news

AI-based talent miner Atrae from Japan launches Tinder-like business matching app

Atrae
Yenta

Masaru Ikeda 2016.02.14

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Atrae recently launched a business matching app using an artificial intelligence (AI) system called Yenta. The app is available gratis for iOS via iTunes AppStore but users must pass screening by Atrae to complete the sign-up process. The Yenta app helps users connect with businesspersons upon widening their network through profile registration and repeated swipes on a screen. Our readers may recall that Atrae launched a talent mining platform leveraging AI and big data analysis called TalentBase last February. Leveraging the experience the team has acquired through development of the TalentBase platform, the Yenta app recommends 10 persons the user may be interested in connecting with at noon daily. After choosing which persons the user wants to meet by swiping on the Tinder-like app, the matching result with other users will be sent out later at 8pm on the same day. When both users confirm to meet each other, they can start chatting via the app to make an appointment. Toshiyuki Oka, Atrae director heading the development team, explained: Since our product is targeting a niche segment and intends to help users meet each other on a face-to-face basis, we are currently targeting…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Atrae recently launched a business matching app using an artificial intelligence (AI) system called Yenta. The app is available gratis for iOS via iTunes AppStore but users must pass screening by Atrae to complete the sign-up process.

The Yenta app helps users connect with businesspersons upon widening their network through profile registration and repeated swipes on a screen. Our readers may recall that Atrae launched a talent mining platform leveraging AI and big data analysis called TalentBase last February. Leveraging the experience the team has acquired through development of the TalentBase platform, the Yenta app recommends 10 persons the user may be interested in connecting with at noon daily. After choosing which persons the user wants to meet by swiping on the Tinder-like app, the matching result with other users will be sent out later at 8pm on the same day. When both users confirm to meet each other, they can start chatting via the app to make an appointment.

Toshiyuki Oka, Atrae director heading the development team, explained:

Since our product is targeting a niche segment and intends to help users meet each other on a face-to-face basis, we are currently targeting businesspersons in central Tokyo, not based on GPS data but on registered user profiles. Our users have to pass our screening upon sign-up so that we can pursue our user base both in quality and in quantity by carefully selecting cutting-edge people.

Since the launch of a closed beta version on 10 December last year, we have acquired 350 users to date. Since targeting such a core niche segment, we have moderately set our initial milestone as the acquisition of 100,000 users.

The service initially came up with matchmaking for business purposes in mind, similar to the Coffee Meeting where one has to choose people whom one may be interested in meeting up with. We’ve also recently seen other matchmaking services like Lemon and Join Us start up in Japan although these are not intended for business purposes.

Aiming to help users build and enhance their network, Atrae decided to offer the Yenta app completely for free as a derivative product from the TalentBase platform. The company claims that it will monetize by offering companies with support for their sales and hiring efforts through the app.

See also:

Translated by Minako Ambiru via Mother First
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

news

Japan’s D Free, bowel movement and urination predictor, secures $1 million

Masaru Ikeda 2016.02.14

See the original story in Japanese. Triple W Japan, developer of wearable bowel movement predictor D Free, recently announced that they have been certified by Japanese governmental business promotion agency NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization) to join its support program for R&D-oriented startups and venture businesses in the seed stage. With this certification, Triple W Japan can receive up to 70 million yen (about $620,000) in subsidies. They also announced that they have secured 50 million yen ($450,000) from Hack Ventures invested by the City Government of Osaka, Hankyu Corporation, and others. The total amount of the two funds is 120 million yen (about $1 million). This follows their undisclosed sum of funding from Nissay Capital and iSGS Investment Works (formerly iStyle Capital) in April 2015. D Free uses ultrasonic waves to measures the size of excreta in the intestine; it then estimates when the sacrum will be stimulated and when the user will begin to feel the urge to go to toilet. A user will then have sufficient time to find a toilet and be relieved from the stress of bowel incontinence. Parkinson’s disease sufferers, the physically handicapped, or the elderly who have difficulty to go…

See the original story in Japanese.

Triple W Japan, developer of wearable bowel movement predictor D Free, recently announced that they have been certified by Japanese governmental business promotion agency NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization) to join its support program for R&D-oriented startups and venture businesses in the seed stage.

With this certification, Triple W Japan can receive up to 70 million yen (about $620,000) in subsidies. They also announced that they have secured 50 million yen ($450,000) from Hack Ventures invested by the City Government of Osaka, Hankyu Corporation, and others. The total amount of the two funds is 120 million yen (about $1 million). This follows their undisclosed sum of funding from Nissay Capital and iSGS Investment Works (formerly iStyle Capital) in April 2015.

D Free uses ultrasonic waves to measures the size of excreta in the intestine; it then estimates when the sacrum will be stimulated and when the user will begin to feel the urge to go to toilet. A user will then have sufficient time to find a toilet and be relieved from the stress of bowel incontinence. Parkinson’s disease sufferers, the physically handicapped, or the elderly who have difficulty to go to toilet will no longer need to use diapers, thus helping people regain their dignity.

Triple W Japan is conducting trials at nursing homes of the D Free Beta version, which predicts urination. Based on the results, they will mass-produce, and they plan to start selling as a package for excretion care service to nursing homes this spring or later.

Last year, the Triple W Japan team participated in the first batch of Heart Catch, the two-month mentoring program for startups to brush up products. During this program, they told that they aim to promote this product to women who take care of their inner body not only outside and suggest them natural way for elimination without laxatives or supplements, in addition to active seniors who have elimination problems.

Last March, Triple W Japan won the Tokyo preliminary round of the Pioneers Festival, a startup conference in Austria. Yusuke Kawada (diagnostic radiology specialist at Japan’s National Center for Global Health and Medicine), Shoji Fukuda (director of Japan’s leading healthcare staffing firm SMS), and Minako Makino (Tokyo metropolitan area bureau chief, Japan Continence Action Society) have taken up posts as advisers to Triple W Japan.

Translated by Minako Ambiru via Mother First
Edited by Kurt Hanson

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Japan’s AgIC, circuit board printing startup, raises $1.5M for radiant heating technology

AgIC

Masaru Ikeda 2016.02.13

Tokyo-based AgIC, a startup born out of the University of Tokyo with the remarkable electroconductive ink technology, announced on Wednesday that it has secured 175 million yen (about $1.5 million) in January. The latest round was led by Beyond Next Ventures, which recently formed its first $44 million fund for investing in technology-focused startups, with participation from Japanese instant glue manufacturer Cemedine (TSE:4999). In an interview with TechCrunch Japan, AgIC founder and CEO Shinya Shimizu revealed that his team aims to invent electroconductive glue technology in partnership with Cemedine. For improved circuit board printing technology in preventing unexpected circuit disconnections due to printing failure, AgIC has also partnered with Mimaki Engineering (TSE:6638), a supplier of high-end inkjet printers for factory use. Setting their sights on the FlexTech sector, AgIC wants to start entering it with replacing floor heating system, conventionally passing hot water through the pipes under the floor, to a radiant electric heating circuit printed on rolled paper to be placed on the floor. To advance this idea, the company started discussing with home renovation companies in Japan as potential sales channels. In January of 2015, AgIC fundraised 60 million yen (about $500,000) from IoT (Internet of Things) focused investment fund…

Tokyo-based AgIC, a startup born out of the University of Tokyo with the remarkable electroconductive ink technology, announced on Wednesday that it has secured 175 million yen (about $1.5 million) in January. The latest round was led by Beyond Next Ventures, which recently formed its first $44 million fund for investing in technology-focused startups, with participation from Japanese instant glue manufacturer Cemedine (TSE:4999).

In an interview with TechCrunch Japan, AgIC founder and CEO Shinya Shimizu revealed that his team aims to invent electroconductive glue technology in partnership with Cemedine. For improved circuit board printing technology in preventing unexpected circuit disconnections due to printing failure, AgIC has also partnered with Mimaki Engineering (TSE:6638), a supplier of high-end inkjet printers for factory use.

Setting their sights on the FlexTech sector, AgIC wants to start entering it with replacing floor heating system, conventionally passing hot water through the pipes under the floor, to a radiant electric heating circuit printed on rolled paper to be placed on the floor. To advance this idea, the company started discussing with home renovation companies in Japan as potential sales channels.

In January of 2015, AgIC fundraised 60 million yen (about $500,000) from IoT (Internet of Things) focused investment fund TomyK, Japan’s East Ventures, Shanghai-based IoT consulting company Yoren and other companies plus angel investors, in addition to 36 million yen (about $300,000) loans from financial institutions.

via TechCrunch Japan

See also:

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

news

Japanese mobile game developer Akatsuki files for IPO

Akatsuki

Takeshi Hirano 2016.02.13

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Akatsuki, the mobile developer behind game titles like Cinderella Nine and Thousand Memories, announced that its IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange was approved on Friday. The company will offer 2.2 million shares for public subscription and sell 495,000 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 1.1 million shares. Nomura Securities will lead the underwriting. Its share price range will be released on 26 February with bookbuilding scheduled to start on 1 March and pricing on 8 March. According to the consolidated statement as of July 2015, they posted revenue of 4.3 billion yen ($38 million) and an ordinary profit of 601 million yen ($5.3 million). In the latest fiscal quarter, they posted revenue of 3.9 billion yen ($34 million) and an ordinary profit 1.4 billion yen ($12.3 million). Led by the company’s CEO, Genki Shiota, (holding a 39.92% stake), its major shareholders include the company’s COO Tetsuro Koda (19.52%), Globis Capital Partners (4.54%), Link and Motivation (4.03%), and Globis Fund (2.72%). Since its launch in June 2010, Akatsuki has been seeing a rapid growth in mobile social game titles through game distribution platforms like Mobage and Gree. The company introduced…

aktsk-genki-shiota-tetsuro-koda — R to L: CEO Genki Shiota, COO Tetsuro Koda (Photo: Akatsuki’s website)

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Akatsuki, the mobile developer behind game titles like Cinderella Nine and Thousand Memories, announced that its IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange was approved on Friday. The company will offer 2.2 million shares for public subscription and sell 495,000 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 1.1 million shares. Nomura Securities will lead the underwriting.

Its share price range will be released on 26 February with bookbuilding scheduled to start on 1 March and pricing on 8 March. According to the consolidated statement as of July 2015, they posted revenue of 4.3 billion yen ($38 million) and an ordinary profit of 601 million yen ($5.3 million). In the latest fiscal quarter, they posted revenue of 3.9 billion yen ($34 million) and an ordinary profit 1.4 billion yen ($12.3 million).

Led by the company’s CEO, Genki Shiota, (holding a 39.92% stake), its major shareholders include the company’s COO Tetsuro Koda (19.52%), Globis Capital Partners (4.54%), Link and Motivation (4.03%), and Globis Fund (2.72%).

Since its launch in June 2010, Akatsuki has been seeing a rapid growth in mobile social game titles through game distribution platforms like Mobage and Gree. The company introduced mobile role-playing game Thousand Memories in November 2013 for iOS, followed by an Android version in December 2013, which acquired 2 million users in only six months after the launch.

The company announced in May 2014 that former partner at IBM Venture Capital Group, Hisashi Katsuya, and former Mixi CFO, Fumiaki Koizumi, have joined the management board. Koizumi is involved with many startups, including Japanese mobile flea market startup Mercari.

See also:

Japanese mobile app developer raises $14M, sets up shop in Taiwan

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson

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Japan’s online coding bootcamp platform TechAcademy acquired for $5 million

Takeshi Hirano 2016.02.07

This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based United (TSE:2497), the Japanese listed company focused on developing mobile apps and adtech platforms, announced on Wednesday that it will acquire a whole stake in Kiramex, a Japanese startup behind online crowdsourced programming school service TechAcademy. According to disclosed information, the listed company will acquire Kiramex for about 600 million yen (about $5.1 million) through stock swap and payment in cash. This deal is expected to be closed on February 19th. Since its launch back in May of 2010, Kiramex had been offering a Groupon-like group-buying platform called Kaupon, starting as the second business of its kind in Japan. Riding a wave of popularity, the company secured angel investments only a month after launch, followed by $2.4 million in funding from Globis Capital Partners in September the same year. However, the Japanese group-buying industry subsequently became fiercely competitive and saturated because of the number of similar services continuously coming online. In 2013, the situation forced Kiramex to withdraw from the group-buying business (ownership of the Kaupon platform was subsequently handed over to Japanese internet company Cybridge). Prior to shutdown of its group-buying business, the team launched online crowdsourced…

This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese.

Tokyo-based United (TSE:2497), the Japanese listed company focused on developing mobile apps and adtech platforms, announced on Wednesday that it will acquire a whole stake in Kiramex, a Japanese startup behind online crowdsourced programming school service TechAcademy. According to disclosed information, the listed company will acquire Kiramex for about 600 million yen (about $5.1 million) through stock swap and payment in cash. This deal is expected to be closed on February 19th.

Since its launch back in May of 2010, Kiramex had been offering a Groupon-like group-buying platform called Kaupon, starting as the second business of its kind in Japan. Riding a wave of popularity, the company secured angel investments only a month after launch, followed by $2.4 million in funding from Globis Capital Partners in September the same year. However, the Japanese group-buying industry subsequently became fiercely competitive and saturated because of the number of similar services continuously coming online. In 2013, the situation forced Kiramex to withdraw from the group-buying business (ownership of the Kaupon platform was subsequently handed over to Japanese internet company Cybridge).

Prior to shutdown of its group-buying business, the team launched online crowdsourced programming school platform TechAcademy in 2012. It has acquired more than 7,000 aspiring programmers as students to date. Additionally, it’s been adopted by about 100 companies for their in-house employee training. In partnership with the new parent company United, Kiramex aims to expand the TechAcademy business further by leveraging the former’s marketing expertise and efforts.

masayuki-murata-yozo-kaneko — From the left: Kiramex CEO Masayuki Murata, United President/COO Yozo Kaneko

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Japan’s SmartHR, cloud-based personnel management platform, secures seed round

Kufu
SmartHR

Junya Mori 2016.02.07

See the original story in Japanese. Kufu is a Japanese startup behind SmartHR, a cloud-based personnel management platform. The company recently announced that it has secured funds from East Ventures, DG Incubation, and Beenext. The exact amount is yet to be announced but it is said to amount to several tens of millions in Japanese yen (hundreds of thousand US dollars). SmartHR automates procedures related to social insurance and unemployment insurance. It was developed to free up managers or human resources representatives from tiresome and time-consuming personnel management. Launched back in November 2015, this release was announced during the “Startup Battle” pitch competition of TechCrunch Tokyo 2015 where they were victorious. This service gained a great response right after its release, and 2 months later the number of companies using the company’s service has grown from 200 to 450. Noted Kufu CEO Shoji Miyata upon the funds, It has been growing much larger than we expected. It’s grown 170% from the preceding month so we are re-calculating profit and loss. Although the majority of SmartHR users are companies with 50 to 100 employees, there are also large companies with some 400 to 500 employees. He also commented: We have huge…

kufu-shoji-miyata — Kufu CEO Shoji Miyata

See the original story in Japanese.

Kufu is a Japanese startup behind SmartHR, a cloud-based personnel management platform. The company recently announced that it has secured funds from East Ventures, DG Incubation, and Beenext. The exact amount is yet to be announced but it is said to amount to several tens of millions in Japanese yen (hundreds of thousand US dollars).

SmartHR automates procedures related to social insurance and unemployment insurance. It was developed to free up managers or human resources representatives from tiresome and time-consuming personnel management. Launched back in November 2015, this release was announced during the “Startup Battle” pitch competition of TechCrunch Tokyo 2015 where they were victorious. This service gained a great response right after its release, and 2 months later the number of companies using the company’s service has grown from 200 to 450.

tctokyo-2015-top-prize-winner-smarthr — Kufu CEO Shoji Miyata (right) receives the award from TechCrunch US writer Kim-Mai Cutler.

Noted Kufu CEO Shoji Miyata upon the funds,

It has been growing much larger than we expected. It’s grown 170% from the preceding month so we are re-calculating profit and loss. Although the majority of SmartHR users are companies with 50 to 100 employees, there are also large companies with some 400 to 500 employees.

He also commented:

We have huge demand and numerous inquiries. That also accelerates the improvement of the product.

With the funds raised this time, Kufu plans to strengthen development and the support service system. Keiko Umino, a certified social insurance labor consultant at SmartHR, established a social and labor consultant corporation to deal with the legal procedures under Act on Public Consultants on Social and Labour Insurance; the two companies will cooperate and offer complementary services to users.

See also:

Cloud-based personnel management tool SmartHR wins Open Network Lab 10th Demo Day

Miyata says:

At this moment our service is only for the enterprises but in the future we are thinking about providing the management displays to consultants as well. The response from the users made us consider this. SmartHR aims to enable anyone to handle the simplified tasks so certified social insurance consultants can effectively commit highly-valued consulting time.

Upon reflecting on the response from users, Miyata commented that “2016 is the year to brush up on the product!” and has set his target for this year – introducing 3,000 companies – which has remained the same since the site release. However, he has revised the target for 2017 upwards to 30,000 companies.

It looks like SmartHR can alter this industry for the first time in ages and we bid godspeed to this endeavor.

Translated by Minako Ambiru via Mother First
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Smartphones ‘Designed in Japan’ are going global under Japan’s Aratas brand

Masaru Ikeda 2016.02.06

See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s Gooute, which was incorporated in Singapore, last month announced the launch of a new design brand for smartphone body or UI in low-end models, called Aratas. It mainly focuses on the emerging market in Asia and plans to commence sales of its series such as KAZE01, KAZE02, NAMI01 or NAMI02 from this spring. At a recent press conference, CEO and co-founder of Gooute Shunya Yokoji said that iPhones are still predominant as the current business model, leveraging the app store, although Android is ready to prevail throughout the world. On the other hand, emerging smartphone manufacturers around the Asian region dealing in low-end smartphones for Android have been showing rapid growth. He founded ARATAS in order to catch up with this trend. He explained: As fabless enterprises, tip manufacturers or design houses go on the rise, now anybody can become a smartphone manufacturer. Yet for low-end smartphone developers, it is unprofitable and only offers cut-throat competition if they cannot sell more than 10 million smartphones each year. ARATAS provides these manufacturers with design of smartphones and opportunities to maximize profits. It especially focuses on the three features of Device (chassis design), UI (user…

See the original story in Japanese.

Japan’s Gooute, which was incorporated in Singapore, last month announced the launch of a new design brand for smartphone body or UI in low-end models, called Aratas. It mainly focuses on the emerging market in Asia and plans to commence sales of its series such as KAZE01, KAZE02, NAMI01 or NAMI02 from this spring.

At a recent press conference, CEO and co-founder of Gooute Shunya Yokoji said that iPhones are still predominant as the current business model, leveraging the app store, although Android is ready to prevail throughout the world. On the other hand, emerging smartphone manufacturers around the Asian region dealing in low-end smartphones for Android have been showing rapid growth. He founded ARATAS in order to catch up with this trend.

He explained:

gooute-yokomichi-demo — Gooute CEO and co-founder Shunya Yokoji exhibits Aratas smartphones

As fabless enterprises, tip manufacturers or design houses go on the rise, now anybody can become a smartphone manufacturer. Yet for low-end smartphone developers, it is unprofitable and only offers cut-throat competition if they cannot sell more than 10 million smartphones each year.

ARATAS provides these manufacturers with design of smartphones and opportunities to maximize profits. It especially focuses on the three features of Device (chassis design), UI (user interface), and NET (information service bundled with the devices).

On the iPhone packages, one can spot the sentence ‘Designed in California.’ It represents the policy that no matter where it was manufactured, branding of the context or the design of the product was being emphasized. Gooute aims to bring this iPhone “trademark idea” to low-end Android smartphones, by providing proprietary UI or UX through tie-ups with manufacturers that have fabrication facilities or potential customers.

DJ Kawasaki composed a theme song for the brand, while the package design for mid-range smartphones KAZE01 and KAZE02 was handled by the architectural designer Tei Shuwa, who was referred to in a previous article about KAMARQ. No similar example of this unique strategy that focuses on product imaging from the very beginning can be easily found among Japanese startups. On the face of the smartphones under the ARATAS brand, in which many Japanese creators including Digital Hollywood graduates have been involved, the phrase of ‘Designed in Japan’ is engraved.

gooute-aratas-loucus — The Loucus feature distributes a variety of life-style information to Aratas smartphone users.

In addition to smartphone sales, Gooute engages in an ad platform business called LOUCUS which enables display of advertisement for targeted users regardless of the device vendors, partnered with Japan’s mobile ad major inMobi. Also, using the entertainment information platform Goume, which allows localization of companies’ unique content and global distribution thereof, Gooute aims to maximize its profitability. It plans to install these services in 50 to 100 million smartphones within this year.

Gooute was launched in June of 2013. CEO Yokoji had been involved in music/image distribution service before at Japan’s internet service company Nifty (TSE:3823), not to mention building up Milmo into a rich content distribution service then spinning it off.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Japan’s Nine matchmaking app connects users through best nine Instagram photos

Lip
Nine

Masaru Ikeda 2016.02.01

See the original story in Japanese. Did you know that a photo-sharing campaign called #2015bestnine has swept the social media sphere around the world? It allows users to curate the year’s top nine photos having acquired most ‘likes’ on their Instagram timeline and put them into a collage image to share on social media with other users. Since this service has penetrated worlwide in a winkling of an eye, about 15 million people including celebrities like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Michelle Obama and Donald Trump, have been reportedly enjoying its use. The campaign was conducted by Tokyo-based Lip, a Japanese startup also known for its matchmaking apps like Lemon and 5pm, aiming to tether a new mobile app just launched globally today. The company launched a mobile app called Nine for iOS, which is available on iTunes AppStore worldwide. Thanks to the successful result of the #2015bestnine campaign, the app went live today but has already acquired 130,000 users worldwide, especially from New York City and Los Angeles. See also: This Japanese duo launches limited-time-period matching app ‘5pm’ in San Francisco Japan’s Lip drops new app Lemon, AI-curated social network for university students Nine is a mobile matchmaking app for…

See the original story in Japanese.

Did you know that a photo-sharing campaign called #2015bestnine has swept the social media sphere around the world? It allows users to curate the year’s top nine photos having acquired most ‘likes’ on their Instagram timeline and put them into a collage image to share on social media with other users. Since this service has penetrated worlwide in a winkling of an eye, about 15 million people including celebrities like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Michelle Obama and Donald Trump, have been reportedly enjoying its use.

nine-cereblities-profiles — More than a few celebrities enjoyed #2015bestnine.

The campaign was conducted by Tokyo-based Lip, a Japanese startup also known for its matchmaking apps like Lemon and 5pm, aiming to tether a new mobile app just launched globally today. The company launched a mobile app called Nine for iOS, which is available on iTunes AppStore worldwide. Thanks to the successful result of the #2015bestnine campaign, the app went live today but has already acquired 130,000 users worldwide, especially from New York City and Los Angeles.

See also:

Nine is a mobile matchmaking app for Instagrammers, allowing them to curate top nine photos having acquired most ‘likes’ on their Instagram timeline over the past year and put them into a collage image to be placed on their profile page. Users can connect with others who may have a similar feeling by repeating flick-right to connect or -left to pass, much in a manner similar to the Tinder app.

MG_2402 — From the left: Lip’s Yusuke Matsuura and Mai Sekiguchi

Thanks to the appeal of simplicity in expressing someone’s inner character and outer appearance with as little as nine pictures, Nine’s user base is rapidly increasing by the day. Lip co-founder Mai Sekiguchi told us that 75% of their users are females, which is very unlikely for this kind of apps. In proportion to the geographical demographics of Instagram users, the Nine app has 40% of their users in the US, followed by Indonesia and UK. Due to acquisition of a huge user base in Android-dominant markets, the team plans to release an Android version in mid-February.

The app is based on an remarkably interesting idea but I’m curious as to how they will make money. In response to this my question, Lip co-founder and CEO Yusuke Matsumura explained:

We will provide a premium plan for a monthly subscription fee of $9.99 or 1,200 yen. It will provides three premium functions: Unlimited Likes, Neighborhood Discovery and Unlimited More Photos.

Unlimited Likes and Unlimited More Photos will allow users to display photos from a wider variety of those in an archive than the maximum limit for the freemium edition. Neighborhood Discovery will allow users to connect with other users in the same city or town while the default freemium setting will connect users with each others within 50 kilometers. Lip thinks they will flexibly alter these settings or criteria for the premium menu while analyzing user behaviors.

Founded in November 2014, Lip raised an undisclosed amount of funding in November 2015 from CyberAgent Ventures, Venture United, Incubate Fund and Primal Capital, in addition to accepting individual investment from Japanese mobile gaming developer Colopl’s co-founder Kotaro Chiba.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Japan’s Gozal secures new funds, adds new functions to automate corporate operations

BEC
Gozal

Masaru Ikeda 2016.01.31

See the original story in Japanese. Gozal is a Japanese crowdsourcing site for back office operations like procedures upon establishing companies or social insurance scheme coverage for employees. BEC, which offers this Gozal platform, announced last week that they have raised about 100 million yen (about $830,000) from CyberAgent Ventures (hereinafter CAV), Venture United, Saison Ventures, and Japanese web marketing company Speee. It has been about a year since BEC raised 10 million yen (about $83,000) from CAV’s Seed Generator Fund at the end of 2014. Along with this fundraising, BEC substantially upgraded the functions for Gozal. Gozal was officially launched in March 2015 (launched as beta version in August 2014) to offer service as a crowdsourcing platform for consultations in these seven professions: lawyers (law offices), patent attorneys (patent offices), certified public accountants (accounting firms), certified tax accountants, judicial scriveners, administrative scriveners, and social insurance and labor consultants. With this upgrade, a new function was added in which procedures like establishing companies or enrollment of employees under the social insurance is templated. All the users have to do is to follow the instructions and fill in the column with the required information; the specialists in those seven fields can…

See the original story in Japanese.

Gozal is a Japanese crowdsourcing site for back office operations like procedures upon establishing companies or social insurance scheme coverage for employees. BEC, which offers this Gozal platform, announced last week that they have raised about 100 million yen (about $830,000) from CyberAgent Ventures (hereinafter CAV), Venture United, Saison Ventures, and Japanese web marketing company Speee. It has been about a year since BEC raised 10 million yen (about $83,000) from CAV’s Seed Generator Fund at the end of 2014.

Along with this fundraising, BEC substantially upgraded the functions for Gozal. Gozal was officially launched in March 2015 (launched as beta version in August 2014) to offer service as a crowdsourcing platform for consultations in these seven professions: lawyers (law offices), patent attorneys (patent offices), certified public accountants (accounting firms), certified tax accountants, judicial scriveners, administrative scriveners, and social insurance and labor consultants. With this upgrade, a new function was added in which procedures like establishing companies or enrollment of employees under the social insurance is templated. All the users have to do is to follow the instructions and fill in the column with the required information; the specialists in those seven fields can handle these procedures.

Motohiro Takatani, founder and CEO of BEC, realized cost reductions by templating the standardizable workflow. He emphasizes that the quality of services is guaranteed due to consultations with specialists. The users can also entrust the entire procedure to these specialists upon request.

In this upgraded Gozal, one of the new functions is automatic notification of users as to changed trade name registration when they modify the name of their company in the profile. The users just need to fill in or change the information required on the platform, and Gozal informs automatically the users of the following procedures. With this function the users do not need to focus attention on all the procedures, and they can just rely on Gozal.

It is very interesting that this automatic notification system is not programmed in advance on Gozal but Gozal will be progressing with its machine learning system based on the advise from the specialists in the seven fields. Normally when this kind of function is released, the system is programmed and patternized based on all assumed scenarios. However, Gozal has been learning the patterns using this machine learning system, it makes possible the release of this function without completing all possible scenario patternization. It can deal with the frequent lack of extracting scenario, the more the users go on Gozal, the better Gozal reads users’ minds. BEC is applying for a patent of this function and implementation.

In this industry, there are some competing companies like Freee and Bizer. However, Takatani has confidence and says:

To choose the task itself is not very easy. Thanks to this automatic notification system, Gozal makes the labor procedures easier for users unfamiliar with those procedures.

See also:

Although the target users of Gozal are the managers of small and medium enterprises or startups, they plan to develop a function which makes the employees partially input the data by themselves in the future and which allows the managers to minimize time as well as labor. They also intend to cooperate with Credit Saison (TSE:8253), the parent company of Saison Ventures, to develop new services.

Gozal has about 1,000 companies using their services and the number of agencies charged with the procedures in the seven fields is about 200. The platform has matched more than 300 cases, and the total of the handling fee generated via Gozal exceeded 2 million yen (about $16,500) as of the end of October, 2015.

Translated by Minako Ambiru via Mother First
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda

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Japan’s Everest App eases planning and managing events across multiple platforms

Yuki Sato 2016.01.31

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Amazing Story, the Japanese startup consisting of multinational team members, launched an event planning and managing app called Everest App for iOS this month. The app allows one to organize personal events across multiple apps such as Google Calendar, Facebook and other social network services. Its basic functions include checking events on calendar, reviewing back past events with other attendees and planning new events. Amazing Story’s CEO Jeffrey Moon explained what motivated him to develop Everest App: When I was attending a business school while working as a strategy consultant, I had been struggling with the complication of managing my schedule using multiple apps. I came up with development of this app to eliminate the inconvenience in managing schedules. The app is aimed to help busy business professionals ease managing events from multiple apps. To add emotional elements in the app, users are allowed to share photos or comments with other users participating in the same event. In addition to Jeffrey Moon who originally came from South Korea, each member of his team has a multinational background so the app has been available both in English and Japanese since its initial launch. What…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Amazing Story, the Japanese startup consisting of multinational team members, launched an event planning and managing app called Everest App for iOS this month.

The app allows one to organize personal events across multiple apps such as Google Calendar, Facebook and other social network services. Its basic functions include checking events on calendar, reviewing back past events with other attendees and planning new events.

Amazing Story’s CEO Jeffrey Moon explained what motivated him to develop Everest App:

When I was attending a business school while working as a strategy consultant, I had been struggling with the complication of managing my schedule using multiple apps. I came up with development of this app to eliminate the inconvenience in managing schedules.

The app is aimed to help busy business professionals ease managing events from multiple apps. To add emotional elements in the app, users are allowed to share photos or comments with other users participating in the same event.

In addition to Jeffrey Moon who originally came from South Korea, each member of his team has a multinational background so the app has been available both in English and Japanese since its initial launch. What makes Everest App quite different from other event managing apps such as Peatix is focus on helping users manage their personal events and community because Everest App intends users to plan their events by leveraging their social graph and share experiences with attendees only.

The team says they plan to launch an Android version in February.

amazing-story-team — The Amazing Story team

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

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Japan’s Everest App eases planning and managing events across multiple platforms

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