THE BRIDGE

Company Profiles

Prepare authentic Japanese food with Cookpad’s top 25 recipes

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We mentioned Japanese recipe portal Cookpad in our previous post 5 Internet services Japanese women can’t do without. With over 10 years of history since its launch way back in 1998, Cookpad perhaps is one of the most successful tech companies here in Japan with over 32 million users 1 Cookpad launched an English version of its website back in August, and after about four months of operation it now includes 8,000 recipes, attracting Japanese food fans from all over the world. In addition to the growing fan base of the English site, very recently, Japanese cuisine (or ‘washoku’) was granted UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage designation. To respond to the growing needs of washoku fans in the world, the company has now launched a special section called What is Washoku? The page introduces the top 25 classic homecooked dishes selected from the 1.59 million recipes in Cookpad’s database. The site adds one recipe to this list per day, and so far has five recipes available for viewing, such as how to make a good dashi broth, or cooking white rice using a pot instead of a rice cooker. The remaining 20 recipes are listed, accessible as they are added/linked through…

Washoku-Cookpad

We mentioned Japanese recipe portal Cookpad in our previous post 5 Internet services Japanese women can’t do without. With over 10 years of history since its launch way back in 1998, Cookpad perhaps is one of the most successful tech companies here in Japan with over 32 million users 1

Cookpad launched an English version of its website back in August, and after about four months of operation it now includes 8,000 recipes, attracting Japanese food fans from all over the world. In addition to the growing fan base of the English site, very recently, Japanese cuisine (or ‘washoku’) was granted UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage designation. To respond to the growing needs of washoku fans in the world, the company has now launched a special section called What is Washoku?

The page introduces the top 25 classic homecooked dishes selected from the 1.59 million recipes in Cookpad’s database. The site adds one recipe to this list per day, and so far has five recipes available for viewing, such as how to make a good dashi broth, or cooking white rice using a pot instead of a rice cooker. The remaining 20 recipes are listed, accessible as they are added/linked through the month.

Japanese cuisine is growing in popularity in many countries with over 55,000 Japanese restaurants overseas. This number has doubled in the past three years. And many of these Japanese restaurants are operated without any involvement from Japanese people. Thanks to Cookpad with the basics to traditional Japanese cuisine at hand, people can enjoy such authenticity in the comfort of their own home as well.

For those of you who are up to the challenge of cooking Japanese food, you might check out Cookpad’s Facebook page for a steady stream of tips as well.


  1. Current as of April 2013.

Japan finds a new way to work: In conversation with Crowdworks’ Koichiro Yoshida

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See the original article in Japanese Tokyo-based Crowdworks, the startup behind the crowdsourcing platform of the same name, announced on December 2nd that it has allocated new shares to a third party, raising 1.1 billion yen in total. The company also announced that it will start a partnership with CyberAgent and Digital Garage. Crowdworks previously allocated shares to third parties in December of 2011 and in October of 2012, raising 300 million yen from Itochu Technology Ventutes, DG Incubation, and Suneight Investment. The startup’s total number of corporate clients reached 18,000 in December of 2013, and the total budget for ordered work on the platform has surpassed 5 billion yen. More than 80,000 users have already registered on the service. In total, the young startup has raised more than 1.4 billion yen within just a year and a half. But will it really change how we do work? Or is this just the result of a bubble? We interviewed Crowdworks’ CEO Koichiro Yoshida, who told more about the potential of the new working style they propose, as well as what’s happening inside the growing startup. In this first part of our interview, he talked discussed fundraising: The Bridge: 1.1 billion…

crowdworks

See the original article in Japanese

Tokyo-based Crowdworks, the startup behind the crowdsourcing platform of the same name, announced on December 2nd that it has allocated new shares to a third party, raising 1.1 billion yen in total. The company also announced that it will start a partnership with CyberAgent and Digital Garage.

Crowdworks previously allocated shares to third parties in December of 2011 and in October of 2012, raising 300 million yen from Itochu Technology Ventutes, DG Incubation, and Suneight Investment. The startup’s total number of corporate clients reached 18,000 in December of 2013, and the total budget for ordered work on the platform has surpassed 5 billion yen. More than 80,000 users have already registered on the service.

In total, the young startup has raised more than 1.4 billion yen within just a year and a half. But will it really change how we do work? Or is this just the result of a bubble? We interviewed Crowdworks’ CEO Koichiro Yoshida, who told more about the potential of the new working style they propose, as well as what’s happening inside the growing startup.

In this first part of our interview, he talked discussed fundraising:

The Bridge: 1.1 billion yen is really a lot of money. But the business model is quite different from a game developer that requires many engineers or a coupon model that requires big marketing resources. To what end did you raise so much money?

Yoshida: First of all, in Japan, crowdsourcing is not really common to order work from individual workers yet. It’s going to take some time. When other competitors try to get into the market, we need to expand our share in this field. We also need to add talent and step up our marketing as well.

The Bridge: I see. Have you set any metrics to measure your success?

Yoshida: At first we were looking at the amount of work ordered. But recently we look more at the matching rate with the goal of increasing user satisfaction. […] Recruit is the biggest human resources company of the 21st century in Japan, and it has access to most Japanese workers’ resumes. We are sort of an online version of Recruit. We’d like to build a database of workers.

The Bridge: What will the future be like if you succeed in building such a database?

Yoshida: We will be able to create a matrix. While a worker gets paid 20,000 yen for some spreadsheet-related work, another worker might get paid 100,000 yen for some spreadsheet work. Then we discover that the difference lies in whether the worker can create a macros or not. With this kind of data, we can come up with a new service offering learning opportunities for workers. We can have an overview of workers’ skills, and that will help companies find the right workers with the required skill set.

Individual human resources will be accumulated on the platform. Each worker’s skillset will be open for viewing, and advanced matching between workers and work will be possible. If there is any specific skills lacking, learning opportunities can pick up the slack. The idea of optimizing human resources through technology is very attractive, but it also requires capital.

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The Bridge: I see. With an expanding database of workers and understanding the state of domestic human resources, the company can gain value as a public service. Then crowdsourcing will require systems such as process control for each work order. Will you assign more developer resources to build those systems?

Yoshida: We are planning to develop a process control system. At the same time, we will explore the possibilities of partnering with other developers by making our API open. Our tie-up with KDDI Web Communications that we announced recently is an example of this. From the beginning, we aim to develop our service through a kind of open source model.

The Bridge: How large are you planning to expand the company?

Yoshida: Currently we have 20 to 30 members, and that includes part-time workers. We plan to make it 50. At the same time, we will choose talent carefully. We hire a new member only when all of 4 board members agree. I heard a lot of stories from experienced entrepreneurs who have lowered the standard of hiring when the companies were in the growth stage, and they later had a problem improving the team. So I’m trying to make this decision carefully.


Crowdsourcing is a different animal in Japan than it is in North America where the concept was born. My Canadian coworker sometimes use ODesk, where crowdsourcing seems to function as more pure C2C. Whereas In Japan, you tend to pay the platform instead, which may instill more trust among clients.

Crowdsourcing can a convenient way for companies to contact workers. On the other hand, many people still see crowdsourcing as a platform for side jobs.

In the second part of our interview, Yoshida discusses how they plan to build a culture that can help expand crowdsourcing.

Japanese deli delivery service begins closed beta for corporate users

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See the original article in Japanese How many business people care about the nutritional balance of their diet? For busy professionals, maintaining a balanced diet can be especially tough to manage during work days. Chisan is a delicatessen delivery company in Japan. It has operated a deli delivery service called Okan, targeting single businessmen who live alone [1]. The company started a new service on November 25 called ‘Office Okan’, delivering additive-free Japanese deli to offices. It is currently accepting corporate users applications for its closed beta version. Okan is a service that regularly delivers Japanese deli to a registered addresses. Since the B2C service was launched on March 26 this year, approximately 200 users have subscribed to the service. The new service, Office Okan, caters to corporate users. With Office Okan, corporate customers will receive Japanese deli once a month, since the deli lasts about a month. The package contains 15 kinds of Japanese home-style deli, including “simmered mackerel in miso” and “simmered meat and potatoes”. Brown rice, which lasts about a month, is also available as an additional order. These can be refrigerated, and users can prepare the meal in about minutes. The company’s CEO, Keita Swaki, says…

okan

See the original article in Japanese

How many business people care about the nutritional balance of their diet? For busy professionals, maintaining a balanced diet can be especially tough to manage during work days.

Chisan is a delicatessen delivery company in Japan. It has operated a deli delivery service called Okan, targeting single businessmen who live alone [1]. The company started a new service on November 25 called ‘Office Okan’, delivering additive-free Japanese deli to offices. It is currently accepting corporate users applications for its closed beta version.

Okan is a service that regularly delivers Japanese deli to a registered addresses. Since the B2C service was launched on March 26 this year, approximately 200 users have subscribed to the service. The new service, Office Okan, caters to corporate users.

With Office Okan, corporate customers will receive Japanese deli once a month, since the deli lasts about a month. The package contains 15 kinds of Japanese home-style deli, including “simmered mackerel in miso” and “simmered meat and potatoes”. Brown rice, which lasts about a month, is also available as an additional order. These can be refrigerated, and users can prepare the meal in about minutes.

The company’s CEO, Keita Swaki, says the service can replace lunch, dinner, and even in-between snacks with healthy Japanese deli. Chisan aims to provide opportunities to ensure a well-balanced diet, giving business people an easy way to manage it.


  1. We use the word ‘deli’ as a loose translation here, as the foods included can include meat, fish, beans, vegetables, and more. You can browse the kinds of foods on the Okan.jp site.  ↩

Japanese mobile captcha startup Capy wins IVS Launchpad, has more plans ahead

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This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto 2013 Last week I had a chance to catch up with the folks from Capy in an office they’re working out of in Shibuya. The founder of the up-and-coming Japanese startup and CEO Mitsuo Okada first developed the concept behind his secure captcha service while studying at Kyoto University. Capy’s value proposition, for those unfamiliar with it, is that it’s less frustrating than the twisted letter solution of convention captchas, replacing it with a sort of sliding image puzzle that robots cannot complete (see below). While talking with Okada and his colleagues last week, I happened to mention that I’d be attending the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Kyoto. “Oh, we’ll be there too,” said Okada. Skip to a week later where Okada pitched his captcha technology in front of a packed hall at the Westin Hotel Kyoto. They were one of 12 startups that took to the stage, but Capy was judged to be the best of them all. We first interviewed Okada about Capy way back in August, so they aren’t a newcomer to us. But among Japanese startups, the company does stand out in that…

This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto 2013

Last week I had a chance to catch up with the folks from Capy in an office they’re working out of in Shibuya. The founder of the up-and-coming Japanese startup and CEO Mitsuo Okada first developed the concept behind his secure captcha service while studying at Kyoto University. Capy’s value proposition, for those unfamiliar with it, is that it’s less frustrating than the twisted letter solution of convention captchas, replacing it with a sort of sliding image puzzle that robots cannot complete (see below).

capy-demo-2

While talking with Okada and his colleagues last week, I happened to mention that I’d be attending the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Kyoto.

“Oh, we’ll be there too,” said Okada.

Skip to a week later where Okada pitched his captcha technology in front of a packed hall at the Westin Hotel Kyoto. They were one of 12 startups that took to the stage, but Capy was judged to be the best of them all.

We first interviewed Okada about Capy way back in August, so they aren’t a newcomer to us. But among Japanese startups, the company does stand out in that it has taken a pretty global approach from the very beginning, initially launching the business in the US [1].

Even though conventional captchas can be frustrating, I’ve always admired the elegance of reCAPTCHA which makes us of user input not as a security precaution, but also as a means of digitizing books. Two birds with one stone. But Capy will be able to do something similar as well, and I think that’s why it has such great potential.

capy-awards
Okada-san all smiles on stage after winning IVS Launchpad

Websites that use Capy can repurpose its validation screen as a space to advertise, and that’s especially useful given how precious space is on a typical smartphone screen. Capy will have free and premium versions, the free version being ad-supported, and with the premium version, a publisher can use whatever image they want. Right now, the company is focusing on developing the premium version. In addition to advertising, there are other purposes for which Capy images could be used. They’re hoping to attend SxSW next year, and so I expect that many of the things they are currently working on should be ready for showtime by then.

Okada tells me that currently Capy is providing 50,000 captchas per day across three or four clients here in Japan. This is the perfect test market he says, because Japan is very closed. They still have improvements they want to make in user interface and experience, but I’m told they still need more engineers. Currently they are still just a team of four with only two engineers.

Their mentor and angel investor is security expert William Saito, with series A funding last May. I expect that a lot more eyes will be on Capy after their win at IVS Launchpad. So look forward to hearing more from them in the next year or so.

capy-aws

capy-microsoft

capy-freee


  1. Capy is incorporated in Delaware.  ↩

Tokyo Office Tour: Trippiece wants you to travel differently

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Trippiece is a Tokyo-based startup that allows you to create your travel plan and then gather friends who might be likely to take the same trip. Our readers may recall the company recently fundraised $200 million yen ($2 million) from Silicon Valley-based investment firm Draper Nexus. This followed previous seed investments from Japanese internet marketing agency Opt and incubation company Movida Japan back in 2012. We heard that they recently relocated, so we visited them at their new office in Shibuya. We spoke to founder and CEO Ian Ishida and CFO Fumiaki Koizumi [1] about how they will enhance their business using these latest funds. Ishida unveiled that the company will launch its first overseas office in Singapore next February, intensifying their global marketing efforts: We currently talking to a person in Singapore, and we’ll be launching an office there early next year, naming her as its head. The new office will be located in the heart of the Asian region, which will encourage more Asian people to travel to Japan using our service. In contrast to other travel services like Meetrip or Voyagin [2], our service advises you to visit a destination you’ve never visited, instead of presenting local…

Trippiece is a Tokyo-based startup that allows you to create your travel plan and then gather friends who might be likely to take the same trip. Our readers may recall the company recently fundraised $200 million yen ($2 million) from Silicon Valley-based investment firm Draper Nexus. This followed previous seed investments from Japanese internet marketing agency Opt and incubation company Movida Japan back in 2012.

We heard that they recently relocated, so we visited them at their new office in Shibuya. We spoke to founder and CEO Ian Ishida and CFO Fumiaki Koizumi [1] about how they will enhance their business using these latest funds.

Ishida unveiled that the company will launch its first overseas office in Singapore next February, intensifying their global marketing efforts:

We currently talking to a person in Singapore, and we’ll be launching an office there early next year, naming her as its head. The new office will be located in the heart of the Asian region, which will encourage more Asian people to travel to Japan using our service. In contrast to other travel services like Meetrip or Voyagin [2], our service advises you to visit a destination you’ve never visited, instead of presenting local experiences at that destination. So in that way, we’re not competing with them.

Trippiece’s key concept is to ask locals about local business and destinations. That’s why they intend to hire local people for the new office rather than just dispatch Japanese personnel.

To help users get easy access to the service’s travel resources on mobile, the company introduced an iOS app back in August. An Android version will follow by the end of this year. The app has a feature to notify users when their favorite travel plans get a comment from other users, and it helps increases user retention.

Trippiece has also partnered with established Japanese travel agencies such as JTB and HIS to work on collaborative projects. It also recently won the Chief Secretary of Japan Tourism Agency award. According to Ishida, these results help them get their name out there and win the confidence of consumers.

As for future global expansions, they will launch an English version in February, with an interface enriched with pictures and videos to help foreign people better understand travel experiences in Japan. The Japanese government and tourism agencies are holding many showcase events around the world, such as the Japan Anime Expo, where the Trippiece will introduce their services to those who love Japanese culture and are likely to travel here.

Including Ishida and Koizumi, the company is a seven-person team in total, comprised of engineers, designers, and a certified travel service supervisor.

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Plastic model airplanes in the meeting room.
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CEO Ian Ishida admires Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe because of their same first names.

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The commemorative shield of the Chief Secretary of Japan Tourism Agency’s award.

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  1. Fumiaki Koizumi previously worked as CFO at Japanese social network service Mixi ↩
  2. Meetrip was acquired by Japanese social game developer Donuts earlier this month. Voyagin is also establishing an office in Singapore.  ↩

Yukai Engineering pushes the limits of Japanese hardware creativity

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This week we had a chance to visit the office of Yukai Engineering, a really fun robotics and hardware development company based here in Tokyo. The group was involved in producing the hardware for the very clever TeamLab Hanger which we featured back in March. They also created the prototype of the world-famous Nekomimi (cat ears) project which you’ve surely seen around the web. But one of the company’s core projects these days is its Konashi computing kit, which allows artists, designers, and engineers to create smartphone gadgets very quickly and easily. The local community has responded well to Konashi too, with some really fun ideas emerging from recent workshops. This past summer they held one at Engadget Japan, where 40 people broke into five teams, with each team creating a prototype in just two days. CEO Shunsuke Aoki introduced us to an amazingly fun smart toothbrush for kids that was made with Konashi, which counts down your how many brushes (or brush strokes?) you’ve done an during a brushing, displaying the number on a smartphone as an animated character moves (see pictures over on Engadget Japan). The team that made it will turn it into a Kickstarter project, and…

This week we had a chance to visit the office of Yukai Engineering, a really fun robotics and hardware development company based here in Tokyo. The group was involved in producing the hardware for the very clever TeamLab Hanger which we featured back in March. They also created the prototype of the world-famous Nekomimi (cat ears) project which you’ve surely seen around the web.

But one of the company’s core projects these days is its Konashi computing kit, which allows artists, designers, and engineers to create smartphone gadgets very quickly and easily.

The local community has responded well to Konashi too, with some really fun ideas emerging from recent workshops. This past summer they held one at Engadget Japan, where 40 people broke into five teams, with each team creating a prototype in just two days.

CEO Shunsuke Aoki introduced us to an amazingly fun smart toothbrush for kids that was made with Konashi, which counts down your how many brushes (or brush strokes?) you’ve done an during a brushing, displaying the number on a smartphone as an animated character moves (see pictures over on Engadget Japan). The team that made it will turn it into a Kickstarter project, and hopefully we can see that soon. Aoki even seems pleasantly amused with how people are using Konashi, noting “It’s surprising that people can make something like this in just one week.”

yukai-laundry-device

Another fun application of Konashi was a system that will let you know when your hanging laundry has dried (pictured right). The system uses a sensor pinned to the drying clothes.

But in true Japanese style, the hanger is housed in an aluminum case that gives it a very cute look. It’s perhaps an extraneous addition, but a really fun one nonetheless.

The most interesting project that the team is working on (at least for me, as a new father) is their concept parent/baby camera called Paby. That device integrates a camera into baby crib hanging mobile, and a working parent can check in on that camera feed from anywhere using their smartphones. They can even communicate with their baby vocally, speaking into their smartphone which the baby can hear through a speaker on the mobile. The project is a joint effort with Hakuhodo, but they are looking for manufacturing partners to develop it further.

You can learn more about it in their promo video below.

Gunosy’s latest addition, Shinji Kimura: This is more than just a news aggregator

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See the original Japanese version of this article. The competition news technology startups is heating up in Japan. Each company is adjusting its business strategy in an attempt to differentiate from competitors. Two startups are leading this competition: Smartnews and Gunosy. The latter recently surpassed 1 million downloads and launched an ad network as well. Gunosy recently added a very notable new member to its team in Shinji Kimura, who previously founded an ad-tech startup (Adlantis) and also has experience as an investor. We spoke with him to learn more about Gunosy, particularly about their recently launched ad service, and about his own goals as an entrepreneur. The Bridge: You are back on the frontlines! Kimura: It is getting busier here everyday. The experience I had before in Adlantis, expanding the business and the team, helps me a lot now. As soon as I started using Gunosy, I realized that this is something different from other recommendation technology. I was referred to Mr. Fukushima, the CEO of Gunosy, and met him at a restaurant. The Bridge: The performance of Gunosy Ads (recently launched) turned out to be surprisingly high, right? It is a way better than I expected. CTR and…

shinji-kimura
Shinji Kimura of Gunosy

See the original Japanese version of this article.

The competition news technology startups is heating up in Japan. Each company is adjusting its business strategy in an attempt to differentiate from competitors. Two startups are leading this competition: Smartnews and Gunosy. The latter recently surpassed 1 million downloads and launched an ad network as well. Gunosy recently added a very notable new member to its team in Shinji Kimura, who previously founded an ad-tech startup (Adlantis) and also has experience as an investor. We spoke with him to learn more about Gunosy, particularly about their recently launched ad service, and about his own goals as an entrepreneur.

The Bridge: You are back on the frontlines!

Kimura: It is getting busier here everyday. The experience I had before in Adlantis, expanding the business and the team, helps me a lot now. As soon as I started using Gunosy, I realized that this is something different from other recommendation technology. I was referred to Mr. Fukushima, the CEO of Gunosy, and met him at a restaurant.

The Bridge: The performance of Gunosy Ads (recently launched) turned out to be surprisingly high, right?

It is a way better than I expected. CTR and CVR figures are both around 10 times more than average ad networks. Facebook might reach a similar figure in the future. I will keep improving the ad technology.

gunosy-ctr-cvr

The Bridge: What is the vision of Gunosy Ads you have in mind?

Kimura: A lot of users get annoyed by ads on smartphones. I want Gunosy Ads to be a solution to this issue. Ads should be part of the content. So, we need to identify how users find content. The question is, how do they find contents they want when everything like music, books and information are digitized? We need to provide technology to help users find contents efficiently.

The Bridge: You worked on advertising technology at Adlantis. How is it different at Gunosy?

Kimura: Gunosy stands right between advertisers and media. We analyze user information and provide that to advertisers. DSP and SSP have room for improvement. Current advertising systems made it possible for advertisers to put ads more efficiently at lower prices. But media has not succeeded in getting enough data on clusters of users, and that keeps them from upping their advertising rate.

The high performance of Gunosy Ads proves that as long as media can grab solid data about users based on SSP and DSP, they don’t need to sell ads at unreasonably low prices. Since we have technology to understand user interests, it could be possible in the future to utilize it and help other websites display optimized ads.

While Adlantis provided optimized ad serving as a third party, Gunosy realized optimal ad serving by changing the scheme and reconstructing information.

The Bridge: It’s not possible without communication with users, is it?

This scheme is possible only when there is solid trust between us and our users. Our users have to be convinced that we are working for them. If we just put random ads, users will not trust us. We have to make sure that our ad program serves our users as a sort of concierge and provide useful information for users’ daily lives.

The Bridge: So how do you describe Gunosy?

Kimura: Gunosy is a response to the changing times. When internet devices were only PCs, the internet was available only at home or in the office. But now, people can connect to the internet with smartphones anytime anywhere. When the places we could use the internet was limited, we connected to the internet with specific purposes. We used search engines to reach information. But when the internet became accessible anytime, we started using the internet without purpose.

The Bridge: I see.

Kimura: Then social network sites expanded. But they are not efficient. Users get redundant information. Users were looking for something that matches their interests. A kind of unknown information was needed.

Social network users seem to spend endless amounts of time looking at their timelines, but actually they are looking for something that interests them. People want a more efficient search engine. That’s Gunosy.

Gunosy is different from a news aggregator. It’s a system that connects users and information when users don’t have any particular purpose.

I understand that the concept of Gunosy is closer to Yahoo than Google. However, on portal sites organized as a directory, users still have trouble finding what they want. So, the question is how to provide a timeline of information optimized for each user. We need to calculate, optimize and control data in order to do that.

The Bridge: The optimization of Yahoo sounds like a key idea for the future.

Kimura: I think Yahoo Japan is going to execute it. They have not yet done it possibly because of other business issues, but Yahoo USA has already implemented a timeline system. The volume of user data is the key to making a solid recommendation system. Things like a social graph makes a difference as well.


Kimura also talked about their competitors, as well as his own goals as an entrepreneur. We’ll cover that in the next article!

gunosy-general

Comico provides free, mobile-friendly manga

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Although many people in Japan still prefer to read comic books on paper, smartphones are pushing the industry towards digital at a fast pace. In Japan, there are websites like Ebook Japan that provide over 160,000 digital comics, and other services like Cmoa and Manga Okoku (roughly means ‘manga kingdom’) serve the same purpose. Recently another service for digital manga was launched. It’s called Comico. At the time of launch, there are 56 different comics available free of charge, and this is expected to grow as the site expands. All the comics on the site are original and new stories are published everyday. Users on the site can rate and make comments on comics, or interact with each other. Sometime this year Comico plans to add a feature that lets anyone upload their own manga works. Comico is accessible on the web and via mobile apps on both iOS and Android. The latter are designed for an easy reading experience with a vertical scroll without frames. The company behind the service is NHN PlayArt. Its initial goal is to acquire 300,000 users by the end of this year.

Comico-wide

Although many people in Japan still prefer to read comic books on paper, smartphones are pushing the industry towards digital at a fast pace. In Japan, there are websites like Ebook Japan that provide over 160,000 digital comics, and other services like Cmoa and Manga Okoku (roughly means ‘manga kingdom’) serve the same purpose.

Recently another service for digital manga was launched. It’s called Comico. At the time of launch, there are 56 different comics available free of charge, and this is expected to grow as the site expands. All the comics on the site are original and new stories are published everyday. Users on the site can rate and make comments on comics, or interact with each other. Sometime this year Comico plans to add a feature that lets anyone upload their own manga works.

Comico is accessible on the web and via mobile apps on both iOS and Android. The latter are designed for an easy reading experience with a vertical scroll without frames.

The company behind the service is NHN PlayArt. Its initial goal is to acquire 300,000 users by the end of this year.

comico

New digital comics site provides free manga in English

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A new digital comics website called Manga Samurai Style was recently launched in Japan. It’s an initiative by publishing companies Gakken Holdings and Gakken Publishing which will host digital manga. There are other digital books services for the manga genre, such as Kodansha’s ‘D-morning’ which which we have written about previously. But what differentiates Manga Samurai Style from competitors is that content is provided in both Japanese and English. The manga featured on the site are ‘Wa-fu’ (or ‘Japanese style’) comics, where many of the characters are samurai or ninja. So in addition to manga fans, this might be of interest to history buffs as well. The stories are written exclusively for the site by well-known authors, and all of the stories can be read for free. The very first title to be released is ‘Nobunaga no Yabou’, which is created in collaboration with the hit historical simultion game to mark its 30th anniversary. Another unique manga title is ‘Stray Wolves’ which will be released on November 8th. This latter story will take in readers’ opinion to determine how the story will evolve. Manga Samurai Style has given a name to this type of user-participation in stories: ‘Join the Story’ or…

Manga-Samurai-Style

A new digital comics website called Manga Samurai Style was recently launched in Japan. It’s an initiative by publishing companies Gakken Holdings and Gakken Publishing which will host digital manga.

There are other digital books services for the manga genre, such as Kodansha’s ‘D-morning’ which which we have written about previously. But what differentiates Manga Samurai Style from competitors is that content is provided in both Japanese and English.

The manga featured on the site are ‘Wa-fu’ (or ‘Japanese style’) comics, where many of the characters are samurai or ninja. So in addition to manga fans, this might be of interest to history buffs as well. The stories are written exclusively for the site by well-known authors, and all of the stories can be read for free.

Manga-Samurai-Style-page

The very first title to be released is ‘Nobunaga no Yabou’, which is created in collaboration with the hit historical simultion game to mark its 30th anniversary. Another unique manga title is ‘Stray Wolves’ which will be released on November 8th. This latter story will take in readers’ opinion to determine how the story will evolve. Manga Samurai Style has given a name to this type of user-participation in stories: ‘Join the Story’ or JOS. The readers can expect to see more such JOS stories on the site.

New episodes will be released every Friday and they can be enjoyed on the web as well as on mobile. It will be interesting to see if Manga Samurai Style can expand the existing fan base of Japanese manga or enhance Japanese creative culture . You can follow the most recent news from the site on their Facebook page.

Asoview partners with Yahoo Japan, proposes more weekend leisure options

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See the original story in Japanese. In Japan, travel and leisure-related portals have been on the rise recently. Keeping with that trend, Tokyo-based Catarizm, the startup behind online leisure booking site Asoview, announced on Friday that it has partnered with Yahoo Travel, the travel-focused arm of Yahoo Japan. Since its launch back in April of 2013, Asoview has been providing booking services for skydiving, rafting, and other weekend leisure activities. Users are allowed to choose and book an activity out of the 1,500 programs available from the startup’s 460 partners. One of the remarkable aspects of the company’s launch was the involvement of Takao Ozawa. He is a serial entrepreneur who launched second-hand book and video marketplace EasySeek [1], established a professional baseball team at Rakuten, and invested in many emerging startups like Star Festival, Nanapi, and Tokyo Otaku Mode. He sold his social marketing agency Crocos to Yahoo Japan back in August of 2012, and joined YJ Capital (the investment arm of Yahoo Japan) to help cultivate its investment and e-commerce businesses. The company’s CEO, Tomohisa Yamano, reflected on when he met Ozawa for the first time: I knew him through a friend of mine when I launched the website. He…

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See the original story in Japanese.

In Japan, travel and leisure-related portals have been on the rise recently. Keeping with that trend, Tokyo-based Catarizm, the startup behind online leisure booking site Asoview, announced on Friday that it has partnered with Yahoo Travel, the travel-focused arm of Yahoo Japan.

Since its launch back in April of 2013, Asoview has been providing booking services for skydiving, rafting, and other weekend leisure activities. Users are allowed to choose and book an activity out of the 1,500 programs available from the startup’s 460 partners.

One of the remarkable aspects of the company’s launch was the involvement of Takao Ozawa. He is a serial entrepreneur who launched second-hand book and video marketplace EasySeek [1], established a professional baseball team at Rakuten, and invested in many emerging startups like Star Festival, Nanapi, and Tokyo Otaku Mode. He sold his social marketing agency Crocos to Yahoo Japan back in August of 2012, and joined YJ Capital (the investment arm of Yahoo Japan) to help cultivate its investment and e-commerce businesses.

The company’s CEO, Tomohisa Yamano, reflected on when he met Ozawa for the first time:

I knew him through a friend of mine when I launched the website. He seemed to like me, and I joined his community of entrepreneurs. Obviously, I’ve got lots of advice from him. In the worst case, he said he could help me get employed in the bottled water business if the company failed.

Yamano previously worked with Recruit, a Japanese human resource and web service company which operates various booking sites. There he proposed the concept of a leisure booking site similar to Asoview, but it was not adopted. Perhaps they thought the market was too small or might conflict with their existing businesses.

Helping consumers enjoy their weekends

We featured PlayLife a week ago, which is another service that helps Japanese people find their leisure plans. When asked how his service is different, Yamano explained:

I decided to launch a travel-focused service at first, but it was unlikely to really address a need in the space because of many travel booking sites/apps available. Then I conducted a survey of 100 persons, and I recognized there’s a huge demand in helping them find what to do and where to visit at travel destinations.

However, several months ago, there were very few websites focused on niche leisure activities like rafting. Consumers were forced to rely on fragmented information resources such as blogs. Yamano recognized consumers need to find ways to enjoy their weekends, and started preparing for the website by partnering with 37 recreation planners and organizers. He says that their available options vary from outdoor activities to unusual experiences such as rides on a rickshaw, a limo, or a helicopter. He expected to acquire 1,000 orders a season at most, but it has already surpassed 5,000 orders to date.

What Asoview provides is similar to Japanese private lesson marketplace Cyta.jp. While there are many difficulties in a niche, commission-based business, Yamano told us their average sales price is 24,000 yen ($240), higher than that of major hotel booking sites.


  1. Subsequently acquired back in 2002 by Rakuten for about $13 million.