Tokyo-based AdInnovation, the startup behind mobile ad analytics solutions AdStore Tracking and Hitracking, announced today that it has partnered with Digital Advertising Consortium (TSE:4281, DAC for short), raising an undisclosed sum of funding from the latter. We were told that AdInnovation became an equity-method affiliate of DAC through the partnership. Since its launch back in 2010, AdInnovation has been providing white-label ad performance tracking solutions to many Japanese mobile ad agencies. They raised $1.6 million from several Japanese investors back in July, and recently launched a new performance analytics tool called Hitracking. DAC is a media representation company focused on digital advertising and marketing, founded back in 1996 by several Japanese ad agencies including Hakuhodo (TSE:2433) and Asatsu-DK (TSE:9747). It leads this industry in Japan, followed by Cyber Communications (TSE:4788, CCI for short, founded by Dentsu) and CyberAgent (TSE:4751). Through this new partnership, AdInnovation will explore opportunities in cross-media marketing, providing their clients advertising and marketing services using TV or other mass media as well as internet marketing. In this space, while Japanese media representation leaders like CyberAgent and Adways (TSE:2489) have their own tracking tools respectively such as Camp and PartyTrack, DAC had got nothing like this kind of…
Tokyo-based AdInnovation, the startup behind mobile ad analytics solutions AdStore Tracking and Hitracking, announced today that it has partnered with Digital Advertising Consortium (TSE:4281, DAC for short), raising an undisclosed sum of funding from the latter. We were told that AdInnovation became an equity-method affiliate of DAC through the partnership.
Since its launch back in 2010, AdInnovation has been providing white-label ad performance tracking solutions to many Japanese mobile ad agencies. They raised $1.6 million from several Japanese investors back in July, and recently launched a new performance analytics tool called Hitracking.
DAC is a media representation company focused on digital advertising and marketing, founded back in 1996 by several Japanese ad agencies including Hakuhodo (TSE:2433) and Asatsu-DK (TSE:9747). It leads this industry in Japan, followed by Cyber Communications (TSE:4788, CCI for short, founded by Dentsu) and CyberAgent (TSE:4751).
Through this new partnership, AdInnovation will explore opportunities in cross-media marketing, providing their clients advertising and marketing services using TV or other mass media as well as internet marketing. In this space, while Japanese media representation leaders like CyberAgent and Adways (TSE:2489) have their own tracking tools respectively such as Camp and PartyTrack, DAC had got nothing like this kind of tools in their group companies. The partnership indicates DAC’s strong intention that they wanted to obtain such a tool.
See the original story in Japanese. Venture United, a Japanese startup investment company, announced today that it has formed a fund worth 1.2 million yen ($11 million). The fund’s investors include the country’s state-run SME Support, Fusion Communications (a telco owned by Rakuten), SBI Securities, ad agency Hakuhodo, and Digital Advertising Consortium. Venture United and its parent company United, the company best known for homescreen app CocoPPa, have already invested in many startups, including Lifenet Insurance, Enigmo, Unoh (acquired by Zynga back in 2010), and Nobot (acquired by Mediba, a KDDI company). We spoke with the company’s chief venture capitalist Satoshi Maruyama to find what entrepreneurs and service sectors they are planning to invest in. We expect to invest in entrepreneurs with a big vision, typically those who want to change the world or create a business that can work in the global market. As smartphone use has grown, broadband internet is available to us anywhere. So our communication might be more active. So the sectors where we will look for potential investees will be commerce, O2O (online-to-offline), and omni-channel retailing. Following this strategy, we invested in Whyteboard, the startup behind the mobile flea market app Listor last April. We…
Venture United and its parent company United, the company best known for homescreen app CocoPPa, have already invested in many startups, including Lifenet Insurance, Enigmo, Unoh (acquired by Zynga back in 2010), and Nobot (acquired by Mediba, a KDDI company).
We spoke with the company’s chief venture capitalist Satoshi Maruyama to find what entrepreneurs and service sectors they are planning to invest in.
Satoshi Maruyama
We expect to invest in entrepreneurs with a big vision, typically those who want to change the world or create a business that can work in the global market.
As smartphone use has grown, broadband internet is available to us anywhere. So our communication might be more active. So the sectors where we will look for potential investees will be commerce, O2O (online-to-offline), and omni-channel retailing. Following this strategy, we invested in Whyteboard, the startup behind the mobile flea market app Listor last April. We also invested in U-Note, and we aim to help them invent a new form of media.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Lang-8, which runs a language learning platform based on peer corrections, announced today that it has raised funding from CyberAgent Ventures. The exact details of the funding were not disclosed. Lang-8 has acquired over 730,000 users from 219 countries and regions around the world, with about 70% coming from outside Japan. According to the company’s CEO Yangyang Xi, they plan to use these funds to develop a new service, and add three more engineers to their current three-person team. Xi initially launched the language learning platform when he was attending Kyoto University. Seven years have passed since then up until this funding. He notes that he has received much assistance from other entrepreneurs: Many people gave me advice for fundraising, including, Kensuke Furukawa (Nanapi), Ryusuke Matsumoto (Community Factory), Kiyo Kobayashi (serial entrepreneur, ex-CEO of Nobot), and Taku Harada (Peatix). But since I was running a service with a small team, I wanted to keep doing it ourselves without fundraising. But we started to explore funding opportunities back last July, and got a good response. When I met with Koichiro Yoshida (Crowdworks), he told me to meet with all available VC firms around…
Tokyo-based startup Lang-8, which runs a language learning platform based on peer corrections, announced today that it has raised funding from CyberAgent Ventures. The exact details of the funding were not disclosed.
Lang-8 has acquired over 730,000 users from 219 countries and regions around the world, with about 70% coming from outside Japan. According to the company’s CEO Yangyang Xi, they plan to use these funds to develop a new service, and add three more engineers to their current three-person team.
Xi initially launched the language learning platform when he was attending Kyoto University. Seven years have passed since then up until this funding. He notes that he has received much assistance from other entrepreneurs:
Many people gave me advice for fundraising, including, Kensuke Furukawa (Nanapi), Ryusuke Matsumoto (Community Factory), Kiyo Kobayashi (serial entrepreneur, ex-CEO of Nobot), and Taku Harada (Peatix). But since I was running a service with a small team, I wanted to keep doing it ourselves without fundraising. But we started to explore funding opportunities back last July, and got a good response. When I met with Koichiro Yoshida (Crowdworks), he told me to meet with all available VC firms around him and try to raise funds.
Takanori Yokoi (Increments) also gave me sound advice. I’ve been sticking to metrics and logic, but he told me I should speak with more courage and not sweat the small stuff.
Every time I talked with Xi, he tended to be a little nervous about doing something new, despite the fact that his service has great potential. If he kept going in this way, I think he wouldn’t be able to create a disruptive service. After this new fundraising, perhaps he will be more aggressive.
And while I can’t disclose too much at this time, he actually is preparing to launch a new service. We’ll take a further look at it when the time comes.
Tokyo-based Logly, a startup running an internet ad platform and recommendation service, announced yesterday that it has raised 120 million yen (approximately $1.15 million) from CA Mobile [1], Voyage Ventures, Mizuho Capital, and SMBC Venture Capital. The fundraising took place back on December 25th, 2013. Since its launch back in 2006, the company has been providing several different B2B internet services: Logly is a demand-side platform that allows advertisers to distribute ads efficiently based on their unique technology that combines the context analysis of a website and the behavioral analysis of visitors. Logly Lift enables the placement of text-based ads on their partner media sites such as Gizmodo Japan, IT Media, and Cafeglobe. Ads are more like articles instead of typical banner ads, giving advertisers better conversion. Newzia Connect is a sort of context matching recommendation engine, allowing news publishers to show their visitors a list of related articles in an article page, helping them increase the amount of page views per visit. With these new funds, the startup has moved their office from Tsukiji to Shibuya [2], and plans to step up their system development and marketing efforts with new talent. The company’s founder/CEO Hirokazu Yoshinaga told us that…
Tokyo-based Logly, a startup running an internet ad platform and recommendation service, announced yesterday that it has raised 120 million yen (approximately $1.15 million) from CA Mobile [1], Voyage Ventures, Mizuho Capital, and SMBC Venture Capital. The fundraising took place back on December 25th, 2013.
Since its launch back in 2006, the company has been providing several different B2B internet services:
CEO Hirokazu Yoshinaga at ICT Spring ’13, Luxembourg
Logly is a demand-side platform that allows advertisers to distribute ads efficiently based on their unique technology that combines the context analysis of a website and the behavioral analysis of visitors.
Logly Lift enables the placement of text-based ads on their partner media sites such as Gizmodo Japan, IT Media, and Cafeglobe. Ads are more like articles instead of typical banner ads, giving advertisers better conversion.
Newzia Connect is a sort of context matching recommendation engine, allowing news publishers to show their visitors a list of related articles in an article page, helping them increase the amount of page views per visit.
With these new funds, the startup has moved their office from Tsukiji to Shibuya [2], and plans to step up their system development and marketing efforts with new talent. The company’s founder/CEO Hirokazu Yoshinaga told us that they expect to grow their ten person team to 30 people by the middle of 2015.
CA Mobile is a subsidiary of CyberAgent, and focused on mobile content development. ↩
Tsukiji is a district known for having the world’s largest fish market. Shibuya became known as a mecca for Japanese startups as well as a trendsetting area of Japanese fashion trends. ↩
I experimented with a lot of mobile games in 2013. But the one that I kept coming back to again and again was GungHo Online Entertainment’s hit title Puzzle & Dragons. The game is most popular is its home market of Japan, where it has seen 23 million downloads to date. But like many Japanese online services, the domestic market is near saturation for P&D, and GungHo has been making efforts push the game abroad. The North American version – the version that I play – doesn’t look like it has had the same success, with only 2 million downloads as of November. But it’s slowly making progress, especially in terms of revenue, and I’d like to take a look at how exactly it’s doing that. Most recently P&D saw a holiday boost in revenue, largely thanks to two smart promotions: 48-hour Godfest – This New Year’s promotion gave players a 3x chance of getting rare and powerful cards, including the game’s coveted god-type cards, using the game’s Rare Egg Machine (a sort of in-game lottery where you can earn rare monster cards). To use the machine, you either need to have accumulated five magic stones (P&D’s in-game currency) or…
Puzzle & Dragons exhibit, Tokyo Game Show 2013
I experimented with a lot of mobile games in 2013. But the one that I kept coming back to again and again was GungHo Online Entertainment’s hit title Puzzle & Dragons. The game is most popular is its home market of Japan, where it has seen 23 million downloads to date. But like many Japanese online services, the domestic market is near saturation for P&D, and GungHo has been making efforts push the game abroad. The North American version – the version that I play – doesn’t look like it has had the same success, with only 2 million downloads as of November.
But it’s slowly making progress, especially in terms of revenue, and I’d like to take a look at how exactly it’s doing that.
Most recently P&D saw a holiday boost in revenue, largely thanks to two smart promotions:
48-hour Godfest – This New Year’s promotion gave players a 3x chance of getting rare and powerful cards, including the game’s coveted god-type cards, using the game’s Rare Egg Machine (a sort of in-game lottery where you can earn rare monster cards). To use the machine, you either need to have accumulated five magic stones (P&D’s in-game currency) or buy stones with actual money. As you can see in the App Annie chart below, the game’s revenue shot up over New Year’s, in both the US and Canada, thanks to this enticing promotion.
Rare Egg Machine was adjusted/renewed – This recent adjustment decreases the chances of a three-star card and increases your chance of a four-star card. This took place on December 10, and the effects of the adjustment are pretty clear as you can see below, for both the US and Canada (note that I’ve varied the scale for clarity).
Puzzle & Dragons, US market, grossing rank, Dec 29 – Jan 13Puzzle & Dragons, Canada market, grossing rank, Dec 29 – Jan 13
On a bit of a sidenote, it always really surprises me to see how active English-speaking fans on the game’s Facebook page, as well as on forums and discussion pages dedicated to the game. That’s not a very tangible measurement of the game’s success, of course, but for me it has always been a good indication that the game, which is very Japanese in both concept and design, has not been lost in translation.
In addition to activities like the ones we saw during the holidays, a number of cross-brand collaborations have helped P&D over the past year as well, most notably the Clash of Clanspromotion that it held with Finnish gaming powerhouse Supercell.
But if we look at the game’s progress over the past year in terms of revenue alone (see below), then it’s easy to see what a productive year this has been for GungHo.
Let’s see what 2014 holds for the company.
Puzzle & Dragons, US market, grossing rank over 2013
See the original article in Japanese Tokyo-based startup 7-bites has launched a new service called A2mato, a C2C flea market app focused on goods relating to Japanese subculture. It’s a smartphone marketplace where individuals can buy and sell things like self-published works, cosplay costumes, gaming, manga, and pop idol goods. When the startup raised funds last June, the CEO told us about this plan, and now it has finally gone online. This ‘otaku’ market includes other things like dating simulations and other online games, vocaloid voice synthesizing, cosplay, figures, novels, electronic comic books, and even railway models. According to a study by Yano Research Institute, this otaku market is getting more customers in Japan beyond its core fan group. In 2011, the market size was valued at 892 billion yen ($8.5 billion). The CEO of Bushiroad, Takaaki Kidani, mentioned that the market for card gaming alone is almost 100 billion yen ($9.5 billion), big enough to get the attention of many businesses. Recently I had a chance to interview with 7bites CEO Shota Sawada about why he thinks there’s potential in this market. He explained there are two main reasons why he started A2mato: One reason is that there is…
Tokyo-based startup 7-bites has launched a new service called A2mato, a C2C flea market app focused on goods relating to Japanese subculture. It’s a smartphone marketplace where individuals can buy and sell things like self-published works, cosplay costumes, gaming, manga, and pop idol goods. When the startup raised funds last June, the CEO told us about this plan, and now it has finally gone online.
This ‘otaku’ market includes other things like dating simulations and other online games, vocaloid voice synthesizing, cosplay, figures, novels, electronic comic books, and even railway models.
According to a study by Yano Research Institute, this otaku market is getting more customers in Japan beyond its core fan group. In 2011, the market size was valued at 892 billion yen ($8.5 billion). The CEO of Bushiroad, Takaaki Kidani, mentioned that the market for card gaming alone is almost 100 billion yen ($9.5 billion), big enough to get the attention of many businesses.
Recently I had a chance to interview with 7bites CEO Shota Sawada about why he thinks there’s potential in this market.
He explained there are two main reasons why he started A2mato:
One reason is that there is a market. The other reason is that I wanted to support creators.
At Comiket (a large comic convention) visitors cannot get enough information on the groups that are participating, and they turn to other media like Twitter or websites to get information. Because information is not easily accessible, comic fans pay attention only to major groups or circles. So it is difficult to find new talented creators. With A2mato I’d like to make information on new talents more easily accessible and support long-tailed creators.
While mobile C2C marketplace and flea market apps attracts many consumers today, there was no flea market app focused only on subculture. So Sawada thought there would be potential to grow.
Today many of online marketplaces for self-published works charge users high service charges. For example, when a creator sells their work on websites like DLsite or Melonbooks, the company charges the creator 30 percent of the price as a service charge. But on A2mato, it’s only 5.25%.
On A2mato, users can follow hashtags for each genre and see that content on their timeline. There is also a feature called ‘remart’, similar to Twitter’s retweet, and users can save their favorite items as well.
The UI was developed based on Sawada’s assumption that the many users with interest an in subculture might be Twitter users too.
Just like other flea market apps, users can list their items on A2mato from their smartphone app. Payments can be made using credit cards, money transfer at convenience stores and banks, or with A2mato points.
Unlike most flea market apps, A2mato has a web version of its marketplace as well. This is because the company expected that linked web content will be important to bring traffic/users from Twitter.
A2mato is targeting a half million users and 500 million yen ($4.8 million) in monthly transactions. If you’d like to try out the app, it is available for the download here. Currently it’s in Japanese only.
Our readers may recall that Japanese robotics company Schaft was recently acquired by Google and won the DARPA robotics challenge trials. Bloomberg reported yesterday that the company’s co-founder Takashi Kato will form a new 2 billion yen fund (approximately $19 million) for Japanese startups focused on biotechnology and energy efficiency segments. It will be called 246 Capital. In the process of negotiating with Google during the acquisition process, he tried to get funds from 10 investment firms and the state-run fund Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ). But his efforts didn’t work out. In response to this disappointing experience, he plans to launch a scheme to help Japanese engineers and scientists get funding to complementary to their research and development expenses. Kato hopes to invest in companies developing cancer treatment devices and analytics technology for genetics since his own mother died from skin cancer. Efforts from successful entrepreneurs that help others in the ecosystem is really a great thing to see in Japan. Our readers may recall that we recently featured a number of up-and-coming robotics startups from Japan, many of whose founders grew out from the creative digital company TeamLab. Via Bloomberg
Takashi Kato (picture from his website)
Our readers may recall that Japanese robotics company Schaft was recently acquired by Google and won the DARPA robotics challenge trials. Bloomberg reported yesterday that the company’s co-founder Takashi Kato will form a new 2 billion yen fund (approximately $19 million) for Japanese startups focused on biotechnology and energy efficiency segments. It will be called 246 Capital.
In the process of negotiating with Google during the acquisition process, he tried to get funds from 10 investment firms and the state-run fund Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ). But his efforts didn’t work out. In response to this disappointing experience, he plans to launch a scheme to help Japanese engineers and scientists get funding to complementary to their research and development expenses. Kato hopes to invest in companies developing cancer treatment devices and analytics technology for genetics since his own mother died from skin cancer.
Efforts from successful entrepreneurs that help others in the ecosystem is really a great thing to see in Japan. Our readers may recall that we recently featured a number of up-and-coming robotics startups from Japan, many of whose founders grew out from the creative digital company TeamLab.
See the original story in Japanese. Silicon-valley based Hapyrus, a Japanese startup focused on developing big data solutions, announced yesterday that it has raised $1.6 million from investors in Japan and the US, including 500startups. Coinciding with these funds, the startup will rebrand itself as FlyData and set up a local subsidiary in Japan. The company is led by Japanese entrepreneur Koichi Fujikawa, who previously worked with a number of prominent Japanese startups like Dennotai (acquired by Yahoo Japan back in 2000), Simplex Technology (TSE:4340), and Sirius Technology (also acquired by Yahoo Japan, 2010). They launched a new service called ‘FlyData for Amazon Redshift’ back in February, allowing automatic uploading and migration of data to Amazon Redshift, Amazon’s data-warehouse service. The decision to rebrand reflects the company’s intention to focus on providing and developing its FlyData service. Fujikawa explained the rationale behind this change at a press briefing yesterday: We’ve been originally developing middleware solutions for Hadoop, but I was so surprised when I saw Amazon Redshift for the first time. I thought that no other options besides Hadoop could deliver big data solutions that work, but in fact Amazon Redshift can do it for about $1,000 an year –…
From the left: Kei Hareyama (country manager), Koichi Fujikawa (founder/CEO), and Daniel Saito (vice president)
Silicon-valley based Hapyrus, a Japanese startup focused on developing big data solutions, announced yesterday that it has raised $1.6 million from investors in Japan and the US, including 500startups. Coinciding with these funds, the startup will rebrand itself as FlyData and set up a local subsidiary in Japan.
The company is led by Japanese entrepreneur Koichi Fujikawa, who previously worked with a number of prominent Japanese startups like Dennotai (acquired by Yahoo Japan back in 2000), Simplex Technology (TSE:4340), and Sirius Technology (also acquired by Yahoo Japan, 2010).
They launched a new service called ‘FlyData for Amazon Redshift’ back in February, allowing automatic uploading and migration of data to Amazon Redshift, Amazon’s data-warehouse service. The decision to rebrand reflects the company’s intention to focus on providing and developing its FlyData service.
Fujikawa explained the rationale behind this change at a press briefing yesterday:
We’ve been originally developing middleware solutions for Hadoop, but I was so surprised when I saw Amazon Redshift for the first time. I thought that no other options besides Hadoop could deliver big data solutions that work, but in fact Amazon Redshift can do it for about $1,000 an year – extremely cheaper than conventional technology. When Amazon’s mentor team came to visit 500startups where we were residing, they gave us a complimentary account for Amazon Redshift. When we tried it, it yielded 10 to 100 times better performance than Hadoop. It was then that we were convinced that we could not win with Hadoop.
While an abundant of solutions for cloud data processing are available, many companies have difficulty in uploading their data, and for many, their data remains in an on-premises environment. We found that there will be a pressing need to solve this issue, which led us to focus on our FlyData business.
But it wasn’t easy reaching this conclusion. Fujikawa’s co-founders left the company because of a gap in their ideas about business strategy. But he believed in the potential of his business and raised $925,000 from investors in Japan and the US last summer. He succeeded in hiring competent workers through Japanese social recruiting platform Wantedly.
For companies, since FlyData technology uploads your data from an on-premise RDBMS (rational database management system) to cloud-based data warehouses like Amazon Redshift, you need to install a FlyData component on your RDBMS server. The component for MySQL is available for now, and components for PostgreSQL, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server will follow soon.
Since the 2013 launch, FlyData for Amazon RedShift has acquired more than 40 corporate users and has over 40% growth in sales every month. They’ve seen a striking increase in the growth here in Japan, across sectors like social gaming, ad tech, and digital marketing. Fujikawa noted that they have prominent clients like Brightroll, Upworthy, Datalot, Enish, and Tokyo Otaku Mode.
FlyData is also a qualified member of the Amazon Redshift Partners program, where we can find a number of their competitors, including Informatica, Talend, Attunity, and SnapLogic. Fujikawa explained a little more about their advantage over these competitors:
From my perspective, Informatica and Talend has many problems in supporting cloud platforms. And Attunity and SnapLogic have not yet made an impact in the Japanese market. In terms of a presence in Japan and the Asia Pacific region, I believe we have an advantage.
Furthermore, Amazon is good at cloud computing but is not as good with data located that’s located in a client’s on-premise environment. But we can handle it, so that we think we’re a good complementary service to Amazon. For the time being, we are currently providing the service for Amazon, which is leading this space, but partnering with other platforms like Google Big Query might be a potential option for us in the future.
Along with the launch of their subsidiary in Japan, a number of notable individuals have joined their management team. Their vice president of sales and international growth Daniel Saito co-founded Rimnet (one of Japan’s oldest internet providers, later acquired by PSINet) and was involved in launching MySQL K.K. Kei Hareyama was appointed as the country manager for the Japanese market, bringing over 12 years experience in the data analytics sector to the table.
In Japan, we’ve seen quite a few startups providing business centric services for global markets. On a related note, Treasure Data, another notable Japanese startup focused on big data solutions, also received angel investment worth $2.75 million back in 2012, with funds coming from several investors including Jerry Yang (Yahoo co-founder) and Yukihiro ‘Matz’ Matsumoto (the inventor of the Ruby programming language).
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese internet company Adways (TSE:2849) announced on Thursday that it has invested an undisclosed sum in and partnered with Korean startup 5Rocks. The latter develops growth hacking solutions for mobile apps, and launched services for Japanese app developers last year. Our readers may recall that 5Rocks raised 230 million yen (approximately $2.3 million) from Japanese VC Global Brain. It was reported last month that 5Rocks had sold its restaurant booking app Poing to fellow Korean startup Trust Us so it could focus more on its growth hacking tool business. Adways has developed a performance analytics solution for mobile apps called PartyTrack, and they plan to integrate their suite with 5Rocks’ solution, aiming to provide more efficient mobile ad marketing services for clients. Another Japanese startup, Sirok, also introduced a growth hacking tool called Growth Point last month. A series of such service launches indicates this sector will likely be a trending space this year.
Japanese internet company Adways (TSE:2849) announced on Thursday that it has invested an undisclosed sum in and partnered with Korean startup 5Rocks. The latter develops growth hacking solutions for mobile apps, and launched services for Japanese app developers last year.
Our readers may recall that 5Rocks raised 230 million yen (approximately $2.3 million) from Japanese VC Global Brain.
It was reported last month that 5Rocks had sold its restaurant booking app Poing to fellow Korean startup Trust Us so it could focus more on its growth hacking tool business.
Adways has developed a performance analytics solution for mobile apps called PartyTrack, and they plan to integrate their suite with 5Rocks’ solution, aiming to provide more efficient mobile ad marketing services for clients.
Another Japanese startup, Sirok, also introduced a growth hacking tool called Growth Point last month. A series of such service launches indicates this sector will likely be a trending space this year.
See the original article in Japanese Whill is a Japanese startup that is currently developing a next-generation wheelchair. Earlier this week the startup unveiled that it has raised funds from Vegas Tech Fund, 500Startups, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and individual angel investors back on November 6th. The total amount of funding raised in this round is $750,000, completing the company’s seed funding of $1.75 million in total. Vegas Tech Fund, also involved in this most recent funding, includes Zappos’ Tony Hsieh as a partner CEO. Coinciding with the announcement, Whill has renewed its company website and has began online pre-orders. According to the CEO Satoshi Sugie, the company has already sold out the 50 available machines by pre-order, and there are over 100 users waiting to buy. They first plan to market the products in the US and are aiming to for a Japan release in late 2014. Sugie said that he wants to use the funding raised this time not only for Whill’s development but also to add some human resources, such as persons who can perform maintenance on the machine. He thinks it is very important to attain a high level of customer satisfaction. The company is also looking…
Whill is a Japanese startup that is currently developing a next-generation wheelchair. Earlier this week the startup unveiled that it has raised funds from Vegas Tech Fund, 500Startups, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and individual angel investors back on November 6th.
The total amount of funding raised in this round is $750,000, completing the company’s seed funding of $1.75 million in total. Vegas Tech Fund, also involved in this most recent funding, includes Zappos’ Tony Hsieh as a partner CEO. Coinciding with the announcement, Whill has renewed its company website and has began online pre-orders.
According to the CEO Satoshi Sugie, the company has already sold out the 50 available machines by pre-order, and there are over 100 users waiting to buy. They first plan to market the products in the US and are aiming to for a Japan release in late 2014.
Sugie said that he wants to use the funding raised this time not only for Whill’s development but also to add some human resources, such as persons who can perform maintenance on the machine. He thinks it is very important to attain a high level of customer satisfaction.
The company is also looking for business development persons and field engineers. Anyone keen to get involved should consider getting in touch. Sugie is currently exhibiting at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show taking place in Las Vegas.
Seeing more and more Japanese startups trying to break into overseas markets is very encouraging for the other startups in Japan. We will also keep an eye on Whill to see how they progress.
Masaru Ikeda
Junya Mori
Takeshi Hirano
Rick Martin
