See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Compath.me, the startup behind family photo sharing platform Kiddy, announced today that it has raised 50 million yen (about $492,000) from Japanese internet company United. The company was originally launched back in 2011, graduating from Tokyo-based startup incubator Open Network Lab. This latest news follows its previous seed funding from DG Incubation, Architype, and Netprice.com [1]. Low birth rate, high potential business The company launched its photo sharing platform in December of 2012, and subsequently started printing and delivering photo postcards and photobooks last year. So far Kiddy has acquired 50,000 households (or families) as users and over 3 million photo and comment entries on the platform. The company’s founder and CEO Hiromichi Ando explained a little more about the funding this time around: Our service allows users to deliver printed postcards or photobooks to as many as three different locations. We learned that many customers chose three locations, typically printing photos of their children and delivering them to both sets of grandparents. As for the photobooks, we are providing a premium version (3,100 yen per photo book, excluding shipping) using silver-halide prints in addition to the lower priced offering (1,550 yen per…
Tokyo-based Compath.me, the startup behind family photo sharing platform Kiddy, announced today that it has raised 50 million yen (about $492,000) from Japanese internet company United.
The company was originally launched back in 2011, graduating from Tokyo-based startup incubator Open Network Lab. This latest news follows its previous seed funding from DG Incubation, Architype, and Netprice.com[1].
Low birth rate, high potential business
The company launched its photo sharing platform in December of 2012, and subsequently started printing and delivering photo postcards and photobooks last year. So far Kiddy has acquired 50,000 households (or families) as users and over 3 million photo and comment entries on the platform. The company’s founder and CEO Hiromichi Ando explained a little more about the funding this time around:
CEO Hiromichi Ando
Our service allows users to deliver printed postcards or photobooks to as many as three different locations. We learned that many customers chose three locations, typically printing photos of their children and delivering them to both sets of grandparents. As for the photobooks, we are providing a premium version (3,100 yen per photo book, excluding shipping) using silver-halide prints in addition to the lower priced offering (1,550 yen per book). The premium option is costly, but it’s selling well. Grandparents want to see how their grandchildren are growing even if they live far away. This motivation helps us increase our sales per customer.
In a low-birth rate society like Japan, it is said that every child has six money streams, if you count parents and grandparents. This concept helps the company be more profitable despite the fact that its user base is not as much as is typically needed for monetization.
Becoming an information platform
The startup intends to shift its platform from family photo storage to a comprehensive information platform where users learn what others family members are doing in their daily lives. Ando explained:
Three or four family members are typically connected to each other on our platform. A couple may divorce or remarry after having their child, so we’ll add a feature that allows users to control privacy about their photo or messages.
He plans to use these latest funds to hire new people and enhance the platform’s features. They are currently a four-person team, but they’ll add a COO and several engineers to accelerate system development efforts.
Global expansion
So far the company has about 20% of users, or about 10,000 families, accessing Kiddy from outside Japan. Considering this demand, they have to think about the internationalization of the platform. Ando explained how they will address the problem:
International shipping has been available only for postcards but not for our photo album products. But considering that as many as 20% of users are from outside Japan, we asked our printing and shipping companies to enable international shipping of photo album products, starting in the first week of June. Shipping charges will be higher than domestic delivery, but I think there’s a huge demand from users out there.
The service is currently available in English and Japanese. But in order to better serve its global user base, they will add French and German interfaces this July. The company has already exhibited and presented at several startup conferences in Europe, such as LeWeb in Paris and WebSummit in Dublin. Ando feels that these promotional activities has helped them build brand awareness in those regions.
In this space we’ve already seen many competitors, including Kazoc, Nicori, BabyDays, Ikumemo, and Wellnote (See this article for details). But Kiddy fares better than these competitors on the App Store in terms of number of reviews and average rating.
Moving forward Kiddy will focus on improving user satisfaction, with the end goal of having the top market share in Japan and the rest of the world. They hope to surpass a million households worldwide by the end of 2015.
Open Network Lab is the incubation arm of Japanese internet company Digital Garage. DG Incubation is the startup-focused investment arm of Digital Garage. The investment arm of NetPrice.com has been rebranded to Beenos. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. Last week I had a chance to visit Bangkok on the way back from an IT conference in Phuket. And while it’s hard to focus on startups and entrepreneurships during a time of political crisis, I decided to push on and speak with some local leaders in the tech space while I was there. Thailand is, of course, a country to be reckoned with when discussing global social media trends. The market has a great impact on the industry as a whole, with the country representing the world’s second largest user base of the Line messaging app. Many foreign entrepreneurs, including Japanese ones, have launched startups right here. BuzzCommerce’s Shinsuke Wakai is one of these entrepreneurs. For over ten years, he has been working with local people and businesses in Bangkok. He launched a cosmetics-focused buzz media site called Cosmenet four years ago, and has assisted cosmetics brands from the West, Thailand, and Japan market their products among local consumers. Cosmenet is very much Thailand’s answer to @Cosme, the Japanese cosmetics online giant. Brands in the cosmetics industry have been heavily dependent on mass media (e.g. TV commercials and magazines) for their promotional activities….
Last week I had a chance to visit Bangkok on the way back from an IT conference in Phuket. And while it’s hard to focus on startups and entrepreneurships during a time of political crisis, I decided to push on and speak with some local leaders in the tech space while I was there. Thailand is, of course, a country to be reckoned with when discussing global social media trends. The market has a great impact on the industry as a whole, with the country representing the world’s second largest user base of the Line messaging app. Many foreign entrepreneurs, including Japanese ones, have launched startups right here. BuzzCommerce’s Shinsuke Wakai is one of these entrepreneurs.
Cosmenet
For over ten years, he has been working with local people and businesses in Bangkok. He launched a cosmetics-focused buzz media site called Cosmenet four years ago, and has assisted cosmetics brands from the West, Thailand, and Japan market their products among local consumers. Cosmenet is very much Thailand’s answer to @Cosme, the Japanese cosmetics online giant.
Brands in the cosmetics industry have been heavily dependent on mass media (e.g. TV commercials and magazines) for their promotional activities. But many have turned to Cosmenet as a means to reach out to potential customers in a more efficient way. Wakai feels that a media site should provide a neutral perspective to readers, so he has refrained from selling cosmetics on Cosmenet. But since many of the products introduced on the site are difficult to purchase in the city, his team has been receiving frequent inquiries about where to buy them.
So Wakai decided to develop an e-commerce site specifically focused on selling cosmetics from outside Thailand to young local women. It’s called BuzzCommerce. When you import and sell cosmetics, you typically are required to get approval from the food and drug administration in that country — and as you might expect, that takes time. But Wakai’s partner has helped a Japanese drug store chain import products to Thailand, so she is quite good at the requisite paper work, and that has accelerated their business’s launch.
In Thailand, we’ve already seen several notable e-commerce sites like Tarad (by Rakuten) and WeLoveShopping (by Thai telco True, inspired by Tarad). However, the majority of e-commerce deals in the country are typically traded between consumers directly using Facebook or Instagram. On BuzzCommerce, whether young women take to their service will make or break the business.
The company recently raised an undisclosed sum from East Ventures, and Wakai is now completely devoted to developing the e-commerce site. If all goes as scheduled, the web version will be launched by the end of June, with mobile apps will follow in August or September.
On a related note, many of you may recall that Singapore-based cosmetics e-commerce site Luxola raised from several investors earlier this week. In the Asian region, we’ve seen many other subscription-based cosmetic e-commerce services, as well as vertical buzz sites like Fashionguide in Taiwan.
Rocket Internet had been rapidly launching e-commerce services in the Asia region, but they have no portfolio company focused on this space after they sold GlossyBox to VanityTrobe in February of last year. I understand that this left market opportunities in the cosmetics industry in the region, which perhaps leaves room for BuzzCommerce to expand business beyond from Thailand if all goes well.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Hachimenroppi, which operates a fish delivery service for restaurants, announced yesterday that it has partnered with JCB, one of Japan’s leading credit card companies. Through this partnership, JCB will provide restaurants with credit purchase options and ease the process of buying fish from the delivery startup. Moreover, JCB will promote the startup’s service to its card member restaurants. Hachimenroppi buys fish from markets and brokers across the country and delivers it to Japanese restaurants or diners, according to specific needs. Unlike existing wholesalers, they balance supply and demand using digital tools, allowing restaurants to order fish based on their customers’ needs rather than submitting to suppliers’ convenience. We previously outlined the specific details about how it works, so please check it out if you’d like to read more. The company raised about $1.5 million back in October in order to hire talented staffers and accelerate system development. They appointed Kenichi Saito as CTO earlier this month, who previously served as CTO at Japanese shoe-focused e-commerce site Locondo. To date the company has been outsourcing their system development, but they plan to set up a system development department (led by Saito) where they…
Tokyo-based startup Hachimenroppi, which operates a fish delivery service for restaurants, announced yesterday that it has partnered with JCB, one of Japan’s leading credit card companies. Through this partnership, JCB will provide restaurants with credit purchase options and ease the process of buying fish from the delivery startup. Moreover, JCB will promote the startup’s service to its card member restaurants.
Hachimenroppi buys fish from markets and brokers across the country and delivers it to Japanese restaurants or diners, according to specific needs. Unlike existing wholesalers, they balance supply and demand using digital tools, allowing restaurants to order fish based on their customers’ needs rather than submitting to suppliers’ convenience. We previously outlined the specific details about how it works, so please check it out if you’d like to read more.
The company raised about $1.5 million back in October in order to hire talented staffers and accelerate system development. They appointed Kenichi Saito as CTO earlier this month, who previously served as CTO at Japanese shoe-focused e-commerce site Locondo. To date the company has been outsourcing their system development, but they plan to set up a system development department (led by Saito) where they can do most of that work in house. In addition to the iOS app, they are planning to launch an Android version, but now they are focusing on hiring Rails engineers. So if you are interested in working with an up-and-coming startup like this one, don’t hesitate to contact them.
To step up their sales and engineering efforts, the company plans to grow to a 50-person team by summer. According to founder and CEO Masanari Matsuda, he plans to allocate about 80% of the team to customer relations serving restaurants, and the rest to system development. He elaborated:
CEO Masanari Matsuda
In order to provide consumers with the best quality foods, I think restaurants shouldn’t be dominated by big companies. When an independent chef launches his own restaurant, he will be unable to buy ingredients on credit from wholesalers because that restaurant has no financial history. So our new service in partnership with JCB will help them a lot when starting out.
We’ll focus on fish delivery for the time being. However, our platform is receiving orders and updates from restaurants, which means we can enhance it to deal with a variety of food in the future, including rice, liquors, meat, vegetables, and fruits. As we know much about restaurants’ needs, we may even launch a new service sending cooks to restaurants.
The company has acquired 300 restaurants as of the end of last year. They expect to increase that to 1,000 restaurants by the end of this year, and 10,000 by the end of 2016. By 2020, they hope to generate over $3 billion in revenue, which accounts for almost 10% of the entire national fishery market volume.
See the original story in Japanese, part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit Sapporo 2014. Our readers may recall that Japanese news curation startup Gunosy raised about $12 million back in March. The company recently started distributing ads on its news app, and we’re told they generate several millions of US dollars monthly from the advertising sales. We spoke with the company’s co-CEO Shinji Kimura at the Infinity Ventures Summit to find out more. The Bridge: We heard that your business has been rapidly growing after you starting broadcasting a TV commercial. What kind of download numbers are you seeing? Kimura: We had acquired 1.8 downloads as of March 15th, but we’re going to hit 4 million downloads pretty soon. The Bridge: So you’ve been doing very well in the last two months since the commercial started. On the other hand, some people were disappointed with some unexpected changes. Kimura: We are sorry for the users who have been using the app since launch. But some users pointed out that the personalization feature we initially adopted results in many duplicate articles. Furthermore, curated content includes many longer articles, which can be tiring to read especially on weekends. So…
Our readers may recall that Japanese news curation startup Gunosy raised about $12 million back in March. The company recently started distributing ads on its news app, and we’re told they generate several millions of US dollars monthly from the advertising sales.
We spoke with the company’s co-CEO Shinji Kimura at the Infinity Ventures Summit to find out more.
The Bridge: We heard that your business has been rapidly growing after you starting broadcasting a TV commercial. What kind of download numbers are you seeing?
Kimura: We had acquired 1.8 downloads as of March 15th, but we’re going to hit 4 million downloads pretty soon.
The Bridge: So you’ve been doing very well in the last two months since the commercial started. On the other hand, some people were disappointed with some unexpected changes.
Kimura: We are sorry for the users who have been using the app since launch. But some users pointed out that the personalization feature we initially adopted results in many duplicate articles. Furthermore, curated content includes many longer articles, which can be tiring to read especially on weekends.
So we adjusted the app to provide users with lighter content, and that resulted in a boost in our daily active users.
The Bridge: We also know that the demographic of our readers would be very limited if we focus too much on startups. So when you think of business opportunities, it must be difficult to determine how wide-ranging to set your scope.
Kimura: Yes, advertising opportunities are also limited if you persist in a niche. For instance, female users don’t like our app. Even my wife used to use SmartNews. I realized we had to change it. (Laughs) Now she uses Gunosy. So we think our adjustment was successful. […] About 10 million people launch our apps every day, and almost 30% of them do it to check out news articles in morning. So we can publish articles written by professional writers exclusively for our readers.
The Bridge: In Japan, there are quite few platforms, including Yahoo News Bylines, where professional or independent writers can write articles and get paid.
Kimura: I think monetization is important. Driving traffic back to media companies is sort of meaningless without monetization opportunities. But we know there’s opportunity out there in smartphone ads.
The Bridge: We’re told that your monthly revenue has reached around several million US dollars. It this true?
Kimura: I can’t disclose details but it seems like that, yes.
The Bridge: So now you can give some benefit back to media from which you’re curating articles?
Kimura: Typical media give you as little as $US 0.02 per page view. But I think our platform will be able to pay you as much as one US dollar. Considering that we can make our platform open to contributors in the future, if you can write an article earning 300,000 page views, you can earn 3,000 US dollars from us. I think we need to establish a content distribution ecosystem that helps creators or authors make a living.
The Bridge: How can you achieve such high profitability?
Kimura: It’s because of smartphone ads. The existing types of ads on desktop websites don’t effectively keep the attention of their audience. A smartphone ad is placed in a limited space and has higher visibility. This was proved by Facebook. One of the reasons why TV commercials perform well is because they are inserted right in the middle of a program.
The Bridge: But because ads are inserted between articles, some people feel it’s annoying.
Kimura: I know that. So we’re thinking more carefully about how to insert ads. We’re also planning to provide a full-page ad package. If we start it, I think our users will not hate it. Because we’ve been conducting A/B tests many times to find out what kind of ads users are comfortable with.
See the original story in Japanese, part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit Sapporo 2014. Tokyo-based Cerevo, the Japanese startup best known for its Cerevo Cam and IoT crowdfunding site Cerevo Dash, announced today that it will invite Osamu Ogasahara to the company’s board pending approval at their board meeting on June 2nd. We had a chance to speak with the company’s co-founder and CEO Takuma Iwasa, as well as Ogasahara, at the Infinity Ventures Summit 2014 happening right now in Sapporo, Japan. Ogasahara is the co-founder of Japanese internet service provider Sakura Internet as well as owner for the popular entrepreneur hub Awabar and co-working space Nomad New’s Base [1]. The Bridge: Since it’s a complicated topic, would you like to clarify what’s happening with your company right now? Iwasa: Sure. As we published on our blog, Ogasahara will join our board pending approval at our board meeting on June 2nd. Shares of our company held by Inspire Technology Innovation Fund, Neostella Capital, Voyage Ventures, and Inova [2] will be handed over to Ogasahara. We’re also planning a big funding round as well. The Bridge: Your company has developed consumer electronics like Cerevo Cam and enterprise hardware…
Tokyo-based Cerevo, the Japanese startup best known for its Cerevo Cam and IoT crowdfunding site Cerevo Dash, announced today that it will invite Osamu Ogasahara to the company’s board pending approval at their board meeting on June 2nd.
We had a chance to speak with the company’s co-founder and CEO Takuma Iwasa, as well as Ogasahara, at the Infinity Ventures Summit 2014 happening right now in Sapporo, Japan. Ogasahara is the co-founder of Japanese internet service provider Sakura Internet as well as owner for the popular entrepreneur hub Awabar and co-working space Nomad New’s Base[1].
The Bridge: Since it’s a complicated topic, would you like to clarify what’s happening with your company right now?
Iwasa: Sure. As we published on our blog, Ogasahara will join our board pending approval at our board meeting on June 2nd. Shares of our company held by Inspire Technology Innovation Fund, Neostella Capital, Voyage Ventures, and Inova [2] will be handed over to Ogasahara. We’re also planning a big funding round as well.
The Bridge: Your company has developed consumer electronics like Cerevo Cam and enterprise hardware like LiveShell. How does the funding and the change of the board member influence your plans?
Iwasa: First, we’ll step up marketing of our brand and accelerate global expansion. Second, we’ll have an incubation project focused on hardware startups.
The Bridge: Your business heavily depends on international sales, right?
Iwasa: Yes, some of our products receive over 40% of all orders from overseas. We will try to raise this to 80%. We also plan to expand our range of products, especially in the IoT and ‘high amateur’ spaces.
The Bridge: What do you mean when you say ‘high amateur’ space?
Iwasa: It’s difficult to explain since it’s a relatively new concept. It means a series of products ranging in a space where professional and hobbyist use overlap. Our video and still camera products are categorized there.
I know the market can grow explosively where low-end products for professional use and high-end products for hobbyist use intersect. That’s what I mean by ‘high amateur’ space. It’s not a huge market because it targets a niche. Successful examples in this area include DJI’s Phantom 2 and GoPro.
The Bridge: Your company is a 10-person team but we heard you’re planning to enlarge it to about four times that.
Iwasa: We’re planning to increase our head count up to 50. Our strategy is to target niche markets and produce a variety of products. […] We think our business is scalable as long as we have a sufficient number of talented people. We are hiring engineers in many fields like electrical engineering, design, mechatronics, app development, and infrastructure.
The Bridge: Let’s talk about the incubation project. Regarding the IoT fund you are planning, who will be in charge of forming this? We heard that Cerevo got money from an investment fund. Is that correct?
Ogasahara: I am the general partner of the fund. We’ll be forming a fund worth $20 million this coming summer, and will invest in Cerevo from that. It’s sort of like a growth fund that I was eager to raise money from when I founded my internet service provider company many years ago.
The Bridge: So you will invest not only in Cerevo but also in other hardware startups. You also have another investment initiative at ABBALab, where you have specifically invested in startups which have succeeded in raising money on crowdfunding sites. How are the funds different?
Ogasahara: For that initiative, we’ll keep seeking young entrepreneurs and help them create prototypes and launch their businesses in a hands-on manner. People are unlikely to create hardware products as easily as they would create smartphone apps. ABBALabs aims to remove the financial or environmental obstacles for ambitious entrepreneurs.
The Bridige: So what does Cerevo expect by launching this incubation business?
Iwasa: Our main focus is to help crowdfunding efforts in Japan and the rest of the world, and to help crowdfunding project owners manufacture their products. We’ll set up a garage and shared office in Akihabara, and we are also planning to organize hardware-focused workshops and hackathon events too.
Ogasahara: By giving knowledge of mass production to entrepreneurs who already succeeded in creating their products, we really want to eliminate barriers for them. I believe it can really help a lot of people.
Iwasa: Looking at posts on bulletin boards, you can see that many entrepreneurs succeed in raising money on Kickstarter, but many of them run into difficulties in mass production. But the biggest obstacle for them will come after production. We help them sell, we support them, and we encourage them to develop the next model of their product. This is where our experience can help.
Ogasahara: We’re running a site called DMM.make in partnership with The Bridge, as you know. This is also part of our effort to encourage businesses to create hardware products. We want to provide opportunities where people can learn, make, share, sell, and buy what they create.
Iwasa: So if you’re interested in this space but don’t know what to do, don’t hesitate to come and join us.
The Bridge: Thanks for your time.
Disclosure: The Bridge has a business partnership with Nomad, the company that Ogasahara has managed. We are providing selected articles to DMM.make, a news curation site by Japanese internet company DMM. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Bracket, the startup operating the Shopify-like e-commerce platform Stores.jp, announced today that it has partnered with Japanese department store chain Parco. Through this partnership, the e-commerce company will assist over 3,000 tenant retailers in the department stores establish their online presence. Since its launch back in 1969, Parco has rolled out 19 stores nationwide in Japan, recently reporting over $2.6 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2013. Stores.jp began its e-commerce platform service back in August of 2012, and has acquired over 90,000 merchants since then. All Parco retailers are encouraged to establish their e-commerce sites using Stores.jp, with plans to drive user traffic from the store’s blog where retailer staff can introduce merchandise and products. Retailers are to set up a pre-order button in their online storefront, where customers can buy a product online in addition to picking it up at retail stores. To date, we’ve never witnessed a high-profile shopping complex like Parco roll out such a quantity of e-commerce sites for tenant retailers. Stores.jp’s CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto elaborated on the partnership: We’ve seen that some retailers from Parco can generate as much as 25% of their entire revenue from online…
Tokyo-based Bracket, the startup operating the Shopify-like e-commerce platform Stores.jp, announced today that it has partnered with Japanese department store chain Parco. Through this partnership, the e-commerce company will assist over 3,000 tenant retailers in the department stores establish their online presence.
Since its launch back in 1969, Parco has rolled out 19 stores nationwide in Japan, recently reporting over $2.6 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2013. Stores.jp began its e-commerce platform service back in August of 2012, and has acquired over 90,000 merchants since then.
All Parco retailers are encouraged to establish their e-commerce sites using Stores.jp, with plans to drive user traffic from the store’s blog where retailer staff can introduce merchandise and products. Retailers are to set up a pre-order button in their online storefront, where customers can buy a product online in addition to picking it up at retail stores.
To date, we’ve never witnessed a high-profile shopping complex like Parco roll out such a quantity of e-commerce sites for tenant retailers. Stores.jp’s CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto elaborated on the partnership:
We’ve seen that some retailers from Parco can generate as much as 25% of their entire revenue from online sales. We’ll be more focused on coordinating blogs and syndicated e-commerce business. We want to enable all retailers in Parco successfully launch e-commerce sites.
Japanese fashion retailer Uniqlo started a new service earlier this week called UTme. It allows you to design and order a shirt you design yourself using their UT (Uniqlo t-shirt) line-up. You can complete your design using their smartphone app (for both iOS and Android), and order it online if you like. You can also try out the UTme experience at the company’s flagship store in Tokyo’s Ginza district. If all goes well, your t-shirt will be printed and delivered on the next day. Shirts are available in sizes XS to XL for 1,990 yen (about $20) plus shipping. The service is currently only available in Japan. The iOS app is off to an especially good start, currently ranked as the top free app in the Japanese app store. On a somewhat related note, our readers may recall that Uniqlo recently started offering Line Character branded t-shirts, another interesting initiative that might appeal to many smartphone users in Japan. via Mobile & Apps
Japanese fashion retailer Uniqlo started a new service earlier this week called UTme. It allows you to design and order a shirt you design yourself using their UT (Uniqlo t-shirt) line-up.
You can complete your design using their smartphone app (for both iOS and Android), and order it online if you like. You can also try out the UTme experience at the company’s flagship store in Tokyo’s Ginza district.
If all goes well, your t-shirt will be printed and delivered on the next day. Shirts are available in sizes XS to XL for 1,990 yen (about $20) plus shipping. The service is currently only available in Japan.
The iOS app is off to an especially good start, currently ranked as the top free app in the Japanese app store.
On a somewhat related note, our readers may recall that Uniqlo recently started offering Line Character branded t-shirts, another interesting initiative that might appeal to many smartphone users in Japan.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based TribeUniv, the company behind the online programming lecture service CodeCamp, announced today that it has raised about 40 million yen (or $400,000) from CyberAgent Ventures. Tribe-Univ was formed during the fifth edition of Incubation Camp, an intensive two-day business development program for entrepreneurs organized by Japan’s Incubate Fund. Following their $30,000 funding from Incubate Fund last July, they launched the learning platform last October. The startup boasts a former Cybird employee previously in charge of training new employees at that company, who has developed curriculum at Tribe-Univ for a programming course. Since launching six months ago, the course has acquired more learners than initially expected, most of whom are entirely new to programming. To better serve such people, the company recently also launched new courses in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Jquery. Even non-engineers often need to have some basic technical understanding of programming in order to efficiently communicate with engineers. To that end, many website directors or designers have applied to join courses, accounting for about 80% of all learners. CodeCamp provides lectures by professional programmers on a one-to-one basis in contrast to typical online learning services, so a student may progress faster…
Tokyo-based TribeUniv, the company behind the online programming lecture service CodeCamp, announced today that it has raised about 40 million yen (or $400,000) from CyberAgent Ventures.
Tribe-Univ was formed during the fifth edition of Incubation Camp, an intensive two-day business development program for entrepreneurs organized by Japan’s Incubate Fund. Following their $30,000 funding from Incubate Fund last July, they launched the learning platform last October.
The startup boasts a former Cybird employee previously in charge of training new employees at that company, who has developed curriculum at Tribe-Univ for a programming course. Since launching six months ago, the course has acquired more learners than initially expected, most of whom are entirely new to programming. To better serve such people, the company recently also launched new courses in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Jquery.
Even non-engineers often need to have some basic technical understanding of programming in order to efficiently communicate with engineers. To that end, many website directors or designers have applied to join courses, accounting for about 80% of all learners. CodeCamp provides lectures by professional programmers on a one-to-one basis in contrast to typical online learning services, so a student may progress faster than if he or she studied at a conventional school.
The company’s CEO Hironobu Ikeda told us that they expect to have 1,500 students by next March. In addition to user acquisition, they have also started approaching companies to let them adopt the platform for in-house employee training. That initiative has gotten a good response this far.
Regarding the variety of languages, we understand they may add new courses for mobile development later on. If you have struggled to learn programming before, you may want to try CodeCamp. Note that it’s only available in Japanese.
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese ad platform operator FreakOut applied and was approved for an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers Market today. The company is expected to be listed on June 24th, with plans to offer 530,000 shares for public subscription and to sell 112,500 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 332,500 shares. The company was launched back in October of 2010, and subsequently introduced demand-side platform FreakOut in January of 2012 and data management platform Mother in March of 2013. Their major shareholders include Kronos Fund, Jafco, YJ Capital, GMO Venture Partners, Batara Eto, and Shogo Kawada. [1] To elaborate on those organizations and individuals: Kronos Fund is an investment fund by Japanese investor Taiga Matsuyama. YJ Capital is the investment arm of Yahoo Japan. Batara Ito is the co-founder and former CTO of Japanese internet company Mixi, currently managing his own investment fund East Ventures with Taiga Matsuyama. Shogo Kawada is an angel investor as well as the co-founder of Japanese internet company DeNA. ↩
Japanese ad platform operator FreakOut applied and was approved for an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers Market today. The company is expected to be listed on June 24th, with plans to offer 530,000 shares for public subscription and to sell 112,500 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 332,500 shares.
The company was launched back in October of 2010, and subsequently introduced demand-side platform FreakOut in January of 2012 and data management platform Mother in March of 2013. Their major shareholders include Kronos Fund, Jafco, YJ Capital, GMO Venture Partners, Batara Eto, and Shogo Kawada. [1]
To elaborate on those organizations and individuals: Kronos Fund is an investment fund by Japanese investor Taiga Matsuyama. YJ Capital is the investment arm of Yahoo Japan. Batara Ito is the co-founder and former CTO of Japanese internet company Mixi, currently managing his own investment fund East Ventures with Taiga Matsuyama. Shogo Kawada is an angel investor as well as the co-founder of Japanese internet company DeNA. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Translimit recently launched a social quiz app called BrainWars. The new app is available for iOS in both English and Japanese. BrainWars pits players against one another in three sets of mental exercise games (15 seconds each) to see which player performs better. Our readers may recall that we mentioned this app when the company secured funding from Genuine Startup and Skyland Ventures back in March. Since then, their team has been largely devoted to improving the app’s interface. So today we’d like to focus a little more on the functions that were added as part of their improvement efforts. BrainWars lets you compete against other players online, but you can compete even when that person is offline since the system virtually reproduces them as your competitor based on their past records. They call this their ‘ghost’ function. In this way, you can encourage your friends to play against you or others by sharing just a link via Facebook, Twitter, or Line. The company is planning to first invite serial entrepreneurs as their users and then market the app by having new users to play against such notable people. Making the grade…
Tokyo-based startup Translimit recently launched a social quiz app called BrainWars. The new app is available for iOS in both English and Japanese.
BrainWars pits players against one another in three sets of mental exercise games (15 seconds each) to see which player performs better. Our readers may recall that we mentioned this app when the company secured funding from Genuine Startup and Skyland Ventures back in March. Since then, their team has been largely devoted to improving the app’s interface. So today we’d like to focus a little more on the functions that were added as part of their improvement efforts.
BrainWars lets you compete against other players online, but you can compete even when that person is offline since the system virtually reproduces them as your competitor based on their past records. They call this their ‘ghost’ function.
In this way, you can encourage your friends to play against you or others by sharing just a link via Facebook, Twitter, or Line. The company is planning to first invite serial entrepreneurs as their users and then market the app by having new users to play against such notable people.
Making the grade
They initially planned to deploy a very simple grading system, assigning a level like beginner or professional, where a user’s grade increases as he or she improves. But at the time of launch, they decided on a more elaborate system with 25 grades, starting first with a chicken, then a turtle.
You can choose three out of 12 quiz game categories (like FlickMaster, DoubtColor, and High and Low) in determining what kind of questions you expect to see in the match. If you don’t choose categories, the system will choose them automatically. If you intentionally choose the categories, you will need to consume a coin, which requires an actual purchase.
Every user has several ‘heart’ points when starting out, but one ‘heart’ point will be consumed every time you play a match. This stamina-based purchase model is, of course, common in many mobile games these days.
The company also plans to advertise using the aforementioned ‘ghost’ player function. Major brands can market themselves by encouraging consumers to playing against their characters in the app. Considering the categories, you may assume demographics are broad ranging, but we understand that the app can show ads according to age or gender, which lets brands easily target a certain user base.
The company appears to have a much improved user interface at launch. The quality of animated graphics and sound effects should allow the app to attain the same kind of popularity as many game titles. Let’s wait and see how it does!
Masaru Ikeda
Takeshi Hirano
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Junya Mori
