Tokyo-based Progate, offering an online code learning service under the same name, announced on Monday that it has secured 100 million yen (about $880,000) in funding from FreakOut Holdings (TSE:6094), DeNA (TSE:2432), and individual investors. Details concerning the payment date and shareholding ratios were not disclosed.
In addition to this, the company announced that their number of users has reached 120,000, that it is being used as teaching materials in around 10 high schools in Japan, and they revealed the expansion of their services with “Progate for School” and “Progate for Business.”
Progate, which was launched in the summer of 2014 by three students attending the University of Tokyo at that time, has been able satisfy users up to now. However, their competitor Codecademy has secured tens of millions of users on a global scale. Following up on this, Progate’s CEO Masanori Kato revealed plans to release an international version of their service within 2017, with the particular desire to become an influential presence in the Asian region.
He said:
Although we don’t have clear results yet (regarding tests of the overseas version), considering Progate’s current demographic of 25-34 year olds, which is a large demographic in Southeast Asia, we think this target is consistent. There are many people who are fascinated by learning programming and it could have an even bigger effect on their lives than Japanese users, and we’d like to appeal to this target while taking advantage of the position of FreakOut, who participated in funding this time around.
Kato also remarked on their goal to increase examples created by users in conjunction with their service by adding applied lesson content, thus gradually showing overseas users the value of their service.
Along with the freshness of a business centered on the creation of students, they are worth paying attention to as they challenge the field of programming education which supports future developers who will go on to shape the world. To what extent will they be able to contribute to the developing capabilities of their generation? I would like to report on it again after quantitative information becomes available.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.” He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him @markbivens. The Japanese translation of this article is available here. I like to preach that Silicon Valley no longer has a monopoly on tech innovation. Startup ecosystems around the world have emerged and have produced many game-changing innovations over the past couple decades. Yet in one area several of these communities (not all, but many) remain in the dark ages relative to North America: employee incentive management. Readers of my blog know that one of my recurring gripes is the regulatory difficulty in granting equity to stakeholders of French startups. France, however, is not uniquely guilty. The government in the Netherlands, for example, has made granting stock options in startups so fiscally unappealing that the instrument is useless. Between bouts of complaining though, I had also promised to expand on some of the lessons I’ve learned over the years on establishing non-monetary incentives in venture-backed…
This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.” He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him @markbivens. The Japanese translation of this article is available here.
I like to preach that Silicon Valley no longer has a monopoly on tech innovation. Startup ecosystems around the world have emerged and have produced many game-changing innovations over the past couple decades.
Yet in one area several of these communities (not all, but many) remain in the dark ages relative to North America: employee incentive management.
Readers of my blog know that one of my recurring gripes is the regulatory difficulty in granting equity to stakeholders of French startups. France, however, is not uniquely guilty. The government in the Netherlands, for example, has made granting stock options in startups so fiscally unappealing that the instrument is useless.
Between bouts of complaining though, I had also promised to expand on some of the lessons I’ve learned over the years on establishing non-monetary incentives in venture-backed startups across Europe. Many of these lessons could be applicable to innovators in any geography.
A personal story
First, a detour into a personal anecdote. When I first graduated from university with a degree in Electrical Engineering, like most clueless 22 year-olds I didn’t know which career to pursue. I just knew that I didn’t want to become an electrical engineer for a living. This was in the 90s, a period in which the default career step for new grads who didn’t know what to do was… consulting.
Despite not really understanding what management consultants actually did, I miraculously received a handful of job offers from the main firms and decided to join one which seemed like the best fit for me. No offense to this firm, which is world-class, but within three months of my first job out of college I realized that I was not the best fit for consulting.
I began spending spare weekends (spare evenings were non-existent) with a former classmate brainstorming on new business ideas. The positive energy from these sessions drew a stark constrast with my day job. I almost resigned in anticipation, but then my employer pulled a jedi mind trick on me which completely shifted my momentum:
They gave me a prize.
The partners of our firm’s office presented me with an award of recognition for my purportedly extraordinary efforts on a client engagement. It was a glass trophy, with no monetary award attached, but a plaque inscribed with my name and the words, “extraordinary achiever” or something like that.
And you know what, it worked. This glass trophy (which probably cost a mere dollar to manufacture in China) re-energized my motivation and loyalty to my firm for another year. Crucially, I was presented this award during a quarterly all-hands meeting, on a stage to the applause of the entire office. This event motivated me more than any bonus or raise ever could have. Even when I try to look back on the occasion with detached hindsight to laugh, I can still sense some of the residual pride I had felt that day.
With this demonstration of human psychology as a backdrop, and in the spirit of spurring creativity among all company-builders reading this, here are a handful of ideas to attract, motivate, and retain your employees on a startup budget.
12 cost-effective ideas to motivate your team:
Give awards. Recognize performance in a manner visible to the whole company. Prizes could take the form of inexpensive trophies, French Open or Stade de France tickets, Michelin restaurant vouchers, etc.
Hold internal competitions. For example, create an 8-week internal hackathon comprised of cross-functional teams (1 salesperson, 1 developer, 1 designer) to produce a viable new revenue line for your company. Teams present their creation in front of the company at the end of the period. Allocate one hour every Friday morning on company time for teams to collaborate. Pride and ego will probably encourage teams to work on their project outside of company time. The winning team receives a prize, but the real winner will be your startup.
Invite a star performer to join a board meeting on occasion (for those whom would enjoy this and not feel intimidated by it).
Grant extreme flexibility in work arrangements: let employees work the hours they wish, from the location they wish, and measure them solely on deliverables, not “office time”.
Create a warm and fuzzy office environment where employees enjoy spending time. Let employees decorate their own desk, provide free monthly catering from a company like La Belle Assiette (I’ll even give you a 40€ voucher if you’re in Belgium, France, Germany, or UK). Or consider relocating your office to a place like Station F. I recently visited one office that put a barbershop in a side room with a barber on-demand which I thought was really cool.
Invite a visiting speaker once a semester, such as a Silicon Valley type on vacation, or a developer to talk about the latest techniques in Rails, or anyone that might be of interest to the staff.
Be creative in granting job titles. Job titles cost the company virtually nothing yet can deliver immeasurable perceptual value to the employee.
Give employees the latest iPhone. As with job titles, there’s an arbitrage opportunity here between the perceived value vs. cost of free smartphones.
Hold periodic company retreats to brainstorm on strategy in a remote environment like a wine-tasting outing, a farmhouse, a kayaking trip, etc. The key is that everyone be invited to contribute to the discussion. You can abandon company hierarchy for a day.
Empower your employees. Give them some autonomy and the ability to fail without repercussions. To the extent possible, allow them to control their own budgets up to a certain limit.
Communicate as openly as you can about the opportunities and challenges facing your business. Twitter and Medium founder Evan Williams is frequently praised by his employees who remain fervently loyal to him. Keeping employees in the dark is a recipe for underperformance.
Make your employees feel that they’re a part of something big. Treat your employees like fonctionnaires if you want to run your startup like a government agency and go nowhere.
See the original story in Japanese. Agribuddy, a startup that offers a mobile app to farmers in Cambodia and other emerging countries to provide them with asset management support services, announced on Wedsneday that it has received US$730,000 in funding from the likes of iSGS Investment Works, Yorihiko “Paul” Kato, several additional corporations, funds, and individual investors. The company plans to use the funds raised to further develop products and systems currently under development and to acquire top talent who can play an active part in the world market. Agribuddy provides an Android app of the same name to farmers, who then can register their farmland and crops as users allowing the app to automatically calculate income and expenditure patterns, as well as timing and money amounts. In addition, Agribuddy’s own credit scoring function also provides a service that sets credit limits from banks and other financial institutions for buying agricultural materials. The total agricultural area of Agribuddy’s users has reached just under 190,000 hectares, and they originally started collecting users mainly in Cambodia, but recently they have also begun to accumulate users in neighboring Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, India, etc. This is due to people called “Buddies” stationed in each…
Agribuddy, a startup that offers a mobile app to farmers in Cambodia and other emerging countries to provide them with asset management support services, announced on Wedsneday that it has received US$730,000 in funding from the likes of iSGS Investment Works, Yorihiko “Paul” Kato, several additional corporations, funds, and individual investors. The company plans to use the funds raised to further develop products and systems currently under development and to acquire top talent who can play an active part in the world market.
Agribuddy provides an Android app of the same name to farmers, who then can register their farmland and crops as users allowing the app to automatically calculate income and expenditure patterns, as well as timing and money amounts. In addition, Agribuddy’s own credit scoring function also provides a service that sets credit limits from banks and other financial institutions for buying agricultural materials.
The total agricultural area of Agribuddy’s users has reached just under 190,000 hectares, and they originally started collecting users mainly in Cambodia, but recently they have also begun to accumulate users in neighboring Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, India, etc. This is due to people called “Buddies” stationed in each rural village, making it possible to reach out to and collect data from potential users who are not connected to the Internet.
See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s digital health startup CureApp announced on Monday that it has fundraised 380 million yen (about $3.4 million) from Beyond Next Ventures, Keio Innovation Initiative and SBI Investment. This funding is subsequent to the 100 million yen (about $890,000) from Beyond Next Ventures in October of 2015. With the money raised this time, the firm enhances its research and development system in order to realize a disease treatment using mobile apps. The company was founded in July of 2014 by two medical doctors: Kohta Satake (CEO) and Shin Suzuki (CTO). The firm is one of the leading players in the medical app vertical under the theme of “app exhibits therapeutic effects against diseases” and launched a nicotine addiction treatment app in February 2015, which was jointly developed with Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Keio University’s School of Medicine. It is currently conducting clinical trials in many locations. The company was selected as a participant of the Hiyaku Next Enterprise program, an innovation encouragement program sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. While CEO Satake was staying at San Francisco to take part in the Silicon Valley course as a part of the…
Japan’s digital health startup CureApp announced on Monday that it has fundraised 380 million yen (about $3.4 million) from Beyond Next Ventures, Keio Innovation Initiative and SBI Investment. This funding is subsequent to the 100 million yen (about $890,000) from Beyond Next Ventures in October of 2015. With the money raised this time, the firm enhances its research and development system in order to realize a disease treatment using mobile apps.
The company was founded in July of 2014 by two medical doctors: Kohta Satake (CEO) and Shin Suzuki (CTO). The firm is one of the leading players in the medical app vertical under the theme of “app exhibits therapeutic effects against diseases” and launched a nicotine addiction treatment app in February 2015, which was jointly developed with Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Keio University’s School of Medicine. It is currently conducting clinical trials in many locations.
The company was selected as a participant of the Hiyaku Next Enterprise program, an innovation encouragement program sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. While CEO Satake was staying at San Francisco to take part in the Silicon Valley course as a part of the program, he replied to our interview about his firm’s view.
Subsequent to the above-mentioned nicotine addiction treatment app, CureApp had jointly developed a NASH (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis remedy) treatment app with Department of Gastroenterology, the University of Tokyo, and has been conducting a clinical trial as well. NASH is hepatitis caused by obesity or diabetes and is one of the typical lifestyle diseases treatable by improving dietary habits. According to Satake, the firm plans a horizontal spread of medical apps for treatment / management of other lifestyle diseases including diabetes, depression and lung cancer, in addition to the two apps.
As for development of the mobile apps, the firm adopted React Native, a app development platform invented by Facebook enabling easy development of apps available for iOS / Android only with JavaScript knowledge.
The CureApp NASH app was fully made with the React Native environment while the nicotine treatment app has also been porting to it. The platform will be adopted to all the firm’s other apps in the future. Kensuke Takagi, engineering team lead of CureApp, has been
making efforts to penetrate this new technology by repeatedly giving presentations at various events held in the Tokyo area such as React Native Meetup.
CureApp is also seeking a way to expand its business to the US through cooperation with local medical institutions, and that is one of the reasons for Satake’s visit to the US. If the apps are approved by FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) after clinical trials in the US, a global development may be possible. One of its investors, Beyond Next Ventures, had recently tied up with San Francisco-based bio-science accelerator IndieBio, and such a movement may boost the firm’s future growth.
You can download the CureApp’s apps from iTunes AppStore or Google Play, but the apps requires use under the guidance of a partnered medical institution due to the nature of medical apps.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo’s Shibuya, aka Bit Valley, has long been the home of Japanese startups, with FinTech stationed in Otemachi, hardware in Akihabara, bioscience in Nihonbashi, and so on, but it appears startup hubs are popping up all over the place. So, I wondered where hot topic sectors like virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality related startups are gathering, thus the topic for this article was born. A number of VR arcades have appeared in Seoul and Shanghai and they play a role in introducing VR to general (not VR-savvy or VR-enthusiast) consumers. According to experts, in the US it seems that VR startups are starting to gather around Silicon Beach LA, from Santa Clara which is very near Hollywood (the mecca of the video and entertainment industry) to Venice Beach. In London they are appearing in Shoreditch, an area of Tech City. Is this where Tokyo’s VR startup hubs will gather? I walked around the city over the New Year while mulling this over. Future Tech Hub, an incubation facility specializing in VR, newly opened in December Future Tech Hub is Japan’s first incubation facility specialized in VR, as well as a coworking space…
Tokyo’s Shibuya, aka Bit Valley, has long been the home of Japanese startups, with FinTech stationed in Otemachi, hardware in Akihabara, bioscience in Nihonbashi, and so on, but it appears startup hubs are popping up all over the place. So, I wondered where hot topic sectors like virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality related startups are gathering, thus the topic for this article was born.
A number of VR arcades have appeared in Seoul and Shanghai and they play a role in introducing VR to general (not VR-savvy or VR-enthusiast) consumers. According to experts, in the US it seems that VR startups are starting to gather around Silicon Beach LA, from Santa Clara which is very near Hollywood (the mecca of the video and entertainment industry) to Venice Beach. In London they are appearing in Shoreditch, an area of Tech City.
Is this where Tokyo’s VR startup hubs will gather? I walked around the city over the New Year while mulling this over.
Future Tech Hub, an incubation facility specializing in VR, newly opened in December
Future Tech Hub is Japan’s first incubation facility specialized in VR, as well as a coworking space and opened December 14. It is 5 minutes walking from Kayabacho station. In addition to investing in The Venture Reality Fund, they are operated jointly by Gumi (TSE: 3903) and Breakpoint. Gumi is managed by Tokyo VR Startups, an incubator specializing in VR. Breakpoint has been developing incubation facilities in Tokyo since 2004.
Tokyo VR Startups regularly develop incubation batches, with the Future Tech Hub raising VR startups until they can participate in these batches, the goal being to produce graduates capable of renting their own offices, creating a mutually beneficial relationship. According to Yasuchika Wakayama, CEO of Breakpoint, leading Japanese VR startups Yomuneco (led by journalist Kiyoshi Shin who has written numerous books related to the gaming industry) and Ouka-Ichimon (offering content production and consulting service specializing in the Oculus VR head-mounted display) have set up operations bases there.
The theme of incubation is how to raise the business value of a startup in its early stage. Information about what kinds of hardware and software are up and coming filters down to us through our networks and we believe this could be helpful for startups.
Wakayama remarked.
On top of that, one the biggest advantages Silicon Valley has is the close proximity of startups and the market. For example, when an entrepreneur needs to meet with someone from Google to inspect their product, they can do it immediately. And they’ll know who to talk with at Pixar. We want to be able to provide this kind of information and create a similar environment.
He continued.
(In the context of open innovation) We are also getting inquiries from major Japanese companies. We are gathering information on what big companies are looking for in startups so, in turn, startups will be able to launch the products that the market wants more efficiently.
High-spec machines and an area to perform test and demonstrations are necessary when developing VR. At Future Tech Hub they have Galleria gaming computers produced by Thirdwave, HTC Vive from HTC, and cloud services from Amazon Web Services. Tenant startups can use these resources free of charge. Since the studio space for chroma key can be shared by several companies it is also economical.
From Future Tech Hub it is a five minute walk along the Nihonbashi River to the Tokyo VR Startups base of operations, and it is expected that the two will share more than just close proximity. They have the power to function as a coworking space, but they have set the conditions for becoming a tenant high in seeking those that will contribute greatly to the VR startup community. Currently there are four corporations and one individual in fixed seats, with three more corporations in free seats and they want to increase this to 30 teams by the end of the year.
Gumi, which is jointly managing Future Tech Lab indirectly, is also jointly developing an incubation program in Korea called Seoul VR Startups. One foreseeable outcome is that VR startups from Korea in Japan using Future Tech Lab as their base.
VR Space
While our event space / live streaming studio The Bridge X is situated in Shibuya 2-chome, near Aoyama Gakuin University, at nearly the same time we moved our base there, the VR experience space VR Space opened in the same area. It is produced by serial entrepreneur Akihito Ninomiya, who previously operated the Talentio recruitment service (the hatch that operated Talentio was acquired by Ximera in September 2015).
VR Space offers 6 booths, each with various VR gaming experiences using HTC Vive. (Currently, they are not licensed to use Oculus Rift, which is not available for direct sales to consumers; only HTC Vive is available.) They are in a favorable location facing Aoyama Street, with couples stopping in on dates, and groups of company employees dropping by for a little recreation. Foreign users have also increased, and recently it seems they had to prepare Chinese manuals and customer guides in a rush.
For Ninomiya, VR Space is not only an arcade, but can also be used as a marketing base for developers of VR content, with the expectation that they could create a scale based on the consulting revenue from the B2B business.
Tech Lab Paak, The Roots, and VR Park Tokyo
Recruit Holdings (TSE: 6098) opened its Acceleration Course specializing in VR from the 6th batch of last year’s Tech Lab Paak startup accelerator in Shibuya. Readers may recall that a number of VR startups were introduced during the demo day for the 6th batch.
Additionally, Colopl Next, which is a fund specializing in VR, has developed an incubation space called The Roots in Shibuya. Although The Roots is especially for student entrepreneurship support and is not necessarily a facility for VR startups, some kind of synergy may be expected between the fund specializing in VR and the VR startups they invest in.
Gree (TSE: 3632), a major internet service provider, along with Adores (TSE: 4712), a big name game center operator, opened the VR arcade VR Park Tokyo in Shibuya in December of last year to showcase attractions developed jointly by both companies. In November of 2015, Gree opened Gree VR Studio as a department specializing in the development of VR content, and it appears that the new titles created there can be experienced in Shibuya first. As we could not arrange an interview in time for this article, the interview released by the Japan Times has been posted below.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Coiney, the Japanese mobile payments startup, announced today that it has completed a 800 million yen funding as the sum of investment from Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), SBI Investment and Dentsu Digital Holdings (DDH) as well as bank borrowing from Seibu Shinkin Bank. Financial details of the deal such as the investment ratio and the payment date have not been disclosed. The company claims that it will use the funds to increase engineers as well as strengthen their sales and marketing team for expanding their payments solution and services: Coiney Terminal (smartphone-based payments solution for real stores), Coiney Payge (web-based payments solution for online transactions) in addition to Coiney Engine. Coiney Engine uses artificial intelligence to offer an evaluation of business enterprises based on the accumulation of payments history and various statistical data from the Coiney Terminal and Coiney Payge services. It is used to see the credibility of a company when they apply for business loans from banks partnering with the payments startup. See also: New partnerships announced in Japanese payments processing space Japanese payments startup Coiney looks back on key metrics from its first year Japanese mobile payment startup…
Tokyo-based Coiney, the Japanese mobile payments startup, announced today that it has completed a 800 million yen funding as the sum of investment from Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), SBI Investment and Dentsu Digital Holdings (DDH) as well as bank borrowing from Seibu Shinkin Bank. Financial details of the deal such as the investment ratio and the payment date have not been disclosed.
The company claims that it will use the funds to increase engineers as well as strengthen their sales and marketing team for expanding their payments solution and services: Coiney Terminal (smartphone-based payments solution for real stores), Coiney Payge (web-based payments solution for online transactions) in addition to Coiney Engine.
Coiney Engine uses artificial intelligence to offer an evaluation of business enterprises based on the accumulation of payments history and various statistical data from the Coiney Terminal and Coiney Payge services. It is used to see the credibility of a company when they apply for business loans from banks partnering with the payments startup.