The Bridge
See the original story in Japanese.
Japanese social gaming giant Ateam (TSE:3662) announced today that it has acquired the entire stake in Tokyo-based Increments, the Japanese startup offering the Qiita knowledge-sharing platform for programmers, for 1.45 billion yen (about $13 million US).
Qiita was launched back in September of 2011 by Hiroshige Umino, who had worked for Google and Japanese internet company Hatena as a programming intern while attending Kyoto University. The team graduated from Tokyo-based seed accelerator Open Network Lab‘s 4th batch, over the 2011-12 period. The platform has served more than half the population of all programmers in Japan. In addition to the Qiita open community platform, the company launched Qiita:Team back in 2013, designed for a company’s in-house use upon knowledge-sharing among their programming employees. According to the consolidated statement as of December 2016, the company posted revenue of 89.95 million yen (about $793,000), with a final deficit of 80.22 million yen (about $708,000).
Ateam said in a statement:
Qiita is very active in the sector where we cannot easily expand into on our own. By gaining the entire stake in Increments, we think we can accelerate our business expansion effort through leveraging of their assets and experience. We are certain this acquisition will contribute to our growth over the mid- to long-term perceptive in addition to improving our corporate value.
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Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
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 
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