See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Sassor, the startup best known for creating its Energy Literacy Platform (ELP), announced today it has raised an undisclosed sum from Japanese semiconductor company Innotech. For those who are unfamiliar with their product, check out their promotional video below. The startup is a graduate from the first batch of Tokyo’s Open Network Lab incubator back in 2010, raising seed funding from another incubator, Samurai Incubate, that same year. Subsequently they joined China-based hardware accelerator HAXLR8R (pronounced ‘hackccelerator’) as well. The company first started its business by providing power consumption management solutions for households. But eventually, they got an offer from soup franchise Soup Stock Tokyo, which led them to develop a service for restaurants and retailers called ELP for Biz. This corporate version lets you manage power consumption for all your appliances, helping you optimize the energy expenditure in your business operations. Sasser co-founder Takayuki Miyauchi explains: In addition to providing these products, we’ve also been requested to advise corporate staffers how they can improve power consumption. But we don’t have enough people to consult with them face-to-face. So we’re planning to develop a system to automate the consultation process. Their corporate service…
The Sassor team: Co-founder/CEO Shuichi Ishibashi in the middle, co-founder Takayuki Miyauchi is second from the left.
Tokyo-based Sassor, the startup best known for creating its Energy Literacy Platform (ELP), announced today it has raised an undisclosed sum from Japanese semiconductor company Innotech. For those who are unfamiliar with their product, check out their promotional video below.
The startup is a graduate from the first batch of Tokyo’s Open Network Lab incubator back in 2010, raising seed funding from another incubator, Samurai Incubate, that same year. Subsequently they joined China-based hardware accelerator HAXLR8R (pronounced ‘hackccelerator’) as well.
The company first started its business by providing power consumption management solutions for households. But eventually, they got an offer from soup franchise Soup Stock Tokyo, which led them to develop a service for restaurants and retailers called ELP for Biz. This corporate version lets you manage power consumption for all your appliances, helping you optimize the energy expenditure in your business operations. Sasser co-founder Takayuki Miyauchi explains:
In addition to providing these products, we’ve also been requested to advise corporate staffers how they can improve power consumption. But we don’t have enough people to consult with them face-to-face. So we’re planning to develop a system to automate the consultation process.
Their corporate service has been adopted at about 50 retail stores. They’ve also been receiving inquiries about their products from home appliance makers in Japan and the rest of the world.
Innotech, the investor in this round, says their investment is not about the short-term, but rather is about potential business synergies that may happen in the future. It is said that Sassor has learned about logistics and warehouse management from Innotech.
Beyond the Internet of Things, Sassor is now looking beyond clean-tech to become more than a hardware-focused startup.
We expect to keep serving our customers by making the most of our experience in hardware development. We hope to change people’s quality of life through a combination of hardware and software rather than just providing technology-oriented products.
The company has been specializing in visualizing power consumption. But Miyauchi hopes to diversify their business to sectors like the health care industry.
We want to be a company that can create everything from software to hardware, with the ability to design a more whole service.
They are currently hiring new people to serve better more clients across many business sectors.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup U-note announced on Thursday that it has received investments from Venture United and Anri. Details were not disclosed, but the amount is thought to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Prior to this funding, the startup raised 11 million yen (approximately $130,000 [1]) from Party Factory, Voyage Ventures, and Movida Japan about a year ago. U-note is an collaborative event summary platform, providing text overviews of presentations, lectures or events. Typical topics could be notable business success stories, secrets for better sales, or useful tips for your work. Their users are mainly business people in their 20s and 30s. When the service was launched in July of 2012, they envisioned the it as a real-time note sharing service rather than an event summarization platform. But according to the company’s co-founder and CEO, Yuto Koide, his team made a change to their service during the last year. The result has been an acceleration in growth. Now they’re positioning U-note as an intelligence hub for business people, and their adjustment has resulted in constant monthly growth of over 140% in pageviews and unique users. Koide tells us a little more about their…
From the left: Anri Samata (general partner, The Anri fund), Yuto Koide (CEO, U-note), and Satoshi Maruyama (chief venture capitalist, Venture United)
Tokyo-based startup U-note announced on Thursday that it has received investments from Venture United and Anri. Details were not disclosed, but the amount is thought to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Prior to this funding, the startup raised 11 million yen (approximately $130,000 [1]) from Party Factory, Voyage Ventures, and Movida Japan about a year ago.
U-note is an collaborative event summary platform, providing text overviews of presentations, lectures or events. Typical topics could be notable business success stories, secrets for better sales, or useful tips for your work. Their users are mainly business people in their 20s and 30s.
When the service was launched in July of 2012, they envisioned the it as a real-time note sharing service rather than an event summarization platform. But according to the company’s co-founder and CEO, Yuto Koide, his team made a change to their service during the last year. The result has been an acceleration in growth. Now they’re positioning U-note as an intelligence hub for business people, and their adjustment has resulted in constant monthly growth of over 140% in pageviews and unique users.
Koide tells us a little more about their change in strategy:
We changed direction about half a year ago. Until then, we had been focusing on providing reports about speaking events, since we thought that kind of content had great value. Subsequently we found that many business people were looking for such useful tips. So we decided to make the platform serve that need.
We’ve recently seen a rise in media sites curating vertical content, such as Iemo (interior-focused) and Mery (girls interest). U-note is yet another that can be added to that list. Koide hopes to keep running it more as a web service instead of a media site. He explained:
We’d aiming to be somewhat like Cookpad, but for business. Cookpad helps housewives figure out what they’ll cook for a dinner. Similarly we are hoping to help business people with their business decisions. Currently our team creates the content, but we expect to get our users involved in creating content too. We hope our site will have more consumer-generated content.
The platform is publishing almost 20 to 30 articles a day, with the goal of increasing it to 100 articles a day within three months. These articles will be more focused on topics that offer value at all times (so-called ‘evergreen’ content) rather than news tips that lose freshness right away. Their current monetization streams are banner ads and branded content (advertorial articles). But they’re seeking other revenue streams as well.
The company aspires to accumulate 100,000 articles by the end of 2015. Using the funds raised this time, they plan to hire more engineers, enrich their content, and develop a mobile app.
We had a chance to speak with Venture United’s chief venture capitalist Satoshi Maruyama and Anri’s general partner Anri Samata about U-Note. Here’s a little of what they had to say:
Maruyama: When I met with them for the first time, they were still running as a note sharing service. But when I met again last summer, they’d already pivoted. I thought the idea – creating a platform for sharing business intelligence – was interesting.
Samata: It was almost a half year ago when I met with Koide for the first time. The more I meet and talk with him, the more I feel that he is strong-minded. He is a workaholic. … Rather than giving his product a good valuation, I thought his attitude at this age will definitely bring a market-disrupting product sooner or later. That’s why I invested in the company.
Maruyama: Through trial and error, Koide has grown up as an entrepreneur. Seeing how fast he has developed, I think he still has much room to grow further.
Koide: Maruyama told me he’s willing to work with us to develop better products. He was the only person who offered to do that. Samata believed in me rather than my product. That’s why I decided to ask them to invest.
Maruyama: This type of service will usually take a while to find success. But I think his team can keep ahead of the curve. From an investor’s perspective, I’ll try to help him make the most of his potential.
Using the currency conversion rate at that time. ↩
See the original article in Japanese WhitePlus is a Japanese startup that offers an online laundry service called Lenet. It lets users request a pick up of their laundry, which will then be cleaned and delivered to their home. Recently, on December 2nd, membership for this laundry service surpassed 40,000 people. That total is three times bigger than a year ago. The latest upgrade of the service took place on September 30th, with the price reduced, and the minimum delivery time being cut to 2 days. The company raised funds in August of 2013, and since then they have been growing their business. For such a paid service, one of the indicators we should look is the rate of repeat customers, a sign user satisfaction. Ryosuke Saito, the company’s CEO and CMO, told us a little about that. The Bridge: It seems sales has been growing well for you. Do you have any indicators that show how much? Saito: We cannot disclose detailed figures, but as an example, the CVR of new users is increasing since our renewal at the end of September. To increase our repeat user rate, we changed the price as well. Since we implemented our membership…
WhitePlus is a Japanese startup that offers an online laundry service called Lenet. It lets users request a pick up of their laundry, which will then be cleaned and delivered to their home. Recently, on December 2nd, membership for this laundry service surpassed 40,000 people. That total is three times bigger than a year ago.
The latest upgrade of the service took place on September 30th, with the price reduced, and the minimum delivery time being cut to 2 days.
The company raised funds in August of 2013, and since then they have been growing their business. For such a paid service, one of the indicators we should look is the rate of repeat customers, a sign user satisfaction.
Ryosuke Saito, the company’s CEO and CMO, told us a little about that.
The Bridge: It seems sales has been growing well for you. Do you have any indicators that show how much?
Saito: We cannot disclose detailed figures, but as an example, the CVR of new users is increasing since our renewal at the end of September. To increase our repeat user rate, we changed the price as well. Since we implemented our membership fee (premium membership costs 315 yen, or about$3 per month), we have reduced the discount rate for members from 20% to 35%, with intention of making the price lower than regular offline laundry services. Also, by making a delivery time of two days, we hoped to increase user satisfaction.
Lenet doesn’t own a cleaning facilities. It uses those of partners. And by reviewing the process from inspection to packaging, the overall process is made even more efficient. As a result, they could shorten the delivery time. But to do all this, they have also hired industry professionals who have much experience.
The Bridge: The business model is to use available resources without having to own your own cleaning facilities. But can you easily scale this business without owning such facilities?
Saito: Our next challenge it to increase our capacity. And yes, that means we need to find facilities. Now we are planning to establish a facility with a business partner. From there we can expand out from that, sort of as the center of other facilities to come later.
For the business model of this type of business, one advantage was that it didn’t require too many resources. That’s why Linet utilized partners, tying up with five different facilities.
However, as he told me in a previous interview, the industry is quite closed. I heard some stories about how the business can be quite hard on young new-comers. And perhaps that’s why they need to establish their own facilities.
Partner factories have the advantage of receiving more orders through the tie-up. According to Saito, he wanted to make his factory into a center where they can check and ensure operations are streamlined.
This attempt by Linet to bring a traditionally offline service online is definitely worth watching. So stay tuned to see how they do!
It’s hard to believe that more than five years have passed since Tonchidot first presented its smartphone AR solution Sekai Camera (or “world camera”) at TechCrunch 50 back in 2008 (see video above). The company’s founder Takahito Iguchi proposed that we change our smartphone habits, and “look up, not down” to see tags and information about the world around us. But regrettably the Sekai Camera service will soon be closed down, according to an announcement on the company’s website. I had a chance to interview Iguchi-san about Sekai Camera back in 2009. It’s one of those futuristic services that is just initially awe-inspiring. As we all know now, Iguchi-san has moved on to other things at Telepathy, proposing a Google Glass-like solution that ostensibly is far better suited to AR than holding a smartphone up in the air all the time [1]. These glasses still have a long way to go (I’ve heard many people use the word ‘vaporware’ when talking about them), but I’m glad that Iguchi is moving on from Sekai Camera. At the same time, I think the presentation above is special for a few reasons, and worthy of reflection: Iguchi-san did not give a f*ck –…
It’s hard to believe that more than five years have passed since Tonchidot first presented its smartphone AR solution Sekai Camera (or “world camera”) at TechCrunch 50 back in 2008 (see video above). The company’s founder Takahito Iguchi proposed that we change our smartphone habits, and “look up, not down” to see tags and information about the world around us. But regrettably the Sekai Camera service will soon be closed down, according to an announcement on the company’s website.
I had a chance to interview Iguchi-san about Sekai Camera back in 2009. It’s one of those futuristic services that is just initially awe-inspiring. As we all know now, Iguchi-san has moved on to other things at Telepathy, proposing a Google Glass-like solution that ostensibly is far better suited to AR than holding a smartphone up in the air all the time [1]. These glasses still have a long way to go (I’ve heard many people use the word ‘vaporware’ when talking about them), but I’m glad that Iguchi is moving on from Sekai Camera.
At the same time, I think the presentation above is special for a few reasons, and worthy of reflection:
Iguchi-san did not give a f*ck – Many Japanese startups I speak to have an irrational lack of confidence when speaking or pitching in English. Very often the Japanese people I know are very good at striving for ‘perfect’, but too often that strategy keeps them from being good[2]. Just know an outline of your talking points, and even if your English is poor, you can let your enthusiasm do the rest. (Not enough enthusiasm about your product? Time to quit.)
It was inspiring – I can’t help but wonder how many geo-location and augmented reality ideas were inspired by that particular presentation? How many went on to make similar solutions? [3]
The West loves to love Japan – Part of the appeal of the pitch was that Tochidot was from Japan, and had brought some secret glimpse of the future with it. Even now in 2013, ‘made-in-Japan’ is still a cool, futuristic brand, full of robots and bullet trains and octopus tentacles and ninjas and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. If you aren’t sure about its potential, go ask Tokyo Otaku Mode.
I’m still a little skeptical about Telepathy’s ability to bring their product to market. But regarding that initial pitch back in 2008, I think it’s a fun part of internet history worth reflecting on as Sekai Camera closes.
It clearly shows that despite the many obstacles facing a Japanese startup looking abroad, there are lots of things in your favor too.
Japan is cool, with lots of imagination. And the West wants to love you.
Takahito Iguchi of Telepathy
I imagine that your arm would get tired after a while. ↩
Tokyo-based investment company Global Brain held its annual startup conference event in Tokyo this past Friday, the Global Brain Alliance Forum, or GBAF for short. Let’s have a quick rundown on the top three winners out of nine nominees at the startup competition session, before looking at the other talks that took place during the event. 1st place: Triibe (Singapore) Triibe is a customer feedback management tool for physical retail stores, developed by Singapore-based startup Ascriber. They have deployed the app at over 300 retail stores and restaurant chains, mainly in Singapore. After visiting a merchant, if you rate them in the app and then share to Facebook, you can receive 10% off when you visit them next time. For retailers, the platform gives you an analytics dashboard page when you can browse metrics from customers about their satisfaction and experience. One of their key features is a realtime alert system. When the platform receives negative feedback from a customer, your store manager can be notified via SMS or e-mail at once, which helps you address the needs of that customer as soon as possible. There are already more than a few competitors in the space, but Triibe is expecting…
Tokyo-based investment company Global Brain held its annual startup conference event in Tokyo this past Friday, the Global Brain Alliance Forum, or GBAF for short. Let’s have a quick rundown on the top three winners out of nine nominees at the startup competition session, before looking at the other talks that took place during the event.
Triibe is a customer feedback management tool for physical retail stores, developed by Singapore-based startup Ascriber. They have deployed the app at over 300 retail stores and restaurant chains, mainly in Singapore. After visiting a merchant, if you rate them in the app and then share to Facebook, you can receive 10% off when you visit them next time.
For retailers, the platform gives you an analytics dashboard page when you can browse metrics from customers about their satisfaction and experience. One of their key features is a realtime alert system. When the platform receives negative feedback from a customer, your store manager can be notified via SMS or e-mail at once, which helps you address the needs of that customer as soon as possible.
There are already more than a few competitors in the space, but Triibe is expecting to differentiate with several features and expanded operations in Japan and the rest of Asia.
Monaca is a cross-platform mobile application development platform offered by Japanese company Asial. It helps non-tech-savvy users to develop native apps using web standards like HTML5, JavaScript and CSS.
When I previously met with the company’s CEO Masahiro Tanaka at ICT Spring in Luxembourg, he told me that this scene has been getting popular around the world since it requires no license or installation fee, and it allows computer vocational schools to give their students opportunities to easily develop an app.
Whoscall is a spam call-block and caller-detection app for the iOS and Android platforms. They have accumulated over 600 million profiles of telephone numbers and callers in their database, and can show you a caller’s name when you get an incoming call.
Earlier this month, Gogolook, the startup behind the app, reportedly secured an disclosed sum of funding from Korean search engine company Naver. I had a chance to talk with the company’s CEO Jeff Kuo, but he was unwilling to talk much about it. My guess is that he wants to prevent the perception that the investment would narrow their partnership opportunities with other companies, despite the fact that they are opened to partnering with any company, in addition to the Korean search engine.
Prior to these funds, the company raised $500,000 from angel investors, and an undisclosed sum from Trinity Venture Capital. In this space, we have already seen several competitors like Number Guru and TrueCaller.
Panel: Techstars on US trends and Asian opportunities
From the left: Techstars president David Brown and managing partner Mark Solon, and Global Brain Katsuyuki Hasegawa (moderator)
In a session introducing trends in recent US incubation, Global Brain’s Katsuyuki Hasegawa moderated a panel with Techstars president David Brown and managing partner Mark Solon.
The incubator launched way back in 2002 in Boulder, Colorado. Mark says their long-term efforts helped the city emerge as the nation’s fourth startup city, following Silicon Valley, New York City, and Boston.
According to Solon, they are partnering with many established companies to provide mentorships for their incubatees, including US-based telco Sprint, UK-based Barclays, and sporting goods company Nike. Many companies like these know they need to encourage more open innovation, and many will no longer depend so much on their internal business and engineering development efforts.
David explained that they want to expand their presence in Asia, but they have still no local accelerator from Japan participating in their global alliance network. So far, it’s only JFDI Asia in Singapore. I asked him if they’re interested in partnering with any Japanese incubator as part of the network. He replied by noting that the network has certain criteria to approve new members. But he says they are pleased to collaboratively work with local accelerators and incubators in Japan and the rest of the world.
What’s new with Global Brain?
From the left: Yasuhiko Yurimoto (Global Brain), Shigeyuki Tsuchida (INCJ), and Masakazu Masujima (Mori Hamada & Matsumoto legal office)
In the opening remarks of the event, Global Brain’s founder and CEO Yasuhiko Yurimoto said:
I have big news to share with you today. Our company will be reborn to serve startups and entrepreneurs much better.
The details of that teaser would emerge later as he moderated a panel discussion with Shigeyuki Tsuchida, INCJ’s [1] strategic investment group chief Shigeyuki Tsuchida, and lawyer Masakazu Masujima, announcing that his company would remove a redemption clause in the term sheets of startups in which they invest, strengthening his team so it could finish due diligence in as little as one or two weeks.
If you are an entrepreneur who has experienced the fundraising process, you know how this clause can be a headache to your business. Typical VC firms can take more than a couple of months to determine their valuation of your company. So the roll out will be welcomed by potential investees. He also revealed the company will publicly disclose term sheet templates, and he hopes to encourage other investment firms can eliminate constraints so that entrepreneurs can more easily find fundraising opportunities.
From the left: Yasuhiko Yurimoto (CEO, Global Brain), Vinnie Lauria (Partner, Golden Gate Ventures), Chester Jungseok Roh (CSO, 5rocks), Mark Hsu (CEO, TMI), Ryoichi Tsukada (Director, Asial), Jeff Kuo (CEO, Gogolook), Clark Chun Kiat Chua (Co-founder, Ascribr)
For those who are not familiar, INCJ is Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, the country’s state-run initiative for investing innovative activities and companies. The governmental company recently announced it has invested 10 billion yen ($97 million) in a startup-focused fund managed by Global Brain. ↩
Innovation Weekend is a monthly showcase and meet-up event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator Sunbridge Global Ventures. Every December there is a big one, where the monthly winners from the year compete in a pitch session. This year, Osaka-based startup Quadcept won the finale with its printed circuit board design solutions. Quadcept – Top prize winner Typical factories in the electronics manufacturing industry have to purchase a tool for designing printed circuit boards, usually provided in the form of packaged software, with costs of up to $80,000 for the initial fee and as much as $10,000 for annual fees per user license. But many factories don’t have the budget to distribute that kind of package to all their employees. And collectively, that problem can slow the entire industry. Quadcept looked to the cloud for a solution. Pricing depends on how many licenses you need in your company, with payment possible on a yearly or monthly basis, requiring no initial fee. Quadcept proposes that you only pay for the licenses you need, when you need them, and not waste money on idle seat licenses. The startup wants to be aggressive in helping device makers by sponsoring events like Maker Faire and…
Innovation Weekend is a monthly showcase and meet-up event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator Sunbridge Global Ventures. Every December there is a big one, where the monthly winners from the year compete in a pitch session. This year, Osaka-based startup Quadcept won the finale with its printed circuit board design solutions.
Typical factories in the electronics manufacturing industry have to purchase a tool for designing printed circuit boards, usually provided in the form of packaged software, with costs of up to $80,000 for the initial fee and as much as $10,000 for annual fees per user license. But many factories don’t have the budget to distribute that kind of package to all their employees. And collectively, that problem can slow the entire industry.
Quadcept looked to the cloud for a solution. Pricing depends on how many licenses you need in your company, with payment possible on a yearly or monthly basis, requiring no initial fee. Quadcept proposes that you only pay for the licenses you need, when you need them, and not waste money on idle seat licenses. The startup wants to be aggressive in helping device makers by sponsoring events like Maker Faire and Gugen. They expects to start global business expansion next year.
Quadcept
More than a dozen startups from Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand pitched their apps and services to a crowd from in Tokyo. Here is a quick rundown on some of the new faces.
VisasQ is a platform for consulting that takes advantage of relationships in your social graph, letting users get advice from experts. The company’s founder, Eiko Hashiba, is very experienced, including time working as an investment banker. The concept is inspired by Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG for short), a company providing consultation and advice from over 250,000 subject matter experts worldwide. Hashiba aims to provide such ‘spot consulting’ services for as little as 1% of the price of conventional services. Their team includes engineers from notable Japanese groupware solution Rakumo.
When you want to hang out at a karaoke bar in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, you might first turn to Google Search or Google Maps, inputting keywords like ‘karaoke’ and ‘Shibuya’. But that typically yields irrelevant information like a list of shops you don’t really care about.
But Tokyo-based startup Tritrue has developed a ‘spatial search engine’ called Pathee, which provides more relevant information by narrowing results to buildings within a five-minute walk from where you are, and to certain trending topics as well. So for example, when you arrive at a train/subway station near an event venue, you check how to get there by just entering the name of the event, with no need for the address. The startup is based at Samurai Incubate’s startup space, Startup Island.
ClickonCake delivers birthday cakes to any part of Japan, based on orders collected from their website. The company’s founder is Shintaro Naganuma, whose family business is a confectionery based in northern Japan. To make the business more profitable, he rolled out a delivery service specializing in birthday cakes. It currently earns 8 million yen ($80,000) in revenue every month.
Typical cake buyers will purchase a cake for someone on or near their birthday. And with this in mind, Naganuma’s team is planning to establish distribution centers all across the Tokyo metropolitan area. He has also invented a frozen type of cake that can be preserved at these centers. In this way, they can give users the option of same-day delivery cakes with unique designs. That would certainly pose stiff competition to conventional cake shops around town.
Waygooapp is a mobile translation application that uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology. For western visitors who come to Asia, one of biggest obstacles is typically reading Chinese characters, since signs and menus usually aren’t in English. And checking them on mobile is hard too, if you haven’t mastered the input method.
But with this app, all you need is to place your phone’s camera over it and let the app figure it out. You will see then English subtitles overlaid on the image. The app is currently available only for Chinese-to-English translation on iOS, but an Android version and Japanese-to-English version will follow soon.
Waygoapp
Other guests from the overseas
At a panel on Singapore’s startup ecosystem. From the left: Yuji Horiguchi (IMJ Fenox), Kenny Lew (Entreport Asia), Vinnie Lauria (Golden Gate Ventures), and Ikuo Hiraishi (Sunbridge Global Ventures)At a panel on how to launch a global startup. From the left: Yusuke Takahashi (AppSocially) and Tak Harada (Peatix)
Madrid’s IE Business School and the Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University (KMD) jointly held their first Venture Day event for entrepreneurs in Tokyo. The former is well known for being one of the top producers of MBA graduates, and for its many entrepreneurship events. KMD is based in Tokyo, encouraging people to solve societal problems and create new businesses using cutting-edge digital media technologies. The event featured a number of talks from both Japanese and European entrepreneurs, as well as a pitch competition where 10 startups competed to win a round-trip ticket to Madrid, presented by Turkish Airlines. I won’t go through all the startups here as we have featured many of them before. But it was good to several new faces with fresh ideas. Let’s have a look. CompiTechnology If you work in the startup industry, how many devices do you bring in your bag to work each day? A tablet, and a smartphone too perhaps — but for programmers, you likely need a laptop too. All that can be heavy, and you probably need a lot of money to buy everything. CompiTechnology aims to develop a smart device that lets you what typically requires many…
Madrid’s IE Business School and the Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University (KMD) jointly held their first Venture Day event for entrepreneurs in Tokyo. The former is well known for being one of the top producers of MBA graduates, and for its many entrepreneurship events. KMD is based in Tokyo, encouraging people to solve societal problems and create new businesses using cutting-edge digital media technologies.
The event featured a number of talks from both Japanese and European entrepreneurs, as well as a pitch competition where 10 startups competed to win a round-trip ticket to Madrid, presented by Turkish Airlines.
I won’t go through all the startups here as we have featured many of them before. But it was good to several new faces with fresh ideas. Let’s have a look.
MoneyTree wins the top award in the pitching session.
If you work in the startup industry, how many devices do you bring in your bag to work each day? A tablet, and a smartphone too perhaps — but for programmers, you likely need a laptop too. All that can be heavy, and you probably need a lot of money to buy everything.
CompiTechnology aims to develop a smart device that lets you what typically requires many smart devices to do. The company hasn’t disclosed too many details about this, but we do know that they are devoting $1 million for the R&D efforts for the production of their next product.
Smart Lab Module (by Molcure)
For many scientific researchers, you will need different devices for difference experimental purposes. This costs a lot. There is a multi-functional device that can be adopted for many experiments, but it can require millions of dollars [1].
A University of Tokyo graduate student had the idea to develop a lighter version of this kind of devices, making the most of smartphone technology, a hardware module, and an SDK. For researchers, one of the key advantages is that it would untether you from your lab, as it gives you the ability to check the status of an experiment using your smartphone regardless of where you are.
Studio4word provides a multilingual narration and translation service. Our readers may recall startups Voip and Creofuga who offer solutions in this space. But Studio4word is different in its easy-to-understand pricing structure. Regardless of what language you choose, their pool of native speakers will receive your job offer for 1,000 yen (about $10) for every 100 words in non-Japanese languages, or for every 100 characters in Japanese.
They also provide translation and proofreading often needed for foreign language narration. I assume the service will target startups who want to create promotional videos for their services for the global market.
Sharebu Kids is a flash-sales e-commerce site focused on kids’ fashion. Their strategy is to partnering with baby fashion brands from overseas that have no presence in Japan, buying their products for Japanese consumers, and presenting them at affordable rates. At the same time, it gives brands the opportunity to get their name out in the Japanese market.
The company is not interested in working with well-known baby brands, since they typically have local distributors or their own flagship stores, and they would usually force retailers to sell at non-discounted prices. By giving brands benefits besides just revenue, Sharebu Kids hopes to provide a unique user experience for consumers.
For example, there’s the Mahoro lab Android developed by the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. ↩
See also our coverage in Japanese. The Bridge and CNet Japan are proud to jointly announce the winners of the Japan Startup Awards. 20 startups were nominated, which we have featured over the past few days in our nominee rundown. Among the nominees, the winners were chosen based on over 10,000 votes from readers of The Bridge and CNet Japan. Top award winner Supplementary prize: 500,000 yen in cash (about $4840) Tokyo Otaku Mode (See our past coverage of them here) Tokyo Otaku Mode curates content about Japanese otaku/geek culture and presents it to a global audience. It has now more than 14 million likes on its Facebook fan page. The CNet Japan Award winner Supplementary prize: 300,000 yen in cash Retty (our past coverage) Retty is a Tokyo-based startup providing social restaurant recommendation where users can find the best restaurants according to their social contacts. The Bridge Award winner Supplementary prize: 300,000 yen in cash MONOCO (our past coverage) What began as Flutterscape has shifted gears to become a B2C service called Monoco. It sells designer interior products to a global market. The winners of the Japan Startup Awards were announced at CNet Japan Live 2013, CNet Japan’s…
The Bridge and CNet Japan are proud to jointly announce the winners of the Japan Startup Awards. 20 startups were nominated, which we have featured over the past few days in our nominee rundown.
Among the nominees, the winners were chosen based on over 10,000 votes from readers of The Bridge and CNet Japan.
Top award winner
Supplementary prize: 500,000 yen in cash (about $4840)
Tokyo Otaku Mode curates content about Japanese otaku/geek culture and presents it to a global audience. It has now more than 14 million likes on its Facebook fan page.
Retty is a Tokyo-based startup providing social restaurant recommendation where users can find the best restaurants according to their social contacts.
What began as Flutterscape has shifted gears to become a B2C service called Monoco. It sells designer interior products to a global market.
Photo courtesy: Monoco CTO Ari Awan
The winners of the Japan Startup Awards were announced at CNet Japan Live 2013, CNet Japan’s annual showcase event. The awards were made possible by sponsorship from NTT Docomo Ventures and KDDI, as well as cooperation from Japanese startup-focused marketing agency Value Press.
The following investment firms and incubators cooperated in selecting nominees for the awards:
Anri, Beenos, CyberAgent (investment unit), CyberAgent Ventures, Global Brain, Globis Capital Partners, Gree Ventures, iMercury Capital, Industrial Growth Platform, Infinity Venture Partners, Itochu Technology Ventures, KDDI, Klab Ventures, Lead Capital Management, Movida Japan, Skyland Ventures, YJ Capital, Samurai Incubate, and Venture United.
The quality of start-ups nominated for tonight’s CNet Japan Startup Awards is high, and Japanese entrepreneurs are seeking to solve problems on par with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. This is part seven of our preview of the nominees. The rest can be found here. Tokyo Otaku Mode Tokyo Otaku Mode (or TOM) is the 500 Startup graduate that exploded on the startup scene with a massive Facebook presence. The most fascinating part about TOM is how its growth trajectory has been the reverse of most startups. The normal flow goes something like this: a few entrepreneurs have an idea, build their product, then market it. But TOM started out by building a massive Facebook following of millions of fans. Since TOM hit critical mass on Facebook, it has been trying to figure out a problem most entrepreneurs would love to have: Well, we have reach. What’s next? From building iOS and Android apps, to an Etsy-like UGC strategy, it’s been fun watching them stumble uphill. Or as one of their angel investors, Craig Mod, perfectly summed up, “building their shrine”. Freee Like Quickbooks, BodeTree, Xero, Yendo, Zoho, et al., Freee is a cloud based software that helps small businesses with their…
The quality of start-ups nominated for tonight’s CNet Japan Startup Awards is high, and Japanese entrepreneurs are seeking to solve problems on par with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. This is part seven of our preview of the nominees. The rest can be found here.
Tokyo Otaku Mode
Tokyo Otaku Mode
Tokyo Otaku Mode (or TOM) is the 500 Startup graduate that exploded on the startup scene with a massive Facebook presence. The most fascinating part about TOM is how its growth trajectory has been the reverse of most startups. The normal flow goes something like this: a few entrepreneurs have an idea, build their product, then market it. But TOM started out by building a massive Facebook following of millions of fans.
Since TOM hit critical mass on Facebook, it has been trying to figure out a problem most entrepreneurs would love to have:
Well, we have reach. What’s next?
From building iOS and Android apps, to an Etsy-like UGC strategy, it’s been fun watching them stumble uphill. Or as one of their angel investors, Craig Mod, perfectly summed up, “building their shrine”.
Freee
Like Quickbooks, BodeTree, Xero, Yendo, Zoho, et al., Freee is a cloud based software that helps small businesses with their accounting. Founded by five-year Google veteran Daisuke Sasaki, who led Google’s small-to-medium sized business marketing in the APAC region, Freee fills a much needed hole in Japan. While working for Google, he realized a there was a huge problem with web-based accounting software, often only working on certain browsers and with a not so friendly user experience.
This year has been a huge year for Freee. They re-branded, raised $27M Series A, and added features and functions to streamline tedious paper-to-digital administrative tasks.
Freee addresses relevant problems for any small- to mid-sized businesses and is building partnerships [1], features, and functions that prove they are one step ahead of their competitors. Recently they added a POS (point of sale) system on their iPad app, and last week they announced a collaboration with receipt tracking app ReceReco to simplify the paper receipt tracking process.
Schoo
Schoo
Schoo is an online learning platform founded by entrepreneurs with editorial backgrounds. Their vision is to encourage other entrepreneurs to be ‘eternal students’ by providing e-learning content focused on the startup and venture world. We recently talked with the founders about their strategy for building a quality e-learning space, and I encourage you to check out that discussion [2].
Coiney
Coiney is the fourth major player in mobile payment solutions along with PayPal Here, Square and Rakuten SmartPay. All four have similar products and strategies. Square and PayPal Here have challenges most US based companies have: localization. Coiney knows and understands the Japanese market as the founder is ex-PayPal Japan.
Rakuten SmartPay’s obstacle is that Rakuten is a massive corporation. In order to quickly gain traction in a highly competitive field like mobile payments, agility is a necessity. If Rakuten SmartPay can figure out how to move and iterate quickly, they will become a major player, as Rakuten Ichiba has existing relationships with small businesses in Japan. Keep in mind that Base is also a mobile payment solution player to be reckoned with, tackling market penetration in a different way [3].
This is definitely one race to keep an eye on.
Good luck to all four finalists tonight at the CNet Japan Startup Awards!
Partnerships with Suica and Seven and i Holdings Co. to track, record, and automate transportation and credit card expenditures. ↩
The quality of start-ups nominated for Tuesday’s CNet Japan Startup Awards is high, and Japanese entrepreneurs are seeking to solve problems on par with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. This is part six of our preview of the nominees. The rest can be found here. PlanBCD, Kaizen Platform Inc. PlanBCD is one of the few startups — globally — attempting to bring high-converting designs to the masses. The closest corresponding product from the US is Optimizely, founded by an ex-Googler 1. While Optimizely’s core product is technology-reliant, PlanBCD is taking a different approach. Users post a job to PlanBCD’s dedicated network of designers, UI/UX specialists who they call ‘Growth Hackers’. These Growth Hackers pick a job they would like to take on, and the user chooses their favorite, which is then tested for 28 days. Payment is based on performance 2. Its human factor sets Kaizen Platform aside from similar products: Optimizely uses Amazon’s Analytics SDK and Google’s UI optimization tool, Content Experiments. We expect that PlanBCD is a product that will stay on our radars for awhile. Wantedly Wantedly is a social recruiting tool based on Facebook. The CEO and founder Akiko Naka’s ethos aligns with the product, aspiring to connect…
The quality of start-ups nominated for Tuesday’s CNet Japan Startup Awards is high, and Japanese entrepreneurs are seeking to solve problems on par with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. This is part six of our preview of the nominees. The rest can be found here.
PlanBCD, Kaizen Platform Inc.
PlanBCD is one of the few startups — globally — attempting to bring high-converting designs to the masses. The closest corresponding product from the US is Optimizely, founded by an ex-Googler 1. While Optimizely’s core product is technology-reliant, PlanBCD is taking a different approach. Users post a job to PlanBCD’s dedicated network of designers, UI/UX specialists who they call ‘Growth Hackers’. These Growth Hackers pick a job they would like to take on, and the user chooses their favorite, which is then tested for 28 days. Payment is based on performance 2.
Its human factor sets Kaizen Platform aside from similar products: Optimizely uses Amazon’s Analytics SDK and Google’s UI optimization tool, Content Experiments. We expect that PlanBCD is a product that will stay on our radars for awhile.
Wantedly
Wantedly is a social recruiting tool based on Facebook. The CEO and founder Akiko Naka’s ethos aligns with the product, aspiring to connect potential employers with talent through the social graph. She believes opportunities found through friends (and mutual friends) create better cultural fits and happier work environments.
“Invest in people, not ideas” is a saying repeatedly spoken by VCs and investors in the US. It is apparently working well in Japan, as Wantedly reports they have over 1,800 clients and more than 61,000 users.
Talknote
If I were still living in America, it would be very easy to dismiss Talknote as just another Yammer clone. But here on the ground in Tokyo, it’s clear why Talknote acquired so many customers. There are many archaic infrastructures out there and the restaurant industry is certainly one of them. Countless establishments still have no website and even accept fax requests for reservations or food deliveries. Haruo Koike, the CEO and founder of Talknote, is the perfect person to push this industry forward, as he has been in the restaurant business for 10 years.
Disruption starts with little baby steps like these, and it will be exciting to track Talknote’s progress. There’s also a part of me that wishes an American start-up would take Koike-san’s approach, as the food industry in the US could use a big change as well.
Talknote’s Facebook page is also very engaging, and I love how the CEO uses and supports products in the start-up community.
Fitting, as Google is known for its thorough A/B testing, the most well known, Marissa Mayer’s 41 shades of blue test. ↩
There’s nothing online that describes their growth hacker acquisition strategy – the closest I found was this job-share posting found here. Since the founders are ex-Recruit, I’m assuming they have techniques unavailable for public knowlege. ↩
Junya Mori
Takeshi Hirano
Rick Martin
Masaru Ikeda
Mona Nomura
