See the original story in Japanese. Japanese “owned media” marketing company Somewrite fundraised 120 million yen (about $1.1 million) from Gree Ventures and other undisclosed investors. In May of 2013, Somewrite won the fifth batch of Incubate Camp, an intensive two-day business development program for entrepreneurs organized by Japan’s Incubate Fund. In July of 2014, the company announced a set of comprehensive “owned media” marketing services called Somewrite Networks, which provides content marketing, owned media distribution, and native advertising platform services. Somewrite Ad, the company’s native advertising network platform, picks up advertorial articles from owned media sites and distributes them to other partnering news media sites as a native ad so that these articles match the form with other regular articles in which they are placed. The platform has a tracking engine which learns the preference of users in real time. In a response to our request for comment upon this funding, Somewrite’s CEO Yasunari Shibata said: Because our Somewrite Ad service has been seeing good growth, we’ll be more focused on the ad network business. We’ve been running this on a test basis to date, but we’ll be shifting to a full-scale service from the middle of this month….
Japanese “owned media” marketing company Somewrite fundraised 120 million yen (about $1.1 million) from Gree Ventures and other undisclosed investors.
In May of 2013, Somewrite won the fifth batch of Incubate Camp, an intensive two-day business development program for entrepreneurs organized by Japan’s Incubate Fund. In July of 2014, the company announced a set of comprehensive “owned media” marketing services called Somewrite Networks, which provides content marketing, owned media distribution, and native advertising platform services.
Somewrite Ad, the company’s native advertising network platform, picks up advertorial articles from owned media sites and distributes them to other partnering news media sites as a native ad so that these articles match the form with other regular articles in which they are placed. The platform has a tracking engine which learns the preference of users in real time.
In a response to our request for comment upon this funding, Somewrite’s CEO Yasunari Shibata said:
Because our Somewrite Ad service has been seeing good growth, we’ll be more focused on the ad network business. We’ve been running this on a test basis to date, but we’ll be shifting to a full-scale service from the middle of this month.
They will use the funds to fulfill their management base as well as to strengthen system development and marketing expansion, in addition to hiring more people.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based TransLimit, the startup that develops social quiz app BrainWars, announced on Thursday that it has fundraised 300 million yen (approximately $2.8 million) form Line Ventures, United, East Ventures, Skyland Ventures, and Genuine Startups. Line Ventures is a subsidiary of messaging company Line, focused on managing a $10 million investment fund called ‘Line Game Global Gateway.’ After start-up in August, the fund has already invested in Japanese gaming company Gumi as its first portfolio company. See also: Japanese startup Translimit raises $100,000 to launch social quiz app Japanese startup launches social quiz app ‘BrainWars’ Japanese quiz app BrainWars ranks in the app store top charts As for BrainWars, during the five months following its launch on May 14, over 3 million downloads of the app from across the world have taken place. Coinciding with this announcement, TransLimit secured a partnership with Line and will “line up” a new game title using the Line user base. The gaming company also unveiled a planned development of a smartphone media business with United, another investor in this round.
Tokyo-based TransLimit, the startup that develops social quiz app BrainWars, announced on Thursday that it has fundraised 300 million yen (approximately $2.8 million) form Line Ventures, United, East Ventures, Skyland Ventures, and Genuine Startups. Line Ventures is a subsidiary of messaging company Line, focused on managing a $10 million investment fund called ‘Line Game Global Gateway.’ After start-up in August, the fund has already invested in Japanese gaming company Gumi as its first portfolio company.
As for BrainWars, during the five months following its launch on May 14, over 3 million downloads of the app from across the world have taken place.
Coinciding with this announcement, TransLimit secured a partnership with Line and will “line up” a new game title using the Line user base. The gaming company also unveiled a planned development of a smartphone media business with United, another investor in this round.
Line’s CSMO Jun Masda unveils their investment in Translimit at Line Conference Tokyo 2014.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Uluru, the startup behind crowdsourcing platform using housewives called Shufti, recently announced that it has fundraised 630 million yen (about $5.8 million) from Japanese VC firm Nissay Capital and wedding-related buzz marketing site Minnano Wedding. Uluru started its business providing business process outsourcing services in 2001, and subsequently launched crowdsourcing platform Shufti in 2007. The platform has acquired over 76,000 users to date. The company plans to use the funds to enhance human resources for further development and management of crowdsourcing business. Shufti was one of the oldest platforms of this kind. While they launched the platform in 2007, there were another several crowdsourcing services launched in Japan at that time, such as Lancers and C-team. So they started the crowdsourcing platform almost five years before Crowdworks, one of the most popular services in this space. According to Uluru’s vice president Yuhei Okeyama, the company still generates its primary revenue stream from their outsourcing services rather than the Shufti platform. They have a database called NJSS, showcasing tendering opportunities from governmental organizations around the country for their outsourcing needs; this DB has acquired nearly 1,500 corporate users to date and account for 60% or 70% of the market share. To…
Tokyo-based Uluru, the startup behind crowdsourcing platform using housewives called Shufti, recently announced that it has fundraised 630 million yen (about $5.8 million) from Japanese VC firm Nissay Capital and wedding-related buzz marketing site Minnano Wedding.
Uluru started its business providing business process outsourcing services in 2001, and subsequently launched crowdsourcing platform Shufti in 2007. The platform has acquired over 76,000 users to date. The company plans to use the funds to enhance human resources for further development and management of crowdsourcing business.
Shufti was one of the oldest platforms of this kind. While they launched the platform in 2007, there were another several crowdsourcing services launched in Japan at that time, such as Lancers and C-team. So they started the crowdsourcing platform almost five years before Crowdworks, one of the most popular services in this space.
According to Uluru’s vice president Yuhei Okeyama, the company still generates its primary revenue stream from their outsourcing services rather than the Shufti platform. They have a database called NJSS, showcasing tendering opportunities from governmental organizations around the country for their outsourcing needs; this DB has acquired nearly 1,500 corporate users to date and account for 60% or 70% of the market share.
To collect tender announcements from local governments, Uluru has been sending their people to governmental offices around the country. Hearing from Okeyama, we found that they have been using crowdsourced forces from Shufti to collect these announcements to build up the NJSS database.
Many of crowdsourced workers on the Shufti platform are married women. So it will be easy for the aforementioned buzz site Minnano Wedding to find synergy by driving potential users to the Shufti platform.
See the original story in Japanese. Yasuhiro Horiuchi, an evangelist at Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Japan, recently stepped down; it has been said that many startups or companies have been keen to invite him into their boards. It was unveiled at an AWS user group event last night that he will join Japanese fintech startup Money Forward as a technical advisor. Horiuchi is also known as the former CTO of Japanese game developer Gumi. According to those in the know, he will not join them on a full-time basis. Yet his move is seen impacting future trends in careers of engineers in the Japanese startup scene, with fintech startups in particular gaining greater attention from now on. Born in 1978, Horiuchi joined teleconferencing solution company V-cube after graduating from Keio University. In 2005, he was involved in developing a video sharing site called Flipclip (shut down in 2012), then later joined Gumi and served as CTO.
Yasuhiro Horiuchi, an evangelist at Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Japan, recently stepped down; it has been said that many startups or companies have been keen to invite him into their boards. It was unveiled at an AWS user group event last night that he will join Japanese fintech startup Money Forward as a technical advisor. Horiuchi is also known as the former CTO of Japanese game developer Gumi.
According to those in the know, he will not join them on a full-time basis. Yet his move is seen impacting future trends in careers of engineers in the Japanese startup scene, with fintech startups in particular gaining greater attention from now on.
Born in 1978, Horiuchi joined teleconferencing solution company V-cube after graduating from Keio University. In 2005, he was involved in developing a video sharing site called Flipclip (shut down in 2012), then later joined Gumi and served as CTO.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based incubator Samurai Incubate held its periodical startup showcase event called Samurai Venture Summit Vol. 10 at the Microsoft Japan headquarters in Tokyo last week. Despite the fact that there were a number of startup events like SF Japan Night and the Infogr.am meetup taking place on the same day, it seemed they had a larger crowd of attendees than past editions of the event. Let’s have a quick rundown of some interesting teams showcased as always. Virtual mountain climbing by Yama Reco Yama Reco is an online community for mountain-climbing afficianados. They showcased what is called a virtual mountain-climbing system using a head-mounted display. Their users have collected and shared 360-degree pictures online of shots from famous mountaintops. So if you download any of these image data from the website, you can virtually experience the feeling when you take in the vista from the top of these mountains. Because their photos are limited only to ones from the top, it is unlikely to be called virtual mountain-climbing. If they can collect sequential pictures on the way to the top in the way similar to Google StreetView, it may provide a more realistic virtual experience using a head-mounted display as well as an exercise machine. Zugyuuun! There are some companies…
Tokyo-based incubator Samurai Incubate held its periodical startup showcase event called Samurai Venture Summit Vol. 10 at the Microsoft Japan headquarters in Tokyo last week. Despite the fact that there were a number of startup events like SF Japan Night and the Infogr.am meetup taking place on the same day, it seemed they had a larger crowd of attendees than past editions of the event.
Let’s have a quick rundown of some interesting teams showcased as always.
Virtual mountain climbing by Yama Reco
Yama Reco is an online community for mountain-climbing afficianados. They showcased what is called a virtual mountain-climbing system using a head-mounted display. Their users have collected and shared 360-degree pictures online of shots from famous mountaintops. So if you download any of these image data from the website, you can virtually experience the feeling when you take in the vista from the top of these mountains.
Because their photos are limited only to ones from the top, it is unlikely to be called virtual mountain-climbing. If they can collect sequential pictures on the way to the top in the way similar to Google StreetView, it may provide a more realistic virtual experience using a head-mounted display as well as an exercise machine.
Unclear because this captured the screen of a head-mounted display. But you can see Mt. Fuji far off over multiple ridges in this frame.
Zugyuuun!
There are some companies that want to allow people to develop ‘connected’ hardware products with software engineering skills only. Some of these examples include Berg in London and Connect Free in Kyoto. Zugyuun is also pursuing the potential that helps people develop hardware products as easily as possible.
Raspberry Pi is used as a platform, and you can use it by inserting an SD card having the company’s operating system Zugyuuun OS. You can write source codes in HTML or JavaScript to command the device, which has to be stored in a repository like GitHub in advance. When you start up your hardware product, it will connect to your Zugyuuun account and operate in accordance with your source codes.
There may be some concerns about security and operational stability. In fact, the Zugyuuun team had been struggling to stabilize the internet connectivity for their demonstration because their booth was located on a very high floor which makes it difficult to catch cellphone signals. But it is certain that their solution lowers technical barriers in making ‘connected’ hardware products. Even elementary school students can develop something using this for their holiday research projects.
Astero
We featured a Korean startup called Notivo in our Japanese edition before, which was showcased at Korea’s annual startup competition beLAUNCH 2014. It is a mobile app that notifies you about updates or alerts if you register topics you wouldn’t like to miss out such as flash sales, flight delays, ticket sales start and suchlike.
The concept of Astero is very similar to that of Notivo. The app’s engine keeps scouring multiple news source websites or monitoring updates via APIs so that it would let you know as soon as any event you want to know happens.
Scuel
Photo courtesy: Moneyless Hareyama
Scuel is an online database of medical organizations and pharmacies launched in early September. In addition to providing iOS and Android apps, it publicizes an API so that third-party developers can create their information services using the Scuel database. It has partnered with Japanese medical news site CareNet, fitness club operator Renascence, Goo Healthcare, disabled jobseekers’ community Welbe, atopic dermatitis patients’ community Untikle, poop-logging app Unlog and kidney disease patients’ community Jinlab.
I often keep my eyes on the intensity of information about medical organizations in the world for my own business reasons. We are lucky to have easy access to this kind of information in Japan because there’s no list or phone directory of medical organizations in some countries. However, even in Japan, some resources are not up-to-date or provide no semantic information. So it will be interesting to see how they set up a hub and provide medical information in a form that people can use easily.
KiSSonix
KiSSonix is a sound-encoding service that lets you experience a 3D sound effect with only two speakers. When you record sounds, you don’t require stereo or surround recordings. Their technology is compatible with two of any type of speakers from any brands.
If you give them your sound, they will encode it and give you back the output in 3D. Their booth staff said, “Your brain will play a decoder role in understanding the encoded sound when you listen to it.”
While Occulus-like head-mounted display products or smart glasses devices are trendy, there will be increased needs for technologies to enable 3D hearing. I forgot to ask them whether or not it’s possible but if their technology does it may have a great potential in application since it will enable live encoding that lets you hear a sound in accordance with the direction you are headed.
See the original story in Japanese. Finland’s annual startup conference Slush held a pitch competition for a number of startups at the Goodpatch office in Tokyo on Friday. CAPTCHA startup Capy won first prize and advances to Slush 2014 to be held in Helsinki, Finland, on November 18 and 19. (These dates incidentally coincide with TechCrunch Tokyo). Capy is a Delaware-registered and Tokyo-based startup that is developing an alternative security technology to replace CAPTCHA. The company was recently selected by Microsoft Ventures as one of 11 startups that will join its fifth batch of incubation program in Tel Aviv, Israel. They also attended last year’s Slush preliminary competition in Tokyo. See also: Capy offers text-free, mobile-friendly captchas Here is a quick rundown of the pitch competition. Yocondo Yocondo is a semantic product search engine that helps users find products when they do not quite know what they are looking for. For instance, a user can find a product by entering a phrase like “gift for girlfriend.” Okuyuki Okuyuki is a crowdfunding platform focused on 3D printing of character figures. (See also: Japanese service brings manga characters to life with 3D printing) Navvi (a project by Rosette Research) Navvi is a…
Click to enlarge. (photo courtesy: Boris Friedrich Milkowski, Goodpatch)
Finland’s annual startup conference Slush held a pitch competition for a number of startups at the Goodpatch office in Tokyo on Friday. CAPTCHA startup Capy won first prize and advances to Slush 2014 to be held in Helsinki, Finland, on November 18 and 19. (These dates incidentally coincide with TechCrunch Tokyo).
Capy is a Delaware-registered and Tokyo-based startup that is developing an alternative security technology to replace CAPTCHA. The company was recently selected by Microsoft Ventures as one of 11 startups that will join its fifth batch of incubation program in Tel Aviv, Israel. They also attended last year’s Slush preliminary competition in Tokyo.
Yocondo
Yocondo is a semantic product search engine that helps users find products when they do not quite know what they are looking for. For instance, a user can find a product by entering a phrase like “gift for girlfriend.”
Navvi (a project by Rosette Research)
Navvi is a navigation platform for those who can read maps. Instead of presenting a map image, this app guides users by showing arrow signs in 3D over an actual image through a smartphone camera so that a user will be able to reach their destination without getting lost.
Anicool
Anicool is an anime production-focused crowdfunding platform. It is available in Japanese, Chinese, English, French, and Korean. Campaign backers can watch outcomes from their supporting projects via DVD or online. Anipipo is a competitor.
Mobingi
Mobingi is an automated cloud environment set-up tool that allows users to create and launch a server instance on Amazon Web Services with just three mouse clicks.
Matcha Latte Media
Matcha Latte Media delivers Japanese culture to global consumers. As the first of these efforts, this startup launched an e-commerce marketplace called Yunomi.us that gives the global tea market access to Japanese tea producers and farmers.
(photo courtesy: Boris Friedrich Milkowski, Goodpatch)
See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s Goodpatch has been providing rapid prototyping tool Prott in beta since April, but it was officially launched on Wednesday. Coinciding with this, they introduced an iOS app for prototyping as well as existing web apps for Macintosh and Windows. This newly introduced version is integrated with internal communication tools such as Slack and Hipchat, which allows the sharing of updates on prototyping using the Prott app in an engineering team. Goodpatch also announced that the Prott app has been adopted by global design consulting firm Ideo, Yahoo Japan, DeNA for their internal app development. See also: Tokyo Office Tour: At new office, Goodpatch preparing official launch of prototyping tool Upon the official launch, Goodpatch also unveiled pricing plans for Prott. The price is determined by the number of prototyping projects a user has developed using the platform; one project is free, three projects cost $14 yen a month (Starter plan), unlimited projects costs $25 yen a month (Pro plan), and $99 yen a month (Team plan). According to Goodpatch founder and CEO Naofumi Tsuchiya, Prott has acquired about 7,000 users in about eight months since the launch of its beta version. Taiwan-based Pop,…
Japan’s Goodpatch has been providing rapid prototyping tool Prott in beta since April, but it was officially launched on Wednesday. Coinciding with this, they introduced an iOS app for prototyping as well as existing web apps for Macintosh and Windows. This newly introduced version is integrated with internal communication tools such as Slack and Hipchat, which allows the sharing of updates on prototyping using the Prott app in an engineering team.
Goodpatch also announced that the Prott app has been adopted by global design consulting firm Ideo, Yahoo Japan, DeNA for their internal app development.
Upon the official launch, Goodpatch also unveiled pricing plans for Prott. The price is determined by the number of prototyping projects a user has developed using the platform; one project is free, three projects cost $14 yen a month (Starter plan), unlimited projects costs $25 yen a month (Pro plan), and $99 yen a month (Team plan).
Prott iOS app
According to Goodpatch founder and CEO Naofumi Tsuchiya, Prott has acquired about 7,000 users in about eight months since the launch of its beta version. Taiwan-based Pop, a competitor, has acquired about 300,000 users in two years since its launch in late 2012. Prott’s figure shows a good start because Goodpatch has not done any promotion.
In the global trends in this space, US-based popular prototyping tool Invision has fundraised about $35 million in total, as well as Axure, US-based wireframe tool for enterprise users, is generating about $200 million annual revenue, so there is huge potential in this market.
Tsuchiya explained the Prott app advantages:
Anyone can start using Prott without preliminary knowledge, which is obviously our strength. Users tell us they love Prott because they can start prototyping in a few seconds after using the app for the first time.
Tsuchiya outlined his growth strategy:
We can develop more services beyond the prototyping tool. But we are not interested in integrating Prott with other crowdsourced platforms because crowdsourcing may cause decreased wages for skilled designers. Nevertheless we may create an online community that matches idea owners with developers because the Prott app allows idea owners to present their ideas about an app regardless of whether they have any engineering skills or not. App developers can leverage outcomes from the platform to hire new people by presenting images of services they want to create.
Goodpatch sets UX/UI design as their core competence and aims to launch more services in this space. With loyal support from the startup and app developer community, the company is aiming for an IPO in the near future.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based SmartNews, the startup behind curated news reader app SmartNews, launched app version 2.0 in Japan and the US on Thursday, and is available on the AppStore and GooglePlay in both countries. The new version includes an interface for readers in the US that allows the changing of app settings to US mode so that users can to check trending news updates in the US. It also supports the iOS Widgets feature and allows users to see headlines in the Notification Center of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. The app’s US mode interface inherits user interfaces and features that Japanese users have been endorsing, but it has also rolled out improvements based on a user test in the US. Upon the launch in the US, SmartNews has partnered with several US-based news media such as Re/Code, The Verge, and Quarz. They aim to partner with more media companies in the US. SmartNews fundraised 35 million yen in August, and subsequently appointed former Conde Nast business development director Bernie Davis as media partner relation head, former Williamson-Dickie Japan vice president Yohei Matsuoka as marketing head, and former Huffington Post Japan editor-in-chief Shigeki Matsuura as…
Tokyo-based SmartNews, the startup behind curated news reader app SmartNews, launched app version 2.0 in Japan and the US on Thursday, and is available on the AppStore and GooglePlay in both countries.
The new version includes an interface for readers in the US that allows the changing of app settings to US mode so that users can to check trending news updates in the US. It also supports the iOS Widgets feature and allows users to see headlines in the Notification Center of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
The app’s US mode interface inherits user interfaces and features that Japanese users have been endorsing, but it has also rolled out improvements based on a user test in the US. Upon the launch in the US, SmartNews has partnered with several US-based news media such as Re/Code, The Verge, and Quarz. They aim to partner with more media companies in the US.
Ring is a device worn on a finger that gives users the ability to control and interact with other devices. Logbar, the company behind the device, announced that it will start shipping the Ring on October 9. See also: As Ring meets its Kickstarter goal, we wonder — Is it just vaporware? How does Ring actually work? The company attracted some $880,000 in funding from more than 5,000 backers via a Kickstarter campaign. They had planned to start shipping the device in July, but postponed the date to August. The schedule was postponed once again to September as they changed the device’s design and added a button. The company’s e-mail to the Kickstarter campaign backers on September 29 states that the shipping date is now set for October 9. However, the date is the actual shipping day, so the Ring will probably reach the backers’ fingers by late October. via DMM.make
Ring is a device worn on a finger that gives users the ability to control and interact with other devices. Logbar, the company behind the device, announced that it will start shipping the Ring on October 9.
The company attracted some $880,000 in funding from more than 5,000 backers via a Kickstarter campaign. They had planned to start shipping the device in July, but postponed the date to August. The schedule was postponed once again to September as they changed the device’s design and added a button.
The company’s e-mail to the Kickstarter campaign backers on September 29 states that the shipping date is now set for October 9. However, the date is the actual shipping day, so the Ring will probably reach the backers’ fingers by late October.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation platform Conyac, unveiled a new translation platform called Conyac Front in beta last week. The platform allows website owners to turn their sites into multilingual versions using crowdsourced translation forces. The fee includes a hosting charge (about $100 a month for each language), a translation charge, and other optional charges when needed. The company is inviting monitor users, where up to 20 companies can use the new platform without paying translation and optional charges until December. Anydoor CEO Naoki Yamada says they will start charging for the service next January. Conyac Front helps companies develop multilingual websites. The localization process, including translation, usually requires a massive workload, where the most difficult part is selecting correct words in translation. We also have the English version, and we know the word picking process in translation for delivering right context is quite difficult. We have to see if translation results are naturally expressed for native speakers and terminology is also common to many people in the industry. So we understand that many startups postponed launching multilingual websites despite the fact that they have typically announced their global expansion. How will…
Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation platform Conyac, unveiled a new translation platform called Conyac Front in beta last week. The platform allows website owners to turn their sites into multilingual versions using crowdsourced translation forces.
The fee includes a hosting charge (about $100 a month for each language), a translation charge, and other optional charges when needed. The company is inviting monitor users, where up to 20 companies can use the new platform without paying translation and optional charges until December. Anydoor CEO Naoki Yamada says they will start charging for the service next January.
Conyac Front helps companies develop multilingual websites. The localization process, including translation, usually requires a massive workload, where the most difficult part is selecting correct words in translation.
We also have the English version, and we know the word picking process in translation for delivering right context is quite difficult. We have to see if translation results are naturally expressed for native speakers and terminology is also common to many people in the industry. So we understand that many startups postponed launching multilingual websites despite the fact that they have typically announced their global expansion.
How will the new platform solve this problem? Yamada said that the platform enables the translation of websites dynamically using a proxy server. Conyac Front crawls a website and lists an index of webpages. Website owners can point to the part that is common across these webpages (such as menu or site description) and order a translation.
Website owners do not need to build a multilingual interface. When a user visits a website, the platform will detect their access location. If the access is from outside your language region, the platform will transfer the access to a proxy server and show translated results.
Translated results will be dynamically updated, which will allow website owners to adopt the platform even for websites using content management systems such as WordPress. But the company says that some membership-based websites, which typically require a user login process or a paywall, may not work properly in transferring user access to the proxy server.
The platform is more suited for translating corporate websites rather than news websites like The Bridge, where content is not often updated and very few technical terms are used.
Junya Mori
Takeshi Hirano
Masaru Ikeda
Yuki Kai
