See this story in Japanese. Below are selected excerpts from the original. This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Sapporo, Japan. You can read more of our reports from this event here. In this panel, CyberAgent CEO Susumu Fujita spoke with five young Japanese entrepreneurs to find out more about how they got to where they are today. Participants in the discussion included: Riki Kojima, CEO of Willgate (an SEO solution provider) Nobuhiro Ariyasu, CEO of Coach United (a private lesson provider) Shintaro Otake, the CEO of Tri-fort (social app and smartphone app developer) Kensuke Furukawa, the CEO of Nanapi (an archive of how-to and daily tips) Natsuko Shiraki, the CEO of Hasuna (jeweler) Startup strategies in the face of hardships Otake: I intended to take a radical approach in order to make it successful. I set a target that we surpass Facebook, and I learned that we need radical and rapid growth to reach that goal. Kojima: At the age of 20, my company was still two years old but employed too many people, even though I didn’t have much business experience at that time. With our 100 million yen funding ($1 million), I…
This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Sapporo, Japan. You can read more of our reports from this event here.
In this panel, CyberAgent CEO Susumu Fujita spoke with five young Japanese entrepreneurs to find out more about how they got to where they are today. Participants in the discussion included:
Riki Kojima, CEO of Willgate (an SEO solution provider)
Nobuhiro Ariyasu, CEO of Coach United (a private lesson provider)
Shintaro Otake, the CEO of Tri-fort (social app and smartphone app developer)
Kensuke Furukawa, the CEO of Nanapi (an archive of how-to and daily tips)
Natsuko Shiraki, the CEO of Hasuna (jeweler)
Startup strategies in the face of hardships
Otake: I intended to take a radical approach in order to make it successful. I set a target that we surpass Facebook, and I learned that we need radical and rapid growth to reach that goal.
Willgate’s CEO Riki Kojima
Kojima: At the age of 20, my company was still two years old but employed too many people, even though I didn’t have much business experience at that time. With our 100 million yen funding ($1 million), I hired 30 people but the company unexpectedly collapsed too soon. Subsequently I found a colleague’s chat post that mentioned ‘I shouldn’t work with this company.”
Fujita: What are the advantages and disadvantages of launching your business when attending school?
Kojima: I had no business experience, so that I couldn’t figure out what was the best approach. I was forced to take a roundabout route and fail repeatedly. I’m still young, so people tend to see me as an immature business person, but in fact this makes me better at feeling people’s pains.
Monetization and business strategies
Fujita to Furukawa: I frequently visit your blog, and I know you’re quite good at writing stories. You, the company’s president, often show up on the web. What is there to gain from that?
Nanapi CEO Kensuke Furukawa
Furukawa: If you’re running an internet service, you should be familiar with the space. But on the other hand, it was once pointed out at an important business appointment that I might have too much time to spare. Many employee applicants come to us through my blog. Compared to applicants we find through talent search services, they are highly motivated and bring much benefit to our business.
Fujita: For today’s business owners, your blogging strategy makes sense. Not only to help your hiring efforts, but it may also help you bring your vision and message to employees as well. But what’s your overall strategy behind Nanapi? Are you just focused on growing it without considering monetization? Do you plan to sell it off to other companies?
Furukawa: In order to monetize the service, we need to make it grow. We have 20 million monthly unique users, not yet sufficient for the monetization. In Japan, if you monetize an internet service, it should be among the top 50 sites in the country in terms of internet traffic. Some web media companies have succeeded to monetize, but my interest is in making big stuff.
Coach United CEO Nobuhiro Ariyasu
Fujita: In my view, Cyta.jp (Coach United’s private lessons portal) is not very ‘Internettish’. How do you feel about it?
Ariyasu: No, our operations are not ‘Internettish’, as you say. For many online service providers, you typically send inquires to consumers to find out if they are satisfied with the customer experience. We actually use mystery shoppers to conduct surveys. In case that we can’t acquire users by e-mail marketing, sometimes even use telephone marketing.
Entrepreneurial culture in Japan
Fujita to Furukawa: Gradually we’re getting a culture where people admire exits. Do you plan to run your business independently without funding? Or are you interested in selling off?
Furukawa: We actually fundraised from Globis Venture Partners. In terms of our business model, our focus is on enlarging our media business. Selling off is a good option. But for now, we’d like to look at buying someone else’s service in order to enlarge our business.
I developed the Nanapi service because I couldn’t find any similar one. In our four-year experience since the launch, I eventually learned that it’s not so promising. Everyone wanted to have it but nobody actually did it, since it’s a bother.
Fujita: In Japan, entrepreneurs are generally not admired much. What do you think about this?
Furukawa: In my understanding, Japan is a country where we can easily launch a startup. We can also receive orders from big companies regardless of the size or maturity of the business. Compared to foreign countries, startup founders in Japan are relatively older, probably because we (generally) prefer to launch a business after getting work experience at a big company. For me, I’ve worked at Recruit for three years, which I think helps me do business more easily. If you are a student, people typically look down on you.
Kojima: When I failed in my business, I was bothered by the issues surrounding capitalization strategy and employment. I wanted more details about this information. I failed once but I bounced back even though I was immature. I hope our society can be tolerant of people who fail.
Ariyasu: Japan is heaven for entrepreneurs. Considering the huge amount of cash flow available in the market, the population of entrepreneurs going after that cash is extremely low. We need more success stories than we need government efforts to help entrepreneurship. If we get more billionaires, more people will get excited about entrepreneurship.
Fujita: Absolutely. If we have more success stories, that will certainly have an impact on people’s mindsets.
Tri-fort CEO Shintaro Otake
Otake finishes by asking Fujita a question: When are you planning to retire? What kind of people would you want to hand the company over to?
Fujita: To be honest, I’ve been always thinking [about] stepping down — when our business became profitable, when we completed the launch of Ameba (CyberAgent’s blog service). But the fact is, every time that we make an achievement, another new goal comes up.
For our media business especially, I was heavily involved in building it up. I did too much, and now I can’t really hand it over to someone else. (big laugh from the audience.)
See the original story in Japanese. This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Sapporo, Japan. You can read more of our reports from this event here. In contrast with that GREE and Mobage (by DeNA) who released a wide range of web-based game titles, native apps are grabbing much more attention, notably Puzzle & Dragons and Line’s repertoire of gaming apps. But can their revenue be sustained? And how will they lead the smartphone app market? We had a chance to hear from Jun Masuda, chief officer at Line Corporation, where he spoke about how to monetize apps and open the platform to the third-party developers. According to the stats from App Annie CEO Bertrand Schmitt, the Line app was ranked in 4th as of last March, based on consolidated global revenues from the iOS Appstore and Google Play. Masuda: For message app developers, you usually make money by selling stickers, ads, and charging for derivative services. For social network providers, you may might make your living with advertising. But if you rely only on that revenue stream, it’s far too difficult to sustain your business. It’s important to mix up revenue streams, both…
This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Sapporo, Japan. You can read more of our reports from this event here.
In contrast with that GREE and Mobage (by DeNA) who released a wide range of web-based game titles, native apps are grabbing much more attention, notably Puzzle & Dragons and Line’s repertoire of gaming apps. But can their revenue be sustained? And how will they lead the smartphone app market?
We had a chance to hear from Jun Masuda, chief officer at Line Corporation, where he spoke about how to monetize apps and open the platform to the third-party developers.
According to the stats from App Annie CEO Bertrand Schmitt, the Line app was ranked in 4th as of last March, based on consolidated global revenues from the iOS Appstore and Google Play.
Masuda: For message app developers, you usually make money by selling stickers, ads, and charging for derivative services. For social network providers, you may might make your living with advertising. But if you rely only on that revenue stream, it’s far too difficult to sustain your business. It’s important to mix up revenue streams, both charging users and with advertising, and keep that in balance. Sale of stickers is showing good numbers, and the app is ranked in first place if you exclude gaming apps, both on the Google Play and the iOS app store.
Popular stickers, popular characters
Masuda: We’ve had success acquiring users in the Thai market, so non-Japanese also like this concept of decorative communications, adding stickers in chat. Our revenue comes primarily from the Japanese market. Prices for our stickers are common in all around the world. Prices are relatively high for Thai users, but they still like to buy the stickers.
In terms of sticker sale trends, we’re not seeing any apparent gap between the globally version and locally-optimized versions. A sticker showing familiar characters, Brown & Cony, is the best selling one in the global markets. In the countries where local people typically watch Japanese animation films or understand what kawaii means, the Line app business does well. In the rest of the world, however, business is not so good.
Make the most of 150 million users
Masuda: In the latter half of last year, the Line Pop app was the best selling of our gaming apps. For games there have been 140 million downloads, and 25 titles. I can’t disclose revenue numbers, but our strategy is to acquire new gaming users on the Line user base.
We intend to keep introducing titles that female users will like, but we carefully set prices that won’t force them to pay too much. They typically play the games where they like to talk with someone over the phone. We’ll try to think further on how to monetize.
If an app has its name associated with the Line app, it usually has a very high rank in the app store. Prior to the launching the app in the gaming app category, we check if the app behaves as intended, and assure the quality of its user experience.
Opening the platform to third-party developers
Line’s Jun Masuda
Masuda: We are actually receiving many inquires about opening the platform to third-party developers. But there’s no plan for the time being. As we’ve been doing until now, we’ll work with partner developers who have ideas on what kind of games are suitable for Line users. We shutdown the in-company gaming studio team back in April. Kakao has more than 200 gaming titles, which makes me feel the life-cycle of a title is getting shorter. We’re now carefully thinking what to do next.
For more information on the growth of Line, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.
This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Sapporo, Japan. You can read more of our reports from this event here. The final session of day one at the Infinity Ventures Summit featured some of the biggest names from Japan’s internet space, including Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani, Line Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa, GMO Internet’s CEO Masatoshi Kumagai, as well as Fuji Television’s senior executive managing director Chihiro Kameyama. The panel was moderated by Nikkei Inc’s senior writer Waichi Sekiguchi. The session was in Japanese, and the remarks below are selected from the simultaneous translation. 18:07 – Rakuten’s Mikitani joked at the begining, saying he’s not so comfortable speaking in Japanese. He started by pointed to the Japan Association of New Economy (you may recall we covered the JANE summit a month back). He notes that in order to bring change, there is a sort of ‘galapagos wall’ that must be overcome. 18:11 – Mikitani says that entrepreneurs who visited Japan from Silicon Valley at that event noted that Japan is on the verge of a renaissance (Phil Libin in particular felt this way). He says that in June they are going to hold an sort…
This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Sapporo, Japan. You can read more of our reports from this event here.
The final session of day one at the Infinity Ventures Summit featured some of the biggest names from Japan’s internet space, including Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani, Line Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa, GMO Internet’s CEO Masatoshi Kumagai, as well as Fuji Television’s senior executive managing director Chihiro Kameyama. The panel was moderated by Nikkei Inc’s senior writer Waichi Sekiguchi. The session was in Japanese, and the remarks below are selected from the simultaneous translation.
Rakuten’s CEO Hiroshi Mikitani
18:07 – Rakuten’s Mikitani joked at the begining, saying he’s not so comfortable speaking in Japanese. He started by pointed to the Japan Association of New Economy (you may recall we covered the JANE summit a month back). He notes that in order to bring change, there is a sort of ‘galapagos wall’ that must be overcome.
18:11 – Mikitani says that entrepreneurs who visited Japan from Silicon Valley at that event noted that Japan is on the verge of a renaissance (Phil Libin in particular felt this way). He says that in June they are going to hold an sort of Abenomics convention, and encouraged everyone to join JANE. They hope to have strong communication with the government about how to help Japan progress economically.
18:15 – What challenges are Japan facing right now? Kumagai says that the tax rate is as high as four times higher in Japan, which puts them at a disadvantage in comparison to global competitors.
18:19 – Fuji’s Kameyama explains that Japan’s mass media is currently at a disadvantage in the face of things like internet video.
18:27 – Kameyama speaks on the role of mass media in the age of internet opportunity. He says that where goals overlap between companies, it’s of course best to work together with a common understanding. We have to research what these startup internet companies are doing and see [how to proceed].
GMO Internet’s CEO Masatoshi Kumagai, Fuji Television’s senior executive managing director Chihiro Kameyama
18:30 – Keidanren (the Japan business federation which he famously left) acted as if it was the voice of the economic world. And that’s what people thought. But it became apparent that this is not necessarily the opinion of the business set.
18:33 – Mikitani speaks about lobbying the government to work on remote education, but encountering resistance because education in person was the norm. He says also that in pharmaceuticals, you can’t buy over the net, and abolishing this in-person regulation was something that was important.
18:35 – Morikawa says that society is always changing, and there are many cycles, including financial ones. In Japanese history, change was usually due to external pressures. But now we are creating an engine for change. But this is a culture that is difficult to change. It’s something like a revolution, and JANE is trying to do that in the internet space. [On partnering with Docomo] We need to compete globally, not really within Japan, trying to work together to create something new.
18:48 – Media used to be one way communication, but that has all changed. Now the individual has become more important.
18:50 – I think the internet will become like electricity. I think the many devices we use will simply be referred to by the size of their screens. I’m excited about wearable computers like Google Glass. I want one. I think in five to ten years, it might even be contact lenses. But the biggest content in that environment is communication, and social media will be the biggest part of that. I think the mass media should focus on that to, because in terms of speed, I don’t think you can compete with that.
18:53 – Mikitani talks about shopping as entertainment and communication. He says that his own shopping experience in the past in local markets, he really enjoyed speaking with the shop owners. In the states, even financial transations are becoming more like a social media activity. I think every activity in your life is becoming more social.
Line Corporation’s CEO Akira Morikawa
18:56 – Morikawa: In Japan, the fact that people use trains a lot, gives people a chance to use mobile and play mobile games. In other countries where they have to drive, they don’t have that luxury. So I think in terms of mobile [this is an edge] and that’s the area we should focus on.
19:05 – Mikitani: The Japanese market is shrinking, and you have to go compete in the international market. But because Japan’s system is so closed, many talented engineers leave Japan. In the US there are 200,000 or 300,000 engineers. We are lacking in volume, and could bring engineers from overseas. But then there are visa issues to handle.
19:13 – Morikawa encourages Fuji’s Kameyama to create a drama where engineers or engineers get admiration. The audience applauds.
This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Sapporo, Japan. You can read more of our reports from this event here. The late afternoon session of the Infinity Ventures Summit featured a panel on mobile gaming, highlighting the efforts of Japanese game companies to win over the global market. Panelists included GREE International’s SVP Eiji Araki, DeNA’s chief platform strategy officer Junichi Akagawa, and Gumi’s president and CEO Hironao Kunimitsu. The discussion was moderated by Taisei Tanaka, the CEO of Geisha Tokyo Entertainment. Araki-san explained that the US and Japan are very different markets, noting that they have had successes and failures in the US. He cited Modern War, Crime City, and Zombie Jombie as a couple of their success stories. He noted that at GREE International (in San Francisco), they work differently than they do in Japan. In the US, they have a very systemized approach across pre-production, production, beta, and general availability phases. And after every stage, there is a check point to reflect on if the game has potential to be a top 5 title. If they aren’t happy with a progress, they may cancel the game mid-way. DeNA’s Akagawa explained that…
This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Sapporo, Japan. You can read more of our reports from this event here.
The late afternoon session of the Infinity Ventures Summit featured a panel on mobile gaming, highlighting the efforts of Japanese game companies to win over the global market. Panelists included GREE International’s SVP Eiji Araki, DeNA’s chief platform strategy officer Junichi Akagawa, and Gumi’s president and CEO Hironao Kunimitsu. The discussion was moderated by Taisei Tanaka, the CEO of Geisha Tokyo Entertainment.
GREE SVP Eiji Araki
Araki-san explained that the US and Japan are very different markets, noting that they have had successes and failures in the US. He cited Modern War, Crime City, and Zombie Jombie as a couple of their success stories. He noted that at GREE International (in San Francisco), they work differently than they do in Japan. In the US, they have a very systemized approach across pre-production, production, beta, and general availability phases. And after every stage, there is a check point to reflect on if the game has potential to be a top 5 title. If they aren’t happy with a progress, they may cancel the game mid-way.
DeNA’s Akagawa explained that the biggest challenges for his company in expanding abroad is ensuring that there is a consistency of management principles as well as a synchronization of corporate philosophies across regions. Building trust and communication across different cultures is difficult, and without trust you can’t really do anything. If a game doesn’t meet it’s goal, does the fault lie with the US or Japan office? This is when good communication comes into play. He notes with a laugh that ‘nom-unication’ (a Japanese portmanteau to describe communication through drinking parties together) is a word they throw around a lot.
Solving the puzzle
In terms of developing a successful game, Akagawa made the comparison to baseball, noting that if you want a hit you need to swing many times. But interestingly, Japan’s most popular mobile game, GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragon’s is somewhat of an exception to this rule.
Gumi CEO Hironao Kunimitsu
Kunimitsu questioned whether or not the money GungHo is making with P&D can be sustained. Akagawa expressed confidence that it can continue at least for a while longer. But it was also noted that many investors overseas don’t know about GungHo, and once they learn about them, there might be some investment coming – resulting in another boost for the company.
But to continue the baseball analogy, if you are swinging and not hitting, then you need to adjust your swing. Akagawa noted that in each market, a publisher needs to figure out what is most likely to resonate in that particular area:
If you want to develop globally, in order to have a game in the top ranking, you need to localize to make sure your game is accepted. At the same time some games are not accepted by the mass public, but if you have core users you can still succeed.
But of course, then there are games that are popular the world over like Angry Birds. But Araki noted that trying to develop such a wide-appealing game can be a gamble. GREE uses a lot of data trying to figure out what will work. Gumi’s Kunimitsu-san pointed to another problem, saying that “content is a zero sum game” and even if your game is popular, but another is more popular – then you still lose.
DeNA’s Junichi Akagawa
Akagawa closed out the session by saying that DeNA has a now or never approach, and that they have to move fast. This is a sentiment that we heard before among some of the country’s more successful internet companies (most notably, Line).
It will be interesting to see how quick all three of these gaming companies can move in the near future, in their efforts to win over global gamers.
Tokyo startup accelerator Open Network Lab, led by MIT Media Lab’s director Joi Ito, held its demo day event today. We had a chance to check out a wide range of startups, not only from this latest batch, but also from the program’s previous five batches. Here’s a quick overview below. From the sixth batch 1. Zenclerk ¶ Website: zenclerk.com We can’t disclose much about their business because they’re in stealth mode, expected to launch next month. But you can infer what they’re working on from their website, as well as this short introductory video (in Japanese). They did not pitch at the event. 2. Papelook / Pape.mu girls ¶ Website: papelook.co.jp Pitched by: Ichiro Ozawa As some of our readers may remember that we previously featured Papelook, a photo collage/cropping app that allows users to share your fashion snapshots with others. It has now passed 5 million downloads since its initial launch back in March of 2012, growing at the impressive rate of 500,000 downloads a month. Almost 50% of all Japanese female smartphone users aged from 15 to 29 are using the app. In terms of differentiation from competing photo apps like Decopic and Snapeee, Papelook makes it…
Tokyo startup accelerator Open Network Lab, led by MIT Media Lab’s director Joi Ito, held its demo day event today. We had a chance to check out a wide range of startups, not only from this latest batch, but also from the program’s previous five batches. Here’s a quick overview below.
We can’t disclose much about their business because they’re in stealth mode, expected to launch next month. But you can infer what they’re working on from their website, as well as this short introductory video (in Japanese). They did not pitch at the event.
As some of our readers may remember that we previously featured Papelook, a photo collage/cropping app that allows users to share your fashion snapshots with others. It has now passed 5 million downloads since its initial launch back in March of 2012, growing at the impressive rate of 500,000 downloads a month. Almost 50% of all Japanese female smartphone users aged from 15 to 29 are using the app.
In terms of differentiation from competing photo apps like Decopic and Snapeee, Papelook makes it easier to sort good pictures from bad ones, which should keep your camera roll from being filled with unnecessary pictures.
Papelook alone does not make much money, but it transfers users to Pape.mu girls, their cash cow. Pape.mu girls is a fashion app that presents a variety of pictures and updates curated from models’ blogs or fashion brands. The app has 250,000 downloads so far, with 500,000 active users generating six million page views a month. What’s most impressive is the retention time of their users, logging an astounding 50 minutes per visit on average.
In this way, the photo collage app brings users on board, which then creates opportunities for brands to promote products with the fashion app. The startup has already managed to partner with Fashionwalker.com, one of Japan’s largest fashion e-commerce sites. The company is planning business expansion to the US and Mainland China soon.
Some of our readers may remember we featured Yangyang Xi, the founder and CEO of language learning platform Lang-8 in an exclusive interview back in February. The startup launched back in 2007 but since then has been operated by the founder on his own.
Mr. Xi was allowed to participate in the last batch of the acceleration program, hiring a CTO who previously worked at recipe sharing site Cookpad, as well as a designer.
With these fresh faces, Lang-8 has been seeing improvements in its access metrics. The growth rate of paid users is twice what it was a year ago, and revenue has almost doubled compared to a year ago. Business is finally in the black, and they can now begin developing a mobile app.
There’s no CGM-based language learning service using a mobile app, so that they expect to be on top of this space soon.
Back in December of 2011, Companth.me’s co-founder/CEO Hiromichi Ando explained his first app to me in an interview. They’ve been developing a number of apps since then, and the newest one is Kiddy.
Parents typically want to record the growth of their children with pictures, but most would prefer not to share all those snapshots with people on social network platforms who they might not be very close to. To address this problem, Kiddy is a photo sharing app that lets parents to share snapshots of their kids within a family group.
The app was launched last January, and more than 1,000 households have signed up for it so far. Comparing to other photo sharing apps, the Kiddy app is showing good user retention, and the ratio of weekly active users among its entire user base is between 40% to 50%, meaning that about one in every two users makes use of the app at least once a week.
With the potential to generate a great lifetime value, the startup expects to enhance the app as a platform for sharing pictures among family members. They have several monetization ideas including photo printing, or new e-commerce services that propose that you buy something that fits the specific occasion/time of your photo.
Website:govoyagin.com Pitched by: Masashi Takahashi, Entertainment Kick
This service initially set out to create a travel experience marketplace for tourists visiting Japan. But subsequently they enhanced their ideas to cover five Asian countries: Japan, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. They are focusing on the Asian market because there are about 42 million travelers that hit region each year, with the market estimated to be worth over $4.2 billion.
Voyagin is planning to move its headquarters to Singapore by the end of this year.
This service is being operated a pair of developer co-founders. They are often asked by other developers to create smartphone apps, and were wondering why developers outsource development work to other developers. Finally they reached a conclusion. System developers in their 20s are familiar with programming languages like Objective-C or Ruby on Rails, but those in their 30s are better versed in conventional technologies like MySQL or Java.
With this insight the startup identified a sort of technology generation gap in the developer community. And it’s a gap that they aim to fill.
They’ve established set up a 20 to 60 hour lecture program for less experienced developers to learn about app development, and a range of related topics. They are also planning to providing some new courses for IT companies to train their employees.
After all the presentations were made, Kaoru Hayashi, the CEO of the accelerator’s parent company Digital Garage, announced that the top prize at the Demo Day event was awarded to the aforementioned Papelook.
The Open Network Lab accelerator is now accepting applications for the next batch of its acceleration program. The deadline is May 31st at noon.
At e27’s Echelon satellite event in Tokyo yesterday, nine startups pitched their businesses in front of a panel of judges. The lineup of startups was pretty high quality, not only with startups from Japan but also from Korea, Taiwan, and beyond. Check out our overview of the pitches below to find out which idea walked away the winner. 1. Belladati ¶ Pitched by Martin Trgina, this is a business analytics service that helps companies visualize and analyse all sort of data. Belladati can connect to over 100 different sources of data for a client, including Twitter, Google, Oracle, or SAP, and “bring your data out of the dark,” exported to powerpoint, PDF, or embedded in your own apps. They have predefined templates for certain industries, so users don’t have to start from scratch if they don’t want to. The service is already being used by a number of prominent companies including Red Bull and Korea Telecom. It can be used as either a cloud solution or installed on-premise. 2. CloudDock ¶ This cloud enterprise solution was presented by Shigeta Okamoto, pitched as a sort of Dropbox for business. They want to isolate user data from the PC (things such as…
At e27’s Echelon satellite event in Tokyo yesterday, nine startups pitched their businesses in front of a panel of judges. The lineup of startups was pretty high quality, not only with startups from Japan but also from Korea, Taiwan, and beyond. Check out our overview of the pitches below to find out which idea walked away the winner.
Pitched by Martin Trgina, this is a business analytics service that helps companies visualize and analyse all sort of data. Belladati can connect to over 100 different sources of data for a client, including Twitter, Google, Oracle, or SAP, and “bring your data out of the dark,” exported to powerpoint, PDF, or embedded in your own apps. They have predefined templates for certain industries, so users don’t have to start from scratch if they don’t want to. The service is already being used by a number of prominent companies including Red Bull and Korea Telecom. It can be used as either a cloud solution or installed on-premise.
This cloud enterprise solution was presented by Shigeta Okamoto, pitched as a sort of Dropbox for business. They want to isolate user data from the PC (things such as documents, pictures, music, etc.), so once you log into CloudDock on a Windows machine, you’ll see your files as normal, but with a small cloud icon on top of them, sort of like Dropbox puts a green check mark on files which have been synced. And when you access that file in an application, it’s quickly downloaded for use. But upon logging out of CloudDock, the data is no longer on that device. This service can be used on mobile as well.
The startup is targeting customers considering VDI systems, and so far they have already managed to sell over 9000 licenses in just two months since their launch in February.
We’ve heard from Conyac a few times before, so regular readers are likely somewhat familiar with this service. Naoki Yamada pitched the startups offering for business, explaining that their crowdsourced translation solution can provide quick translations for businesses for a low price. As a typical business use case, he gave the example of a 10-slide powerpoint presentation, which was translated in five hours and cost $36. In comparison to competing services, Naoki explained that on their platform translators can be educated by more experienced translators, thus giving them an opportunity to improve themselves.
This app is a product from Sony Digital Network Applications (SDNA), a group that presentor Masato Kuninori describes as a team of ‘intrapreneurs’ who operate as a startup somewhat independent of its parent company Sony. This photo app was released about a year ago (I gave it a short review), which presents pictures in a magazine style reminiscient of Flipboard, with a great design and the ability to add labels to organize your photos. But I was curious to hear Kuninori describe one of their business models as becoming a B2B service, where they would create versions of Million Moments for various companies. He also noted that once they create a cloud service, they might try to use the labels that users add to photos, although he was somewhat vague on the details, unable to disclose too much.
This Taiwanese startup offers a range of preschool and entertainment apps for kids, a sort of learning cirriculum in the form of fun games. Currently QLL has over 140 applications, with the goal of offering 300. To date they have seen 4.5 million downloads, 50,000 daily active users, the majority of which are from their home market of Taiwan. The business model is paid advertising in app, as well as licensed content. The company began one and a half years ago, but are now trying to expand abroad, eyeing the Japanese market as one of their next targets. Serkan Toto, one of the judges, asked about how the company planned to market their apps, and presentor Lulu Yeh explained that since they often have a few of their apps ranked very high in app stores, they can then cross promote their other offerings. It seems like a solid idea, and it will be interesting to see how they fare outside Taiwan.
This was another interesting games/entertainment offering for kids, a games and toy startup that was originally launched late last year. The company’s games offer physical stickers as a reward, which they say has worked really well in terms of getting kids excited about playing. For some kids who receive these stickers, it might be the first piece of physical mail they ever receive, so naturally they get quite excited. Typically Roam & Wander will send about 300 stickers a day, with a peak of about 700. But presentor Jason describes it as a viral gateway, and the cost of mailing has dropped a little as they have grown.
The startup also plans to bring their Tutu game character to life in the form of a doll that uses a smartphone as the characters face. Special capacitive touch toys are individually recognized by the application, allowing kids to give the doll a drink for example. They are hoping to soon launch a Kickstarter project in order to drum up some awareness about their product.
The only Korean entry in attendance, Zimly is a startup that has been around for a few years now. But at the pitch event, it was presented as a solution to share video across devices, or as a way to watch videos together with friends. Currently the service shares video from PC to mobile, but they hope to make it from “any device to any device” soon. The previous version of Zimly has about two million users, and it is planned to move them over to this new version, and then increase the number of users.
While there’s no shortage of cute photo apps on the market, this one looks sort of promising. Decoalbum’s value proposition is to offer two of the typical cute photo app functions – photo decoration and photo collage – combined in a single app. Readers may remember that we recently featured the collage creation app Papelook, which had racked up more than 4 million downloads since its initial release back in mid–2011. DecoAlbum, which appears to have been on the app store since the middle of last year, boasts 1 million downloads, and the founders say that’s without any paid promotion. Their business model is printing photos, which they plan to do in cooperation with print service Tolot, as well as photo storage. They also mentioned plans to release stickers next month.
Another Taiwan-based service, TopAdmit offers the editing services of its team of 45+ English speaking editors. The pitched use case was a Japanese student who has written an application to a university abroad, but needs some editing to ensure the quality of the document. But TopAdmit also aspires to expand to provide editing of research papers and business editing. They charge 30 cents per English word, or a retainer feed of $500 per month. TopAdmit was judged the winner of the pitch event [1].
TopAdmit
Speaking as an editor, I’m curious to hear how they handle really awful submissions. I wonder what kind of back-and-forth communication, if any, occurs when a given sentence’s meaning is not clear. ↩
See also the original story in Japanese. At e27’s Echelon satellite event in Tokyo today,We had a chance to hear a panel discussion with co-founders of emerging tech news media from the Asian region. The panelists included [1]: Mohan Belani, co-founder, e27, Singapore Rama Mamuaya, co-founder, Daily Social, Indonesia Masaru Ikeda, co-founder, SD Japan Moderator: Rick Martin, editor-in-chief, SD Japan How do your respective countries help support startups or entrepreneurs? Rama: Our western city of Bandung is one of the hottest places right now. Jakarta is where the money is. The investment people and those who are making money around the startup scene, such as VC firms or incubators are based in Jakarta. Typically entrepreneurs might meet and talk with advertisers or VC firms every week in Japan. Jakarta is not so open to accept entrepreneurs who might make some crazy business – however Bali welcomes them. (laugh) Our government does not actually help us much. And typically Indonesian entrepreneurs launch their business without governmental support. Masaru: Compared to other countries, Japan is very conservative. But it is fortunate that many incubators and accelerators have launched in the last few years. Some Japanese giant IT companies established subsidiaries that specializing in investing…
At e27’s Echelon satellite event in Tokyo today,We had a chance to hear a panel discussion with co-founders of emerging tech news media from the Asian region. The panelists included [1]:
How do your respective countries help support startups or entrepreneurs?
Rama: Our western city of Bandung is one of the hottest places right now. Jakarta is where the money is. The investment people and those who are making money around the startup scene, such as VC firms or incubators are based in Jakarta. Typically entrepreneurs might meet and talk with advertisers or VC firms every week in Japan. Jakarta is not so open to accept entrepreneurs who might make some crazy business – however Bali welcomes them. (laugh) Our government does not actually help us much. And typically Indonesian entrepreneurs launch their business without governmental support.
Masaru: Compared to other countries, Japan is very conservative. But it is fortunate that many incubators and accelerators have launched in the last few years. Some Japanese giant IT companies established subsidiaries that specializing in investing in startups. In terms of creating an environment where entrepreneurs can take risk, these new entities are a great support for them.
Mohan: The Singaporean government provides pretty good support for our local startup scene. When you launch a company in Singapore, if your business meets the criteria, you will receive the maximum amount of up to $5 million, not as an investment but as a grant.
Japanese IT businesses and investors are busy in South East Asia. How are they doing?
Mohan: I think DeNA is doing well, and Gumi has also a presence. And we’ve seen many Japanese VC firms in Singapore. Typically they set up a subsidiary in Singapore and expand to other SE Asia countries to invest in local startups. I think this is a good choice. Because for local startups, the government tells you where you should go for a job, which developers you should partner with, and necessary information for their localization efforts.
Rama: Compared to funding from Indonesian local VC firms, it would be better to get funds from Japanese VC firms. Among them, GREE Ventures is pretty active. DeNA is likely to come next. CyberAgent Ventures has already started investment, and they also brought their subsidiaries (such as MicroAd) to the Indonesian market. In Indonesia, Japanese companies typically are investing in local startups and bringing their portfolio companies over.
The latest startup trends
Rama: Tiket is an impressive service, and they succeeded in raising funds and are pretty aggressive. Mobile gaming and social networking services are very hot. Some Indonesian mobile gaming startups are reaching foreign AppStores in the US, UK, and Japan. (cites TouchTen as an example)
Mohan: We’re hosting satellite events all across the region, and winning teams from those startup pitch sessions are basically teams of professional people. For example, there’s a startup providing a telemedicine service for doctors. These things remind Singaporean entrepreneurs that they shouldn’t keep developing just simple social apps, and they might start providing serious solutions for serious problems in spaces like the construction, medical, and legal industries.
Answers are paraphrased and not quoted verbatim. ↩
At e27’s Echelon satellite event in Tokyo today, Hidetaka Fukushima of Snapdish presented a little background about how his startup set out to take on a global market from the very start. This is certainly unique for any startup, but it’s especially unique in Japan where not too many startups venture beyond the domestic market – and even few startups succeed in their efforts. Hidetaka explained that the majority of posts to Snapdish are of homemade food, specifically 70% – so it’s not just restaurant pictures. They have about 8000 posts per day, and about 2 million in total to date. Currently they’re available in 11 languages, but the process of localizing their service went beyond just simple translation. Hidetake noted that when translating their ‘yummy’ button into other languages requires consideration of what will work in other cultures. So for Japanese that meant using ‘mogumogu’ (which means something like ‘nom nom’). But he explains that they even create food categories based on regional preferences, so for example, China has different categories than Japan. Eventually they came to the realization that taking pictures of food was something that was particular to Asia, and they figured that Asia was going to…
At e27’s Echelon satellite event in Tokyo today, Hidetaka Fukushima of Snapdish presented a little background about how his startup set out to take on a global market from the very start. This is certainly unique for any startup, but it’s especially unique in Japan where not too many startups venture beyond the domestic market – and even few startups succeed in their efforts.
Hidetaka explained that the majority of posts to Snapdish are of homemade food, specifically 70% – so it’s not just restaurant pictures. They have about 8000 posts per day, and about 2 million in total to date.
Currently they’re available in 11 languages, but the process of localizing their service went beyond just simple translation. Hidetake noted that when translating their ‘yummy’ button into other languages requires consideration of what will work in other cultures. So for Japanese that meant using ‘mogumogu’ (which means something like ‘nom nom’). But he explains that they even create food categories based on regional preferences, so for example, China has different categories than Japan.
Eventually they came to the realization that taking pictures of food was something that was particular to Asia, and they figured that Asia was going to be a big market for them. Nevertheless, their team is a very international one, with members from Japan, German, the US, Taiwan, and Denmark.
Snapdish’s Hidetaka Fukushima
The global reach of the smartphone platform let them have significant reach upon launch, becoming the number one photo app in Japan, number eight in Taiwan, seventh in Singapore, and 11th in China. Eventually Chinese social network Renren approached them about a partnership, and they also established cooperation with SK Telecom. They’ve had some good media coverage too, with a mention in Travel + Leisure, as well as a mention on ABCNews.com as one of the top five food photo apps.
During the Q&A session, someone asked about Snapdish monetization strategy, and Hidetaka explained that they have official accounts for companies. Currently those accounts are free, but they will be charged later on. They plan to do paid campaigns eventually as well.
Hidetaka is a pretty sharp founder, so it will be interesting to see if they can make that jump from a large user base to profitability.
On Monday and Tuesday we had a chance to attend the B Dash Camp 2013 event in Fukuoka, Japan. There were a number of great sessions discussing key issues and developments in Japan’s tech space. Below is quick a round-up of our English language coverage. Although if you’d prefer it in Japanese we have that too! We’re still experimenting with the best ways to do event coverage with our small team, and your feedback on how we’re doing is always welcome. Line Corporation’s CEO Akira Morikawa on fast and furious global expansion New tides in social B2B Social gaming principles can also be applied to e-learning Kakao CEO Sirgoo Lee: Creating a mobile social platform Trends in the Japanese online ad business Yoshiaki Maeda on how Docomo plans to tackle Japan’s smartphone app market Naoki Shibata on cutting-edge app SEO techniques New trends in Asian startups The next stage in social games Discussing developments in big data In conversation with two up-and-coming Japanese e-commerce founders Foursquare has 240M check-ins in Japan, will leverage its big data for next business phase
On Monday and Tuesday we had a chance to attend the B Dash Camp 2013 event in Fukuoka, Japan. There were a number of great sessions discussing key issues and developments in Japan’s tech space. Below is quick a round-up of our English language coverage. Although if you’d prefer it in Japanese we have that too!
We’re still experimenting with the best ways to do event coverage with our small team, and your feedback on how we’re doing is always welcome.
Last week we live-blogged many of the sessions from the Japan New Economy Summit on disruptive innovation. Since then, we’ve had a chance to digest all the information, and our more in depth overview of the discussions is below. Admittedly it’s a little long, so we’ve made it available in ePub format which you can take for free. The Japan New Economic Summit took place on April 16th in Tokyo, where business leaders from Japan and Silicon Valley came together to discuss innovation and entrepreneurship. While the word “disruption” was peppered though the event’s agenda, the most prominent themes of the event were slightly different. In a way, the day felt like a giant collaborative diagnosis, where some of the greatest innovators in the Internet space came together to find out what ails Japan. Conversation continually returned to emphasize the importance of failure for entrepreneurs, as well as the ability to quickly recognize and rebound from that failure. Directly connected to this notion was a recurring discussion of risk, and Japan’s traditional aversion to it. And while these are not messages we haven’t heard before, it’s the first time that we have heard these ideas coming from such prominent business…
Last week we live-blogged many of the sessions from the Japan New Economy Summit on disruptive innovation. Since then, we’ve had a chance to digest all the information, and our more in depth overview of the discussions is below. Admittedly it’s a little long, so we’ve made it available in ePub format which you can take for free.
The Japan New Economic Summit took place on April 16th in Tokyo, where business leaders from Japan and Silicon Valley came together to discuss innovation and entrepreneurship. While the word “disruption” was peppered though the event’s agenda, the most prominent themes of the event were slightly different. In a way, the day felt like a giant collaborative diagnosis, where some of the greatest innovators in the Internet space came together to find out what ails Japan.
Conversation continually returned to emphasize the importance of failure for entrepreneurs, as well as the ability to quickly recognize and rebound from that failure. Directly connected to this notion was a recurring discussion of risk, and Japan’s traditional aversion to it. And while these are not messages we haven’t heard before, it’s the first time that we have heard these ideas coming from such prominent business leaders in Japan and Silicon Valley.
Success is not a straight line
During the conference, a number of speakers mentioned a lack of agility that exists in companies in Japan, or a need to always plan for everything. Joichi Ito, the director of MIT’s Media Lab, drove this point home in the context of how internet technologies have drastically changed the rules of the game:
Everything was moving slow before and that’s when Japan was strong. … But after the internet, the rules that everyone anticipated [changed everything]. When there is a concentrated control, Japan excels. But with the internet, this has changed.
L to R: Masatoshi Kumagai, GMO Internet Group; Yukihiro Matsumoto, Ruby Association; Yoshikazu Tanaka, GREE; Akira Morikawa, Line Corporation; Joichi Ito, MIT Media Lab
The notion of creative freedom is one that Joi promotes at MIT Media Lab, explaining that members of the lab are completely free to study what they want without his approval. He emphasized that “it’s not about profitability or outcomes, because if you know this in advance, then it’s not disruptive.” As many others noted during the conference, there should be a basic direction, but the minor details can be decided along the way.
While most traditional Japanese companies lack this sort of agility, recently we have seen one very notable exception. Line Corporation, headed up by Akira Morikawa, has developed its Line chat application with a decision-making strategy that I suspect involves a dart board of some kind. Since announcing back in the middle of 2012 that Line would be a platform for other services like games, coupons, and other things, the service’s user base has ballooned to 140 million around the world, and more than 45 million in its home market of Japan. He notes that at Line, their priority is not to innovate, but rather to provide customers with what they need as quickly as possible. Morikawa elaborated on his company’s improvisational philosophy in very simple terms:
Japanese people love plans. But I thought it would be good to not announce our strategy. Japanese companies love to announce strategies. We don’t. People get concerned because we don’t have any plans, but from that vagueness we can create a tension that in order to survive we have to do something.
Line Corporations CEO Akira Morikawa echoed these sentiments again at B Dash Camp in Fukuoka
But is this top-speed philosophy really sound? I’m sure that much of Line’s success to date is largely attributable to timing and luck. And I’m sure that their big ad spending hasn’t hurt either. But at the summit, there were a number of other success entrepreneurs – both foreign and domestic – who echoed this notion of working as fast as possible. George Kellerman, partner at 500 Startups, explained that it’s all about the accelerating speed of technological development. “You have to speed up,” he asserted. “If you don’t speed up you will lose.”
But Japanese corporate culture is notoriously slow, and it remains to be seen whether the messages expressed during this conference will leave any lasting impact. Programming legend Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, the chairman of the Ruby Association, underscored that slow-moving corporate culture can often stand in the way of those who have true vision:
We are living in an era where it could take only one or two years to change the world. […] We should let these people move from the company working style, so we don’t impose an obstacle to those who want to change the world.
Failing fast
But when companies move at such a rapid pace, it’s critical to identify when corrections need to be made, so that you can change direction if you have to. Niklas Zennström, the CEO of Atomico and co-founder of Skype, expressed this sentiment in the conference’s opening session, saying that creating a disruptive service is seldom just simple execution of a business plan:
[M]any times, the road is just not a straight line and you need to iterate and fail fast. If something is not working, do a course correction and make another iteration. But as long as you have a long term vision you can be successful. If an idea doesn’t work out it doesn’t mean that you have failed.
Likewise former Google SVP Andy Rubin opened the conference by relating the early days of Android, when their product was pitches as a platform for digital cameras. But as everyone knows, Android had a far different fate in store, and their second VC presentation was Android for cell phones. It was this willingness to stray from the original plan that led to the company’s subsequent acquisition by Google. Andy added:
You have to be flexible, and if your business doesn’t work, you have to change. You have to make decisions quickly, and change direction instantly.
Former Google SVP Andy Rubin emphasized the importance of agility
While most of the speakers appeared to agree that failing fast and making speedy corrections is an essential component to success, the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have a much more forgiving environment in which to operate than their Japanese counterparts. Japan, of course, is typically far less accepting of failure, and this is a heavy burden that the nation’s entrepreneurs have to carry.
Safety and support
Imagine if people said to [aspiring] doctors “Oh my god, but what if you fail?!”
Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann posed this hypothetical to the audience in the second morning session, saying that if you meet an entrepreneur trying to do something, you should do your best to support and encourage them. And as we heard from many of the speakers, one of the beautiful things about Silicon Valley is that it offers exactly this type of support.
Derek Collison, the founder and CEO of Apcera, put it best when he said that the valley is a unique environment “where you have more reasons to try something than not.”
In contrast, Domo’s Josh James spoke of how hard it was to build a Silicon Valley-like company when he was in Utah, and he figures Tokyo might be much the same. He reflected back on those difficult days:
The VCs [there] thought of themselves as better than the entrepreneurs. That made things very challenging, because it felt like they were taking advantage of you. Silicon Valley is great because everyone is respected and viewed the same.
Perhaps the most moving moment of the conference came when George Kellerman, partner at 500 Startups, asked all the entrepreneurs in the audience to stand up, so the audience could give them a round of applause in support. “These people are the future of Japan,” George declared, “you must really celebrate them!”
The symbolism of this exercise wasn’t lost on the Japanese audience, as these entrepreneurs are precisely the proverbial nails that stick out in Japanese society; the passionate risk-takers in a country where passion and risk are not exactly embraced when it comes to business. Speaking briefly with George after the conference, he told me that one of the event staffers was even in tears as he came off stage. Cool moment.
500 Startups partner George Kellerman requests a round of applause for the Japanese nails who stand up
A call to action
But as beautiful this moment was, CyberAgent’s founder and president Susumu Fujita reminded us that the country’s entrepreneurs are going to need more than just warm fuzzies in order to thrive. Government, he says, will have to play a role as well:
[W]e need to see actions, such as changes in policies. Startups bring new ideas, new hires. […] The government should act upon their messages – so for example making an entrepreneurship center for Asia in Tokyo, or a place where engineers can be educated, or something like that.
The notion of an entrepreneurship center is an interesting one. There are are number of seed accelerators and incubators in the Tokyo area (we’ve mapped them here if you’d like an overview), but there isn’t really a prominent focal point to speak of. But I don’t think it would really take much to establish such a hub near Shibuya or Roppongi; some sort of special area that could attract both companies and entrepreneurs from at home and abroad. Joi Ito pointed to the example of Singapore, which is “very proactive in issuing visas to talented people” from other countries.
Get out of the way
In addition to helping out in this way, governors and lawmakers need to stop hindering promising new startups through regulations that protect legacy businesses. It’s truly a shame to hear about great services like Uber that can’t enter the market due to unneceessarily complex laws designed to protect the taxi industry. At the summit, Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanik lamented the obstacles he’s up against in bringing his luxury car service to Japan:
In Tokyo they fix the prices on private car services at 5540 yen. There are something like 90 different zones with different minimum fares, different rules. We are in cities all over the world and we haven’t seen anything like this. The government has essentially said that only rich people are able to get car service. […] These laws are set up to protect the taxis and your city is worse off because of it. In order for us to connect you to a car service through an app, we have to become a licensed travel guide. We have to hire certified travel guides. I don’t know why. They’re just trying to make it hard.
Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani also noted that there are a lot of regulations in place in Japan that have to be overcome when creating a disruptive internet business. But whether anyone in government will take action on the messages expressed during this conference remains to be seen. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did swing by on the evening before the summit, and we hope that it wasn’t just a photo opportunity.
On the verge of a renaissance?
While this conference included much talk of the problems facing Japan, there were many more optimistic voices during the day as well. When it comes to the potential of Japan, perhaps no one was more complimentary than Evernote’s CEO Phil Libin. He explained a little about why he’s so positive:
I’m super optimistic about Japan, it’s why I’m here, it’s why we invested in Japan. Japan has a giant disconnect between how the country perceives itself and how outside Japan sees the country. Everyone outside Japan, everyone thinks Japan is a magical place. I come to Japan, and all the conversation is about ‘What’s wrong with Japan’ — and there’s a big mismatch between that and how the world sees it. When people talk about China, there’s some good and some bad, but when you go there, everyone is positive. For whatever reason, Japan is more negative about themselves than other people are.
I think Japan is on the verge of an entrepreneurial renaissance. You don’t need so much money to startup these days. The most important thing is attention to design and details, and Japan does that well. The boundaries to export to the rest of the world are lower than ever before, so I think Japan is on the verge of a major renaissance, and that’s why we’re here — we’re betting on it.
L to R: George Kellerman, 500 Startups; David Chao, DCM; Derek Collison, Apcera; Josh James, Domo; Phil Libin, Evernote
However, Phil did note that he thought people in Japan aren’t quite as willing to express their passion in business. And this is something that entrepreneurs need to do in order to get people to get behind them on their journey. He said with a smile that Japan should treat entrepreneurship with the same passion that it shows to food, fashion, and culture.
This sentiment, combined with George’s grand gesture of recognition to entrepreneurs in attendance, ended the summit on a high note. But as an observer, I was perhaps more impressed by something that Matz mentioned earlier in the day. When a Japanese panel was discussing how Japan can create disruptive innovation, he made what I thought was a very disruptive comment that threw the raison d’etre of the entire conversation into question:
Is it really necessary to have disruptive innovation from Japan? If we have innovation from Google that makes our lives better, isn’t that good? If we talk about globalization, why focus on having it from Japan. Is it loyalty?
Matz appears to see things through a truly global lens. And where everyone else sees borders, language obstacles, and a country falling behind, those things don’t even appear to register with him. I get the impression that he sees the internet as a great enabler, where a rising tide floats all boats regardless of location.
So maybe the true root of the problem is that many Japanese entrepreneurs and companies don’t really think on a global level, or see themselves as a part of a larger world community together on the web. Because if they did, maybe there wouldn’t be a problem at all.
Takeshi Hirano
Rick Martin
Masaru Ikeda
Tokyo startup accelerator 
Takuya Tsuchiya
