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The storefront of the future? Tokyo department store digitizes its window display

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.12.18

Many national convenient store chains in Japan have installed digital signage at their storefronts to lure customers inside. The retail industry is typically aggressive, using enormous bright screens to showcase different products, to both encourage more purchases and to communicate their message. Japanese department store Parco has long been the center of the nation’s trendy fashions. And recently it has installed digital signage at its Shibuya storefront. There are six vertical screens that make up its ‘P-Wall’, showcasing the different products available on the Parco website, including 1,000 products by various brands. People can touch different products to see more details, or even check if that product is available in different colors. This P-Wall initiative was completed in collaboration with Tokyo-based TeamLab, and you can get a better idea of how the screens work in the video below. The six adjacent screens replace the traditional shop display windows, letting customers check out a variety of products in one place instead of browsing store after store. Many stores are trying to establish a better connection between their real stores and their online malls, and we’ll have to wait to see if P-Wall proves an effective solution for this problem.

Many national convenient store chains in Japan have installed digital signage at their storefronts to lure customers inside. The retail industry is typically aggressive, using enormous bright screens to showcase different products, to both encourage more purchases and to communicate their message.

Japanese department store Parco has long been the center of the nation’s trendy fashions. And recently it has installed digital signage at its Shibuya storefront. There are six vertical screens that make up its ‘P-Wall’, showcasing the different products available on the Parco website, including 1,000 products by various brands.

People can touch different products to see more details, or even check if that product is available in different colors. This P-Wall initiative was completed in collaboration with Tokyo-based TeamLab, and you can get a better idea of how the screens work in the video below.

The six adjacent screens replace the traditional shop display windows, letting customers check out a variety of products in one place instead of browsing store after store. Many stores are trying to establish a better connection between their real stores and their online malls, and we’ll have to wait to see if P-Wall proves an effective solution for this problem.

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Japan’s online laundry service, Lenet, is growing fast

SCORE 1,107

Takeshi Hirano 2013.12.18

See the original article in Japanese WhitePlus is a Japanese startup that offers an online laundry service called Lenet. It lets users request a pick up of their laundry, which will then be cleaned and delivered to their home. Recently, on December 2nd, membership for this laundry service surpassed 40,000 people. That total is three times bigger than a year ago. The latest upgrade of the service took place on September 30th, with the price reduced, and the minimum delivery time being cut to 2 days. The company raised funds in August of 2013, and since then they have been growing their business. For such a paid service, one of the indicators we should look is the rate of repeat customers, a sign user satisfaction. Ryosuke Saito, the company’s CEO and CMO, told us a little about that. The Bridge: It seems sales has been growing well for you. Do you have any indicators that show how much? Saito: We cannot disclose detailed figures, but as an example, the CVR of new users is increasing since our renewal at the end of September. To increase our repeat user rate, we changed the price as well. Since we implemented our membership…

See the original article in Japanese

WhitePlus is a Japanese startup that offers an online laundry service called Lenet. It lets users request a pick up of their laundry, which will then be cleaned and delivered to their home. Recently, on December 2nd, membership for this laundry service surpassed 40,000 people. That total is three times bigger than a year ago.

The latest upgrade of the service took place on September 30th, with the price reduced, and the minimum delivery time being cut to 2 days.

The company raised funds in August of 2013, and since then they have been growing their business. For such a paid service, one of the indicators we should look is the rate of repeat customers, a sign user satisfaction.

Ryosuke Saito, the company’s CEO and CMO, told us a little about that.

The Bridge: It seems sales has been growing well for you. Do you have any indicators that show how much?

Saito: We cannot disclose detailed figures, but as an example, the CVR of new users is increasing since our renewal at the end of September. To increase our repeat user rate, we changed the price as well. Since we implemented our membership fee (premium membership costs 315 yen, or about$3 per month), we have reduced the discount rate for members from 20% to 35%, with intention of making the price lower than regular offline laundry services. Also, by making a delivery time of two days, we hoped to increase user satisfaction.

Lenet doesn’t own a cleaning facilities. It uses those of partners. And by reviewing the process from inspection to packaging, the overall process is made even more efficient. As a result, they could shorten the delivery time. But to do all this, they have also hired industry professionals who have much experience.

The Bridge: The business model is to use available resources without having to own your own cleaning facilities. But can you easily scale this business without owning such facilities?

Saito: Our next challenge it to increase our capacity. And yes, that means we need to find facilities. Now we are planning to establish a facility with a business partner. From there we can expand out from that, sort of as the center of other facilities to come later.

For the business model of this type of business, one advantage was that it didn’t require too many resources. That’s why Linet utilized partners, tying up with five different facilities.

However, as he told me in a previous interview, the industry is quite closed. I heard some stories about how the business can be quite hard on young new-comers. And perhaps that’s why they need to establish their own facilities.

Partner factories have the advantage of receiving more orders through the tie-up. According to Saito, he wanted to make his factory into a center where they can check and ensure operations are streamlined.

This attempt by Linet to bring a traditionally offline service online is definitely worth watching. So stay tuned to see how they do!

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Tokyo Office Tour: Zendesk gets set to serve Japan from its new space

Masaru Ikeda 2013.12.17

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-breakingbarrel — 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.

zendesk-entrance — From the office entrance. Some guests have already started networking.

zendesk-flowers-and-bags — Flowers and foldable bags

zendesk-kickass — Who has two thumbs and apparently likes to kick ass? This guy!

zendesk-foodstall2 — Mikkel orders from a food stall.

zendesk-teammember — One of their team members celebrated his birthday as well

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As Sekai Camera closes down, we look back at a legendary pitch

Rick Martin 2013.12.17

It’s hard to believe that more than five years have passed since Tonchidot first presented its smartphone AR solution Sekai Camera (or “world camera”) at TechCrunch 50 back in 2008 (see video above). The company’s founder Takahito Iguchi proposed that we change our smartphone habits, and “look up, not down” to see tags and information about the world around us. But regrettably the Sekai Camera service will soon be closed down, according to an announcement on the company’s website. I had a chance to interview Iguchi-san about Sekai Camera back in 2009. It’s one of those futuristic services that is just initially awe-inspiring. As we all know now, Iguchi-san has moved on to other things at Telepathy, proposing a Google Glass-like solution that ostensibly is far better suited to AR than holding a smartphone up in the air all the time [1]. These glasses still have a long way to go (I’ve heard many people use the word ‘vaporware’ when talking about them), but I’m glad that Iguchi is moving on from Sekai Camera. At the same time, I think the presentation above is special for a few reasons, and worthy of reflection: Iguchi-san did not give a f*ck –…

It’s hard to believe that more than five years have passed since Tonchidot first presented its smartphone AR solution Sekai Camera (or “world camera”) at TechCrunch 50 back in 2008 (see video above). The company’s founder Takahito Iguchi proposed that we change our smartphone habits, and “look up, not down” to see tags and information about the world around us. But regrettably the Sekai Camera service will soon be closed down, according to an announcement on the company’s website.

I had a chance to interview Iguchi-san about Sekai Camera back in 2009. It’s one of those futuristic services that is just initially awe-inspiring. As we all know now, Iguchi-san has moved on to other things at Telepathy, proposing a Google Glass-like solution that ostensibly is far better suited to AR than holding a smartphone up in the air all the time [1]. These glasses still have a long way to go (I’ve heard many people use the word ‘vaporware’ when talking about them), but I’m glad that Iguchi is moving on from Sekai Camera.

At the same time, I think the presentation above is special for a few reasons, and worthy of reflection:

Iguchi-san did not give a f*ck – Many Japanese startups I speak to have an irrational lack of confidence when speaking or pitching in English. Very often the Japanese people I know are very good at striving for ‘perfect’, but too often that strategy keeps them from being good [2]. Just know an outline of your talking points, and even if your English is poor, you can let your enthusiasm do the rest. (Not enough enthusiasm about your product? Time to quit.)
It was inspiring – I can’t help but wonder how many geo-location and augmented reality ideas were inspired by that particular presentation? How many went on to make similar solutions? [3]
The West loves to love Japan – Part of the appeal of the pitch was that Tochidot was from Japan, and had brought some secret glimpse of the future with it. Even now in 2013, ‘made-in-Japan’ is still a cool, futuristic brand, full of robots and bullet trains and octopus tentacles and ninjas and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. If you aren’t sure about its potential, go ask Tokyo Otaku Mode.

I’m still a little skeptical about Telepathy’s ability to bring their product to market. But regarding that initial pitch back in 2008, I think it’s a fun part of internet history worth reflecting on as Sekai Camera closes.

It clearly shows that despite the many obstacles facing a Japanese startup looking abroad, there are lots of things in your favor too.

Japan is cool, with lots of imagination. And the West wants to love you.

iguchi_wearing_telepathy_one — Takahito Iguchi of Telepathy

I imagine that your arm would get tired after a while. ↩
Also check out the video from the TechCrunch 50 Q&A session, which is as hilarious as it is awesome. ↩
I’m a huge fan of Kyoto’s Yesterscape, a similar AR solution that has an interesting timeline element. ↩

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With 18M global downloads, Noom CEO looks to the future of fitness tech

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.12.17

We’ve covered the New York startup Noom several times in the past. Noom is a popular diet/fitness app with over 18 million downloads globally. Back in August, the team launched its Japanese version with its Android app ‘Noom Diet Coach’. The app was updated today with a new group feature that had been available to US users since May. Based on a user’s target weight, age, sex, and location, the app automatically adds users to their groups. Because of their similar characteristics and goals, these groups can be a big motivator to Noom users. On the release of this new feature app we asked Noom CEO, Saeju Jeong, a little about team building, the challenge of launching and marketing in the Japanese market, and the future of the healthcare sector. The Bridge: Tell us a little about your background and how you ended up starting your own business. Jeong: I was raised in the country side in South Korea, and went to Seoul to study electronic engineering at HongIk University. I started my first media business, a record label at age 19, and it quickly took over the Korean music market. I moved to New York in 2005 after dropping…

We’ve covered the New York startup Noom several times in the past. Noom is a popular diet/fitness app with over 18 million downloads globally. Back in August, the team launched its Japanese version with its Android app ‘Noom Diet Coach’. The app was updated today with a new group feature that had been available to US users since May. Based on a user’s target weight, age, sex, and location, the app automatically adds users to their groups. Because of their similar characteristics and goals, these groups can be a big motivator to Noom users.

On the release of this new feature app we asked Noom CEO, Saeju Jeong, a little about team building, the challenge of launching and marketing in the Japanese market, and the future of the healthcare sector.

The Bridge: Tell us a little about your background and how you ended up starting your own business.

Jeong: I was raised in the country side in South Korea, and went to Seoul to study electronic engineering at HongIk University. I started my first media business, a record label at age 19, and it quickly took over the Korean music market. I moved to New York in 2005 after dropping out of the college so I could achieve a little more. I built my connections and a network from scratch, and ended up working as an executive producer for the broadway musical Bye Bye Birdie, hiring some of the top talent in the industry. I met my cofounder, Artem Petakov, in 2006. We cofounded WorkSmart Labs (our former company name) in 2007.

The Bridge: Was founding a company in Korea an option for you?

Jeong: No. From the start of the company, my idea was that in Korea we would fail to get the sort of top talent needed to build a truly strong global company. If I want to build a global company, its going be hard to hire the such talent in Shanghai, Korea, etc. NY was simply the best location to hire the best talent, and that would accelerate the company’s growth. I came to NY with no network, but I knew I would find something once I came here. You don’t really know until you take the risk and do it. But I see that sort of risk as an opportunity.

The Bridge: What qualities or skillsets would be ideal for entrepreneurs?

Jeong: It’s those who are always curious about new things, those who like solving problems. If you believe you can fix the problem, that represents tremendous energy to overcome future struggles and obstacles. There is no manual to fix a problem. So you just have to figure it out. Use the best knowledge you have and then move on.

The right stuff

The Bridge: What do you look for when you’re hiring for Noom?

Jeong: (cites three things)

The skillset that meets the job description (engineering, marketing, business… any position) – this is basic.
Communication skills – teamwork cannot be done without communication.
Integrity

The Bridge: What word would be the most appropriate to explain the current Noom team?

Jeong: I would say that they’re smart, open-minded, and like a family.

The Bridge: How do you go about finding talent?

Jeong: All kind of channels – we do everything to get the top talent. It’s just like dating – if you want to date someone, you try every single way to attract that person. We are open to every opportunity that will let us hire the best talent. Our bar is very high. The interview process is very long and tough, and it’s not easy to get into.

The Bridge: Who are Noom users?

Jeong: Most users are female in their 20s and 30s, and even their 40s. More than 40% of our users stay with Noom even after 2 years. Some users want to lose weight for a special occasion, others just to look better and gain confidence. Many women after having a baby, perhaps they gained weight and want to lose it.

The Bridge: What do you care most about your product?

Jeong: Results. We want to deliver a product that enables users to get good results through better habits and better lifestyles. This drives how we improve the service, through the UI, etc.

The Bridge: Why should users choose Noom over the many competitors out there?

Jeong: We are different from all those healthcare products. Noom provides intelligent nutrition/exercise coaching plus motivational support, 24/7, all available in your pocket! So it’s sustainable in the long term. We also know that logging is important, but we also know that it is hard to keep logging. So we analyze the data of users, and provide active coaching. What we are promising is very difficult. We want to build an AI and its not easy at all. We learn everyday how users are behaving and make changes to our product.

Local understanding

The Bridge: Do you localize features and the app itself to suit local markets?

Jeong: Features and designs are universally the same because our strength is our background in technology and design. We are truly proud of our talented engineers’ and designers’ work on the product so far. But we do have localized task content, the food database, etc, to serve Japanese users.

The Bridge: What do you think you need to be the most careful of when marketing to the Japanese market?

Jeong: We are a startup so we move fast, and make judgements quickly too. So we will need to stay patient, not judging the market too fast. Setting an appropriate timeline will be very important. Also, taking care of the voices of locals will be important too. The message and language towards users in the market has to be 100% local. I respect the lifestyle of Japanese people. What we are good at is providing the right technology, but we don’t want to be just a “Made in the USA technology company,” no. There is a saying that “the customer is the king” in Korea, and this applies to Japanese users too. We are from New York, but if one user is not happy about our service, we listen. That’s how we have developed our product and how we can improve the product as well.

The Bridge: How do you promote Noom?

Jeong: We always emphasize that we don’t over-market like many other weight loss service providers. In US, we have incurred no user acquisition cost, ever. We focus on service quality and interact a lot with users. We listen carefully to what they need. But we have global partners such as Curves, the world’s biggest fitness gym chain, Amore Pacific, a famous Korean cosmetic brand, as well as well institutions like the NIH (National Institution of Health) and the United Nations. Collaborating with those global partners will definitely help make our brand trusted by users, so we’d like to continue working with partners that have the same goal of helping people live healthier through diet and exercise.

The Bridge: Do you have a different approach to different markets?

Jeong: We are savvy about how people’s needs differ by country. Why people want to lose weight is different in the US, Korea, Japan, etc. So we will differentiate the messaging accordingly.

The Bridge: How do you see the mobile wellness/fitness sector in the future?

Jeong: I think wearable devices are disrupting the hardware industry. Laptop features have improved dramatically, with faster CPUs. Smart phones improve every six months. […] We started seeing wearable devices recently, not many yet, but these new devices are going to be disruptive – cheaper, durable, lighter, faster. As a software maker, we see it as an opportunity. Software makers create more fun, interesting services, and create ecosystems. There are more than 100 companies who make wearable devices like Fitbit already! We can provide a better software experience, lighter, cheaper, and faster. People will be used to seeing more of this kind of things, and the entire market will grow faster than ever.

The Bridge: Is there any interesting new service or product you think is particularly interesting?

Jeong: A food scanner, which will be on the market in two years. It scans food or drink and tells you the calories. Galaxy gear and wearable device will also be disruptive.

The Bridge: Do you expect partnerships with local companies?

Jeong: I think there are many ways to work with Japanese organizations. Medical organizations can be one. More broadly, we see potential partners in those who are focused on helping people live healthier with diet and exercise. Naturally this opens us up to a wide range of partners, so we’re exploring where’s best to begin.

The Bridge: Where will Noom be in three years?

Jeong: I think Noom will do more in the healthcare eco-system, eventually. The opportunity to improve health just by improving diet and exercise is extraordinary. Those two things alone can powerfully improve many aspects of health. Diabetes prevention, your heart, overall energy levels, not to mention the emotional benefits that come from improving physical health. The impact can be tremendous.

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Handie: An affordable, functional prosthetic hand, made in Japan with 3D printing

Takeshi Hirano 2013.12.17

See the original article in Japanese Before we go any further, please check out the movie above. What you’re looking at is one of the many prototype devices developed for the recent Gugen hardware contest held in Tokyo on December 7th. Its developers are a team of three (a software engineer, a mechanical engineer, and a designer) who came together for this contest and developed this device. Users can create a functioning prosthetic arm by connecting the device with a smartphone, sensors, and a 3D printer. Affectionately named ‘Handie’, the prosthetic arm won contest. Gugen is an event focused on identifying business-oriented hardware prototypes, and provides reward to top talent. A member of its executive committee, Yasunori Okajima, says the number of entries reached almost 200 this year. Before participants were mostly those who enjoy creating electronics as a hobby. But this time, however, I see many more participants creating things that are business-oriented. ‘Makers’ is more than just a buzzword Chris Anderson is a genius at creating buzzwords. He finds the structure of latest trends, and expresses that trend with one powerful word to facilitate an entire movement. When he published the books The Long tail and Free, even…

See the original article in Japanese

Before we go any further, please check out the movie above. What you’re looking at is one of the many prototype devices developed for the recent Gugen hardware contest held in Tokyo on December 7th. Its developers are a team of three (a software engineer, a mechanical engineer, and a designer) who came together for this contest and developed this device. Users can create a functioning prosthetic arm by connecting the device with a smartphone, sensors, and a 3D printer. Affectionately named ‘Handie’, the prosthetic arm won contest.

Gugen is an event focused on identifying business-oriented hardware prototypes, and provides reward to top talent. A member of its executive committee, Yasunori Okajima, says the number of entries reached almost 200 this year.

Before participants were mostly those who enjoy creating electronics as a hobby. But this time, however, I see many more participants creating things that are business-oriented.

‘Makers’ is more than just a buzzword

Chris Anderson is a genius at creating buzzwords. He finds the structure of latest trends, and expresses that trend with one powerful word to facilitate an entire movement. When he published the books The Long tail and Free, even though the concepts were not brand new, many businesses then followed those trends. His most recent work, Makers, is no exception. Here in Tokyo, 3D printers appeared in many places all of a sudden, and media too have begun paying attention to this trend. A Makers boom suddenly started, but it soon cooled off.

What we need is not just a temporary trend or buzzword, but more initiatives like Gugen that try to tap into the inherent potential of the concept.

Three components for hardware creation

There are three components typically associated with developing hardware or electronics:

Create molding: exterior design.
Create software: the fusion of online and built-in software
Create electronics: open-source hardware such as Arduino

Because we can easily see and touch exteriors, 3D printers quickly became a sort of symbol for Makers. And this process of creating something from scratch is definitely exciting.

Handie’s exterior can be created at a reasonable price thanks to 3D printers. With data and printers, Handie can be created anywhere. However, there are two other important factors involved in building Handie:

All the software is smartphone apps, which cuts down the cost.
Motors and sensors are not customized parts. By putting general parts together, the team could create this device much faster.

Of course, Handie is not the kind of device anyone can develop. The most amazing part is its mechanical design. While multiple motors are typically needed to move fingers, the team managed to do it with only one motor.

And while not everyone can develop this level of device, as long as the developer has the core idea and the experience, they can create advanced devices like Handie.

Potential for business

Why is this new way of creating hardware and electronics getting so much attention right now? One of the reasons is that it represent significant potential for business expansion. When it comes to creating something entirely, the important thing to keep in mind is this notion of expansion.

Handie could never have been built without smartphone software. Yet with only smartphone apps Handie cannot be built. This is what I mean when I talk about expansion. As a result of such ideas, the shift from two dimensions to three dimensions has now accelerated.

For those who are interested in what kind of hardware can be developed by individuals, we’d like to list some of the other entries in the Gugen contest 1.

Squama

Squama is a screen that lets users can control transparency. At the contest, the developer mentioned that the panel can make an office more open while it also protecting privacy. In addition, it has an energy-saving effect in heated rooms.

Universal Earphones

This earphone automatically recognizes if it was put into your left of right ear, and then proceeds to play the right sounds.

Handie

As mentioned above, it aims to provide reasonably priced prosthetic arms using just a 3D printer and smartphone apps. It’s only for the people who lost a hand or the finger, it could be used as “a third arm” for everyone in the future.

Telemba

Telemba is a video-chat Robot created by connecting android devices and other electronic parts with a Roomba (robotic vacuum cleaner). It was quite amazing to watch the team members participated in the awards ceremony through Telemba.

PocoPoco

PocoPoco is an intuitive and sophisticated music interface. Each part was carefully chosen to realize elegant movement of the interface. PocoPoco played a short performance at the event, drawing a significant the audience.

You can see the whole list of entries on their website. ↩

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Swingmail: A new app from Japan to better manage email and social messages

Masaru Ikeda 2013.12.17

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.

swingmail_at_booth — The BHI team at ICT Spring Luxembourg, June 2013.

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Tokyo Office Tour: Find your dream job with friends on Wantedly

Rick Martin 2013.12.16

We recently featured Tokyo-based startup Wantedly as one of the nominees in last week’s CNet Japan Startup Awards. The company has taken an innovative approach to helping people in their job search, providing a platform that leverages your social graph to ensure you find a better fitting job. The ideas is, that by being introduced to jobs by friends and mutual friends, you have a higher chance if finding a job that you’ll love. So far the platform has over 60,000 users and 1800 clients, which is not bad considering that they are just a year and a half old. Their team is growing, and they like to point out that they have brought on new members using the Wantedly platform. In addition to their multi-talented CEO, Akiko Naka, some of folks that I spoke to seem to have ridiculously impressive pedigrees, many coming from places like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, or Goldman Sachs [1]. Wantedly just recently moved into a new office on Meguro, and they were nice enough to allow me to bring my camera by and take some pictures. The office sits just adjacent to a beautiful park, giving the staff a pretty inspiring view, especially at this…

We recently featured Tokyo-based startup Wantedly as one of the nominees in last week’s CNet Japan Startup Awards. The company has taken an innovative approach to helping people in their job search, providing a platform that leverages your social graph to ensure you find a better fitting job. The ideas is, that by being introduced to jobs by friends and mutual friends, you have a higher chance if finding a job that you’ll love.

So far the platform has over 60,000 users and 1800 clients, which is not bad considering that they are just a year and a half old. Their team is growing, and they like to point out that they have brought on new members using the Wantedly platform. In addition to their multi-talented CEO, Akiko Naka, some of folks that I spoke to seem to have ridiculously impressive pedigrees, many coming from places like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, or Goldman Sachs [1].

Wantedly just recently moved into a new office on Meguro, and they were nice enough to allow me to bring my camera by and take some pictures. The office sits just adjacent to a beautiful park, giving the staff a pretty inspiring view, especially at this time of year with all the fall foliage still hanging around.

It will be interesting to see what kind of ideas they hatch from this new space. Given that there’s lots of English on their front page right now, I think we can expect Wantedly to make an overseas push in 2014 (or a push to neighboring Asian markets), although for the time being they aren’t saying much on that point. The team has more than a few fluent English speakers, so I think they’ll be far better prepared to go global than most other Japanese startups.

You can check out some of the photos below for a better idea of the layout of their new space, as well as a short video intro from the CEO [2].

wantedly-01 — Wantedly office entrance: Ring the bell to say hi

wantedly-02 — I’ve seen this dog somewhere before…

Engineer's super-keyboard of the future — Engineer’s super-keyboard of the future

Akiko herself is ex-Facebook. But overall she’s a pretty remarkable talent, who in addition to being a programmer, has also dabbled with making her own manga. As we talked in her office, one of her paintings was propped against the sofa. ↩
It was really cool of her to give this video a try in English. Not many Japanese startups have dared to do that so far in our series. ↩

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The Global Brain Alliance Forum: Highlights from the pitches and panels in Tokyo

Global Brain

Masaru Ikeda 2013.12.16

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.

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 to differentiate with several features and expanded operations in Japan and the rest of Asia.

2nd place: Monaca (Japan)

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.

3rd place: Whoscall (Taiwan)

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

gbaf-techstars-on-stage — 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?

gbaf-incj-masujima-on-stage — 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.

gbaf-winners-on-stage — 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. ↩

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Quchy proposes fun shop and restaurant recommendations, born on mobile

Rick Martin 2013.12.16

Japan has a number of restaurant-focused apps and services, including recent CNet Japan Startup Award winner Retty. But another restaurant recommendation app that’s gearing up to challenge in this space is Quchy, produced by Tokyo-based Endymion, a Samurai Incubate startup. The founder is Loren Fykes, who decided to create this service to make it easier for people all over the world to keep track of restaurants they like or ones recommended by friends. Quchy, which has been operating in public beta since October 2013 [1], proposes a social, card-collection approach to restaurant curation and recommendation, where you can save your favorite restaurants or remember places you’d like to go, or you can explore restaurants saved by your friends, sorting by proximity to your current location if you wish. One of Quchy’s more interesting functions is the ability to arrange cards into decks. Assuming that enough users make use of this function, it could potentially give Quchy’s mobile restaurant curation the same sort of appeal as the many articles we typically find online for top five or top ten lists of, for example, sushi restaurants in Tokyo. Currently decks cannot be shared externally in the same way that cards can (i.e….

Japan has a number of restaurant-focused apps and services, including recent CNet Japan Startup Award winner Retty. But another restaurant recommendation app that’s gearing up to challenge in this space is Quchy, produced by Tokyo-based Endymion, a Samurai Incubate startup. The founder is Loren Fykes, who decided to create this service to make it easier for people all over the world to keep track of restaurants they like or ones recommended by friends.

Quchy, which has been operating in public beta since October 2013 [1], proposes a social, card-collection approach to restaurant curation and recommendation, where you can save your favorite restaurants or remember places you’d like to go, or you can explore restaurants saved by your friends, sorting by proximity to your current location if you wish.

One of Quchy’s more interesting functions is the ability to arrange cards into decks. Assuming that enough users make use of this function, it could potentially give Quchy’s mobile restaurant curation the same sort of appeal as the many articles we typically find online for top five or top ten lists of, for example, sushi restaurants in Tokyo. Currently decks cannot be shared externally in the same way that cards can (i.e. via a web link shared to mail, message, or other social services), but I’m told the startup “will likely add this as part of the web app first”.

While I’m not a huge foodie myself, I can see the value in collecting and sharing restaurant information. It’s especially handy for travelers to be able to browse what’s available when they are in a new area. But at the same time, restaurant information available for reference on the web than ever before (think Google Maps, Facebook, Yelp, FourSquare) so I’m not sure Quchy has the same sort of value right now that it would have had a few years ago [2]. In terms of curation and recommendation, it does solve a problem, yes. Is it a big problem? For me, no. But that may differ for people who eat out more than I do [3].

On the restaurant side however, Quchy will later provide the ability to use a dashboard to grow and reward their loyal fan base. I’m told that the dashboard portion of the service will launch on February 1st, and it should be interesting to see how that feature is received. The startup has established a partnership with benefits platform community KUDOS First Benefit to help “will leverage its lifestyle benefit partners and build out premium communities” around the world. In the long term, Quchy aspires to have 3 million users and 10,000 lifestyle partner shops in three years.

Similarly, I think the connoisseur list feature looks very promising. Currently there’s just ‘Mr. Quchy’ on the app, but Quchy has some tie-ups with industry professionals who will become connoiseurs, thanks to its partnership with KUDOS. That initiative could result in some really fun curated collections.

If you’d like to check out the app for yourself, you can download it for free over on the App Store.

It has been in private beta since May of 2013. ↩
And then there’s Gournavi and Tabelog in Japan, or Dianping in China, if you want to look at other languages. ↩
It certainly would come in handy when friends come from out of town. But as international as my own online social circle is pretty international, this situation only arises once or twice a year for me. I do like to pop open Quchy and save interesting restaurants when I see them. As a relatively busy person, those instances are not so often, but I can see many of my friends on the service have been far more active. ↩

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