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Japanese startup Tokyo Otaku Mode raises $2.7M

Takeshi Hirano 2014.04.16

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo Otaku Mode, the startup behind the Japanese subculture site of the same name, announced today that it has raised series A funding worth 270 million yen. The round was led by Itochu Technology Ventures, with Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Sun Eight Investment, GaiaX Global Marketing Ventures (GX), and 500 Startups also participating [1]. Otaku Mode did not disclose the breakdown of the funding. Since first launching in the form of a Facebook fan page back in 2011, the startup has acquired over 14.7 million likes. They registered a company in Delaware in December of 2012, and subsequently joined Silicon valley accelerator 500 Startups. In addition to their fan page, they subsequently created their own website OtakuMode.com. Their partnering creators have increased to five times the total from last year. Evolving into e-commerce The company started its e-commerce business last September, as one of their primary revenue streams in addition to ad sales. We understand that they intend to use these new fund to further improve their e-commerce platform. According to the company’s CEO Tomohide Kamei, the gender demographic of their user base is evenly split, with almost 40% of their users coming from the…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo Otaku Mode, the startup behind the Japanese subculture site of the same name, announced today that it has raised series A funding worth 270 million yen. The round was led by Itochu Technology Ventures, with Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Sun Eight Investment, GaiaX Global Marketing Ventures (GX), and 500 Startups also participating [1]. Otaku Mode did not disclose the breakdown of the funding.

Since first launching in the form of a Facebook fan page back in 2011, the startup has acquired over 14.7 million likes. They registered a company in Delaware in December of 2012, and subsequently joined Silicon valley accelerator 500 Startups.

In addition to their fan page, they subsequently created their own website OtakuMode.com. Their partnering creators have increased to five times the total from last year.

Evolving into e-commerce

The company started its e-commerce business last September, as one of their primary revenue streams in addition to ad sales. We understand that they intend to use these new fund to further improve their e-commerce platform.

According to the company’s CEO Tomohide Kamei, the gender demographic of their user base is evenly split, with almost 40% of their users coming from the Asian region, with 20% for each of North and South America. Most of of items sold on the platform are shipped to overseas users spread across 60 countries.

Their strategy for marketing their e-commerce business is very aggressive. For example, a limited edition print (shown below) was $1,200, but it sold out immediately. Dragonball art prints autographed by manga author Akira Toriyama is on sale for about $200.

The user retention rate for their e-commerce service is much higher than other e-commerce sites, says Kamei.

A toy shop for the world

I believe Tokyo Otaku Mode has much potential to be a global media presence, capitalizing on Japan’s unique culture and art. But it will likely be difficult for them to be a comprehensive solution like Amazon, which started out with books but expanded to other items. The startup’s strength is very dependent on their chosen niche.

Kamei explained that the market cap in the global entertainment merchandising industry is worth about $29.3 billion. Since the market is dominated by content companies from the US and and around Asia he hopes that his company can sell products using characters from other companies in the future (Disney, for example). He added,

We can’t win alone. We can build our business by partnering with content holders. If we expand our business to selling non-Japanese character items, our website could look like a toy shop selling interesting items from around the world.

Even limited edition prints worth $1,200 were sold out immediately

Itochu Technology Ventures, GaiaX Global Marketing Ventures, and 500startups invested in the past rounds. ↩

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Japan’s Open Network Lab accepting startup applicants for latest batch of its incubation program

Open Network Lab

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.16

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Open Network Lab, the startup incubator operated by Digital Garage and its affiliated companies, announced today it has started accepting applications for the ninth batch of its seed accelerator program. This batch will run from July to September of this year, with qualifying startups able to work from the incubator’s Daikanyama space (in Tokyo). Participants can also work at the recently established DG717 venue in San Francisco, where they can develop products, explore funding opportunities, and receive mentoring in the heart of the US startup community. Since its launch back in 2010, the program has incubated 45 startups over the past eight batches. Many of their graduates have been aggressively seeking business opportunities in Silicon Valley and Japan. You may recalled movie crowdsourcing platform Viibar raised $3 million from Globis Capital Partners and Gree Ventures back in February. On a related note, the incubator will hold a demo day on April 23rd to showcase startups from their eighth batch, so please stay for our coverage of that event. You can also check out our previous articles covering past demo days. Your submissions for the ninth batch will be accepted until May 19th.

dg717-featuredimage — A workshop held at DG717, Digital Garage’s incubation space in San Francisco.

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Open Network Lab, the startup incubator operated by Digital Garage and its affiliated companies, announced today it has started accepting applications for the ninth batch of its seed accelerator program.

This batch will run from July to September of this year, with qualifying startups able to work from the incubator’s Daikanyama space (in Tokyo). Participants can also work at the recently established DG717 venue in San Francisco, where they can develop products, explore funding opportunities, and receive mentoring in the heart of the US startup community.

Since its launch back in 2010, the program has incubated 45 startups over the past eight batches. Many of their graduates have been aggressively seeking business opportunities in Silicon Valley and Japan. You may recalled movie crowdsourcing platform Viibar raised $3 million from Globis Capital Partners and Gree Ventures back in February.

On a related note, the incubator will hold a demo day on April 23rd to showcase startups from their eighth batch, so please stay for our coverage of that event. You can also check out our previous articles covering past demo days.

Your submissions for the ninth batch will be accepted until May 19th.

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Users spend 30% more time on Cookpad’s Android app than before. Here’s why?

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2014.04.15

See the original article written in Japanese Cookpad, the Japanese online recipe platform, is largely recognized as a “user first” service. The Cookpad app recently surpassed 20 million downloads, and their latest data shows nearly 70% of access to the service comes from smartphones. This past February, the company built a mobile-first team. Among the company’s 70 engineers, about 10% joined the team. Aside from app development and operations, the company is pushing towards a mobile-first policy, encouraging web engineers to focus on mobile-related work. I spoke with Toshihiro Yagi and Kentaro Takiguchi, who have just joined this mobile-first team. Both have experience developing Android apps, and both came to Cookpad less than a year ago. The development of the Android app started within the device division of the media department, which later turned into the mobile-first team. The project started in October of last year, and after half a year of development, the Android app officially launched this past March. The mobile version of Cookpad originally started as a website formatted for smartphones. At that time, even though the division had dozens of web engineers, it had only one Android engineer. To adapt to the increasing number of users…

Cookpad-Mobile-First-members-1024x768 — Toshihiro Yagi and Kentaro Takiguchi from the mobile-first team

See the original article written in Japanese

Cookpad, the Japanese online recipe platform, is largely recognized as a “user first” service. The Cookpad app recently surpassed 20 million downloads, and their latest data shows nearly 70% of access to the service comes from smartphones.

This past February, the company built a mobile-first team. Among the company’s 70 engineers, about 10% joined the team. Aside from app development and operations, the company is pushing towards a mobile-first policy, encouraging web engineers to focus on mobile-related work.

I spoke with Toshihiro Yagi and Kentaro Takiguchi, who have just joined this mobile-first team. Both have experience developing Android apps, and both came to Cookpad less than a year ago.

The development of the Android app started within the device division of the media department, which later turned into the mobile-first team. The project started in October of last year, and after half a year of development, the Android app officially launched this past March.

The mobile version of Cookpad originally started as a website formatted for smartphones. At that time, even though the division had dozens of web engineers, it had only one Android engineer. To adapt to the increasing number of users on smartphones, it was decided to offer Cookpad as a native app.

The team of four (three Android engineers and one designer) worked together to develop the Android app. They collaborated on the app’s UI and usability, using the engineer’s knowledge of things like OS guidelines. Based on the mockup created by the designer, they worked towards creating the best app they could.

Consistent UX/UI

The iOS app for Cookpad had been already released, so the team had to be careful that the Android app design would not be influenced too much by that. To ensure that the app was easy to use, the team continued releasing small, incremental updates. One such update, for example, had the menu icon located in the left-top corner. The team learned that some users don’t recognize that the icon can be tapped to display a menu, and so they they implemented a tutorial message a the initial log-in to address the issue.

Takiguchi: It took much time to figure out to what extent the usability and UI of our iOS and Android apps should be unified. Many people say there should be a consistent user experience for iOS and Android, and the UI should be designed differently. But that’s a very difficult thing to do.

Through these small improvements, eventually the amount of time users spent on the Android app increased 30% more than they had seen with the previous version, which looked more like the service’s web interface. Swifter movement through content inside the app and improved tab display (such as today’s recipe and top recipe) also contributed much to this success. Yagi explained that one of the most important things to keep in mind during this kind of development is to keep asking if a feature is really necessary, and if it is easy to use.

Results that get attention

Cookpad has an internal blog where members share ideas. Since last November the company has also organized a meeting called Potechi where engineers outside and inside the company get together to share technical tips. Potechi takes place every week within the company, and every month for the external meet. Each iOS or Android engineer is given five minutes to present their tips.

Yagi: Engineers at Cookpad are all highly motivated and have great technical skills. When we find a problem, we all do our best to solve it.

Takiguchi: Our CEO often says that each member has to keep a career goal in our mind when we work. He says we should create results that will attract headhunters’ attention.

Cookpad currently look for mobile engineers. To work on the mobile-first team, the most important thing is to have strong passion for app development rather than technical skills and experiences.

Yagi: We look to see if the candidate codes at home or outside the work place. We look for someone who looks like they cannot help but code at any occasion.

The value of female engineers

At present, all members of mobile-first team are men. Even in the company as a whole, female engineers amount to only 10% of the total. Engineers are expected to see things from the user’s perspective in order to find the best usability and UI by working with designers. Therefore, they hope they can add a force of female engineers as well.

Yagi: We interview users and hear their opinion. But when we reflect on app design, we might need to filter out perspectives that come from the male point of view. I believe that if the engineer is a woman, then it can effect the app design a lot. So we really hope female engineers can join our team.

It is not going to far to say that a major service like Cookpad could set the standard for app usability and UI. If you are passionate about creating apps, you might want to join their Potechi meeting. The next one takes place on May 14th.

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Japan’s wearable smart-toy Moff raises nearly $80,000 on Kickstarter

Moff

Takeshi Hirano 2014.04.11

See the original story in Japanese. Moff launched its Kickstarter campaign for its wearable wristbank smart-toy almost a month ago. The project nearly reached $80,000, four times its initial goal of $20,000. According to the product’s creator, Akinori Takahagi, they have even surpassed smart toy Ubooly (backed by TechStars) in funds raised on Kickstarter. Ubooly secured seed funding of about $2.5 million from several investors back in November, and recently started sales at Softbank stores in Japan. So the Moff team considers Ubooly the benchmark in their growth strategy. The team is working on many business opportunities. This includes developing content for the device and partnering with content holders with popular characters or mascots, and delivering the product as soon as possible. Moff was initially launched at a hackathon in Osaka last year, and we understand that they attracted much attention at SXSW in Austin. It will be interesting to see how their product is received by consumers beyond the Japanese market.

See the original story in Japanese.

Moff launched its Kickstarter campaign for its wearable wristbank smart-toy almost a month ago. The project nearly reached $80,000, four times its initial goal of $20,000.

According to the product’s creator, Akinori Takahagi, they have even surpassed smart toy Ubooly (backed by TechStars) in funds raised on Kickstarter. Ubooly secured seed funding of about $2.5 million from several investors back in November, and recently started sales at Softbank stores in Japan. So the Moff team considers Ubooly the benchmark in their growth strategy.

The team is working on many business opportunities. This includes developing content for the device and partnering with content holders with popular characters or mascots, and delivering the product as soon as possible.

Moff was initially launched at a hackathon in Osaka last year, and we understand that they attracted much attention at SXSW in Austin. It will be interesting to see how their product is received by consumers beyond the Japanese market.

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Japan’s Iemo secures funding from B Dash Ventures

iemo

Takeshi Hirano 2014.04.09

See the original story in Japanese. Some of our readers may remember a few months back when we told you about the launch of Tokyo-based Iemo, a new curation media focused on interior decoration and housing. The company announced today it has secured an undisclosed sum of funding from B Dash Ventures. Iemo will use these funds to step up its engineering efforts. Coinciding with this news, Japanese search engine expert Yuji Kumagai has joined their management team as COO [1]. The company was initially launched by well-known Japanese entrepreneur Mari Murata. In order to ensure quality content on their platform, they have established partnerships with interior manufacturers and architectural offices to collect high quality images, with the goal of helping users post curated articles more easily. We understand that this approach resulted a corporate membership program which has now launched as well. Interior manufacturers can set up their own curated portfolios, and more than 30 such companies have signed up to date. We were told by Murata and Kumagai that their growth curve shows an exponential increase. Almost 90% of their users are females who visit the website on mobile, many of them housewives (according to their user profiles)….

kumagai-murata — From the left: COO Yuji Kumagai, CEO Mari Murata

See the original story in Japanese.

Some of our readers may remember a few months back when we told you about the launch of Tokyo-based Iemo, a new curation media focused on interior decoration and housing. The company announced today it has secured an undisclosed sum of funding from B Dash Ventures. Iemo will use these funds to step up its engineering efforts. Coinciding with this news, Japanese search engine expert Yuji Kumagai has joined their management team as COO ^[1].

The company was initially launched by well-known Japanese entrepreneur Mari Murata. In order to ensure quality content on their platform, they have established partnerships with interior manufacturers and architectural offices to collect high quality images, with the goal of helping users post curated articles more easily.

We understand that this approach resulted a corporate membership program which has now launched as well. Interior manufacturers can set up their own curated portfolios, and more than 30 such companies have signed up to date.

We were told by Murata and Kumagai that their growth curve shows an exponential increase. Almost 90% of their users are females who visit the website on mobile, many of them housewives (according to their user profiles).

They didn’t tell us specific user totals, but we’ll follow up on this when we get more details.

Kumagai founded his own company focused on the search engine technology a few years ago. He also once won a prize at a Facebook hackathon event with his app called Corollin’ Planet (currently unavailable). ↩

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Japanese travel marketplace ‘Trip’ deals in unexplored destinations

Junya Mori 2014.04.08

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Trip, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japanese web development company Lig, has launched an online travel marketplace, also called Trip. The service is available only in Japanese at the moment. The goal of the service is to connect tourism activity providers (individuals and companies) with consumers who are interested in unique travel experiences. Sellers need to pay a 10% commission and a 3% mandatory deposit of the sales price. Buyers pay a 5% commission and a 500 yen ($5) optional deposit when placing an order. Trip has partnered with Nagoya-based tourism consultancy KHS which has strong connections to tourism promotion departments all across the nation. By leveraging this connection and the travel portals (Entermeus, Onsen Japan) of its partent company, Trip aspires to accumulate 10,000 activities and 100,000 users by the end of FY2014. In Japan, there are likely many attractive spots that have been never been introduced in travel publications or by conventional travel agents. It will be interesting to see how the company will fit in this niche. We’ve already seen several Japanese startups operating in this space, including Asoview by Catalizm, Trippiece, Voyagin, and PlayLife.

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup Trip, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japanese web development company Lig, has launched an online travel marketplace, also called Trip. The service is available only in Japanese at the moment.

The goal of the service is to connect tourism activity providers (individuals and companies) with consumers who are interested in unique travel experiences. Sellers need to pay a 10% commission and a 3% mandatory deposit of the sales price. Buyers pay a 5% commission and a 500 yen ($5) optional deposit when placing an order.

Trip has partnered with Nagoya-based tourism consultancy KHS which has strong connections to tourism promotion departments all across the nation. By leveraging this connection and the travel portals (Entermeus, Onsen Japan) of its partent company, Trip aspires to accumulate 10,000 activities and 100,000 users by the end of FY2014.

In Japan, there are likely many attractive spots that have been never been introduced in travel publications or by conventional travel agents. It will be interesting to see how the company will fit in this niche.

We’ve already seen several Japanese startups operating in this space, including Asoview by Catalizm, Trippiece, Voyagin, and PlayLife.

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Japanese fish delivery startup finds underserved markets using heat maps

Hachimenroppi

Junya Mori 2014.04.07

See the original story in Japanese. Our readers may recall when we reported about Tokyo-based Hachimenroppi, a unique startup that delivers fish to restaurants using a disruptive approach. Today the company unveiled a fascinating heat map showing the geographical distribution of fish quantities transacted at every wholesale market and port in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. Obviously it gives a clear picture of which areas are relatively out of reach from conventional fish distributors. In these areas, consumers are less likely to have fresh fish at local stores or restaurants, especially fish delivered on the same day that it’s caught. The startup sees a huge potential in expanding its business to those areas.

See the original story in Japanese.

Our readers may recall when we reported about Tokyo-based Hachimenroppi, a unique startup that delivers fish to restaurants using a disruptive approach.

Today the company unveiled a fascinating heat map showing the geographical distribution of fish quantities transacted at every wholesale market and port in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. Obviously it gives a clear picture of which areas are relatively out of reach from conventional fish distributors.

In these areas, consumers are less likely to have fresh fish at local stores or restaurants, especially fish delivered on the same day that it’s caught. The startup sees a huge potential in expanding its business to those areas.

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Japanese movie app SlideStory surpasses 1M downloads

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.04

See the original story in Japanese. SlideStory is an iOS app that lets you create a 32-second movie clip from still images on your mobile. Tokyo-based Nanameue, the startup behind the app, has announced that it has recently surpassed a million downloads, a promising total for the still very young service. The app is usually ranked high in the ‘photo/video’ category on the App Store, especially in the Asia region. We understand that they intend to add some new features in an effort to improve user acquisition. The company’s Atsushi Takishima tells us that 45% of their users comes from Japan, but the rest are from abroad, with fans in Thailand and Taiwan in particular. They’ve been relatively successful in acquiring many users across Asia since the app supports nine languages, including Japanese, English, Korean, simplified and traditional Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Malay, and Indonesian. Takishima explained: We have not yet deployed any significant advertising or marketing effort. However, Kazuhiro Mizuno, the founder and CEO of Quan Inc, who I previously worked for, advised us on what to do and linked us up with many key people around Asia. Mizuno has strong connections among notable internet companies in the region, and…

See the original story in Japanese.

SlideStory is an iOS app that lets you create a 32-second movie clip from still images on your mobile. Tokyo-based Nanameue, the startup behind the app, has announced that it has recently surpassed a million downloads, a promising total for the still very young service. The app is usually ranked high in the ‘photo/video’ category on the App Store, especially in the Asia region. We understand that they intend to add some new features in an effort to improve user acquisition.

The company’s Atsushi Takishima tells us that 45% of their users comes from Japan, but the rest are from abroad, with fans in Thailand and Taiwan in particular. They’ve been relatively successful in acquiring many users across Asia since the app supports nine languages, including Japanese, English, Korean, simplified and traditional Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Malay, and Indonesian. Takishima explained:

We have not yet deployed any significant advertising or marketing effort. However, Kazuhiro Mizuno, the founder and CEO of Quan Inc, who I previously worked for, advised us on what to do and linked us up with many key people around Asia.

Mizuno has strong connections among notable internet companies in the region, and has succeeded in partnering with China’s Tencent and Thai mobile telco AIS to promote his company’s mobile apps in these markets.

Speaking of mobile video apps, you may recall that Japanese mobile streaming app TwitCasting has acquired a promising amount of users in Brazil. While the two video apps are very different in nature, Nanameue thinks TwitCasting is a good role model for doing business internationally.

The next challenge

When creating and sharing a movie clip on SlideStory, the current version lets you upload the clip to third-party platforms like Twipple and then share that link on other social media. In this way, the company doesn’t need a backend environment for storage, and can concentrate on giving users a better experience, with things like custom SlideStory embed code for blogs, for example. But there’s a limit in the variety of functions they can provide without their own storage. Nanameue is currently working on that, and they expect to launch that in about a month.

Considering the fact that more than a half of their entire user base is from South East Asia, they are also planning to launch an Android version, since that platform is more widely used in that region.

SlideStory was initially launched back on October 3rd, 2013. Six months have passed since then, and it’s really encouraging that they have a clear vision of the future. The company raised seed funding of about $300,000 from Skyland Ventures late last year, and they are making efforts to raise more funds soon.

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Japan’s EventRegist raises $1.6 million from Nikkei

Shintaro Eguchi 2014.04.01

See the original story in Japanese.Tokyo-based EventRegist provides a mobile app for event organizers. It lets you announce events, handle ticketing, and collect admission fees from guests. The startup announced today that it has raised 165 million yen (about $1.6 million) from Japanese newspaper company Nikkei. Since its launch back in November of 2011, EventRegist has been available to five markets, offering service in Japanese, English, Indonesian, Thai, and traditional Chinese. They will use these new funds to intensify product development and marketing efforts. Their platform has been adopted by notable events here in Japan, such as the New Economy Summit, Ceatec Japan, and Ad:tech Tokyo. It appears they will focus on adding more functions for event-organizing companies rather than just individual meet-up organizers. Update: Nikkei unveiled they are planning to integrate their digital edition’s subscribers with EventRegist, promoting events by helping them easier register to attend.

See the original story in Japanese.Tokyo-based EventRegist provides a mobile app for event organizers. It lets you announce events, handle ticketing, and collect admission fees from guests. The startup announced today that it has raised 165 million yen (about $1.6 million) from Japanese newspaper company Nikkei.

Since its launch back in November of 2011, EventRegist has been available to five markets, offering service in Japanese, English, Indonesian, Thai, and traditional Chinese. They will use these new funds to intensify product development and marketing efforts.

Their platform has been adopted by notable events here in Japan, such as the New Economy Summit, Ceatec Japan, and Ad:tech Tokyo. It appears they will focus on adding more functions for event-organizing companies rather than just individual meet-up organizers.

Update: Nikkei unveiled they are planning to integrate their digital edition’s subscribers with EventRegist, promoting events by helping them easier register to attend.

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Japan’s Goodpatch launches rapid prototyping tool in closed beta

Junya Mori 2014.04.01

See the original story in Japanese. Our readers may recall Tokyo-based web design firm Goodpatch raised funds from Digital Garage this past December. More recently the company announced a new prototyping tool in closed beta. It’s called Prott. The tool is focused on helping developers create mobile apps based on rapid prototyping methods. We’ve already seen similar tools like Invision or Flinto, but there are very few players in this space in Japan. Coinciding with this beta version, the company has unveiled a new design for its homepage, including a promo video of the prototyping tool (see below). The company also plans to launch an iOS app for the tool this month. For their closed beta period, members of their Facebook beta testers group are preferentially invited.

See the original story in Japanese.

Our readers may recall Tokyo-based web design firm Goodpatch raised funds from Digital Garage this past December. More recently the company announced a new prototyping tool in closed beta. It’s called Prott.

The tool is focused on helping developers create mobile apps based on rapid prototyping methods. We’ve already seen similar tools like Invision or Flinto, but there are very few players in this space in Japan.

Coinciding with this beta version, the company has unveiled a new design for its homepage, including a promo video of the prototyping tool (see below).

The company also plans to launch an iOS app for the tool this month. For their closed beta period, members of their Facebook beta testers group are preferentially invited.

translation