Founder Daigo Kusunoki sits in the center among the Soundraw team. Image credit: Soundraw
Tokyo-based Soundraw, the Japanese startup behind an AI-powered music composing service under the same name, announced on Thursday that it has secured 180 million yen (about $1.4 million US) in the latest funding round. Participating investors are Ceres (TSE:3696), Mint, iSGS Investment Works, SMBC Venture Capital, and Deepcore. For the company, this follows their seed round (securing 65 million yen) in June of 2020 and pre-series A round (securing an undisclosed sum) in March of 2021. Deepcore has also participated in a previous round.
Soundraw was founded in February of 2020 by serial entrepreneur Tago Kusunoki. During his university days, Kusunoki twice won the national championship in a university student dance competition. After graduating from Ritsumeikan University graduate school, he worked for a manufacturer and then launched his own company to pursue his dream of creating something by himself. Prior to Soundraw, Kusunoki has developed the SoundMoovz wearable musical instrument gadget based on his dance experience, which has shipped a total of 400,000 units to 17 countries to date.
Image credit: Soundraw
It
is common to hear background music in all kinds of videos on YouTube and
Facebook, not to mention on TV programs. Creators of these clips
usually choose from stock music services just as they choose photos and
images from stock photo sites, but this poses a few problems. Unlike
photos and images which can be searched for in a list, they have to
listen to and check the music one by one to pick the best fit.
The
AI composer can help with these needs, there are no copyright issues
involved because each of the tunes created is completely original. This
approach of creating a new song to match the clip, rather than searching
for one in the past, is an interesting shift. Because of its non-verbal
user experience making less language barriers, the platform has
successfully attracted more users from the overseas. The automated
entire process helps them keep gross margin high.
Although the company has conducted no marketing activities in the global market so far, users from the overseas accounts for 37% of the service’s paying user base, mainly from Europe and the United States. They will use the funds to renew their platform’s user interface and
experience drastically and increase the variety of music tracks the
platform can create. In addition, they have established a Los Angeles
office with several local representatives to boost international market
effort.
SOUNDRAW won the Pitch Arena competition at the B Dash Camp 2022 Summer startup conference in Sapporo last month.
We just learned that Japanese startup ChatBook, providing the automated marketing solution under the same name utilizing chatbot, has been acquired by Japan’s leading FinTech conglomerate Monex Group(TSE:8698). Monex acquired all stakes in ChatBook for an undisclosed sum. Chatbook’s most recent funding was a pre-series A round in December of 2019 (securing 100 million yen, about $920,000 in the exchange rate at the time) where Monex Ventures, the VC arm of Monex Group, participated in the investment. Japanese startup database Initial reported ChatBook was valued at 712 million yen (about $6.6 million) at the time. Chatbook was co-founded in September of 2016 (named Hect as its start) by Maiko Kojima who formerly worked for Prime Again (now known as Prime) as CFO/COO. The firm has been chosen for various accelerator programs so far; the first batch of the Code Public program in 2016, Accelerate course of FbStart which is a developer support program by Facebook in 2017 and the first batch of AI Accelerator organized by the major job information provider Dip (TSE:2379). ChatBook uses chatbots compatible with social media like Facebook, Line, and Instagram to lure potential customers and link them to sales activities in conjunction with customer relation…
Image credit: Monex Goup, ChatBook
We just learned that Japanese startup ChatBook, providing the automated marketing solution under the same name utilizing chatbot, has been acquired by Japan’s leading FinTech conglomerate Monex Group(TSE:8698). Monex acquired all stakes in ChatBook for an undisclosed sum.
Chatbook’s most recent funding was a pre-series A round in December of 2019 (securing 100 million yen, about $920,000 in the exchange rate at the time) where Monex Ventures, the VC arm of Monex Group, participated in the investment. Japanese startup database Initial reported ChatBook was valued at 712 million yen (about $6.6 million) at the time.
Chatbook was co-founded in September of 2016 (named Hect as its start) by Maiko Kojima who formerly worked for Prime Again (now known as Prime) as CFO/COO. The firm has been chosen for various accelerator programs so far; the first batch of the Code Public program in 2016, Accelerate course of FbStart which is a developer support program by Facebook in 2017 and the first batch of AI Accelerator organized by the major job information provider Dip (TSE:2379).
Image credit: ChatBook
ChatBook uses chatbots compatible with social media like Facebook, Line, and Instagram to lure potential customers and link them to sales activities in conjunction with customer relation management tools. While there are several marketing solutions using chatbots in Japan, Chatbook has a high affinity with sales activities for long-legged and rigid business solutions for enterprises.
In this sector, some of our readers may recall that Japanese startup Zeals, developing and offering the Fanp chatbot-based solution for e-commerce retailers, had planned to list on the TSE Mothers market but subsequently decided postpone it due to negative factors such as changes in US monetary policy, IPO market trends, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The company recently announced that it has secured 5 billion yen (about $38 million) in May.
Through this acquisition, Monex will invest its management resources in Chatbook, while promoting further business expansion by providing multifaceted support such as sales channel expansion and funding, and will return Chatbook’s human resources, mainly engineers, and the knowledge and know-how gained through business expansion to the Monex. The company will also aim to enhance the digital marketing capabilities of the Monex Group companies by returning to the Monex Group the human resources of Chatbook, mainly engineers, as well as the knowledge and expertise gained through business expansion.
Through this acquisition, Monex expects to invest its management resources in Chatbook while promoting further business expansion by providing support for cultivating sales channels and funding. In addition, the acquisition will also enable the FinTech group to enhance the digital marketing capabilities of each of its subsidiaries by incorporating ChatBook’s human resources, mainly engineers, as well as the knowledge and expertise.
Japanese WFH (work-from-home) jobs offering startup Caster, headquartered in the country’s western prefecture of Miyzaki, announced on Friday that it will be expanding into Germany and United Arab Emirates (UAE). The company plans to set up a local office in Berlin and Dubai within this year. Since its launched back in September of 2014, the company offers online assistance service in the categories like secretarial, human resources, accounting, translation, and other corporate tasks for startups and enterprises. The company had 1,500 remote staffers registered as of June while more than 3,000 companies have used the service so far. The company said that it has chosen Germany as its first step for global expansion because the country’s social environment and workforce are similar to those in Japan, which helps the company take advantage of their experience and schemes. With offices in Germany and the UAE, Caster plans to accelerate its expansion effort into the entire European region. The company has already begun recruiting local employees in Berlin and the rest of Germany on the the Japan-Germany Industrial Association website. In February, Caster announced that it has secured 1.3 billion yen (about $11.5 million US in the exchange rate at the time)…
Image credit: Caster
Japanese WFH (work-from-home) jobs offering startup Caster, headquartered in the country’s western prefecture of Miyzaki, announced on Friday that it will be expanding into Germany and United Arab Emirates (UAE). The company plans to set up a local office in Berlin and Dubai within this year.
Since its launched back in September of 2014, the company offers online assistance service in the categories like secretarial, human resources, accounting, translation, and other corporate tasks for startups and enterprises. The company had 1,500 remote staffers registered as of June while more than 3,000 companies have used the service so far.
The company said that it has chosen Germany as its first step for global expansion because the country’s social environment and workforce are similar to those in Japan, which helps the company take advantage of their experience and schemes. With offices in Germany and the UAE, Caster plans to accelerate its expansion effort into the entire European region. The company has already begun recruiting local employees in Berlin and the rest of Germany on the the Japan-Germany Industrial Association website.
In February, Caster
announced that it has secured 1.3 billion yen (about $11.5 million US
in the exchange rate at the time) in a Series D round, which brought
their funding sum up to around 3 billion yen (about $21.5
million US in the exchange rate at the time) on an estimation basis. The
Initial startup database estimates the company is valued over 12.3
billion yen (about $89 million US).
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). He is the Managing Partner of Shizen Capital (formerly known as Tachi.ai Ventures) in Japan. 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’m a VC guy not a PE guy, so when I start opining about private equity, readers should grant my words a tepid reception. Yet I am observing a phenomenon here on the ground in Japan that I thought might be relevant to share. Let’s start with recapping the current macroeconomic backdrop, a context upon which numerous experts — both armchair and real — have weighed in. Massive runaway inflation has taken root in most developed economies. At last print, CPI, a core measure of inflation in the U.S., ticked up to 8.6%. Governments and particularly central banks — whose core mandate is to keep inflation under control — have found themselves behind the curve. As a result, the U.S….
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). He is the Managing Partner of Shizen Capital (formerly known as Tachi.ai Ventures) in Japan. You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him @markbivens. The Japanese translation of this article is available here.
Hurricane Sandy hits Massachusetts. A public domain image. Photo by Marilee Caliendo/FEMA via Picryl
I’m a VC guy not a PE guy, so when I start opining about private equity, readers should grant my words a tepid reception. Yet I am observing a phenomenon here on the ground in Japan that I thought might be relevant to share.
Let’s start with recapping the current macroeconomic backdrop, a context upon which numerous experts — both armchair and real — have weighed in. Massive runaway inflation has taken root in most developed economies. At last print, CPI, a core measure of inflation in the U.S., ticked up to 8.6%.
Governments and particularly central banks — whose core mandate is to keep inflation under control — have found themselves behind the curve. As a result, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, followed not far behind by the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, have shifted to a steady diet of interest rate hikes and quantitative tightening, sending asset prices plummeting, with seemingly no asset class immune (equities, real estate, crypto assets, you name it).
The one glaring exception to all this within the G7 countries is Japan. In Japan, depending on how broad a basket you take, CPI inflation has risen to only 2.5%, and if stripping out food and energy from the calculation, inflation in Japan currently sits at a mere 0.3%, 20x lower than the comparable measure in the U.S.
Accordingly, the bank of Japan has maintained its policy of yield curve control, effectively capping yields on 10-year government bonds to 25 basis points. The impact of course of this stark disparity, i.e. with other countries hiking rates and tightening while Japan maintains low rates, has manifested itself in a drastic JPY devaluation to a 20-year low, as I’ve written about before.
In light of the Yen’s tumble, there has been some speculation in the markets that the BOJ will relent on its yield curve control policy in order to bolster its currency. However, consensus here in Tokyo seems to be that as long as inflation in Japan does not get out of hand, it’s unlikely that the BOJ would do anything else but stay the course. Furthermore, BOJ governor Kuroda-san’s final mandate ends next spring. The likelihood of him implementing a radical policy shift in the final nine months of his mandate appears low.
So this brings me back to the topic of private equity. When executed successfully, private equity transactions can generate value creation in up to three different ways (VCs like to joke that there are only three, but I’ll resist the temptation here):
Operational efficiencies
Multiple expansion
Leverage
Operational efficiencies can result from restructuring. Divestment of underperforming assets, unlocking cost savings, bolt-on acquisitions, realignment of management incentives, are among other expertise that PE firms can bring to a company once they take control.
Multiple expansion means positioning a company to justify higher EV/S and EV/EBITDA multiples (enterprise value/sales, enterprise value/EBITDA, respectively). Higher multiples can be attained via both internal actions such as enhanced strategic focus, improved corporate governance, and external factors such as investing in a sector which is growing or coming back into favor.
Leverage means using a significant portion of debt to acquire the target company in the PE buyout. A typical leveraged buyout of a company for say $100 million might entail $30 million of equity from the PE fund and $70 million of debt from lenders.
As you can imagine, combining two or all three above factors can exponentially enhance the financial return profile of the investment. Let’s say that the aforementioned $100 million company is valued at a multiple of 5x EBITDA, (EBITDA = 100m / 5 => 20m). The transaction is financed with 30m from the PE fund and 70m in outside debt. If the PE firm through operational efficiencies is able to increase EBITDA from 20m to 30m, and in parallel is able to justify that the company thanks to its improved strategic focus and sectorial growth justifies an EV/EBITDA multiple of 7 rather than 5, the enterprise value of the company becomes $210 million. If the PE fund can find a buyer for the company at this price, it will generate a return on its invested capital of 4.67x ((210m – 70m debt)/30m).
When viewing Japan through the lens of the above three factors for private equity value creation, the market here looks pretty attractive.
Without naming names, it’s no secret that many incumbent corporations carry underperforming business lines on their books, and hence offer some opportunities ripe for restructuring, which in turn could unlock operational efficiencies. Additionally, Japan’s new ESG compliance requirements are forcing some companies to restructure and in certain cases even carve out business units.
Regarding the principle of multiple expansion, EV/EBITDA multiples are moving in quite the opposite direction worldwide, as rising rates depress asset prices. Yet I would submit that such forces of multiple compression run deeper in the U.S. and Europe right now than what we are witnessing in Japan.
However, thanks to its low interest rate environment, debt financing in Japan remains a relative bargain compared to the rest of the world. The opportunity to structure buyout transactions with inexpensive leverage is where Japan really shines on these vectors for private equity value creation.
Moreover, the perception in Japan of the business of private equity, even of foreign funds, has been gradually improving. In the eyes of foreign PE funds, the Japanese market represents a reliable beacon of security and rule of law.
Upon admittedly superficial analysis, it stands to reason that Japan should represent an appealing market for global PE funds in the current environment.
We’re already witnessing some evidence of movement. At the start of the latest annual shareholding meeting season, a record 77 companies faced proposals from stock owners, many of them foreign funds. In March, Sweden’s EQT acquired Bering Private Equity Asia, with stated expansion plans for Japan. The potential imminent $20 billion buyout of Toshiba would serve as a bellwether.
Whether these data points portend a broader trend remains to be seen, but if they do, this could result in increased competition for Japan’s domestic PE firms. (Unlike venture deals, in which VC firms often invest collaboratively as syndicates, private equity is more of a solo sport). An informal survey suggests to me that they are not alarmed.
Perhaps I’m straying too far out of my lane here, but because I enjoy these hypothetical thought experiments, here’s my unsolicited (and probably unwelcome) advice to Japan’s domestic PE firms: build relationships upstream, i.e. with venture capital funds in Japan.
The market here still remains quite opaque to foreigners at the venture stage, so you have an inherent competitive advantage by being on the ground. Granted, not all venture companies grow into private equity targets, but high-growth firms in some sectors often do, such as in enterprise SaaS, or alternatively can serve as complementary targets for PE build-up strategies. Building such relationships today will lay the groundwork for future dealflow before the competitive bidding process even begins.
We reported earlier this year that Osaka-headquartered Warrantee, the Japanese startup offering free insurance services in the US and Singapore, has publicly filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its initial public offering (IPO) on NASDAQ. We recently learned the application has been approved by SEC. According to the regulator’s database EDGAR, the company has received SEC’s Notice of Effectiveness dated June 30. The company’s stock will be traded under its ticker code WRNT while it’s uncertain when the trading begins. Based on past cases, the trading will start within half to one month after the approval. We confirmed that Bloomberg has already set up a page showing Warrantee’s quotes. Meanwhile, Warrantee has posted a document titled Public Notice of Board of Directors’ Resolution on Issuance of Shares for Subscription on their website, which details the subscription and payment for the underlying shares and the shares subject of the Over-Allotment Option. Founded back in October of 2013 by CEO Yusuke Shono, Warrantee started its business with helping consumers turn product warranties into digital followed by foraying into the on-demand insurance market in 2017 in collaboration with insurance companies. Subsequently the company started offering free or low-cost on-demand…
Yusuke Shono Image credit: Warrantee
We reported earlier this year that Osaka-headquartered Warrantee, the Japanese startup offering free insurance services in the US and Singapore, has publicly filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its initial public offering (IPO) on NASDAQ. We recently learned the application has been approved by SEC.
According to the regulator’s database EDGAR, the company has received SEC’s Notice of Effectiveness dated June 30. The company’s stock will be traded under its ticker code WRNT while it’s uncertain when the trading begins. Based on past cases, the trading will start within half to one month after the approval. We confirmed that Bloomberg has already set up a page showing Warrantee’s quotes.
Founded back in October of 2013 by CEO Yusuke Shono, Warrantee started its business with helping consumers turn product warranties into digital followed by foraying into the on-demand insurance market in 2017 in collaboration with insurance companies.
Subsequently the company started offering free or low-cost on-demand insurance services in the US and Singapore where state-run affordable and universal health insurance systems are less common unlike Japan.
We have contacted Warrantee for further details but haven’t yet received any response as of this writing. This is a developing story and may be updated in the future.
This guest post is authored by Tomohiko Hayashi. He is Pricncipal Director at Accenture Song / Accenture Ventures. He leads business development and innovation from a customer experience perspective. He has won and judged many awards at industry events including SXSW and Cannes Lions. You all know about a16z media, right? Then, have you heard of Lenny’s Newsletter? In my opinion, it is a newsletter and global Slack community that gathers the best startup information available today. More than 150,000 people, mainly startup PMs, managers, engineers, designers, etc., are registered. Lenny Rachitsky, former product manager of Airbnb, who operates these programs. The off-line meetups of this community are being held in various countries around the world by community participants. In June 2022 alone, there are 24 locations worldwide. I’d like to make it happen in Tokyo too! So I raised my hand to be the host. The first meeting will be held at Accenture Innovation Hub in Azabujuban on Tuesday, July 12, from 7PM. Would be great if we can get the Tokyo global crowd together! The content of the event is to be a place for international startups and globally minded startups to meet and exchange ideas. Please apply…
Tomohiko Hayashi
This guest post is authored by Tomohiko Hayashi.
He is Pricncipal Director at Accenture Song / Accenture Ventures. He leads business development and innovation from a customer experience perspective.
He has won and judged many awards at industry events including SXSW and Cannes Lions.
Lenny’s Newsletter
You all know about a16z media, right? Then, have you heard of Lenny’s Newsletter? In my opinion, it is a newsletter and global Slack community that gathers the best startup information available today. More than 150,000 people, mainly startup PMs, managers, engineers, designers, etc., are registered.
Lenny Rachitsky
Lenny Rachitsky, former product manager of Airbnb, who operates these programs.
The off-line meetups of this community are being held in various countries around the world by community participants. In June 2022 alone, there are 24 locations worldwide.
I’d like to make it happen in Tokyo too! So I raised my hand to be the host.
The first meeting will be held at Accenture Innovation Hub in Azabujuban on Tuesday, July 12, from 7PM. Would be great if we can get the Tokyo global crowd together!
The content of the event is to be a place for international startups and globally minded startups to meet and exchange ideas. Please apply for the event by filling out the form above. There will be free drinks and snacks. You don’t have to be a newsletter reader.