See the original story in Japanese. CyberAgent subsidiary Sirok, the startup behind the photo app My365 and AB testing service Growth Push, today unveiled a new growth hack tool that enables developers to record video of smartphone user behavior. It’s called Growth Replay. Developed for user testing, for the purpose of the tool is mainly acquiring qualitative rather than quantitative data. By integrating their SDK with your app, you can record videos of how your users behave in that app. Typical analytics tools let you to learn where many users quit. But if you use those tools in combination with Growth Replay, it lets you understand out how users typically quit at that point. The recorded videos can be reviewed using a convenient dashboard, shown below. You can record a 15-minute video for every observed session and store about 100 videos max for an account. According to the company, they are planning to add more features such as video recording on a web browser and heat map. Pricing is not disclosed but available upon request. Sirok plans to introduce more services in this space in the future, so expect to see more services from them later on.
CyberAgent subsidiary Sirok, the startup behind the photo app My365 and AB testing service Growth Push, today unveiled a new growth hack tool that enables developers to record video of smartphone user behavior. It’s called Growth Replay.
Developed for user testing, for the purpose of the tool is mainly acquiring qualitative rather than quantitative data. By integrating their SDK with your app, you can record videos of how your users behave in that app.
Typical analytics tools let you to learn where many users quit. But if you use those tools in combination with Growth Replay, it lets you understand out how users typically quit at that point.
The recorded videos can be reviewed using a convenient dashboard, shown below. You can record a 15-minute video for every observed session and store about 100 videos max for an account. According to the company, they are planning to add more features such as video recording on a web browser and heat map. Pricing is not disclosed but available upon request.
Sirok plans to introduce more services in this space in the future, so expect to see more services from them later on.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Shiroyagi Corporation [1] recently launched a new curation app called Kamelio. And now just last week the startup announced that it has raised about 50 million yen ($490,000) from Japanese investment firm Global Brain. The money comes from a $150-million fund managed by Global Brain but primarily invested by the country’s state-run investment company, Innovation Network Corporation of Japan. Shiroyagi’s co-representative director Yoshi Watanabe elaborated how his team will be improving on app: We’re currently a eight-person team. In order to build up a solid user base, we’ll keep focusing on improving the interface of our app for the time being, improvising the algorithm on our ‘follow’ engine and speeding up back-end data processing. Kamelio has adopted a new concept that differs slightly from conventional news curation apps. While many apps present selected articles based on what articles are trending on social media or which media you subscribe to, Kamelio picks up articles based on topics you are likely to be interested in, using their unique algorithm to go even beyond the keywords you’ve entered in your preference. As the team is comprised of technology experts, they expect to attract potential co-workers by…
Tokyo-based Shiroyagi Corporation [1] recently launched a new curation app called Kamelio. And now just last week the startup announced that it has raised about 50 million yen ($490,000) from Japanese investment firm Global Brain. The money comes from a $150-million fund managed by Global Brain but primarily invested by the country’s state-run investment company, Innovation Network Corporation of Japan.
Shiroyagi’s co-representative director Yoshi Watanabe elaborated how his team will be improving on app:
We’re currently a eight-person team. In order to build up a solid user base, we’ll keep focusing on improving the interface of our app for the time being, improvising the algorithm on our ‘follow’ engine and speeding up back-end data processing.
Kamelio has adopted a new concept that differs slightly from conventional news curation apps. While many apps present selected articles based on what articles are trending on social media or which media you subscribe to, Kamelio picks up articles based on topics you are likely to be interested in, using their unique algorithm to go even beyond the keywords you’ve entered in your preference.
As the team is comprised of technology experts, they expect to attract potential co-workers by opening their growth hack knowledge to the public.
The company name ‘Shiroyagi’ is means ‘white goat’ in Japanese, encourages their team members to climb higher and higher. ↩
See the original article in Japanese An intriguing smart-toy dubbed Moff officially launched here in Japan last week, getting attention from several media outlets leading up to its release. It’s a wearable wristband device that lets kids play using physical motion to create sound effects for any object they might be holding. You can get a better idea for how that works in the video below. Moff is developed by a team organized at a local hackathon event in Osaka. The team participated in last year’s SF Japan Night where they pitched their product. At that time, Moff was a toy that attached to other toys, but after making improvements, they turned it into a wearable device. Moff CEO Akinori Takahagi came up with the idea when he was examining the way kids play with toys: Kids get bored with new toys so quickly. And parents just repeat buying and throwing toys away. It’s a waste of money. To solve this issue, I came up with the idea for a device that lets kids play in many ways depending on their imagination. The Moff wristband connects to a smartphone or a tablet device through BLE. When Moff turns on, the…
An intriguing smart-toy dubbed Moff officially launched here in Japan last week, getting attention from several media outlets leading up to its release. It’s a wearable wristband device that lets kids play using physical motion to create sound effects for any object they might be holding. You can get a better idea for how that works in the video below.
Moff is developed by a team organized at a local hackathon event in Osaka. The team participated in last year’s SF Japan Night where they pitched their product. At that time, Moff was a toy that attached to other toys, but after making improvements, they turned it into a wearable device.
Moff CEO Akinori Takahagi came up with the idea when he was examining the way kids play with toys:
Kids get bored with new toys so quickly. And parents just repeat buying and throwing toys away. It’s a waste of money. To solve this issue, I came up with the idea for a device that lets kids play in many ways depending on their imagination.
The Moff wristband connects to a smartphone or a tablet device through BLE. When Moff turns on, the app on the connected device generates sounds corresponding to the motion of your hand. It could be sound effects, voices, or background music. So for example, it could be the sound of a guitar, a ray gun, or even a even a Star Wars lightsaber.
Moff uses a three-axis accelerometer and gyroscope. These sensors recognize your physical motion and generate sound accordingly. Data is accumulated in the cloud, and the team hopes to utilize this data to improve the device’s precision and complex motion. They are also considering offering a SDK and making a developer´s platform.
The device is covered with silicon and its battery is said to last for about 40 to 50 hours, and can be replaced by the user if it wears out. The wrist band can be adjusted for various sizes.
Takahagi explained about the pricing:
We are thinking to make it around 3000 to 4000 yen (or about $30 to $40). Regarding production, we decided to outsource to a factory that develops BLE equipment in-house. Normal factories purchase BLE equipment and use it to create products, which increases their costs. But we can reduce costs by working with factories that make BLE equipment on their own. We aim to minimize the cost and charge for content like extra sounds within the app.
Moff plans to show their product at events in March and April, such as at Mobile World Congress and SXSW. The company plans to fundraise for development in March through crowdfunding. Their first production lot is scheduled to be available in July or August of this year.
See the original article in Japanese HackOsaka 2014, held earlier this month in Osaka, featured a pitch contest where 10 startups pitched their services and products. I’d like to introduce the prize winning startups below. Gold Prize: Waygo Awarded 500,000 yen ($5000), a round-trip ticket to London sponsored by British Airways, a Pebble Watch. Waygo is a translation app using that uses OCR technology. When the user scans Chinese sentences with their smartphone camera, the app will translate that sentence into English even without an internet connection. We previously mentioned this app when we covered Echelon 2013 and Innovation Weekend Grand Finale 2013. Last year, the startup took part in 500 Startups’ incubation program, and subsequently raised $900,000. CEO Ryan Rogowski shared two updates at the event. The first is that they are going to release a new version of their app that translates Chinese into Japanese. The other (and perhaps the most interesting one) is that they are now developing a prototype app for Google Glass. Silver Prize: TransferGo Awarded 300,000 yen ($3000), Pebble Watch Many people need to make international money transfers. But service charges at banks can be expensive, as are other transfer services like Western Union….
HackOsaka 2014, held earlier this month in Osaka, featured a pitch contest where 10 startups pitched their services and products. I’d like to introduce the prize winning startups below.
Gold Prize: Waygo
Awarded 500,000 yen ($5000), a round-trip ticket to London sponsored by British Airways, a Pebble Watch.
Waygo CEO/founder Ryan Rogowski
Waygo is a translation app using that uses OCR technology. When the user scans Chinese sentences with their smartphone camera, the app will translate that sentence into English even without an internet connection. We previously mentioned this app when we covered Echelon 2013 and Innovation Weekend Grand Finale 2013. Last year, the startup took part in 500 Startups’ incubation program, and subsequently raised $900,000.
CEO Ryan Rogowski shared two updates at the event. The first is that they are going to release a new version of their app that translates Chinese into Japanese. The other (and perhaps the most interesting one) is that they are now developing a prototype app for Google Glass.
Silver Prize: TransferGo
Awarded 300,000 yen ($3000), Pebble Watch
TransferGo co-founder/CEO Daumantas Dvilinskas
Many people need to make international money transfers. But service charges at banks can be expensive, as are other transfer services like Western Union.
TransferGo, a startup based in Lithuania and London, offers international money transfers service at reasonable price. The transfer flow goes like this:
A user transfers money to the local TransferGo account, thus paying only a domestic transfer fee
TransferGo will then send the money from the TransferGo’s local account to a TransferGo account in the recipient’s country, and then on to the recipient.
The transfer fee is £2.50 plus 1.5% of the total amount of transferred. The company’s real rate of return is pretty high at 70%, and they have acquired licenses from authorities in the countries where they offer the service.
TransferGo was launched in May of 2013, and the number of the transfers in the first month was 941. But in January of 2014, that number shot up to 6,837. Currently they have 21,000 users and 98% of them said they want to recommend the service to friends. TransferGo is currently only available in Europe, but the startup aims to expand to other areas, including Asia.
Bronze Prize: StudyPact
Awarded 100,000 yen ($1000), Pebble Watch
StudyPact is a service that lets users to set a study goal and monetary stakes as as sort of bet with themselves. For example, you can set a goal of studying English for two hours a week, and then set the target stakes at $5. If you reach that goal, you get $5, but if not, you have to pay $5. In the event that you have to pay, the fee is split in half among users who supported the goal and the rest will go to StudyPact.
To realize more effective learning platforms, the startups plans to tie up with other educational platforms and services like Duolingo, Anki, Memrise, Coursera and Edx. The prototype that implemented Anki is expected to be released in early March, and there are plans develop apps for Android, Chrome, FireFox and iPhone. They’re now participating in an accelerator program hosted by Open Network Lab, so let’s wait and see what they present at the demo day in a few months.
Crosscorp Prize: Slumbor
Awarded 1-year free pass to co-working spaces run by Crosscorp in Singapore, Jakarta, Delhi, and Ho Chi Minh City.
AnSing Technology CEO Dr. Hu Junhao
Slumbor is a Singapore-based startup producing a sort of smart mat designed to be put under your pillow. The mat has sensors that acquire various data, which are then transferred to the user’s smartphone via BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy). The startup currently attends a program run by the IoT incubator, HAXLR8R. They plan to raise funds at Kickstarter later on.
In addition to these four prize winners, I’d like to introduce two more startups that stood out for me in the competition.
Ontrox
Ontrox CEO, Kazuki Arita
Ontrox is a startup aspiring to reduce traffic jams by using big data. The CEO says that by using such data, you can see certain patterns of traffic jams in cities. The advantage of Ontrox, he says, lies in their unique technology that can visualize the pattern of traffic jams and shorten the processing time for visualization.
The same technology can be used for other purposes such as analyzing and optimizing computer network data, or analyzing users’ online behavior on e-commerce sites. The startup was selected as one of 10 startups to participate in SVIP (Silicon Valley Innovative Program) hosted by the Japan External Trade Organization, which aims to launch global services from Silicon Valley.
Warrantee
Warrantee, an Osaka-based startup, aims to digitalize product warranties. When you buy a product, you typically have to fill out information on a paper form to validate the warranty. But because this is a time consuming process, many users skip it.
Warrantee proposes a one-stop process, registering personal data in advance on their service. In this way the user can quickly register warranties for different products or from different companies. There are many cases where retail stores offer additional paid warranties, so the startup plans to earn a service charge from retailers by motivating users to opt into such additional warranties. Another business opportunity lies in tying up with retailers, allowing them to utilize user data accumulated on Warrantee for the retailer promotions.
This is an abridged version of the original report in Japanese. The HackOsaka 2014 conference recently took place here in Japan, with the aim of boosting the startup community in Japan’s Kansai region. This year Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky and Berg CEO Matt Webb were invited as special guests. Pebble, of course, is the smart watch developer that was funded by Y-Combinator. Berg is based in London, offering an ‘Internet of Things’ cloud platform for third-party developers. Together with Masahiko Inada, the CEO of Kabuku [1], they participated in an panel discussion moderated by journalist Tsuruaki Yukawa. While many major companies in Japan have their headquarters in Tokyo, many CEOs are originally from Osaka. Yukawa explained a little about Osaka’s history of entrepreneurship: My father was a merchant. In fact, when I was a kid, all the parents except maybe one were merchants. Even though there are strong entrepreneurship roots in Osaka, the city is not the startup hub in Japan. Everyone goes to Tokyo. What should we do? Matt noted that the situation is similar to what London previously experienced: A lot of startups in London left for the USA. Because we didn’t have funds, there was no way…
The HackOsaka 2014 conference recently took place here in Japan, with the aim of boosting the startup community in Japan’s Kansai region. This year Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky and Berg CEO Matt Webb were invited as special guests. Pebble, of course, is the smart watch developer that was funded by Y-Combinator. Berg is based in London, offering an ‘Internet of Things’ cloud platform for third-party developers. Together with Masahiko Inada, the CEO of Kabuku [1], they participated in an panel discussion moderated by journalist Tsuruaki Yukawa.
While many major companies in Japan have their headquarters in Tokyo, many CEOs are originally from Osaka. Yukawa explained a little about Osaka’s history of entrepreneurship:
My father was a merchant. In fact, when I was a kid, all the parents except maybe one were merchants. Even though there are strong entrepreneurship roots in Osaka, the city is not the startup hub in Japan. Everyone goes to Tokyo. What should we do?
Matt noted that the situation is similar to what London previously experienced:
A lot of startups in London left for the USA. Because we didn’t have funds, there was no way to tie up with big companies. We didn’t have a community.
Of course, community plays an important role in any startup scene. And Eric stressed the benefits that the startup community provides in Silicon Valley.
When you develop a minimum viable product, you can get both positive and negative feedback from the community. Taking that feedback into account, and continuing development in a constructive manner is important.
At a large company, a CEO can get feedback from his or her board members. But at a startup, a founder often has to rely on himself or herself. Because of this, community support can be just as important as fundraising and market chance.
Matt said it is important to name a community if you want to develop it. The area around Old Street station in East London had been called Silicon Roundabout, but later the UK government named the area TechCity with the intention to invite more startups there. This has helped to raise public awareness. People started thinking about entrepreneurship, getting together in order to create a community.
Matt: Organizing events is important as well. In London, events related to hardware startups are held about twice a month. Job events and networking events are held almost every week.
Eric: People in Osaka have already started doing important things. This event has a pitch contest. This is quite important to help build a community.
TechCity in London took a much different path than Silicon Valley. In the same way, I’m optimistic that Osaka can develop it’s own unique startup culture, something different from Tokyo or Fukuoka.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based WebPay Holdings [1], a startup providing Stripe-compatible payment processing solutions for web services, announced yesterday that it has raised 110 million yen (approximately $1.1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures and two other undisclosed VC firms. Prior to this round, the company raised an undisclosed amount of funding from CyberAgent Ventures, Architype, and GMO Payment Gateway upon its launch back last year. The company says they plan to use the funds for hiring more engineers to improve their solution’s usability in order to serve their users better. Previously known as FluxFlex. ↩
Tokyo-based WebPay Holdings [1], a startup providing Stripe-compatible payment processing solutions for web services, announced yesterday that it has raised 110 million yen (approximately $1.1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures and two other undisclosed VC firms. Prior to this round, the company raised an undisclosed amount of funding from CyberAgent Ventures, Architype, and GMO Payment Gateway upon its launch back last year.
The company says they plan to use the funds for hiring more engineers to improve their solution’s usability in order to serve their users better.
See the original article in Japanese On February 7th, an Osaka-based startup pitch event called Shoot took place. Nine startups pitched in total, and perhaps the most remarkable one was Mimimiru, presenting a wearable device designed for the blind and visually impaired. Mimimiru analyzes image data and lets users know what’s in that image by reading information aloud. Tomoyuki Hisada is a software engineer and the CEO of Another Brain, the startup behind this device. He has been considering how he could support a visually impaired friend of his through IT. Observing a rising trend in wearable devices like Google Glass, he came up with the idea for Mimimiru. He tells us: When I saw wearable devices, I thought this could be a tool for disabled people. If I could inform blind and visually impaired people about what they see in front of them, their everyday lives could be much improved. He presented Mimimiru for the first time at the MA9 Mashup Camp Osaka web development contest, where the device won the top award and moved on to the second stage where it won the NTT docomo Award, KDDI Web Communications Award, and the TechWave Award. At the Docomo Wearable…
On February 7th, an Osaka-based startup pitch event called Shoot took place. Nine startups pitched in total, and perhaps the most remarkable one was Mimimiru, presenting a wearable device designed for the blind and visually impaired. Mimimiru analyzes image data and lets users know what’s in that image by reading information aloud.
Tomoyuki Hisada is a software engineer and the CEO of Another Brain, the startup behind this device. He has been considering how he could support a visually impaired friend of his through IT. Observing a rising trend in wearable devices like Google Glass, he came up with the idea for Mimimiru. He tells us:
When I saw wearable devices, I thought this could be a tool for disabled people. If I could inform blind and visually impaired people about what they see in front of them, their everyday lives could be much improved.
Technology for reading image data aloud is still under development, and it is expected that it will be a few years before it can be really put to use. So Hisada sought and found another solution by turning to crowdsourcing and social media. He explains:
A user takes pictures with a wearable device and post the image(s) to Twitter. And his followers can then reply and tell him information about the picture, which the device will then read aloud. It’s essentially five-second volunteer work that can really help the visually impaired.
He’s receiving support from a volunteer group on Twitter, and he hopes to develop a system by utilizing the activity of social welfare corporations and NPOs who create lists of visually impaired Twitter users and blocks mischievous users. They could also gain support from corporations as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities.
We’d like to keep our eyes on Mimimiru, one of many interesting wearable tech startups here in Japan.
See the original article in Japanese Tokyo-based startup Shiroyagi Corporation recently launched a news curation app called Kamelio. Here in Japan the competition between mobile news apps is heating up lately, and this is just the latest of entry. Similar services include Gunosy, SmartNews, NewsPicks, and Line News. Shiroyagi Corporation was previously chosen to participate in Movida Japan’s accelerator program, on Demo Day pitching their app under the name of Bizlio. Can Kamelio survive this competitive news app landscape in Japan? Let’s take a look at the application. Topics and timelines After login, the app asks you to type a keyword that you are interested in, and then related topics appear as well. When you choose a topic, you’ll see a preview news items around that theme. Topics are based on Wikipedia, and in total the app crawls amounts over 4000 news/media sites. On the preview page, you can follow a topic via the follow button in the upper right. You can keep following topics by typing other keywords or tapping on related topics. Trendy topics will be shown with the red “trending” mark, so you can what’s popular in real time. Another remarkable feature of this app is its…
Tokyo-based startup Shiroyagi Corporation recently launched a news curation app called Kamelio. Here in Japan the competition between mobile news apps is heating up lately, and this is just the latest of entry. Similar services include Gunosy, SmartNews, NewsPicks, and Line News.
Shiroyagi Corporation was previously chosen to participate in Movida Japan’s accelerator program, on Demo Day pitching their app under the name of Bizlio. Can Kamelio survive this competitive news app landscape in Japan? Let’s take a look at the application.
Topics and timelines
After login, the app asks you to type a keyword that you are interested in, and then related topics appear as well. When you choose a topic, you’ll see a preview news items around that theme.
Topics are based on Wikipedia, and in total the app crawls amounts over 4000 news/media sites.
On the preview page, you can follow a topic via the follow button in the upper right. You can keep following topics by typing other keywords or tapping on related topics. Trendy topics will be shown with the red “trending” mark, so you can what’s popular in real time.
Another remarkable feature of this app is its timeline. Each news article has a timeline in the upper right, and when you tap it, other related articles will appear in chronological order.
Serving user interest
The chief scientist at Shiroyagi Corporation, Akira Shibata, tells us that the potential of Kamelio lies in its ability to present what users are unaware of:
We are often unaware of what we are really interested in. With Kamelio, we’d like to help users find information about their interests. If a user likes music, he’ll be reminded when his favorite artist releases a new song. A user can keep up with a topic that interests him even when he doesn’t follow a certain media.
The early pioneer in mobile news curation in Japan is Gunosy, which goes beyond being just a news service. It matches individual users and information, and the company is now running a successful ad network.
Kamelio has the same potential as well. But the startup is behind the other major competitors. No matter how developed their recommendation system or algorithm are, if the app isn’t accepted by enough users, the business can’t move forward.
Stay tuned to this space, because it’s only going to get more interesting!
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Smart Education, a developer of educational mobile apps for kids, announced yesterday that it has raised 550 million yen (approximately $5.4 million) from CyberAgent and Infinity Venture Partners. This follows their previous funding worth 75.3 million yen (approximately $750,000) from Shinsei Corporate Investment secured back in May of last year. CyberAgent also invested in the startup’s series B round back in April of last year. Fujita Fund is an investment initiative by CyberAgent, its name derived from the company’s CEO Susumu Fujita. It’s focused is on mid/late-stage startups in Japan. This contrasts with their investment arm CyberAgent Ventures, focused on early-stage startups all across Asia. Regarding this funding, Smart Education’s CEO Daigo Ikeya explains: When looking at our users, we found characteristics very close to those of Ameba users (CyberAgent’s blog platform). So we thought that partnering with CyberAgent could create a synergistic relationship in the future. But more importantly, this partnership lets us benefit from the advice of CyberAgent. Ikeya previously worked at CA Mobile, a mobile app development arm at CyberAgent. He told us how Fujita got involved in this investment: I think their investment was possible because of Fujita’s decision….
Tokyo-based Smart Education, a developer of educational mobile apps for kids, announced yesterday that it has raised 550 million yen (approximately $5.4 million) from CyberAgent and Infinity Venture Partners. This follows their previous funding worth 75.3 million yen (approximately $750,000) from Shinsei Corporate Investment secured back in May of last year. CyberAgent also invested in the startup’s series B round back in April of last year.
Fujita Fund is an investment initiative by CyberAgent, its name derived from the company’s CEO Susumu Fujita. It’s focused is on mid/late-stage startups in Japan. This contrasts with their investment arm CyberAgent Ventures, focused on early-stage startups all across Asia.
Regarding this funding, Smart Education’s CEO Daigo Ikeya explains:
When looking at our users, we found characteristics very close to those of Ameba users (CyberAgent’s blog platform). So we thought that partnering with CyberAgent could create a synergistic relationship in the future. But more importantly, this partnership lets us benefit from the advice of CyberAgent.
Ikeya previously worked at CA Mobile, a mobile app development arm at CyberAgent. He told us how Fujita got involved in this investment:
I think their investment was possible because of Fujita’s decision. Our business sector is not bad but it can’t make a bunch of money. It may require some time to reach any successful milestone, but he has been encouraging us to keep going, saying that the sector will grow enormously in five to ten years.
Our readers may recall the company has been launching a new app and is working on global expansion. Their apps are showing good numbers in terms of overseas user acquisition. They have surpassed 6.4 million total downloads and will reach 7 million very shortly. The company expects to reach 10 million downloads, with an eventual domestic/international ratio of 50/50.
It has been said that our apps are designed to suit Japanese preferences, and have been not accepted in the overseas markets. But our Gocco brand targets the global audience, and has been seeing good results. If we can keep going at this pace, we may catch up with other developers in this space, such as Sweden’s Toca Boca. Their apps are currently making money through in-app purchases, but they plan to shift it to a monthly, subscription-based system, as they do with their apps targeting the Japanese domestic market, which may contribute to more rapid growth in downloads as well as revenue.
Smart Education is doing more than just developing apps. They are also making an effort to suggest the appropriate usage of apps for infants, based on discussions with high profile people in the educational industry. Ikeya explains:
When you become a parent for the first time, you may not quite know how to take care of your baby, or feel a little uneasy. We are building a resource website for such people, especially for those who are a little confused about what to do.
The company recently announced that their educational app Oyako de Smahon (literally, “smartphone app for parents and kids”) will be adopted at 250 nurseries in Japan. They want to make people use their apps as they would an illustrated book. Ikeya explains:
By sorting out a curriculum focused on digital creation, and giving kids opportunities to learn through picture-drawing apps, we expect to help kids create something by taking advantage of IT skills.
If kids draw and share their pictures, it can break language barriers and may even start interactions with people in different countries. Ikeya adds:
There’s no border for such communication. We expect kids to experience this concept in their childhood, and we would like to help them grow as cosmopolitan-minded people through our business.
Smart Eduction will spend this year creating manuals for their curriculum, followed by the launch of a full-scale service next year.
See the original story in Japanese. It was announced yesterday that Keio Media Design’s [1] indie film portal site, Node, will tie up with Singapore-based Viddsee, an online movie shorts startup. You may remember that Viddsee raised $40,000 from ACE Singapore back in November of 2013 [2]. Node has been introducing films online with the goal of helping independent directors. Through this partnership, Node will set up a Japan-focused channel called Node Japan on Viddsee, showing Japanese indie films to a global audience, with English subtitles added. As we write this, the following four titles are available with more to be added later: Tales from the Cottage (by Takafumi Tachibana) A Flower in a Part (by Asami Tomatsuri) A Treasure (by Yuki Yamaguchi) Rootless Heart (by Toshiko Hata) Node was initially launched back in July of 2013 to create value through connecting people and groups. Viddsee was launched in March of 2013 by Singaporean entrepreneurs Ho Jia Jian and Derek Tan to give people a better chance to access to short films from Asia. While most established directors can show their works at the many movie festivals worldwide and through other distribution channels, opportunities for new directors are limited. Even if…
It was announced yesterday that Keio Media Design’s[1] indie film portal site, Node, will tie up with Singapore-based Viddsee, an online movie shorts startup. You may remember that Viddsee raised $40,000 from ACE Singapore back in November of 2013 [2].
Node has been introducing films online with the goal of helping independent directors. Through this partnership, Node will set up a Japan-focused channel called Node Japan on Viddsee, showing Japanese indie films to a global audience, with English subtitles added. As we write this, the following four titles are available with more to be added later:
Tales from the Cottage (by Takafumi Tachibana)
A Flower in a Part (by Asami Tomatsuri)
A Treasure (by Yuki Yamaguchi)
Rootless Heart (by Toshiko Hata)
Node was initially launched back in July of 2013 to create value through connecting people and groups. Viddsee was launched in March of 2013 by Singaporean entrepreneurs Ho Jia Jian and Derek Tan to give people a better chance to access to short films from Asia.
While most established directors can show their works at the many movie festivals worldwide and through other distribution channels, opportunities for new directors are limited. Even if a film is focused on a very niche topic, this partnership can help it reach an interested global audience.
Some of our readers may recall Singapore’s video streaming website Viki was acquired by Rakuten for $200 million back last September. As both wired and mobile broadband internet are rapidly developing in Asia, viewing professional content on the internet is becoming a viable entertainment option for people as an alternative to conventional broadcasting.
KMD’s ‘Node’
Keio Media Design is the graduate school of Media Design, Keio University. ↩
Action Community for Entrepreneurship is a state-run entrepreneurship encouragement initiative in Singapore. ↩
Junya Mori
Takeshi Hirano
Masaru Ikeda
When you develop a minimum viable product, you can get both positive and negative feedback from the community. Taking that feedback into account, and continuing development in a constructive manner is important.
Shintaro Eguchi
