tim: It must be hard for a child to understand what’s going in a situation like that.
Yes, I was 10-years-old then and I could not really image what prejudice was until I experienced it. My parents wanted the best for me, but no one knew about my nationality until after I become Japanese.
Tim: Many people say the being an outsider helps you think differently and can be an advantage as an entrepreneur. Was that the case?
I don’t think so. In my case I think it just made it hard to trust other people. I went to an Arts college and got a job as a designer at a good company, but I wasn’t happy there. I felt like they did not really appreciate or understand my design, so I left to find work in Tokyo. At the time I really wanted to work at Sofmap.
Tim: How did that work out?
Not well. My wife was very against the move and even threatened to divorce me. I left for Tokyo by myself, and due to my own mistakes in judgement, I ended up not getting the job, and I was actually living in a park for six months?
Tim: You were homeless for six months?
Yes. I was until I met a Chinese women who had moved to Japan and was trying to find work. I told her my story, but she didn’t feel sorry for me. In fact, she scolded me for being so weak. For not appreciating how easy I had things. For using little challenges and other people’s opinions as excuses for not trying. I was shocked at first, but I realized she was right. The next day I made some phone calls and got a very, very low-paying freelance job as a designer, but that was the start.
Image credit: OKWave
Tim: The start? How did that lead to OkWave?
I was soon designing web pages, but I didn’t really know how to do the job, so I went online to ask people basic questions. It’s seems natural today, but in the mid-1990s, people were upset. People told me to go away and said I had no right to waste their time with such basic questions.
Tim: That’s one thing that amazes me. Japanese people are very polite, but when they are anonymous on the Internet they can be pretty horrible.
That’s true, and it used to be worse. I decided then that I wanted to make a site where anyone could ask questions safely. At that time, no one thought it would work. Venture capitalists and private investors told me that there was no incentive for anyone to answer questions for free on the internet.
Tim: So you decided to use your own money?
Sort of. I went back to visit my wife who had stayed behind in Aichi for the past two years. I wanted to apologize and tell her all the details of my life in Tokyo, and maybe start over together. I told her about my plan. She thought about it, and gave me the money she had been saving those two years. It was enough to launch OKWave back in 2000.
Tim: Wow! That’s a lot of pressure. It’s one thing to lose investor’s money, but your wife’s savings?
Yes. [Laughs] Failure was not an option. Fortunately, the site grew quickly after we launched. People were attracted to a place where members were friendly and they could ask questions freely. After investors saw the model working, they understood it and Rakuten invested. Growth continued steadily and we were able to IPO. From outside it might look like we were able to IPO very quickly, but it was actually a very long road to get there.
It’s hard to believe that back in 1997 Japanese VCs could not even imagine the internet becoming an open and friendly place where people are willing to take the time to answer questions simply because they’ve been asked.
Most assumed the Internet would evolve to mirror Japanese business culture at that time, a collection of tightly-knit alliances and closed communities. The open internet is an obvious reality to us today, but Kanemoto-san deserves credit for not only seeing it before others did, but committing his life to making it happen.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Lang-8, the company behind a Q&A app for language learning called HiNative, announced on Wednesday that it has secured 200 million yen (nearly $2 million US) in funding. The investors in this round include Kyoto University Innovation Capital, East Ventures, and DeNA, as well as individual investors notably Chiba Kotaro and Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron, in addition to multiple others. Details of the shareholding ratios and payment date have not been disclosed. Since its official launch back in November of 2014, HiNative has gradually assembled users, and as of the end of July 2016 it had reached around 200,000 registered users. “We can see a 500,000 users milestone within the year,” CEO Yangyang Xi said in a previous interview back in July. In relation to the number of questions and responses, which is of special importance to the Q&A app, as of the end of September there have been 960,000 questions asked receiving 3.4 million answers. The app supports 120 languages and gains user access from almost every country in the world. The company plans to use the funds raised this time around to strengthen their development system, as well as promoting marketing…
Tokyo-based Lang-8, the company behind a Q&A app for language learning called HiNative, announced on Wednesday that it has secured 200 million yen (nearly $2 million US) in funding. The investors in this round include Kyoto University Innovation Capital, East Ventures, and DeNA, as well as individual investors notably Chiba Kotaro and Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron, in addition to multiple others. Details of the shareholding ratios and payment date have not been disclosed.
Since its official launch back in November of 2014, HiNative has gradually assembled users, and as of the end of July 2016 it had reached around 200,000 registered users. “We can see a 500,000 users milestone within the year,” CEO Yangyang Xi said in a previous interview back in July.
HiNative’s user growth
In relation to the number of questions and responses, which is of special importance to the Q&A app, as of the end of September there have been 960,000 questions asked receiving 3.4 million answers. The app supports 120 languages and gains user access from almost every country in the world. The company plans to use the funds raised this time around to strengthen their development system, as well as promoting marketing measures aimed at acquiring 2.5 million users by the end of 2017.
And so the story continues, with Xi having said in a previous interview, “Finally, we’re on track and growing,” to now, where he is set to advance to the next stage. He says that while they have to some degree seen verification of their growth, he’d like to improve the number of acquired users and at the same time qualities to retain them.
Xi explained:
As we thought, the more concurrent connections we have the better the numbers become, so first of all we’ll do our best to win over new users. At the same time, what we want to do within 6 months is increase the response speed. If we can get to where answers come within an average of 5 minutes, user experience would also significantly improve, so we want to focus on that from here on out.
Additionally, since his debut in 2007 as a student entrepreneur, Xi has continuously operated his social network for language learning, but unable to make any breakthroughs, experienced his share of struggle. As such, this is his first chance to take a large sum of funding to strengthen the system.
He continued:
Until now we have been working with 5 team members, but we would like that to become 10. In particular, we’re looking for engineers, 1 iOS specialist and one Android, as well as a designer, so those are areas we’d especially like to strengthen. Also, I am still doing the web design, so of course I’d like someone who could take that over.
In terms of business development, they will look for measures to attract YouTuber marketing to their ‘big hit’, as well as for managerial support similar to COO for Xi.
To begin with, Xi seeks to complete his goal of breaking through the 2 million user mark. He also discussed hopes of opening up the language learning contents stored on HiNative for searching capabilities (like Stack Overflow).
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Palo Alto-based IDEO, one of the world’s most influential design firms, and Tokyo-based startup-focused VC firm Genuine Startups, announced today they will jointly launch a new venture capital called D4V. Based in Tokyo, the new firm’s founding partners are Tom Kelley (Partner of IDEO), Kenichi Nonomura (Director of IDEO Tokyo) as well as Makoto Takano, Kengo Ito and Mamoru Taniya from Genuine Startups while executive advisors are Nobuyuki Idei (former president of Sony) and Hollywood actor and angel investor Masi Oka, best known as the breakout star of TV show Heroes. Regarding the investment ratio, IDEO Tokyo holds 40% in the new firm while Genuine Startups has the remainder. With investments in more than 50 startups through the first fund, Genuine Startups has looked to form its own second fund since last year but it will be substantially merged into the D4V fund being formed. While the size of the fund is not fixed yet, Takano told us that they aim to raise up to around 5 billion yen (approximately $50 million) by next March with an eye to possible future funding from investors in the US. The new fund is derived from “Design for Ventures”; for investees, IDEO will provide expertise about…
L to R: Kenichi Nonomura (Director of IDEO Tokyo), Tom Kelley (Partner of IDEO) Makoto Takano (Genuine Startups), Kengo Ito (Genuine Startups) – Photo taken at IDEO Tokyo
Palo Alto-based IDEO, one of the world’s most influential design firms, and Tokyo-based startup-focused VC firm Genuine Startups, announced today they will jointly launch a new venture capital called D4V. Based in Tokyo, the new firm’s founding partners are Tom Kelley (Partner of IDEO), Kenichi Nonomura (Director of IDEO Tokyo) as well as Makoto Takano, Kengo Ito and Mamoru Taniya from Genuine Startups while executive advisors are Nobuyuki Idei (former president of Sony) and Hollywood actor and angel investor Masi Oka, best known as the breakout star of TV show Heroes.
Regarding the investment ratio, IDEO Tokyo holds 40% in the new firm while Genuine Startups has the remainder. With investments in more than 50 startups through the first fund, Genuine Startups has looked to form its own second fund since last year but it will be substantially merged into the D4V fund being formed. While the size of the fund is not fixed yet, Takano told us that they aim to raise up to around 5 billion yen (approximately $50 million) by next March with an eye to possible future funding from investors in the US.
The new fund is derived from “Design for Ventures”; for investees, IDEO will provide expertise about design thinking and venture design. Genuine Startups is mainly responsible for deal-sourcing and also offering networking opportunities and business management know-how. However, the two companies claim that they neither intend to pour design elements into startups nor focus on investing in design-oriented startups. According to Takano, they will choose which companies to invest in based on a mission-oriented concept which is “let ‘non-growing’ companies go out of the market and help new companies enter the global business arena.”
L to R: Makoto Takano (Genuine Startups), Tom Kelley (Partner of IDEO), Mamoru Taniya (Genuine Startups) Photo taken at IDEO Palo Alto – Image credit: D4V
IDEO partner Tom Kelley, also best known as his bestselling book Creativity Confidence, made a comment in the press briefing:
Steve Jobs met up with Steve Wozniak, and then they founded Apple. Prior to Apple, Wozniak was previously working at Hewlett Packard but he was digged up by Jobs. In Japan, I think many people like Wozniak are living and working in obscurity. I want to dig them up and nourish them.
As IDEO’s startup collaboration effort, Kelley shared some examples including PillPack, a startup making it easy for patients on multiple medications to take the right pills at the right time, born out of a program called Startup In Residence where entrepreneurs can work side by side with IDEO employees. While D4V is neither an accelerator nor an incubator, in the future invested startups can expect to receive hands-on support leveraging both tangible and intangible assets that IDEO possess.
The fund will be mainly focused on investing in early-stage startups from Japan. However, it can also help them expand globally and get follow-on funding from investors outside Japan by leveraging the vast global network of the fund’s four founding partners and two executive advisors.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Toreta, the company offering a reservation and customer management platform for restaurants under the same name, announced on Friday that it has secured 1.2 billion yen (about $12 million) in the latest round. This round was led by Eight Roads Ventures Japan with participation from NTT Docomo Ventures and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital as well as four existing shareholders: Femto Growth Capital, WiL (World Innovation Lab), iStyle Capital (now known as iSGS Investment Works), and Salesforce Ventures. Details of the shareholding ratios and payment date have not been disclosed. In accordance with this, David Milstein, Head of Eight Roads Ventures Japan, will join the board as an external director. Since launching the service in December of 2013, Toreta has seen a steady increase in the number of acquired restaurants, and as of September 2016 it has been introduced in some 7000 stores. Additionally, it is possible for participating businesses to access services from detailed table and seat management to online reservations for their restaurants. Merely by accumulating more users, Toreta has found additional business potential. The company aims to use the funds secured this round to enhance their development system and to…
Tokyo-based Toreta, the company offering a reservation and customer management platform for restaurants under the same name, announced on Friday that it has secured 1.2 billion yen (about $12 million) in the latest round. This round was led by Eight Roads Ventures Japan with participation from NTT Docomo Ventures and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital as well as four existing shareholders: Femto Growth Capital, WiL (World Innovation Lab), iStyle Capital (now known as iSGS Investment Works), and Salesforce Ventures. Details of the shareholding ratios and payment date have not been disclosed.
In accordance with this, David Milstein, Head of Eight Roads Ventures Japan, will join the board as an external director.
Since launching the service in December of 2013, Toreta has seen a steady increase in the number of acquired restaurants, and as of September 2016 it has been introduced in some 7000 stores. Additionally, it is possible for participating businesses to access services from detailed table and seat management to online reservations for their restaurants. Merely by accumulating more users, Toreta has found additional business potential.
The company aims to use the funds secured this round to enhance their development system and to strengthen their sales and support marketing system.
To get down to it, from their founding period (no, even before that) I’ve kept an eye on Toreta as a favored reservation and customer database management service and now they have managed to fundraise over 1 billion yen ($10 million) in funding. With rumors floating about of an IPO within the next few years, perhaps their next large funding will come with the announcement of this.
Disclosure: A member of the author’s family has in the past had a contractual business relationship with Toreta.
While they continue to steadily acquire new stores, I was curious about their growth strategy for the future. With that in mind, I approached the company’s CEO Hitoshi Nakamura with a few key points.
First, what measures do they have to expand sales? With regards to the introduction speed of reservation and customer database management services Nakamura mentioned it’s proportional to sales force. Aside from this, they can increase numbers by offering additional services with the goal being to upsell. This is straightforward.
But what about the online reservation feature? One of the strong points of Toreta’s model is when restaurants receive a reservation (having until now used a paper ledger to record it) they are now able to to manage the status of their seating digitally. Consequently, it becomes possible to efficiently provide tables and seats to customers, ultimately contributing to the sales of these restaurants.
Recently, Nakamura said close to 20 percent of stores using their service support online reservations, and confided that this is also a growing trend.
We originally developed our service to solve the problem of managing numerous reservations for extremely busy restaurants, and we’ve acquired many contracts with ‘thriving businesses’ concentrating on reservations.
Usability, functionality, support, in every aspect our service have been optimized for these ‘thriving businesses.’ These businesses use Toreta with remarkable results, and from there news of us spreads by word of mouth. I believe our current expansion is a result of this.
On the other hand, restaurants typically require to use Gurunavi, Tabelog, Retty and other online restaurant review sites as a gateway to bring customers to their online reservation. Toreta is the only “reception” system connected to the restaurant side of seat inventory management, and for restaurants to accept customers it is essential to make use of such media sites.
With that, a question: I tried asking about the possibility of Toreta acquiring these types of media sites. First and foremost, Toreta can be thought of as a platform to assist restaurants from attracting customers to improving management. Regardless of the gourmet media sites, there exists a wide variety of service providers in the food-related IT industry, and acquisition can definitely be considered a stepping stone for private companies.
As a means for the expansion of our business, certainly I think acquisition is one of the choices. Not only reservations, but other business areas as well; not only Japan, but abroad as well. If there are partners that can share in our ideals from a variety of angles, we’d like to aggressively continue to increase such relationships.
He chose his words carefully while answering, but through Nakamura’s expressions I could feel just a hint of satisfaction.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
The content of this article first appeared on Disrupting Japan. It has been reproduced by The Bridge with the approval of Disrupting Japan and the article’s author Tim Romero. Tim is a Tokyo-based entrepreneur, podcaster and author who has started four companies and led Japan market entry for others since coming to Japan more than 20 years ago. Tim hosts the Disrupting Japan podcast and is deeply involved in Japan’s startup community as an investor, founder and mentor. Yuka Fujii considers Famarry to be the happiest company in the world, and looking at who her customers are, I think she just might be right. But behind this happy company is an aggressive plan to disrupt a cartel of photo studios that have dominated the Japanese market for decades. Changes in technology and demographics have opened up a small crack in this wall, and Famarry plans on using it to gain a foothold and then to change the entire industry for the better. Tim: Can you explain a what Famarry does? It’s basically crowd-sourcing of photographers, and we’ve started with pre-wedding photography. About 70,000 couples get married in Japan every year, and about half of them do pre-wedding photography. That’s the…
Tim Romero
The content of this article first appeared on Disrupting Japan. It has been reproduced by The Bridge with the approval of Disrupting Japan and the article’s author Tim Romero.
Tim is a Tokyo-based entrepreneur, podcaster and author who has started four companies and led Japan market entry for others since coming to Japan more than 20 years ago. Tim hosts the Disrupting Japan podcast and is deeply involved in Japan’s startup community as an investor, founder and mentor.
Famarry founder Yuka Fujii
Yuka Fujii considers Famarry to be the happiest company in the world, and looking at who her customers are, I think she just might be right.
But behind this happy company is an aggressive plan to disrupt a cartel of photo studios that have dominated the Japanese market for decades. Changes in technology and demographics have opened up a small crack in this wall, and Famarry plans on using it to gain a foothold and then to change the entire industry for the better.
Tim: Can you explain a what Famarry does?
It’s basically crowd-sourcing of photographers, and we’ve started with pre-wedding photography. About 70,000 couples get married in Japan every year, and about half of them do pre-wedding photography. That’s the initial market we are focusing on.
Tim: So they go to a romantic spot with a beautiful back drop and take pictures?
Exactly. The wedding photographer is usually arranged by the venue, so the couple has no choice, but people find pre-wedding photographers by word of mouth or by searching online.
Tim: How have you marketed to this audience?
We’ve had great success using Instagram. It’s nearly a perfect fit for us since it’s all about sharing photos. We run promotions, of course, but most of our customers want to share their own photos, so it’s a more modern version of word-of-mouth. It makes it easy for people to hear about us and to find a photographer they really like.
Tim: On thing that worries me about this business is that you will have very few repeat customers. Since most people only get married once, you would always need to be recruiting new customers.
We plan to build on that. A wedding is the start of a family, so naturally our customers will soon want baby pictures and then family pictures. In the future we’ll be offering these other kinds of photography services so we can grow with our clients.
Tim: You mentioned before that the photography business is changing in Japan?
The industry is becoming more accessible. Quality camera equipment used to be very expensive, but that’s not the case any more. There are many more skilled photographers with high-quality equipment than their used to be. Also, until recently, the studios controlled just about everything. They had a set of standard backdrops and poses and the customer mostly did what they were told to do. People are now starting to see photography differently. More and more people want something that suits their own character and tastes.
Tim: So there is more independence in the industry now?
There will be. It’s much easier for a photographer to be independent these days, and we try to match those photographers up with clients who suit their style. In the future, it will be very hard for the photography studios to stay in business using their current business model. Independent photographers can deliver higher quality at a lower cost and with a style customized to the customers’ personal tastes.
Image credit: Famarry
Tim: What made you target the wedding market? With Japan’s aging population, it does not seem particularly attractive.
The overall market may be shrinking from year to year in Japan, but it’s still a huge market. Not much has changed recently, so it’s a market that’s ready for disruption. As you said, the market is not growing, and many Japanese companies are trying to grow business overseas rather than innovate at home, which makes it easer for us.
Tim: Do you think being a women entrepreneur has made things easier or harder for you?
A bit of both, I suppose. Being different makes it easier to get press attention, but it can make it harder to do certain deals. With a startup you have to just deal with whatever advantages or disadvantages you have. I don’t think too much about it. In our case, however, most of our customers are women, so perhaps I can relate to them better.
Tim: I thought they were couples.
They are, but the woman generally take control of the wedding, and they are the ones who make the decisions about things like pre-wedding photography.
Tim: That makes sense. And even when it comes time for baby pictures or family portraits, it will be the wives driving the process.
Exactly.
Tim: What surprised you most about running your own business?
Both how hard it was and how fun it was. I knew it was going to be hard, but I guess you don’t really understand something until you go through it. I’m not complaining. It was just harder than I expected it would be. But I was also surprised ho much I enjoy interacting with both our staff and our customers. It’s a very happy business. To hear the voices of our customers every day and how happy they are with our service is a very encouraging thing.
Tim: I had not thought of that, but actually you are working with people at some of the happiest times of their lives. I can see how interacting with these people every day would be wonderful, and put you and your staff in a good mood as well.
Yes. that’s true. It’s also a pleasure working with the photographers. They are artists who are happy to be chosen to work with couples who like their style. Everyone is really nice, and I really want to help them. I think that we are doing a very good thing here.
I love the fact that Fujii-san considers Famarry to be the happiest business in the world, and she just might right about that.
Famarry, however, also represents a text book example of a beneficial disruptive businesses. The fundamental structure of Famarry results in their costs being much lower and their flexibility being much higher than traditional photography studios. The studios will be forced to either change the way to do business or go out of business.
Hopefully, Famarry will remain a happy business as they continue to grow.
Masaru Ikeda
The Bridge
Takeshi Hirano
Regarding the investment ratio, IDEO Tokyo holds 40% in the new firm while Genuine Startups has the remainder. With investments in more than 50 startups through the first fund, Genuine Startups has looked to form its own second fund since last year but it will be substantially merged into the D4V fund being formed. While the size of the fund is not fixed yet, Takano told us that they aim to raise up to around 5 billion yen (approximately $50 million) by next March with an eye to possible future funding from investors in the US.
