Masaru started his career as a programmer/engineer, and previously co-founded several system integration companies and consulting firms. He’s been traveling around Silicon Valley and Asia exploring the IT industry, and he also curates event updates for the Tokyo edition of Startup Digest.
Our readers may recall that online customer support platform provider Zendesk established a presence in Japan back in March. The company was initially launched back in 2007 in Copenhagen, but relocated its headquarters to San Francisco to develop more global business opportunities. They have set up a branch here in Tokyo, and we were invited to their recent launching party, hosting many of their customers from the local startup community. This is the fifth regional branch for them, following London, Melbourne, Copenhagen, and Dublin. CEO Mikkel Svane was in attendance, on his way back from the Infinity Venture Summit in Kyoto. He and his country manager, Kan Kunimura, broke open a ceremonial Japanese sake barrel together to serve drinks to guests. They also hired the kind of Japanese food stall often seen at shrine festivals, where anyone can order their favorite foods out of fried noodles, beef rice balls, and the more. I was curious to see that they still have only three people at this branch despite the large office, spanning over 100 square meters. But their marketing manager Shoko Yanagisawa told me they will be hiring more people to serve better their Japanese clients, so we can expect…
Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane (Left) and Kan Kunimura broke open a Japanese sake barrel.
Our readers may recall that online customer support platform provider Zendesk established a presence in Japan back in March. The company was initially launched back in 2007 in Copenhagen, but relocated its headquarters to San Francisco to develop more global business opportunities. They have set up a branch here in Tokyo, and we were invited to their recent launching party, hosting many of their customers from the local startup community. This is the fifth regional branch for them, following London, Melbourne, Copenhagen, and Dublin.
CEO Mikkel Svane was in attendance, on his way back from the Infinity Venture Summit in Kyoto. He and his country manager, Kan Kunimura, broke open a ceremonial Japanese sake barrel together to serve drinks to guests. They also hired the kind of Japanese food stall often seen at shrine festivals, where anyone can order their favorite foods out of fried noodles, beef rice balls, and the more.
I was curious to see that they still have only three people at this branch despite the large office, spanning over 100 square meters. But their marketing manager Shoko Yanagisawa told me they will be hiring more people to serve better their Japanese clients, so we can expect it to fill up in the not-too-distant future. For the time being, staffers at their Melbourne branch will be assisting with Japanese clients since they’re in close time zone.
Zendesk’s Tokyo office is located alongside a busy street filled with many Japanese bars and diners. If you visit them in evening, it will be easy to find a place in their neighborhood to chat over drinks.
From the office entrance. Some guests have already started networking.Flowers and foldable bagsWho has two thumbs and apparently likes to kick ass? This guy!Mikkel orders from a food stall.One of their team members celebrated his birthday as well
Many business people struggle to find the time to manage their email. And if you have social media accounts, you might have difficulty keeping up with those messages too. Tokyo-based BHI has introduced a new messaging application today that lets you check and respond to e-mails or private messages on social media, all in one app. It’s called Swingmail, and it’s available for free on the App Store. While it doesn’t have any function to create new messages, it prioritizes and sorts received messages based on various metrics, such as how many times you’ve exchanged messages with a sender in a certain period of time, for example. The company expects that you’ll keep using your own preferred e-mail app on desktop or mobile. Marketing director Jun Inoue emphasizes that they don’t intend for Swingmail to replace existing e-mail apps. They are also working on a contact list app as well, giving you a list of contacts in order of priority. The default contact app on your mobile just presents contacts in alphabetical order, but this new app will determine priority based on your current location (i.e. whose office you’re currently close to) and how many times you’ve exchanged messages contacts…
Many business people struggle to find the time to manage their email. And if you have social media accounts, you might have difficulty keeping up with those messages too. Tokyo-based BHI has introduced a new messaging application today that lets you check and respond to e-mails or private messages on social media, all in one app. It’s called Swingmail, and it’s available for free on the App Store. While it doesn’t have any function to create new messages, it prioritizes and sorts received messages based on various metrics, such as how many times you’ve exchanged messages with a sender in a certain period of time, for example.
The company expects that you’ll keep using your own preferred e-mail app on desktop or mobile. Marketing director Jun Inoue emphasizes that they don’t intend for Swingmail to replace existing e-mail apps.
They are also working on a contact list app as well, giving you a list of contacts in order of priority. The default contact app on your mobile just presents contacts in alphabetical order, but this new app will determine priority based on your current location (i.e. whose office you’re currently close to) and how many times you’ve exchanged messages contacts through the messaging app. This new contacts app will be launched early next year.
BHI is based out of the Tokyo startup incubation space Samurai Startup Island and recently invited former Google Japan president Koichiro Tsujino to get involved as their advisor.
Tokyo-based investment company Global Brain held its annual startup conference event in Tokyo this past Friday, the Global Brain Alliance Forum, or GBAF for short. Let’s have a quick rundown on the top three winners out of nine nominees at the startup competition session, before looking at the other talks that took place during the event. 1st place: Triibe (Singapore) Triibe is a customer feedback management tool for physical retail stores, developed by Singapore-based startup Ascriber. They have deployed the app at over 300 retail stores and restaurant chains, mainly in Singapore. After visiting a merchant, if you rate them in the app and then share to Facebook, you can receive 10% off when you visit them next time. For retailers, the platform gives you an analytics dashboard page when you can browse metrics from customers about their satisfaction and experience. One of their key features is a realtime alert system. When the platform receives negative feedback from a customer, your store manager can be notified via SMS or e-mail at once, which helps you address the needs of that customer as soon as possible. There are already more than a few competitors in the space, but Triibe is expecting…
Tokyo-based investment company Global Brain held its annual startup conference event in Tokyo this past Friday, the Global Brain Alliance Forum, or GBAF for short. Let’s have a quick rundown on the top three winners out of nine nominees at the startup competition session, before looking at the other talks that took place during the event.
Triibe is a customer feedback management tool for physical retail stores, developed by Singapore-based startup Ascriber. They have deployed the app at over 300 retail stores and restaurant chains, mainly in Singapore. After visiting a merchant, if you rate them in the app and then share to Facebook, you can receive 10% off when you visit them next time.
For retailers, the platform gives you an analytics dashboard page when you can browse metrics from customers about their satisfaction and experience. One of their key features is a realtime alert system. When the platform receives negative feedback from a customer, your store manager can be notified via SMS or e-mail at once, which helps you address the needs of that customer as soon as possible.
There are already more than a few competitors in the space, but Triibe is expecting to differentiate with several features and expanded operations in Japan and the rest of Asia.
Monaca is a cross-platform mobile application development platform offered by Japanese company Asial. It helps non-tech-savvy users to develop native apps using web standards like HTML5, JavaScript and CSS.
When I previously met with the company’s CEO Masahiro Tanaka at ICT Spring in Luxembourg, he told me that this scene has been getting popular around the world since it requires no license or installation fee, and it allows computer vocational schools to give their students opportunities to easily develop an app.
Whoscall is a spam call-block and caller-detection app for the iOS and Android platforms. They have accumulated over 600 million profiles of telephone numbers and callers in their database, and can show you a caller’s name when you get an incoming call.
Earlier this month, Gogolook, the startup behind the app, reportedly secured an disclosed sum of funding from Korean search engine company Naver. I had a chance to talk with the company’s CEO Jeff Kuo, but he was unwilling to talk much about it. My guess is that he wants to prevent the perception that the investment would narrow their partnership opportunities with other companies, despite the fact that they are opened to partnering with any company, in addition to the Korean search engine.
Prior to these funds, the company raised $500,000 from angel investors, and an undisclosed sum from Trinity Venture Capital. In this space, we have already seen several competitors like Number Guru and TrueCaller.
Panel: Techstars on US trends and Asian opportunities
From the left: Techstars president David Brown and managing partner Mark Solon, and Global Brain Katsuyuki Hasegawa (moderator)
In a session introducing trends in recent US incubation, Global Brain’s Katsuyuki Hasegawa moderated a panel with Techstars president David Brown and managing partner Mark Solon.
The incubator launched way back in 2002 in Boulder, Colorado. Mark says their long-term efforts helped the city emerge as the nation’s fourth startup city, following Silicon Valley, New York City, and Boston.
According to Solon, they are partnering with many established companies to provide mentorships for their incubatees, including US-based telco Sprint, UK-based Barclays, and sporting goods company Nike. Many companies like these know they need to encourage more open innovation, and many will no longer depend so much on their internal business and engineering development efforts.
David explained that they want to expand their presence in Asia, but they have still no local accelerator from Japan participating in their global alliance network. So far, it’s only JFDI Asia in Singapore. I asked him if they’re interested in partnering with any Japanese incubator as part of the network. He replied by noting that the network has certain criteria to approve new members. But he says they are pleased to collaboratively work with local accelerators and incubators in Japan and the rest of the world.
What’s new with Global Brain?
From the left: Yasuhiko Yurimoto (Global Brain), Shigeyuki Tsuchida (INCJ), and Masakazu Masujima (Mori Hamada & Matsumoto legal office)
In the opening remarks of the event, Global Brain’s founder and CEO Yasuhiko Yurimoto said:
I have big news to share with you today. Our company will be reborn to serve startups and entrepreneurs much better.
The details of that teaser would emerge later as he moderated a panel discussion with Shigeyuki Tsuchida, INCJ’s [1] strategic investment group chief Shigeyuki Tsuchida, and lawyer Masakazu Masujima, announcing that his company would remove a redemption clause in the term sheets of startups in which they invest, strengthening his team so it could finish due diligence in as little as one or two weeks.
If you are an entrepreneur who has experienced the fundraising process, you know how this clause can be a headache to your business. Typical VC firms can take more than a couple of months to determine their valuation of your company. So the roll out will be welcomed by potential investees. He also revealed the company will publicly disclose term sheet templates, and he hopes to encourage other investment firms can eliminate constraints so that entrepreneurs can more easily find fundraising opportunities.
From the left: Yasuhiko Yurimoto (CEO, Global Brain), Vinnie Lauria (Partner, Golden Gate Ventures), Chester Jungseok Roh (CSO, 5rocks), Mark Hsu (CEO, TMI), Ryoichi Tsukada (Director, Asial), Jeff Kuo (CEO, Gogolook), Clark Chun Kiat Chua (Co-founder, Ascribr)
For those who are not familiar, INCJ is Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, the country’s state-run initiative for investing innovative activities and companies. The governmental company recently announced it has invested 10 billion yen ($97 million) in a startup-focused fund managed by Global Brain. ↩
Innovation Weekend is a monthly showcase and meet-up event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator Sunbridge Global Ventures. Every December there is a big one, where the monthly winners from the year compete in a pitch session. This year, Osaka-based startup Quadcept won the finale with its printed circuit board design solutions. Quadcept – Top prize winner Typical factories in the electronics manufacturing industry have to purchase a tool for designing printed circuit boards, usually provided in the form of packaged software, with costs of up to $80,000 for the initial fee and as much as $10,000 for annual fees per user license. But many factories don’t have the budget to distribute that kind of package to all their employees. And collectively, that problem can slow the entire industry. Quadcept looked to the cloud for a solution. Pricing depends on how many licenses you need in your company, with payment possible on a yearly or monthly basis, requiring no initial fee. Quadcept proposes that you only pay for the licenses you need, when you need them, and not waste money on idle seat licenses. The startup wants to be aggressive in helping device makers by sponsoring events like Maker Faire and…
Innovation Weekend is a monthly showcase and meet-up event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator Sunbridge Global Ventures. Every December there is a big one, where the monthly winners from the year compete in a pitch session. This year, Osaka-based startup Quadcept won the finale with its printed circuit board design solutions.
Typical factories in the electronics manufacturing industry have to purchase a tool for designing printed circuit boards, usually provided in the form of packaged software, with costs of up to $80,000 for the initial fee and as much as $10,000 for annual fees per user license. But many factories don’t have the budget to distribute that kind of package to all their employees. And collectively, that problem can slow the entire industry.
Quadcept looked to the cloud for a solution. Pricing depends on how many licenses you need in your company, with payment possible on a yearly or monthly basis, requiring no initial fee. Quadcept proposes that you only pay for the licenses you need, when you need them, and not waste money on idle seat licenses. The startup wants to be aggressive in helping device makers by sponsoring events like Maker Faire and Gugen. They expects to start global business expansion next year.
Quadcept
More than a dozen startups from Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand pitched their apps and services to a crowd from in Tokyo. Here is a quick rundown on some of the new faces.
VisasQ is a platform for consulting that takes advantage of relationships in your social graph, letting users get advice from experts. The company’s founder, Eiko Hashiba, is very experienced, including time working as an investment banker. The concept is inspired by Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG for short), a company providing consultation and advice from over 250,000 subject matter experts worldwide. Hashiba aims to provide such ‘spot consulting’ services for as little as 1% of the price of conventional services. Their team includes engineers from notable Japanese groupware solution Rakumo.
When you want to hang out at a karaoke bar in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, you might first turn to Google Search or Google Maps, inputting keywords like ‘karaoke’ and ‘Shibuya’. But that typically yields irrelevant information like a list of shops you don’t really care about.
But Tokyo-based startup Tritrue has developed a ‘spatial search engine’ called Pathee, which provides more relevant information by narrowing results to buildings within a five-minute walk from where you are, and to certain trending topics as well. So for example, when you arrive at a train/subway station near an event venue, you check how to get there by just entering the name of the event, with no need for the address. The startup is based at Samurai Incubate’s startup space, Startup Island.
ClickonCake delivers birthday cakes to any part of Japan, based on orders collected from their website. The company’s founder is Shintaro Naganuma, whose family business is a confectionery based in northern Japan. To make the business more profitable, he rolled out a delivery service specializing in birthday cakes. It currently earns 8 million yen ($80,000) in revenue every month.
Typical cake buyers will purchase a cake for someone on or near their birthday. And with this in mind, Naganuma’s team is planning to establish distribution centers all across the Tokyo metropolitan area. He has also invented a frozen type of cake that can be preserved at these centers. In this way, they can give users the option of same-day delivery cakes with unique designs. That would certainly pose stiff competition to conventional cake shops around town.
Waygooapp is a mobile translation application that uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology. For western visitors who come to Asia, one of biggest obstacles is typically reading Chinese characters, since signs and menus usually aren’t in English. And checking them on mobile is hard too, if you haven’t mastered the input method.
But with this app, all you need is to place your phone’s camera over it and let the app figure it out. You will see then English subtitles overlaid on the image. The app is currently available only for Chinese-to-English translation on iOS, but an Android version and Japanese-to-English version will follow soon.
Waygoapp
Other guests from the overseas
At a panel on Singapore’s startup ecosystem. From the left: Yuji Horiguchi (IMJ Fenox), Kenny Lew (Entreport Asia), Vinnie Lauria (Golden Gate Ventures), and Ikuo Hiraishi (Sunbridge Global Ventures)At a panel on how to launch a global startup. From the left: Yusuke Takahashi (AppSocially) and Tak Harada (Peatix)
Madrid’s IE Business School and the Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University (KMD) jointly held their first Venture Day event for entrepreneurs in Tokyo. The former is well known for being one of the top producers of MBA graduates, and for its many entrepreneurship events. KMD is based in Tokyo, encouraging people to solve societal problems and create new businesses using cutting-edge digital media technologies. The event featured a number of talks from both Japanese and European entrepreneurs, as well as a pitch competition where 10 startups competed to win a round-trip ticket to Madrid, presented by Turkish Airlines. I won’t go through all the startups here as we have featured many of them before. But it was good to several new faces with fresh ideas. Let’s have a look. CompiTechnology If you work in the startup industry, how many devices do you bring in your bag to work each day? A tablet, and a smartphone too perhaps — but for programmers, you likely need a laptop too. All that can be heavy, and you probably need a lot of money to buy everything. CompiTechnology aims to develop a smart device that lets you what typically requires many…
Madrid’s IE Business School and the Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University (KMD) jointly held their first Venture Day event for entrepreneurs in Tokyo. The former is well known for being one of the top producers of MBA graduates, and for its many entrepreneurship events. KMD is based in Tokyo, encouraging people to solve societal problems and create new businesses using cutting-edge digital media technologies.
The event featured a number of talks from both Japanese and European entrepreneurs, as well as a pitch competition where 10 startups competed to win a round-trip ticket to Madrid, presented by Turkish Airlines.
I won’t go through all the startups here as we have featured many of them before. But it was good to several new faces with fresh ideas. Let’s have a look.
MoneyTree wins the top award in the pitching session.
If you work in the startup industry, how many devices do you bring in your bag to work each day? A tablet, and a smartphone too perhaps — but for programmers, you likely need a laptop too. All that can be heavy, and you probably need a lot of money to buy everything.
CompiTechnology aims to develop a smart device that lets you what typically requires many smart devices to do. The company hasn’t disclosed too many details about this, but we do know that they are devoting $1 million for the R&D efforts for the production of their next product.
Smart Lab Module (by Molcure)
For many scientific researchers, you will need different devices for difference experimental purposes. This costs a lot. There is a multi-functional device that can be adopted for many experiments, but it can require millions of dollars [1].
A University of Tokyo graduate student had the idea to develop a lighter version of this kind of devices, making the most of smartphone technology, a hardware module, and an SDK. For researchers, one of the key advantages is that it would untether you from your lab, as it gives you the ability to check the status of an experiment using your smartphone regardless of where you are.
Studio4word provides a multilingual narration and translation service. Our readers may recall startups Voip and Creofuga who offer solutions in this space. But Studio4word is different in its easy-to-understand pricing structure. Regardless of what language you choose, their pool of native speakers will receive your job offer for 1,000 yen (about $10) for every 100 words in non-Japanese languages, or for every 100 characters in Japanese.
They also provide translation and proofreading often needed for foreign language narration. I assume the service will target startups who want to create promotional videos for their services for the global market.
Sharebu Kids is a flash-sales e-commerce site focused on kids’ fashion. Their strategy is to partnering with baby fashion brands from overseas that have no presence in Japan, buying their products for Japanese consumers, and presenting them at affordable rates. At the same time, it gives brands the opportunity to get their name out in the Japanese market.
The company is not interested in working with well-known baby brands, since they typically have local distributors or their own flagship stores, and they would usually force retailers to sell at non-discounted prices. By giving brands benefits besides just revenue, Sharebu Kids hopes to provide a unique user experience for consumers.
For example, there’s the Mahoro lab Android developed by the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. ↩
See also our coverage in Japanese. The Bridge and CNet Japan are proud to jointly announce the winners of the Japan Startup Awards. 20 startups were nominated, which we have featured over the past few days in our nominee rundown. Among the nominees, the winners were chosen based on over 10,000 votes from readers of The Bridge and CNet Japan. Top award winner Supplementary prize: 500,000 yen in cash (about $4840) Tokyo Otaku Mode (See our past coverage of them here) Tokyo Otaku Mode curates content about Japanese otaku/geek culture and presents it to a global audience. It has now more than 14 million likes on its Facebook fan page. The CNet Japan Award winner Supplementary prize: 300,000 yen in cash Retty (our past coverage) Retty is a Tokyo-based startup providing social restaurant recommendation where users can find the best restaurants according to their social contacts. The Bridge Award winner Supplementary prize: 300,000 yen in cash MONOCO (our past coverage) What began as Flutterscape has shifted gears to become a B2C service called Monoco. It sells designer interior products to a global market. The winners of the Japan Startup Awards were announced at CNet Japan Live 2013, CNet Japan’s…
The Bridge and CNet Japan are proud to jointly announce the winners of the Japan Startup Awards. 20 startups were nominated, which we have featured over the past few days in our nominee rundown.
Among the nominees, the winners were chosen based on over 10,000 votes from readers of The Bridge and CNet Japan.
Top award winner
Supplementary prize: 500,000 yen in cash (about $4840)
Tokyo Otaku Mode curates content about Japanese otaku/geek culture and presents it to a global audience. It has now more than 14 million likes on its Facebook fan page.
Retty is a Tokyo-based startup providing social restaurant recommendation where users can find the best restaurants according to their social contacts.
What began as Flutterscape has shifted gears to become a B2C service called Monoco. It sells designer interior products to a global market.
Photo courtesy: Monoco CTO Ari Awan
The winners of the Japan Startup Awards were announced at CNet Japan Live 2013, CNet Japan’s annual showcase event. The awards were made possible by sponsorship from NTT Docomo Ventures and KDDI, as well as cooperation from Japanese startup-focused marketing agency Value Press.
The following investment firms and incubators cooperated in selecting nominees for the awards:
Anri, Beenos, CyberAgent (investment unit), CyberAgent Ventures, Global Brain, Globis Capital Partners, Gree Ventures, iMercury Capital, Industrial Growth Platform, Infinity Venture Partners, Itochu Technology Ventures, KDDI, Klab Ventures, Lead Capital Management, Movida Japan, Skyland Ventures, YJ Capital, Samurai Incubate, and Venture United.
Tokyo-based AdInnovation, a startup providing ad consulting solutions for mobile developers, announced today that it has launched a performance analytics tool. It’s called Hitracking. Instead of conventional tools in this similar space, the new tool is more focused on giving mobile developers all they need to analyze the performance of their app. This means not only ad performance analytics but also what traffic sources best help the app turn a profit. Their project manager, Ryoma Hosokawa, tells me that the tool aims to show you all the ROI (return on investment) metrics for an app, rather than simple ad performance-focused ROI metrics. This would include overall profit or loss. In a way, the company wants to set app developers free from monetization concerns so that they can concentrate on development. There is also an SDK that can be embedded in your app to track stats. Pricing depends on the number of requests per month, but it is currently available free until the end of February as part of a promotion. According to the AdInnovation consultant Aya Yamada, they will make two key efforts to make this tool better known. One will be publishing a monthly report of mobile app trends, just…
Tokyo-based AdInnovation, a startup providing ad consulting solutions for mobile developers, announced today that it has launched a performance analytics tool. It’s called Hitracking. Instead of conventional tools in this similar space, the new tool is more focused on giving mobile developers all they need to analyze the performance of their app. This means not only ad performance analytics but also what traffic sources best help the app turn a profit.
Their project manager, Ryoma Hosokawa, tells me that the tool aims to show you all the ROI (return on investment) metrics for an app, rather than simple ad performance-focused ROI metrics. This would include overall profit or loss. In a way, the company wants to set app developers free from monetization concerns so that they can concentrate on development.
There is also an SDK that can be embedded in your app to track stats. Pricing depends on the number of requests per month, but it is currently available free until the end of February as part of a promotion.
According to the AdInnovation consultant Aya Yamada, they will make two key efforts to make this tool better known. One will be publishing a monthly report of mobile app trends, just like what AppAnnie does. The other option is exhibiting their service at as many international showcase events as possible. You will have a chance to meet with them next year at AppsWorld North America (February 5-6, San Francisco), Casual Connect Europe (February 11-13, Amsterdam), and SXSW Interactive (March 7-16, Austin).
The company raised 160 million yen (about $1.6 million) from DBJ Capital, SMBC Venture Capital, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital back in July.
As for other players in this space, there are services like HasOffers in the US, which secured $9.4 million from Accel Partners in a series A round back in May.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Skyland Ventures, an investment fund focused on startups, announced it has allocated its 200 million yen (approximately $2 million) fund to invest in smartphone app developers. The fund is expected to be finishing investments by next June. You may recall our recent article citing analyst’s prediction that about 60% of Japanese mobile users will switch to smartphones by 2014. Since cheaper smartphone handsets will be more easily available to many consumers, this shift will of course occur in other parts of the world as well. Obviously for Skyland, getting on board with this trend makes sense. Coinciding with this announcement, the group also disclosed its investment in Japanese mobile development startup Nanameue, which also received investment from East Ventures to the tune of 30 million yen ($300,000) [1]. The startup was launched back in May by Atsushi Takishima and Takahiro Ishihama. The pair previously worked with Japanese startup Quan, known for its apps targeting the Southeast Asian region. SlideStory, one of Nanameue’s apps, has already surpassed 400,000 downloads, with users mainly in Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan. The total downloads across all 12 of their apps has reached over 2.3 million. SlideStory allows you…
Tokyo-based Skyland Ventures, an investment fund focused on startups, announced it has allocated its 200 million yen (approximately $2 million) fund to invest in smartphone app developers. The fund is expected to be finishing investments by next June.
You may recall our recent article citing analyst’s prediction that about 60% of Japanese mobile users will switch to smartphones by 2014. Since cheaper smartphone handsets will be more easily available to many consumers, this shift will of course occur in other parts of the world as well. Obviously for Skyland, getting on board with this trend makes sense.
Coinciding with this announcement, the group also disclosed its investment in Japanese mobile development startup Nanameue, which also received investment from East Ventures to the tune of 30 million yen ($300,000) [1].
The startup was launched back in May by Atsushi Takishima and Takahiro Ishihama. The pair previously worked with Japanese startup Quan, known for its apps targeting the Southeast Asian region. SlideStory, one of Nanameue’s apps, has already surpassed 400,000 downloads, with users mainly in Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan.
The total downloads across all 12 of their apps has reached over 2.3 million.
SlideStory allows you to create a movie clip from 15 still images, or you can also create a clip of up to 32 seconds by splicing multiple clips. Its functionality resembles Korea’s Tripvi Album or Honda Motor’s RoadMovies app.
East Ventures is also a limited partner for Skyland Ventures.↩
See the original story in Japanese. Goodpatch is a Tokyo-based startup focused on giving web companies a better user experience and user interface for their projects [1]. The company announced today that it has raised $100 million yen (approximately $1 million) from DG Incubation, the investment arm of Digital Garage (TSE:4819). The startup was launched back in August of 2011, and is known for its role in designing the slick Japanese news curation app Gunosy. Since investments in startups are usually made based on the scalability of their business, it is curious why a startup like this that has no product would receive funds. We spoke with the company’s co-founder and CEO Naofumi Tsuchiya to hear a little more about what’s behind this funding. The Bridge: What was the purpose of this funding? Isn’t it hard for companies like yours with no scalable product to do so? Tsuchiya: We faced tough times in the beginning, but your colleague Eguchi-san previously posted an article and it made many people aware of the fact that we designed Gunosy. Then we gradually started receiving more offers for work, far more than we could do. Our business became profitable, but we needed to pay…
Goodpatch is a Tokyo-based startup focused on giving web companies a better user experience and user interface for their projects [1]. The company announced today that it has raised $100 million yen (approximately $1 million) from DG Incubation, the investment arm of Digital Garage (TSE:4819).
The startup was launched back in August of 2011, and is known for its role in designing the slick Japanese news curation app Gunosy. Since investments in startups are usually made based on the scalability of their business, it is curious why a startup like this that has no product would receive funds.
We spoke with the company’s co-founder and CEO Naofumi Tsuchiya to hear a little more about what’s behind this funding.
Goodpatch CEO Naofumi Tsuchiya
The Bridge: What was the purpose of this funding? Isn’t it hard for companies like yours with no scalable product to do so?
Tsuchiya: We faced tough times in the beginning, but your colleague Eguchi-san previously posted an article and it made many people aware of the fact that we designed Gunosy. Then we gradually started receiving more offers for work, far more than we could do. Our business became profitable, but we needed to pay a lot of tax. It will require more time than we expected to save money to launch our next business.
We first thought production companies like us would have no chance to receive investments. However, our advisor Kimiyuki Suda told us that there was potential for our company to get investment from Digital Garage.
Digital Garage was co-founded by Kaoru Hayashi and Joi Ito (the director of MIT Media Lab), and they became one of the greatest global internet companies, coming from a tiny web production. Since my team is looking to do more global business, they are one of the role models we should follow. That’s why we were keen to receive investments from Digital Garage. They are a business company, and have many ways to exit other than IPO and M&As. That’s different from typical investment firms.
The Bridge: What do you expect from this investment?
Tsuchiya: I have been managing the company alone, and I know I’ll reach my limit soon. I’m keen to get advice from the folks at Digital Garage through the partnership.
In addition, Digital Garage acquired a company called Neo back in November of last year, which specializes in giving UX consultation for enterprises and governments. They have many offices around the world. The partnership with Digital Garage will help us collaborate with that UX consultancy, and also help us keep our clients updated with the best of cutting-edge UX methods from San Francisco. For example, if we can send some of our employees to San Francisco every several months and give them a chance to learn the best UX methods, it will also help us hire good talent at our Tokyo office too.
What we do is not web or app production outsourced from our clients, but we get directly involved in making their products. If our client’s concept has no potential to make a reputation in the market, we would refuse their project offer.
Tsuchiya told us the company is now working on a new service focused on improving user interface and user experience design. It will be launched by the end of this year.
Prior to launching this company, he was working as an intern at Btrax, a digital agency based out of San Francisco. Coinciding with these funds, we heard message from Tsuchiya’s former boss Brandon Hill, complimenting the milestone of his old colleague:
It is my great pleasure to see the success of one of our interns. At the same time, I feel a bit funny that although Mr. Tsuchiya did not have the shiniest resume, he definitely has the makings of an entrepreneur – passion, courage, action, and determination.I truly admire him for recovering from a disastrous situation back in 2012. Just over a year ago, he lost his founders, staff, and customers. At that time, I had asked him what he was going to do. He just said “I won’t give up.” Now with over 30 employees, he’s in the process of creating a real business.
It is said that ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’, but I’ve been skeptical how much impacts a news site like ours can have on real businesses. So I was pleased to learn my colleague’s article made a bit of an impact on this startup during its rough time, helping them back on the road to success.
Over two years passed since the launch, they are now an over 30-people team.A bunch of Ideas from employees for improving web designs for clients on the boards.
The company’s name is derived from Dogpatch Labs, a well-known incubation space based out of San Francisco. ↩
Japan-based internet giant Netprice.com (TSE:3328) recently announced that it has raised about 790 million yen (approximately $7.67 million) from fellow Japanese web conglomerate Digital Garage (TSE:4819). It will use the funds to intensify its efforts to discover new internet business opportunities in global markets. Both companies have been operating startup incubator Open Network Lab since 2010, and have also been working together on cultivating business opportunities in the Southeast Asian region, including co-investing in Indonesian payment processor Veritrans Indonesia back in 2012. Coinciding with this funding, the two companies intend to collaboratively discover more internet business opportunities in the US as well as emerging markets. Digital Garage purchased a multi-storey building in the heart of San Francisco last month, where it has set up an incubation space called DG717. To commemorate this, the city’s mayor Edwin Lee has declared November 5th as Digital Garage Day in San Francisco. Netprice.com is expected to make the use of the location to gain accessibility to high potential startups and other opportunities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our readers may also recall that Netprice.com has established its own incubation program, Beenos, which is separate from the aforementioned Open Network Lab initiative.
Japan-based internet giant Netprice.com (TSE:3328) recently announced that it has raised about 790 million yen (approximately $7.67 million) from fellow Japanese web conglomerate Digital Garage (TSE:4819). It will use the funds to intensify its efforts to discover new internet business opportunities in global markets.
Both companies have been operating startup incubator Open Network Lab since 2010, and have also been working together on cultivating business opportunities in the Southeast Asian region, including co-investing in Indonesian payment processor Veritrans Indonesia back in 2012. Coinciding with this funding, the two companies intend to collaboratively discover more internet business opportunities in the US as well as emerging markets.
Digital Garage purchased a multi-storey building in the heart of San Francisco last month, where it has set up an incubation space called DG717. To commemorate this, the city’s mayor Edwin Lee has declared November 5th as Digital Garage Day in San Francisco. Netprice.com is expected to make the use of the location to gain accessibility to high potential startups and other opportunities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Our readers may also recall that Netprice.com has established its own incubation program, Beenos, which is separate from the aforementioned Open Network Lab initiative.
