THE BRIDGE

Startups

3 great startup ideas from the latest Samurai Venture Summit in Tokyo

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See the original article written in Japanese Last weekend at the Microsoft Japan Office here in Tokyo, the ninth edition of the Samurai Venture Summit took place. This is a semi-annual startup event organized by Samurai Incubate, and is a great opportunity for investors to find startups in the early seed stages. Here is a quick rundown of the startups that caught our eye at the event. Wine It! Wine It is an app that identify the kind of wine you are drinking by taking picture of the label with a smartphone camera. The app contains data for nearly 11,000 wine brands, including information such as grape variety, the place of production, and cuisines that match the wine. There is an app called Sakenote that helps you to keep track of Japanese sake that you drink. But the main feature of Sakenote is to keep a record of your experience, Wine It is more like a wine encyclopedia. If you can’t find a certain brand of wine in the app, the information will be transferred to a sommelier, and it will be added to the database later on. Wine It! has not succeeded in monetizing just yet, but it could…

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See the original article written in Japanese

Last weekend at the Microsoft Japan Office here in Tokyo, the ninth edition of the Samurai Venture Summit took place. This is a semi-annual startup event organized by Samurai Incubate, and is a great opportunity for investors to find startups in the early seed stages. Here is a quick rundown of the startups that caught our eye at the event.

Wine It!

wineit_screenshot

Wine It is an app that identify the kind of wine you are drinking by taking picture of the label with a smartphone camera. The app contains data for nearly 11,000 wine brands, including information such as grape variety, the place of production, and cuisines that match the wine.

There is an app called Sakenote that helps you to keep track of Japanese sake that you drink. But the main feature of Sakenote is to keep a record of your experience, Wine It is more like a wine encyclopedia. If you can’t find a certain brand of wine in the app, the information will be transferred to a sommelier, and it will be added to the database later on.

Wine It! has not succeeded in monetizing just yet, but it could be possible to create an e-commerce service such as a Sake subscription service.

This initiative began as an incubated startup at D2C, a joint venture of NTT Docomo and ad agency Dentsu.

STARted

started_at_svs9

Many aspiring fashion designers have dreamt of launching their own brand. But doing so requires a very complicated process. In addition to creating your designs, you need to look for factories and then convince retailers or online stores to sell it.

But using a service like STARted, you need only upload a hand-drawn design of your dress, and STARted takes over the rest of the process. It’s a little early to talk about the potential of the service since it is still in the closed testing phase right now, with plans to launch this summer.

However, if the startup successfully builds a solid platform, perhaps implementing a crowdfunding system, it could become a place that helps designers do business without the usual required capital or risk.

Edulio

edulio_screenshot

Edulio is an online learning platform that launched in Japan earlier this month. The first ‘O’ in MOOC stands for ‘open’, but in contrast, Edulio is a platform that runs closed online courses. It has about 180 clients including training companies and private preparatory schools. The platform lets clients to provide online courses for a closed group of users, and it has a dashboard where clients can track the learning progress of the participants and manage tests and results.

As Youngme Moon, the dean of Harvard Business School’s MBA program, mentioned at the recent New Economy Summit, the audience is not forced to engage, so it is important to build a system that motivates them to participate in learning. Edulio currently lets users who are taking the same course share their achievements, with future plans to strengthening this feature later on.

ShouldBee wins OnLab Demo Day in Tokyo with automated web app testing solution

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Tokyo-based startup incubator Open Network Lab (OnLab for short) held a demo day event earlier this week, showcasing five startups from the eighth batch of its incubation program. A “Best Team” and “Special” award were presented to two startups who have shown solid growth in the last six months of their incubation period. Let’s take a quick look at those two, and take a look at the other startups that graduated from the program as well. ShouldBee (‘Best Team’ award winner) It is said that typical software development requires that you spend almost 50% of time just testing. What the ShouldBee team provides is an automated testing process for web-based systems that are under development. By using this solution, developers can automate the process of filling and submitting forms on their web app, and it can complete testing 12 times faster than human testers, and reduce cost to one-sixtieth of what would normally be required for conventional human-based testing. Since its launch several months ago, it has acquired 105 companies as users without any significant promotional effort. Jidoteki (‘Special’ award winner) There are many convenient SaaS-based tools out there, such as DropBox or Evernote. But often many corporations resist using…

onlab-demoday-grouppic

Tokyo-based startup incubator Open Network Lab (OnLab for short) held a demo day event earlier this week, showcasing five startups from the eighth batch of its incubation program.

A “Best Team” and “Special” award were presented to two startups who have shown solid growth in the last six months of their incubation period. Let’s take a quick look at those two, and take a look at the other startups that graduated from the program as well.

ShouldBee (‘Best Team’ award winner)

shouldbee-pitch

It is said that typical software development requires that you spend almost 50% of time just testing. What the ShouldBee team provides is an automated testing process for web-based systems that are under development.

By using this solution, developers can automate the process of filling and submitting forms on their web app, and it can complete testing 12 times faster than human testers, and reduce cost to one-sixtieth of what would normally be required for conventional human-based testing.

Since its launch several months ago, it has acquired 105 companies as users without any significant promotional effort.

shouldbee-pic
From the left: ShouldBee’s Hidehito Nozawa, Reo Mori, and Digital Garage CEO Kaoru Hayashi

Jidoteki (‘Special’ award winner)

jidoteki-screenshot

There are many convenient SaaS-based tools out there, such as DropBox or Evernote. But often many corporations resist using such tools because of their internal guidelines or security reasons. Jidoteki lets SaaS vendors to create a virtual appliance having their apps. It encourages enterprise users to adopt a such SaaS tools by setting up such an appliance behind their firewall.

The Jidoteki team
The Jidoteki team

Orange Magazine

orangemagazine-pitch

Orange Magazine is a mobile content platform that targets relatively older female users. In contrast with many mobile services that go after the younger generation these days, this team learned that senior women are having difficulties finding information about things like movies, health, travel, and much more.

To address this, they have developed a mobile app that is easy to use, and comfortable to read even for seniors. In order to provide a good user experience and content likely to fit their preference, they asked several older women to curate news articles as well.

For their monetization strategy, they considered partnering with existing book or magazine publishers to distribute their content to premium users through the app.

Astero

astero_image

Astero is a notification-focused news delivery app that aspires to bring you what you want to know at the right time. Typical users subscribe to many resources or visit many websites to collect things you want to know about. It could be things like appointments, weather updates, public transit updates, or when your favorite publication is on sale in stores.

In order to keep you from missing something important, they have developed an app that focuses on following three factors:

  1. Curation – Opt out of updates likely to be unnecessary to you.
  2. Recommendation engine – They’ve developed an engine using own original algorithm
  3. Notification management – Users can adjust the frequency of notification updates, or even receive a single ‘digest’ of many notifications at once.

They are considering monetizing their service by partnering and integrating with third-party apps.

StudyPact

studypact-pitch

Our readers may recall that we told you a bit about StudyPact during our recent coverage of the HackOsaka event. It is a service that lets users set a study goal with monetary stakes as a sort of bet with themselves. For example, you can set a goal of studying English for two hours a week, and then set the target stakes at $5. If you reach that goal, you get $5, but if not, you have to pay $5. In the event that you have to pay, the fee is split in half among users who supported the goal and the rest will go to StudyPact.

To realize more effective learning platforms, the startups plans to tie up with other educational platforms and services like like Duolingo, Anki, Memrise, Coursera and Edx. They launched an Android version of the app several weeks ago, and they have learned their users’ completion rate for online courses has reached 85%. Typically the completion rate for MOOCs is somewhere around a lowly 5%.


Open Network Lab is now inviting applications from startups looking to join the next batch of its incubation program starting in July. The application deadline is May 19th.

Startup Weekend Tokyo to hold its first international-themed event

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The Tokyo incarnation of Startup Weekend has been ongoing for quite some time now [1]. And while the most recent Startup Weekends are held mostly in Japanese to encourage more local involvement, we’re glad to see that this weekend (Friday, April 25th to Sunday, April 27th) will mark the first international-themed event, appropriately dubbed Startup Weekend Tokyo International. We spoke briefly with one of the organizers who explained that even though the regular Startup Weekend Tokyo events have become rather homogenous, there are still many Japanese people interested in international business who would like to meet a more diverse range of people. Similarly, having an international themed event encourages people from other countries who might be here in Tokyo to come out and participate. While the event will be conducted in English, and for anyone here in Tokyo it could be a good opportunity to pitch in English and meet some fun people as well. If you’d like to sign up for this one, you can do so over on Doorkeeper. One of our earliest postings about the event dates all the way back to 2010.  ↩

swt

The Tokyo incarnation of Startup Weekend has been ongoing for quite some time now [1]. And while the most recent Startup Weekends are held mostly in Japanese to encourage more local involvement, we’re glad to see that this weekend (Friday, April 25th to Sunday, April 27th) will mark the first international-themed event, appropriately dubbed Startup Weekend Tokyo International.

We spoke briefly with one of the organizers who explained that even though the regular Startup Weekend Tokyo events have become rather homogenous, there are still many Japanese people interested in international business who would like to meet a more diverse range of people. Similarly, having an international themed event encourages people from other countries who might be here in Tokyo to come out and participate.

While the event will be conducted in English, and for anyone here in Tokyo it could be a good opportunity to pitch in English and meet some fun people as well.

If you’d like to sign up for this one, you can do so over on Doorkeeper.


  1. One of our earliest postings about the event dates all the way back to 2010.  ↩

Singapore’s Viddsee marks 5M viewers since its launch

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Singapore-based Viddsee, the operator of an online platform that showcases short films from Asia, announced this week that it has surpassed five million unique viewers since launching in February 2013. The company has also rolled out an editorial feature called Viddsee Buzz, which is a sort of blog/news channel that highlights selected films with greater context. Viddsee aims to bring Asian short films to global audiences, and it will be interesting to see how it can grow from here. I don’t think this genre benefits from a wide fan base as a startup like Tokyo Otaku Mode (which showcases just anime, manga, and cosplay), but no doubt there are many people who wish to explore Asian films in depth, and so its good to have a centralized repository like this on the web. The service has a strong following over on its Facebook fan page so far, with over 42,000 fans. That growth, we understand, has been entirely organic. Viddsee features a selection of video channels, many of which have a regional focus, including Node Japan, which highlights movies from Keio Media Design’s indie film portal, Node.

viddsee

Singapore-based Viddsee, the operator of an online platform that showcases short films from Asia, announced this week that it has surpassed five million unique viewers since launching in February 2013. The company has also rolled out an editorial feature called Viddsee Buzz, which is a sort of blog/news channel that highlights selected films with greater context.

Viddsee aims to bring Asian short films to global audiences, and it will be interesting to see how it can grow from here. I don’t think this genre benefits from a wide fan base as a startup like Tokyo Otaku Mode (which showcases just anime, manga, and cosplay), but no doubt there are many people who wish to explore Asian films in depth, and so its good to have a centralized repository like this on the web.

The service has a strong following over on its Facebook fan page so far, with over 42,000 fans. That growth, we understand, has been entirely organic.

Viddsee features a selection of video channels, many of which have a regional focus, including Node Japan, which highlights movies from Keio Media Design’s indie film portal, Node.

Japanese startup Bento.jp sends lunch to your office in 20 mins

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See the original article written in Japanese Bento.jp, a new lunch delivery service for busy business people, launched last week. Now with just a few taps on your smartphone, you can get your freshly made bento box lunch [1] delivered in around 20 minutes, at a costs of 800 yen ($8) including the delivery fee. I interviewed the company’s CEO Atsumasa Kobayashi, who previously worked in Itokuro (a company later transferred to KLab), involved in launching its social games division and Shanghai branch office. He came back to Japan in 2013 and founded Bento.jp Inc this past January. Currently, he runs the company, along with engineer Masahiro Saito. He explains coming up with the idea for the service through his own experience. It was a time when I was so busy that I didn’t have many other choices than to go to convenience stores to get lunch to bring back to the office. I wished I had more options. I’d like to provide more alternatives for those who feel the same way, bringing some innovation to the existing lunch market which hasn’t changed in a long time. How is Bento.jp different from other food delivery services? The big difference is…

Bento.jp-app

See the original article written in Japanese

Bento.jp, a new lunch delivery service for busy business people, launched last week. Now with just a few taps on your smartphone, you can get your freshly made bento box lunch [1] delivered in around 20 minutes, at a costs of 800 yen ($8) including the delivery fee.

I interviewed the company’s CEO Atsumasa Kobayashi, who previously worked in Itokuro (a company later transferred to KLab), involved in launching its social games division and Shanghai branch office. He came back to Japan in 2013 and founded Bento.jp Inc this past January. Currently, he runs the company, along with engineer Masahiro Saito. He explains coming up with the idea for the service through his own experience.

It was a time when I was so busy that I didn’t have many other choices than to go to convenience stores to get lunch to bring back to the office. I wished I had more options. I’d like to provide more alternatives for those who feel the same way, bringing some innovation to the existing lunch market which hasn’t changed in a long time.

How is Bento.jp different from other food delivery services? The big difference is its convenience, a sort of Uber – but for lunches. Bento.jp reminds me of UberRUSH, a new service recently launched by Uber, which delivers packages on foot or by bike in New York city. Kobayashi adds:

Like Amazon, more and more companies are starting to deliver orders on the same day or the following day. What’s the next step? I’m sure more companies will try to deliver within hours, and then in less than an hour. Bento.jp wants to meet that expectation and bring customers what they want soon after they want it.

The bento that the company currently offers is the kind most people are familiar with, with things like rice and fried chicken. Their bento lineup is created by a chef with experience at the Michelin-starred French restaurant Chez Naka. The company plans to add more quality Bento to this lineup in the future.

Bento.jp first looks to achieve stable sales of about 1000 bento a day. And while the delivery area is currently limited to Shibuya, Dogenzaka and Roppongi, it aims to expand to other busy area later on.

The number of startups offering food-related services are growing around the world. If a company like Bento.jp can successfully respond to the customers’ needs, I believe there is a lot of potential to win repeat customers.

If you work in the area where service is available, do give Bento.jp a try. You can download the app for free from the App Store.


  1. A bento lunch is a Japanese take-out box packed with rice and variety of side dishes, usually for one person.  ↩

Boasting over 200K Facebook likes, cosplay photo sharing platform secures funding

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Ample, the Tokyo-based startup behind cosplay photo sharing platform of the same name, announced today that it has raised an undisclosed sum of funding from Japan’s online learning company Hitomedia and entrepreneur/investor Takafumi Horie. Since its launch back in October of 2012, the platform has acquired more than 40,000 photos and over 210,000 likes on Facebook, and has users from about 60 countries worldwide. The company plans to use these funds to strengthen its team so it can better serve its users, and develop additional features such as a personalized interface. For Hitomedia, this is the fourth tech startups investment in its history, following US-based social commerce platform Fancy, online English learning school Langrich, and mobile food recommendation app Teriyaki. via Venture Now

ample

Ample, the Tokyo-based startup behind cosplay photo sharing platform of the same name, announced today that it has raised an undisclosed sum of funding from Japan’s online learning company Hitomedia and entrepreneur/investor Takafumi Horie.

Since its launch back in October of 2012, the platform has acquired more than 40,000 photos and over 210,000 likes on Facebook, and has users from about 60 countries worldwide. The company plans to use these funds to strengthen its team so it can better serve its users, and develop additional features such as a personalized interface.

For Hitomedia, this is the fourth tech startups investment in its history, following US-based social commerce platform Fancy, online English learning school Langrich, and mobile food recommendation app Teriyaki.

via Venture Now

What good is Silicon Valley to Japanese entrepreneurs? [NES 2014 panel]

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This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. On day two of the New Economy Summit here in Tokyo last week, we had a chance hear a panel discuss the benefits that Silicon Valley can have for Japanese entrepreneurs. This session was moderated by Gen Isayama, co-founder and CEO of WIL (World Innovation Lab), and the participating speakers included: Noriyuki Matsuda, CEO of Sourcenext Hironobu Yoshikawa, CEO and co-founder of Treasure Data Hitoshi Hokamura, chairman of Evernote Japan Satoshi Sugie, CEO and co-founder of Whill [1] Recently more Japanese investors and entrepreneurs have been moving to Silicon Valley. In order to get to the bottom of this trend, Isayama asked the panelists why they set up bases in Silicon Valley. Japanese software distribution company Sourcenext established a local subsidiary in Silicon Valley back in 2012, and has partnered with notable companies to distribute packaged editions of their software products. Since that office opened, Matsuda has spent more than a half of his time in Silicon Valley. He explained: I had no option but to come to Silicon Valley by myself. I used to…

entrepreneur-panel
From the left: Hitoshi Hokamura (Evernote Japan), Hironobu Yoshikawa (Treasure Data),
Noriyuki Matsuda (Sourcenext), Satoshi Sugie (Whill)

This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.

On day two of the New Economy Summit here in Tokyo last week, we had a chance hear a panel discuss the benefits that Silicon Valley can have for Japanese entrepreneurs. This session was moderated by Gen Isayama, co-founder and CEO of WIL (World Innovation Lab), and the participating speakers included:

  • Noriyuki Matsuda, CEO of Sourcenext
  • Hironobu Yoshikawa, CEO and co-founder of Treasure Data
  • Hitoshi Hokamura, chairman of Evernote Japan
  • Satoshi Sugie, CEO and co-founder of Whill [1]

Recently more Japanese investors and entrepreneurs have been moving to Silicon Valley. In order to get to the bottom of this trend, Isayama asked the panelists why they set up bases in Silicon Valley.

Japanese software distribution company Sourcenext established a local subsidiary in Silicon Valley back in 2012, and has partnered with notable companies to distribute packaged editions of their software products. Since that office opened, Matsuda has spent more than a half of his time in Silicon Valley. He explained:

I had no option but to come to Silicon Valley by myself. I used to make having short trips there, but I subsequently figured out that it’s difficult to arrange appointments with locals unless I have a base there. During the several months that I’ve been there, we made a lot of good partnerships. So finally I decided to hand my previous role at headquarters over to some reliable people and I started living in Silicon Valley.

Sourcenext's Matsuda
Sourcenext’s Noriyuki Matsuda

The discussion moved on to Hokamura-san, who is known to have worked at Apple as director of marketing in the early 1990s when it was far less common for Japanese businessmen to work in Silicon Valley. He looks back at that time, explaining:

I had no intention to launch a business during the time. Why do I still stay there? Maybe because I can meet many exciting people. In Japan, I think we need to consume more of our energy on trivial tasks.

Evennote Japan's Hitoshi Hokamura
Evernote Japan’s Hitoshi Hokamura

Prior to launching his next-gen wheelchair startup, Sugie previously worked at Nissan, and also as a Japanese teacher for non-Japanese speakers. He explained his relocation:

Compared to the electric vehicle industry, the US market is 15 times larger than that of Japan. If you look at the number of vehicles sold annually, it’s 300,000 in the US versus 20,000 in Japan. So we decided to launch our first prototype in Silicon Valley. The area has a larger base of early adopters and it’s easier to arrange interviews with people, including investors and consumers.

entrepreneur-sugie
Whill’s Satoshi Sugie

Yoshikawa previously worked with the investment arm of Japanese trading company Mitsui & Co. Isayama asked him why he abandoned such a good position to launch a startup. Yoshikawa explained:

Since I was investing in tech companies, it was natural for me to be in Silicon Valley. But I subsequently found huge potential in big data, so I launched a startup doing that business by myself.

Treasure Data's Yoshikawa
Treasure Data’s Hironobu Yoshikawa

Isayama also asked about the challenges of doing business in Silicon Valley. Wheel’s Sugie confessed he had many difficulties hiring local talent.

Hiring is so hard in the US. When we interview potential employees, they try to sell themselves saying “I’m very confident I can fill a role at your company” or “My skills are a great fit for your company.” It’s not like Japan where employers can believe in a resumé from an interviewee. We definitely need to speak to at least three people that they have worked with before prior to hiring. I think there’s a huge cultural gap around hiring.

Sugie wrapped up the session by speaking about the attraction of Silicon Valley and encouraged audience members to launch their business there:

Silicon Valley is obviously awesome. But the geography doesn’t matter so much. Europe is great. China is also great. I think the mindset that entrepreneurs have in Silicon Valley is pretty important. Once you have it, you can go anywhere and launch your business anywhere in the world.

entrepreneur-panel2
WIL’s Gen Isayama moderates the panel

  1. You can check out our exclusive interview with Sugie in this article.

LogBook makes data analysis more accessible to startups

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See the original article in Japanese Plucky, the Tokyo-based developer of user behavior analysis tool Slash–7, is now developing a new service [1]. The new service is called Logbook, and its goal is to allow anyone to start analyzing data. Logbook targets those who want to measure their own services but don’t know where to start. It helps clarify target areas to be analyzed and shows what steps to take. Recently we hear a lot about growth hacking, and the five key stages of acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue – which have been referred to as ‘Pirate Metrics’, spelling out ‘AARRR’. This idea was developed to help startups execute data-driven management, and Logbook enables users to analyze data based on this AARRR framework. Many startups wonder which areas they need to analyze and improve. Data alone won’t help you figure it out, but Logbook helps you find more clarity using on AARRR, as explained in the slides below. The initial setup for Logbook is very easy. After users answer a few questions, the tool generates codes which users can embed in the software, so they can then start analyzing data right away. The wizard system tell you which indicators…

See the original article in Japanese

Plucky, the Tokyo-based developer of user behavior analysis tool Slash–7, is now developing a new service [1]. The new service is called Logbook, and its goal is to allow anyone to start analyzing data.

Logbook targets those who want to measure their own services but don’t know where to start. It helps clarify target areas to be analyzed and shows what steps to take.

Recently we hear a lot about growth hacking, and the five key stages of acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue – which have been referred to as ‘Pirate Metrics’, spelling out ‘AARRR’. This idea was developed to help startups execute data-driven management, and Logbook enables users to analyze data based on this AARRR framework.

AARRR

Many startups wonder which areas they need to analyze and improve. Data alone won’t help you figure it out, but Logbook helps you find more clarity using on AARRR, as explained in the slides below.

The initial setup for Logbook is very easy. After users answer a few questions, the tool generates codes which users can embed in the software, so they can then start analyzing data right away. The wizard system tell you which indicators which need attention.

While there are similar tools in overseas markets, no tools have this kind of wizard system. With this addition, and by supporting those who don’t have the typical requisite skills for data analysis, Logbooks plans to expand its user base more broadly.

Logbook’s service will be in both Japanese and English, with the aim of targeting east Asian markets like as Hong Kong and Taiwan as well. By expanding Logbook, Plucky aims to ultimately become a growth-hacking platform that recommends optimized tools.

Pre-registration for alpha version of Logbook is now available. If you are interested in the service, you can learn more here.


  1. Editor’s note: The company name and service are technically called ‘pLucky’ and ‘SLASH–7’ respectively, but in the interests of readability and common sense, we’re normalizing both. –RM  ↩

How different countries motivate local entrepreneurs [NES 2014 panel]

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This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. Day two of the New Economy Summit in Tokyo included a panel about how governments in the Middle East and European regions motivate local entrepreneurs. Speakers included: David Heller, managing partner of Vertex Venture Capital Talmon Marco, CEO of Viber Peter Vesterbacka, Mighty Eagle at Rovio Entertainment Chris Wade, venture capital advisor of UK Trade and Investment Heller kicked off the panel describing how his company has evolved the local startup scene in Israel. Since its launch back in 1997, Vertex has invested in 108 companies, and over 30 went on to an exit. The most recent was Waze, a community-based, real-time traffic and navigation app, acquired by Google last year. He emphasized that one of the most interesting things about the Israeli startup ecosystem is the amount of VC investment per person is much higher than that of any other developed country. Marco then introduced himself by encouraging the audience to call Viber a Japanese company, since they were acquired by Japan’s Rakuten earlier this year. Despite the fact that they started business in…

emea-panel2-lead

This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.

Day two of the New Economy Summit in Tokyo included a panel about how governments in the Middle East and European regions motivate local entrepreneurs. Speakers included:

  • David Heller, managing partner of Vertex Venture Capital
  • Talmon Marco, CEO of Viber
  • Peter Vesterbacka, Mighty Eagle at Rovio Entertainment
  • Chris Wade, venture capital advisor of UK Trade and Investment

Heller kicked off the panel describing how his company has evolved the local startup scene in Israel. Since its launch back in 1997, Vertex has invested in 108 companies, and over 30 went on to an exit. The most recent was Waze, a community-based, real-time traffic and navigation app, acquired by Google last year. He emphasized that one of the most interesting things about the Israeli startup ecosystem is the amount of VC investment per person is much higher than that of any other developed country.

David Heller
David Heller

Marco then introduced himself by encouraging the audience to call Viber a Japanese company, since they were acquired by Japan’s Rakuten earlier this year. Despite the fact that they started business in Belarus and then moved on to London, they have an especially large user base in South East Asia, especially in Myanmar and the Philippines. His advice for Japanese entrepreneurs? You need to encourage your employees to respect individualism and think out of box.

Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka explained that his company initially started out as a gaming company, but is now focused on three Es: entertainment, education, and entrepreneurship. As part of these efforts, they have been involved in organizing Finland’s largest tech conference Slush [1]. He encouraged Japanese entrepreneurs in the audience to create global success stories, pointing out that Tokyo alone has a larger population than all of Finland. He says startups have to stand out and differentiate from others, and that his company respects the diversity of employees. After launching an office here in Tokyo, they hope to be more Japanese than Japanese people, he says.

UKTI’s Chris Wade explained that his organization has been helping to grow the local startup community in East London by eliminating obstacles for entrepreneurs who are launching a company, providing them with the necessary mentorship. He says the UK government has also deployed several measures to accelerate entrepreneurship, including tax incentives for seed investments and issuing an entrepreneur visa to helps startups more easily hire talented people from outside the country.

He noted that every entrepreneur has to fail fast and keep trying. That’s the must-have mindset not only for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, but for people all over the world who are keen to launch a business.

Peter Vesterbacka, Chris Wade
Peter Vesterbacka, Chris Wade

  1. Update: We’re told the largest tech conference in Eurasia, in fact.  ↩

Japan’s Transcosmos takes 10% stake in Thai e-publication platform Ookbee

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Japanese system integration company Transcosmos (TSE:9715) announced today that it will take a 10% stake in Thailand’s e-publication platform Ookbee [1]. By bringing its business experience and IT solutions to the table, Transcosmos plans to help the startup to expand its business beyond the e-publication to become a more comprehensive monetization platform. This includes launching an e-commerce business to make the most of their user base in South East Asia. Since its launch back in March of 2012, Ookbee has acquired 5.5 million users to date across the region, with the goal of reaching 10 million users by the end of this year. The startup signed a strategic partnership with their Indonesian counterpart Scoop in late 2012, securing $2 million in funding for a 25% percent stake from Intouch. via Venture Now Coinciding with the capital tie-up, it was also announced that a Transcosmos employee will join Ookbee’s management board.  ↩

transcosmos-ookbee_logos

Japanese system integration company Transcosmos (TSE:9715) announced today that it will take a 10% stake in Thailand’s e-publication platform Ookbee [1].

By bringing its business experience and IT solutions to the table, Transcosmos plans to help the startup to expand its business beyond the e-publication to become a more comprehensive monetization platform. This includes launching an e-commerce business to make the most of their user base in South East Asia. Since its launch back in March of 2012, Ookbee has acquired 5.5 million users to date across the region, with the goal of reaching 10 million users by the end of this year.

The startup signed a strategic partnership with their Indonesian counterpart Scoop in late 2012, securing $2 million in funding for a 25% percent stake from Intouch.

ookbee_featuredimage

via Venture Now


  1. Coinciding with the capital tie-up, it was also announced that a Transcosmos employee will join Ookbee’s management board.