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San Francisco’s Gumroad doubles down on its Japanese sellers

Rick Martin 2013.10.30

San Francisco-based startup Gumroad launched their platform for selling digital goods back in February of 2012. It enables various kinds of artists (such as musicians, authors, software developers, or even comic creators) to sell their wares easily over the net. Speaking with Ryan Delk, who is in charge of the company’s growth strategy, I was surprised to hear that Gumroad became popular with Japanese creators almost immediately after its initial launch. “This happened entirely organically,” he points out. And now the company is making an effort to better serve its Japanese userbase, adding support for Zengin System payouts for sellers in the country. This marks Gumroad’s first international payment rollout, Ryan tells us. Zengin is the protocol that Japanese banks use to transfer funds, and Gumroad’s new integration will mean that sellers can move funds to their banks without using any go-between like PayPal [1]. I’m told that Zengin System support has been beta tested in Japan since about three weeks ago, and with very promising results so far, according to Ryan: Since we first rolled out Zengin payouts to existing sellers, growth in the Japanese market on the creator side is beating the global average by 28%. We asked…

San Francisco-based startup Gumroad launched their platform for selling digital goods back in February of 2012. It enables various kinds of artists (such as musicians, authors, software developers, or even comic creators) to sell their wares easily over the net.

Speaking with Ryan Delk, who is in charge of the company’s growth strategy, I was surprised to hear that Gumroad became popular with Japanese creators almost immediately after its initial launch. “This happened entirely organically,” he points out.

And now the company is making an effort to better serve its Japanese userbase, adding support for Zengin System payouts for sellers in the country. This marks Gumroad’s first international payment rollout, Ryan tells us. Zengin is the protocol that Japanese banks use to transfer funds, and Gumroad’s new integration will mean that sellers can move funds to their banks without using any go-between like PayPal [1].

I’m told that Zengin System support has been beta tested in Japan since about three weeks ago, and with very promising results so far, according to Ryan:

Since we first rolled out Zengin payouts to existing sellers, growth in the Japanese market on the creator side is beating the global average by 28%.

We asked Gumroad for some examples of Japanese sellers making use of the platform. Interestingly the very creative Maiwa Denki is a seller on there, with a published work about how to think about new ideas.

In Japan, there is already a similar service (knock-off?) called Ameroad, meaning Candy Road. That service was subsequently sold, on Yahoo Auction of all things, for about $15,000 in what was described as a very short term buyout. Currently, the service looks pretty neglected, and is likely not much competition for Gumroad.

Sellers can be paid out ever other Friday to Zengin, with a minimum payment amount of $100. You can set this up by going to the Zengin section of Gumroad’s payouts page. ↩

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Japanese startup detects social media threats to kids, warns parents

Masaru Ikeda 2013.10.29

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup A’s Child (pronounced as Ace Child) recently launched a web service that aims to protect children from bullying and other threats stemming from social media interactions. It’s called Filii. The service lets you analyze your children’s posting or messaging through social media (with their approval), and it will notify you to take counter- or preventative measures when any cause for concern is detected. These days, with words like sexting creeping into mainstream conversation, social media and messaging apps are coming under greater scrutiny. But the fact is many of these undesirable issues arise not from the social media platforms, but by malicious users. The operators of these platforms are requested to deploy countermeasures, but Japanese telecommunication law prohibits operators from tapping or interfering with users’ communications. To keep a moral and legal balance, Filii wants to give Japanese parents an option to protect your children using technology. The company plans to partner with local governments, schools, crime prevention organizations, and personal security service companies like Mimamorl. Filii claims that its technology can work to help ensure the security of not only children, but also adults. For example in Korea, where the suicide…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup A’s Child (pronounced as Ace Child) recently launched a web service that aims to protect children from bullying and other threats stemming from social media interactions. It’s called Filii. The service lets you analyze your children’s posting or messaging through social media (with their approval), and it will notify you to take counter- or preventative measures when any cause for concern is detected.

These days, with words like sexting creeping into mainstream conversation, social media and messaging apps are coming under greater scrutiny. But the fact is many of these undesirable issues arise not from the social media platforms, but by malicious users. The operators of these platforms are requested to deploy countermeasures, but Japanese telecommunication law prohibits operators from tapping or interfering with users’ communications.

To keep a moral and legal balance, Filii wants to give Japanese parents an option to protect your children using technology. The company plans to partner with local governments, schools, crime prevention organizations, and personal security service companies like Mimamorl.

Filii claims that its technology can work to help ensure the security of not only children, but also adults. For example in Korea, where the suicide rate is very high, data analysis company Daumsoft succeeded in developing a technology that can identify persons exhibiting suicidal behavior by analyzing their tweets or interactions on social media.

A’s Child was founded earlier this month by two engineers who previously work with a systems integration company. The startup is based out of Samurai Startup Island, an incubation space in Tokyo.

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Japanese youths love Line. But is social fatigue setting in?

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.10.29

Japanese mobile marketing research company Livigen conducted a survey of 200 students about their usage of social network applications. When asked about which social network apps they use most frequently, 65% of respondents answered Line, 29% said Twitter, and 5% Facebook (see chart below). Back in August at its ‘Hello Friends in Tokyo’ conference, Line Corporation announced that among its 230 million registered users to date, 47 million come from Japan. That’s a pretty hefty figure considering that the country’s population is about 130 million. When asked why they prefer Line, many students responded that most of their communication with friends happens there, phone calls are free, and its an easy way to get in touch with friends. Students who favor Twitter cited its ease of use, the ability to read tweets by celebrities, and the general wide variety of information, stories, and photos. Students who like Facebook say they like to find out what friends are up to, and they also like how it helps them keep in touch with friends overseas. Looking at the social space outside of Japan, we have seen quite a few reports this year about ‘Facebook fatigue’. This may also be true for social…

Japanese mobile marketing research company Livigen conducted a survey of 200 students about their usage of social network applications. When asked about which social network apps they use most frequently, 65% of respondents answered Line, 29% said Twitter, and 5% Facebook (see chart below). Back in August at its ‘Hello Friends in Tokyo’ conference, Line Corporation announced that among its 230 million registered users to date, 47 million come from Japan. That’s a pretty hefty figure considering that the country’s population is about 130 million.

When asked why they prefer Line, many students responded that most of their communication with friends happens there, phone calls are free, and its an easy way to get in touch with friends. Students who favor Twitter cited its ease of use, the ability to read tweets by celebrities, and the general wide variety of information, stories, and photos. Students who like Facebook say they like to find out what friends are up to, and they also like how it helps them keep in touch with friends overseas.

Looking at the social space outside of Japan, we have seen quite a few reports this year about ‘Facebook fatigue’. This may also be true for social networks in Japan, and not just for Facebook either. Livigen asked Line users if they feel and fatigue toward using the mobile chat service. 8.5% responded that they feel a strong sense of fatigue, while 16.5% answered that they felt somewhat tired of it. That’s a total of 25% showing some weariness. As for heavy users of Twitter, 15.5% responded that they feel some fatigue, while 7.5% said the same for Facebook.

Line and Twitter are both popular among young people, but for Facebook, kids tend to open an account as part of their job-hunting process. Although kids are connected with their friends on Twitter, its ‘at-your-own-pace’ characteristic allows for a more loose connection. In contrast, all notifications you get on Line (messages, stamps, invitation to Line game, etc.) are addressed to you specifically, and people often feel more pressure to respond.

Admittedly this survey used a very small sample, but Line is undoubtedly the dominant communication tool among kids in Japan. The closed nature of this social network provides comfort and security that many mainstream users want.

Closed can be good, but is it too closed? Figuring out the right distance to put between friends is mostly a responsibility left to the social network users. For now, Line appears to have hit the sweet spot for Japanese users, but it remains to be seen whether it stays that way.

How we socialize online is, of course, always changing.

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Tokyo Office Tour: Panoplaza has a 360-degree view of the world

Rick Martin 2013.10.28

Panoplaza, a platform created by Tokyo-based Kadinche, enables the creation of virtual spaces through the use of panoramic technology. In the past we have written about some implementations, including a number of retailers who use it to more realistically show how their store looks, all in the browser and viewable across many devices. Check out their panoramas of Daimaru department stores or Tokyu Hikarie to see what the service is capable of doing. In our latest Tokyo Office Tour, I had a chance to visit the Kadinche office. CEO Soko Aoki explained a little more about how they work, and what lies ahead for Panoplaza. I like photography, so it was really fun to see some of the gear they use on their Panoramic photo shoots. In addition to super-wide fisheye lenses, they also have some custom fabricated tools (using a Makerbot 3D printer on site) for mounting multiple GoPro cameras for 360-degree video recording. Panoplaza’s advantage, of course, lies in its software, and the end result when the images are processed into the final panoramic presentation. Soko expects that retailers and e-commerce players will make more use of these panoramic presentation, as it has high potential as an O2O…

Panoplaza, a platform created by Tokyo-based Kadinche, enables the creation of virtual spaces through the use of panoramic technology. In the past we have written about some implementations, including a number of retailers who use it to more realistically show how their store looks, all in the browser and viewable across many devices. Check out their panoramas of Daimaru department stores or Tokyu Hikarie to see what the service is capable of doing.

In our latest Tokyo Office Tour, I had a chance to visit the Kadinche office. CEO Soko Aoki explained a little more about how they work, and what lies ahead for Panoplaza.

I like photography, so it was really fun to see some of the gear they use on their Panoramic photo shoots. In addition to super-wide fisheye lenses, they also have some custom fabricated tools (using a Makerbot 3D printer on site) for mounting multiple GoPro cameras for 360-degree video recording. Panoplaza’s advantage, of course, lies in its software, and the end result when the images are processed into the final panoramic presentation.

Soko expects that retailers and e-commerce players will make more use of these panoramic presentation, as it has high potential as an O2O tool.

For users, being able to access such a virtual space online has many benefits, as you retain the sense of exploring a realistic space. But you can also benefit from supplementary info and functions, like clicking on a product to see more information or to make a purchase directly. Just recently Kadinche announced two new retailers that are using its service: Kintetsu Department Store (see their Abeno Harukas store panoramas) and Seibu Department Store in Shibuya (see their 15 panorama spots here).

Readers may recall that the company has previously partnered with Stores.jp to help small businesses create panoramic online store fronts.

Given the work required to do these photo shoots, the business does lack some scalability at present. But the company has managed to carve out a niche that appeals to big retailers, and Soko hopes they can manage to scale their operations further so they can do more. I hope they can do well, because I think the upcoming 2020 Olympics could represent an opportunity for a company like Kadinche, helping the city and its many retailers with promotion.

panoplaza-06 — Their meeting room sits just adjacent to a pedestrian street in a quiet neighborhood

panoplaza-08 — Kadinche logo signals we’re in the right spot

Fisheye lenses galore, and a fun Go Pro set-up for video

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Japanese personal accounting startup Money Forward raises $5 million

Takeshi Hirano 2013.10.28

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Money Forward, the startup behind the personal accounting app of the same name, announced today that it has raised 500 million yen ($5 million) from Japanese investment company Jafco. Money Forward provides online personal accounting for individuals, allowing them to easily manage their daily expenses by integrating with their bank passbooks and credit purchase history with information scraped from their web bank and credit accounts. The service is also available for desktop, as well as iOS and Android platforms. The company also announced that it will launch a cloud-based accounting service for individual and corporate users, and it will also start publishing an online newsletter. The service launched back in December of 2012 in beta, and subsequently launched its official version back in July of 2013. The company’s CEO Yosuke Tsuji told us that their service has acquired over 100 million accounting records from users, up 43% on average in the last several months [1]. He explained: We launched an asset simulation tool called ‘Yoso-Q’ this past July, and it has been getting lots of attention from our users. Its daily active users are much higher than we expected. When we look at…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Money Forward, the startup behind the personal accounting app of the same name, announced today that it has raised 500 million yen ($5 million) from Japanese investment company Jafco.

Money Forward provides online personal accounting for individuals, allowing them to easily manage their daily expenses by integrating with their bank passbooks and credit purchase history with information scraped from their web bank and credit accounts. The service is also available for desktop, as well as iOS and Android platforms. The company also announced that it will launch a cloud-based accounting service for individual and corporate users, and it will also start publishing an online newsletter.

The service launched back in December of 2012 in beta, and subsequently launched its official version back in July of 2013. The company’s CEO Yosuke Tsuji told us that their service has acquired over 100 million accounting records from users, up 43% on average in the last several months ^[1]. He explained:

We launched an asset simulation tool called ‘Yoso-Q’ this past July, and it has been getting lots of attention from our users. Its daily active users are much higher than we expected. When we look at visiting frequency, almost 30% of our users who have registered their bank accounts on our service are using the simulation tool once every two days.

Their personalized credit card recommendation engine is especially popular among users. It proposes cards based on how much you pay on a monthly basis, or what kind of rewards you want to get. Their 60% of users are male, and 40% are female.

moneyforward_dataaccumulation — *CHART: The growth of expense data collected from Money Forward users*

Simplifying income tax reporting

Cloud-based accounting is a fierce space here in Japan, where Tokyo-based startup Freee is doing well in its user acquisition. According to Tsuji, Money Forward will be also getting into this space, launching a tax reporting tool later next month. It will simplifies your tax reporting tasks by scraping expenses from your bank accounts and sorting out automatically.

So what is his overall goal for Money Forward? He explains:

Along with the account aggregation technology, we’ll be providing various services for users including asset management and simulation for individuals, and cloud-based accounting for SMEs. When you have money management troubles, you find the answer at Money Forward. That’s what we’re aiming to be.

With the funds raised this time around, the company plans to hire more engineers in an effort to be a leading one-stop solution provider.

The startup was spun-off from Tokyo online stock brokerage Monex in 2012. It raised 100 million yen (over $1 million) back in March from several angel investors and WIT Corporation, a technology licensing organization under Waseda University.

Not to be confused with user growth, of course.↩

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Traditional Japanese craftsmanship comes online, reaches fans outside of Japan

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.10.28

For the many fans of Japanese craftsmanship who reside outside of Japan, there are two e-commerce websites you might want to keep your eyes on. Unique Japan and Alexcious both provide such products. The first is operated by a Canadian couple who have fallen in love with Japanese art, and the latter was founded by an Japanese entrepreneur who previously worked at Sony and Google Japan. Unique Japan launched back in 2006, introducing many traditional craftsmanships including hand-crafted knives, or Daruma, a round Japanese wishing doll. But believe it or not, their speciality is Japanese swords. The founder of Unique Japan is a passionate fan of antique Samurai swords. On the site, you can find a page titled ‘7 points to consider when choosing your Japanese sword,’ which includes professional advice when considering a sword purchase. Unique Japan also has a beautiful gallery of ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement. As for Alexcious, it showcases a wider variety of products. This ranges from interior products to toys, from tech to Japanese sake. The Japanese entrepreneur behind the ecommerce service is Koichiro Tsujino, who is ex-Sony and a former Google Japan president. For some of its products, Alexcious provides great…

For the many fans of Japanese craftsmanship who reside outside of Japan, there are two e-commerce websites you might want to keep your eyes on. Unique Japan and Alexcious both provide such products. The first is operated by a Canadian couple who have fallen in love with Japanese art, and the latter was founded by an Japanese entrepreneur who previously worked at Sony and Google Japan.

Unique Japan launched back in 2006, introducing many traditional craftsmanships including hand-crafted knives, or Daruma, a round Japanese wishing doll. But believe it or not, their speciality is Japanese swords. The founder of Unique Japan is a passionate fan of antique Samurai swords. On the site, you can find a page titled ‘7 points to consider when choosing your Japanese sword,’ which includes professional advice when considering a sword purchase. Unique Japan also has a beautiful gallery of ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement.

As for Alexcious, it showcases a wider variety of products. This ranges from interior products to toys, from tech to Japanese sake. The Japanese entrepreneur behind the ecommerce service is Koichiro Tsujino, who is ex-Sony and a former Google Japan president.

For some of its products, Alexcious provides great product videos. Below you can see how one product, a Makuzu-yaki sake cup, is crafted.

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Japanese mobile payments processor Coiney secures $8M in funding

Masaru Ikeda 2013.10.28

Japan’s Nikkei reported that Tokyo-based mobile payments processor Coiney will soon raise up to 800 million yen (approximately $8 million) from Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, the country’s state-run investment fund which promotes emerging technology businesses. Our readers may recall that the startup raised 500 million yen ($5 million) back in August from Credit Saison, one of Japan’s top credit card companies. The company expects to transact more than 1 trillion yen ($10 billion) through its payment platform in the next five years. Coiney was launched back in March of 2012 by ex-PayPal Japan employee Naoko Samata, and has been providing mobile payments solutions using swipe card readers for smartphones. In Japan, other competitors in this space are Square, Paypal Here, and Rakuten Smartpay. On a related note, it was announced a couple of weeks ago that the aforementioned fund announced will also invest up to 1 billion yen ($10 million) in another payments processor company, Royal Gate.

Japan’s Nikkei reported that Tokyo-based mobile payments processor Coiney will soon raise up to 800 million yen (approximately $8 million) from Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, the country’s state-run investment fund which promotes emerging technology businesses.

Our readers may recall that the startup raised 500 million yen ($5 million) back in August from Credit Saison, one of Japan’s top credit card companies. The company expects to transact more than 1 trillion yen ($10 billion) through its payment platform in the next five years.

Coiney was launched back in March of 2012 by ex-PayPal Japan employee Naoko Samata, and has been providing mobile payments solutions using swipe card readers for smartphones. In Japan, other competitors in this space are Square, Paypal Here, and Rakuten Smartpay.

On a related note, it was announced a couple of weeks ago that the aforementioned fund announced will also invest up to 1 billion yen ($10 million) in another payments processor company, Royal Gate.

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Viibar wins OnLab demo day with crowdsourced video production solution

Open Network Lab

Masaru Ikeda 2013.10.27

See the original story in Japanese. All photos courtesy of Open Network Lab. Tokyo-based startup incubator Open Network Lab (OnLab for short) held a demo day event earlier this week, showcasing five startups from the 7th batch of its incubation program. The Best Team Award and the Special Award were presented to two startups who have shown solid growth in the last six months of their incubating period. Let’s do a quick rundown of the startups that have graduated from the program. Viibar (The Best Team Award winner) Viibar is a crowdsourcing platform focusing on video production. For enterprises or startups, you may need to produce video clips or ads to promote your products or services online. By splitting your video production process into small tasks, this platform lets you create high quality videos at affordable rates by taking advantage of crowdsourced skills. The startup can also accept orders to create YouTube TrueView video ads, providing content optimization advice and measurement of ad effectiveness so that your viewers are more likely keep watching your video through to the end. The concept of its ‘1 min videos‘ production service is similar to that of Korea’s 500videos. Locarise (The Special Award winner)…

See the original story in Japanese. All photos courtesy of Open Network Lab.

Tokyo-based startup incubator Open Network Lab (OnLab for short) held a demo day event earlier this week, showcasing five startups from the 7th batch of its incubation program.

The Best Team Award and the Special Award were presented to two startups who have shown solid growth in the last six months of their incubating period. Let’s do a quick rundown of the startups that have graduated from the program.

Viibar (The Best Team Award winner)

Viibar is a crowdsourcing platform focusing on video production. For enterprises or startups, you may need to produce video clips or ads to promote your products or services online. By splitting your video production process into small tasks, this platform lets you create high quality videos at affordable rates by taking advantage of crowdsourced skills.

The startup can also accept orders to create YouTube TrueView video ads, providing content optimization advice and measurement of ad effectiveness so that your viewers are more likely keep watching your video through to the end. The concept of its ‘1 min videos‘ production service is similar to that of Korea’s 500videos.

Locarise (The Special Award winner)

Locarise is an analytics solution for retail stores. By placing small sensors inside and around your store, the system can collect metrics such as how many people passed in front of the store and how many customers you have served.

The system’s web-based dashboard shows you these metrics, as well as other things like visit duration, and retention rate. For a business owner monitoring many store locations, you can easily stay up to date on real-time target rates for KPIs at many stores in a single interface.

Shakring

Regardless of location, culture, or language, this mobile app lets you to ask or tell other users what you’re looking at. By scanning barcodes, it also helps you find details about what you have in your hand.

When the app’s creator, Hyongchol, Kim visited a drug store here in Japan, he saw a young Indian confused about cold medicine he should buy. Since he couldn’t read Japanese characters, he hesitated to buy the medicine despite the fact that Kim told him which one it was. This experience motivated Kim to create the app, which he is preparing for iOS and Android platforms.

Style With

Style With is an e-commerce site for men, helping them coordinate their outfits. Users’ preferences are classified according to the ’taste graph’ concept, and you will receive about five different outfit proposals of outfits every month that you might like. The platform can monetize by letting a user buy any item from the outfits proposed. It targets male users may not be very bold in their fashion but want to purchase clothes that will turn some heads.

Ednity

Ednity is a vertical social network for school classes. By putting teachers, students, and their parents in a sort of loop, it will help them build a collaborative education environment. The platform gives you a dashboard to manage notifications from school and your homework, and also provides a virtual white board for hand-drawn content that can be shared between teachers and their children.

Open Network Lab is now inviting applications from startups looking to join the upcoming batch of its incubation program starting next January. The application deadline is November 8th. The incubator’s parent company, Digital Garage, will also launch a co-working space in San Francisco pretty soon, where their incubated startups will be able to establish a base.

To commemorate the launch of the facility, the company plans to host Global Pitch 2013 on November 4th, and New Context Conference 2013 in San Francisco on November 5th and 6th. That’s just before digital agency Btrax’s SF Japan Night event at Pivotal Labs on November 7th.

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New digital comics site provides free manga in English

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.10.27

A new digital comics website called Manga Samurai Style was recently launched in Japan. It’s an initiative by publishing companies Gakken Holdings and Gakken Publishing which will host digital manga. There are other digital books services for the manga genre, such as Kodansha’s ‘D-morning’ which which we have written about previously. But what differentiates Manga Samurai Style from competitors is that content is provided in both Japanese and English. The manga featured on the site are ‘Wa-fu’ (or ‘Japanese style’) comics, where many of the characters are samurai or ninja. So in addition to manga fans, this might be of interest to history buffs as well. The stories are written exclusively for the site by well-known authors, and all of the stories can be read for free. The very first title to be released is ‘Nobunaga no Yabou’, which is created in collaboration with the hit historical simultion game to mark its 30th anniversary. Another unique manga title is ‘Stray Wolves’ which will be released on November 8th. This latter story will take in readers’ opinion to determine how the story will evolve. Manga Samurai Style has given a name to this type of user-participation in stories: ‘Join the Story’ or…

A new digital comics website called Manga Samurai Style was recently launched in Japan. It’s an initiative by publishing companies Gakken Holdings and Gakken Publishing which will host digital manga.

There are other digital books services for the manga genre, such as Kodansha’s ‘D-morning’ which which we have written about previously. But what differentiates Manga Samurai Style from competitors is that content is provided in both Japanese and English.

The manga featured on the site are ‘Wa-fu’ (or ‘Japanese style’) comics, where many of the characters are samurai or ninja. So in addition to manga fans, this might be of interest to history buffs as well. The stories are written exclusively for the site by well-known authors, and all of the stories can be read for free.

The very first title to be released is ‘Nobunaga no Yabou’, which is created in collaboration with the hit historical simultion game to mark its 30th anniversary. Another unique manga title is ‘Stray Wolves’ which will be released on November 8th. This latter story will take in readers’ opinion to determine how the story will evolve. Manga Samurai Style has given a name to this type of user-participation in stories: ‘Join the Story’ or JOS. The readers can expect to see more such JOS stories on the site.

New episodes will be released every Friday and they can be enjoyed on the web as well as on mobile. It will be interesting to see if Manga Samurai Style can expand the existing fan base of Japanese manga or enhance Japanese creative culture . You can follow the most recent news from the site on their Facebook page.

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Tokyo Office Tour: Freee takes small businesses for a walk in the cloud

Masaru Ikeda 2013.10.25

Freee is the Tokyo-based startup behind a cloud-based accounting solution. Readers may recall it has previously raised seed funding worth 50 million yen (about $523,000) back in December, and raised series A funding worth 270 million yen ($2.7 million) back in July. They recently relocated their office, and we visited the new location to speak with Freee CEO Daisuke Sasaki and COO Sumito Togo to hear about their future plans. The company recently partnered with Tokyo-based startup Ubiregi, integrating the Freee accounting platform with the latter’s cloud-based POS (point of sales) system earlier this month. For small retailers or restaurant owners, this integration lets you automate your back office tasks, ranging from daily cash to accounts. By making use of such a service, they can save a lot of time and refocus their efforts on providing a better experience for their customers. In Japan, the penetration rate of cloud services is very low, not only at big companies but also at SMEs. Cloud services can easily provide up-to-date solutions for users. In order to encourage business people to change the paradigm of the Japanese business scene, we need to provide something more than cloud services. If we can create something…

Freee is the Tokyo-based startup behind a cloud-based accounting solution. Readers may recall it has previously raised seed funding worth 50 million yen (about $523,000) back in December, and raised series A funding worth 270 million yen ($2.7 million) back in July.

They recently relocated their office, and we visited the new location to speak with Freee CEO Daisuke Sasaki and COO Sumito Togo to hear about their future plans.

The company recently partnered with Tokyo-based startup Ubiregi, integrating the Freee accounting platform with the latter’s cloud-based POS (point of sales) system earlier this month. For small retailers or restaurant owners, this integration lets you automate your back office tasks, ranging from daily cash to accounts. By making use of such a service, they can save a lot of time and refocus their efforts on providing a better experience for their customers.

In Japan, the penetration rate of cloud services is very low, not only at big companies but also at SMEs. Cloud services can easily provide up-to-date solutions for users. In order to encourage business people to change the paradigm of the Japanese business scene, we need to provide something more than cloud services. If we can create something special in the Japanese market, we can top the global market at the same time.

In the past for SME owners, when you bought software for your back office operations, you were forced to buy a cheap edition if you couldn’t pay high license fees. Many companies could not use the full features of software that enterprises were making the most of. We thought this was ridiculous and we wanted to develop solutions to help SMEs liberate themselves from routine tasks and use more time for doing creative jobs.

Their team is working on adding new features to the platform but paying attention to keeping it simple so that people who are not accounting-savvy can keep using them. In the future, they expect to add several features like an instant-submission income tax report, and automating payroll calculations.

On their 12-person team Freee has seven engineers, but is hiring new people who can work on a variety of issues ranging from mobile app development to server-side maintenance. If any of our readers are interested, feel free to contact the company via thier recruiting page.

Article

San Francisco’s Gumroad doubles down on its Japanese sellers

Japanese startup detects social media threats to kids, warns parents

Japanese youths love Line. But is social fatigue setting in?

Tokyo Office Tour: Panoplaza has a 360-degree view of the world