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Meet the startup crowdsourcing Japanese demand for overseas musicians

alive

Masaru Ikeda 2013.10.24

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Yuno Group today launched a crowdfunding site focused on live musical performances. It enables music fans in Japan to collaboratively invite their favorite artists from overseas. The new site is called Alive (alive.mu). The number of live performance events hosting musicians from the overseas has been gradually decreasing. For those in the event business, there is always the risk of poor sales or way too many vacant seats, and that may scare organizers away from inviting niche artists. But this new crowdfunding platform receives ticket orders prior to organizing an event, and the artist will be invited when the number of advanced orders reaches a preset target. In this way, the platform reduces the chance of an unsuccessful event. It is a similar business model to on-demand theater service Dreampass which was acquired by Yahoo Japan back in March. As of today, the platform has five crowdfunding projects available: Blue Hawaii – An electronic music duo from Montreal, Canada. The band’s latest album Untogether features acoustic folk and electronic sounds. San Cisco – An Australian four-piece indie pop band formed in 2009. Awkward, a single from their first album San Cisco, has…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup Yuno Group today launched a crowdfunding site focused on live musical performances. It enables music fans in Japan to collaboratively invite their favorite artists from overseas. The new site is called Alive (alive.mu).

The number of live performance events hosting musicians from the overseas has been gradually decreasing. For those in the event business, there is always the risk of poor sales or way too many vacant seats, and that may scare organizers away from inviting niche artists. But this new crowdfunding platform receives ticket orders prior to organizing an event, and the artist will be invited when the number of advanced orders reaches a preset target. In this way, the platform reduces the chance of an unsuccessful event. It is a similar business model to on-demand theater service Dreampass which was acquired by Yahoo Japan back in March.

As of today, the platform has five crowdfunding projects available:

Blue Hawaii – An electronic music duo from Montreal, Canada. The band’s latest album Untogether features acoustic folk and electronic sounds.
San Cisco – An Australian four-piece indie pop band formed in 2009. Awkward, a single from their first album San Cisco, has over 5 million views on YouTube.
Crocodiles – An indie pop band from San Diego. Their sound has typically been likened to The Jesus and Mary Chain and Stone Roses because of their psychedelic pop style. They have performed all across Europe.
XXYYXX – A 17-year-old electronic musician and producer from Orlando, Florida. His style has been likened to James Blake and Burial because of his experimental lo-fi music.
Nouvelle Vague – A French pop cover band known for punk rock, post-punk, new wave, and their use of ’60s bossa nova-style arrangements.

The Alive team was founded by British neuroscientist Sam Mokhtary and Japanese UI designer Yutaka Fujiki. They are based at PAX Coworking, a space here in Tokyo. It seems their team is comprised of many people from music startup Nana.

In this space, we’ve already seen some websites providing showbiz-focused crowdfunding projects, such as UK-based Songkick and Brazil’s WeDemand (previously known as Queremos). The former raised $10 million from Sequoia Capital last year, which is a good indication of the potential in this sector.

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Japanese startup hopes you have space in your living room for their photo tiles

Junya Mori 2013.10.17

See the original story in Japanese. Many of us enjoy taking mobile snapshots every day, and here in Japan this tendency has helped photobook services, such as Mixi’s Nohana, to become popular among consumers. Thanks to advanced printing technologies and photo shooting techniques, now we have more ways than ever to enjoy our photos. Tokyo-based startup O.N.A.R (apparently pronounced ‘One R’) recently launched a service called Niiice (apparently pronounced ‘Naaieece’) which lets you order photo tiles made from your smartphone snapshots. In this space, we’ve already seen many startups enabling users to print their own original creations using Instagram photos (see Casetagram for iPhone cases and Snaptee for T-shirts). The company plans to target consumers who want to keep their memories in a physical form nearby. And these tiles do just that. They come in small, medium, and large sizes. The small size has a magnet on the back, and the medium and large sizes come with a hook that will let you hang it on your wall. The original intention was for these tiles to be used for pet photos or to celebrate a birth. But they’ve found users are creating tiles as presents for parents or loved ones…

See the original story in Japanese.

Many of us enjoy taking mobile snapshots every day, and here in Japan this tendency has helped photobook services, such as Mixi’s Nohana, to become popular among consumers. Thanks to advanced printing technologies and photo shooting techniques, now we have more ways than ever to enjoy our photos.

Tokyo-based startup O.N.A.R (apparently pronounced ‘One R’) recently launched a service called Niiice (apparently pronounced ‘Naaieece’) which lets you order photo tiles made from your smartphone snapshots.

In this space, we’ve already seen many startups enabling users to print their own original creations using Instagram photos (see Casetagram for iPhone cases and Snaptee for T-shirts). The company plans to target consumers who want to keep their memories in a physical form nearby. And these tiles do just that.

They come in small, medium, and large sizes. The small size has a magnet on the back, and the medium and large sizes come with a hook that will let you hang it on your wall. The original intention was for these tiles to be used for pet photos or to celebrate a birth. But they’ve found users are creating tiles as presents for parents or loved ones too.

The startup’s CEO Shunsuke Nakakariya says:

We hope our users can fill their walls with our tiles. But since people already have many small articles in their rooms, there might not be much space for new items. So we think users can start tile decoration using a small space on surface of a fridge, for example.

The startup targets users in the photobook market and hopes to catch up with Nohana in its number of total app downloads. Their service is currently available for the iOS, and an Android version will follow soon. Check out the picture below using our company logo!

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Cooori: A web-based spaced repetition system for learning Japanese

Rick Martin 2013.10.16

There have been many Japanese language learning software systems that have emerged over the years, but I think the most effective ones are the ones that take the SRS (spaced repetition system) approach. Systems like iKnow [1], and the iOS software Anki – these systems team to take the planning out of your study, and let you focus on learning the language. One of the more interesting of these is Cooori, which we saw takes third place in the recent SF Japan night startup competition here in Tokyo. Cooori is a web-based flash card system that caters to all levels of Japanese study, finding material that corresponds to JLPT testing, as well as popular curriculum like Minna no Nihongo. It also gives you the ability to create your own word lists if you choose. I gave Cooori a quick test using his trial, which is restricted to 25 words only, and I was encouraged to see that the system works well across all platforms including mobile. If you want to use Cooori, it doesn’t come super cheap at $17 per month, although if you are a student there is a discounted $11 per month rate [2]. Of course figuring out…

There have been many Japanese language learning software systems that have emerged over the years, but I think the most effective ones are the ones that take the SRS (spaced repetition system) approach. Systems like iKnow [1], and the iOS software Anki – these systems team to take the planning out of your study, and let you focus on learning the language. One of the more interesting of these is Cooori, which we saw takes third place in the recent SF Japan night startup competition here in Tokyo.

Cooori is a web-based flash card system that caters to all levels of Japanese study, finding material that corresponds to JLPT testing, as well as popular curriculum like Minna no Nihongo. It also gives you the ability to create your own word lists if you choose. I gave Cooori a quick test using his trial, which is restricted to 25 words only, and I was encouraged to see that the system works well across all platforms including mobile.

Cooori, pitched at SF Japan Night this month

If you want to use Cooori, it doesn’t come super cheap at $17 per month, although if you are a student there is a discounted $11 per month rate [2]. Of course figuring out an effective way to study language is quite difficult, so I think this will be money well spent for anyone looking to study Japanese seriously.

The flash card system looks very good, with audio available to listen to if you want to check to see how words and sentences are pronounced. One clever feature is the daily reminders function, which is something that I know I would really use, because it’s important to keep study consistent, rather than just checking in whenever you have time. (I always struggle with that!)

None of what Cooori does is completely new, I think. But as far as I can see so far, it’s appears to have nailed all the important things that an SRS should do [3]

If you’d like to give Cooori a try, you can test it out for free over on their website, Cooori.com. The company also has a handy Japanese-English dictionary for iOS and Android that you can download for free. Overall I think the service looks very promising, and I’m looking forward to spending more time with it.

I used to be a huge fan of iKnow, but their transition from a free service to a paid one was – shall we say – less than graceful, and not entirely respectful of their users’ past contributions. I won’t be going back. ↩
You’ll need to send in a picture of your student card to prove that you really are a student. There were also referral discounts, so that if you get your friends to sign up you get a cheaper rate (I’m shamelessly going to put my referral link here, although I haven’t quite decided if I’m going to subscribe yet). ↩
Although I’m still waiting on an SRS that lets me do word/sentence mining with a javascript bookmarklet or browser extension as I find new phrases on the web. It would be nice to be able to quickly add those to own my study list. ↩

news

Japanese ecommerce service boasts 70% returning users

factelier

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.10.15

Japanese fashion e-commerce website Factelier just celebrated its one year anniversary. As we have mentioned in a previous post, Factelier creates made-in-Japan quality apparel products by partnering directly with well-established Japanese factories. By skipping middlemen such as distributors and retailors, these high quality products are made available to consumers at affordable price. To mark its one year anniversary, Factelier shared an impressive statistic: 70% of people using its service are returning users. That’s an amazing number for any type of e-commerce. The company has formed partnerships with five different factories in Japan to date. On the website, there are special contents dedicated to its one year annivesary, where it features the voices of participating factories. Factelier has built its name by collaborating with companies old and new. Back in December of 2012, the startup joined forces with a Japanese factory Kuska, a location three hours away from Kyoto. The beauty of Kusaka’s products is that they are completely hand-made. This time-consuming process only allows a few pattern variations to be produced. However, the resulting high-quality silk ties are one of a kind. Factelier has also made original products in collaboration with Zozotown, and it has opened its first show-room to showcase…

Japanese fashion e-commerce website Factelier just celebrated its one year anniversary. As we have mentioned in a previous post, Factelier creates made-in-Japan quality apparel products by partnering directly with well-established Japanese factories. By skipping middlemen such as distributors and retailors, these high quality products are made available to consumers at affordable price.

To mark its one year anniversary, Factelier shared an impressive statistic: 70% of people using its service are returning users. That’s an amazing number for any type of e-commerce.

The company has formed partnerships with five different factories in Japan to date. On the website, there are special contents dedicated to its one year annivesary, where it features the voices of participating factories.

Factelier has built its name by collaborating with companies old and new. Back in December of 2012, the startup joined forces with a Japanese factory Kuska, a location three hours away from Kyoto. The beauty of Kusaka’s products is that they are completely hand-made. This time-consuming process only allows a few pattern variations to be produced. However, the resulting high-quality silk ties are one of a kind. Factelier has also made original products in collaboration with Zozotown, and it has opened its first show-room to showcase quality apparel products to potential customers.

It will be interesting to see how the company progresses from here, as it continues to connect factories and consumers.

rising-expo-factelier_2 — Factelier founder Toshio Yamada

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Two young Japanese entrepreneurs discuss their recent buyouts

Takeshi Hirano 2013.10.15

See the original story in Japanese. This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013. Two Japanese startups that have experienced an strong growth in the last several months are Coach United, the startup behind private lesson portal Cyta.jp, and Bracket, which operates instant e-commerce platform STORES.jp. On day two of B Dash Camp Osaka last week, we had a chance to hear from Coach United CEO Nobuhiro Ariyasu and Bracket CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto. Also on the panel were Rakuten executive officer Takeshi Homma, and KDDI general manager Shigeki Matsuno. This year Ariyasu sold his startup to Japanese recipe site Cookpad, and Mitsumoto sold his startup to leading Japanese fashion commerce company Start Today. Moderator Hiroyuki Watanabe started the sessions with asking about their recent exits. When did you start preparing for buyouts? Ariyasu explained: When we launched our company back in 2007, I had no idea about funding or M&As. We couldn’t help but enjoy developing our product at that time. Two or three years later, we finally could make our business profitable, and had a chance to receive offers from some people [1]. The company kept using bank loans but were exploring funding opportunities…

bracket-fril — Bracket CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto and Coach United CEO Nobuhiro Ariyasu

See the original story in Japanese.

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013.

Two Japanese startups that have experienced an strong growth in the last several months are Coach United, the startup behind private lesson portal Cyta.jp, and Bracket, which operates instant e-commerce platform STORES.jp. On day two of B Dash Camp Osaka last week, we had a chance to hear from Coach United CEO Nobuhiro Ariyasu and Bracket CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto. Also on the panel were Rakuten executive officer Takeshi Homma, and KDDI general manager Shigeki Matsuno.

This year Ariyasu sold his startup to Japanese recipe site Cookpad, and Mitsumoto sold his startup to leading Japanese fashion commerce company Start Today. Moderator Hiroyuki Watanabe started the sessions with asking about their recent exits.

When did you start preparing for buyouts?

Ariyasu explained:

When we launched our company back in 2007, I had no idea about funding or M&As. We couldn’t help but enjoy developing our product at that time. Two or three years later, we finally could make our business profitable, and had a chance to receive offers from some people ^[1].

The company kept using bank loans but were exploring funding opportunities for the next stretch.

Bracket is not an old company but has been running a number of businesses for about five years. In contrast to his past businesses, Mitsumoto was aggressively exploring funding opportunities to boost their e-commerce platform. He attributes this to the many competitors in that space ^[2].

What’s the most impressed in the entire session was the following interaction between the pair.

Ariyasu asked Mitsumoto,

If Base (Bracket’s main competitor) wasn’t around, would you still sell your startup to Startup Today?

Mitsumoto answered, saying:

Without them, we probably might have not achieved the revenue we have.

Why not aim for an IPO?

Since these two startups were rapidly growing but self-funded, their founders could probably consider IPOs as possible options. But they emphasized a good match with the companies that acquired them.

Ariyasu explains:

I’m not really a person who drives after an IPO. It’s all up to you to determine whether an IPO and an M&A is a better choice for you. … I actually got an offer from Murakami (Livesense CEO) but I think it was not so aggressive. I’m close with him, and we have been fishing together. The reason why we partnered with Cookpad was I thought the both companies have something common in their corporate culture.

In a explanation about how Bracket’s Mitsumoto decided to sell his startup, he unveiled it was finally decided over the phone with Start Today’s CEO Yusaku Maezawa, which surprised the audience.

bdash-camp-buyout-mitsumoto — Bracket CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto

The decision was surprisingly smooth. I’ve been in touch with Maezawa for almost three years since he sent us an inquiry via our website. … I’ve handled four different businesses in the past, and I finally managed to find success in my fifth. The recent announcement that Yahoo Japan made of making its e-commerce platform free this year will be a big turning point in the Japanese e-commerce industry, where more players will make more bold decisions to defeat competitors.

Buyer’s perspective, seller’s perspective

KDDI’s Matsuno was involved in Mediba’s ^[3] acquisitions of startups such as Nobot and Scaleout. In a response to moderator Watanabe’s question about criteria around M&As, he says:

You probably need the perspectives of both a buyer and a seller. When your company is acquired by 100%, you will totally lose your ownership. In an extreme case, you might lose your position as the CEO. When you think of a company that you could sell your business to, you will need to build a good relationship of mutual trust (not to be asked to step down).

Rakuten’s Homma concluded the session with saying that:

Both for a seller and a buyer, the more experience you have, the better you can understand how you should proceed.

We previously featured Ariyasu and Cyta in this article.↩
Our readers may recall that we visited the Bracket office just last month, and had a chance to speak more with Mitsumoto about Stores.jp.)↩
Mediba is a mobile advertising-focused subsidiary of KDDI.↩

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Puteko poised to push its AR coloring books in Japan

Rick Martin 2013.10.08

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013. As we reported earlier today, Japanese startup Kaizen Platform walked away with the top prize at the B Dash Osaka startup pitch event. But one of the services that turned the most heads over the two-day event was Puteko’s colAR Mix app. It uses augmented reality technology to animate ordinary coloring books (see demo below), and has already attained some significant exposure when it was featured in TechCrunch back in July. Interestingly Puteko has been focused on the Japan market, and they plan to move their office here before the end of the year. They have already partnered with SourceNext in Japan, and will be working with Dentsu, DeNA, and d-right. CEO Katy Kelly explained that right now their business consists of three aspects: A library of coloring pages (sort of like Line’s stickers) Partnering with content/brand owners to make coloring pages In-app purchases, cross promotion and revenue share. In the future their business may expand to include things like game integration (use your character in a game), an SDK for third party app developers, and they may provide an authoring tool for users to create their…

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013.

As we reported earlier today, Japanese startup Kaizen Platform walked away with the top prize at the B Dash Osaka startup pitch event. But one of the services that turned the most heads over the two-day event was Puteko’s colAR Mix app. It uses augmented reality technology to animate ordinary coloring books (see demo below), and has already attained some significant exposure when it was featured in TechCrunch back in July.

Interestingly Puteko has been focused on the Japan market, and they plan to move their office here before the end of the year. They have already partnered with SourceNext in Japan, and will be working with Dentsu, DeNA, and d-right. CEO Katy Kelly explained that right now their business consists of three aspects:

A library of coloring pages (sort of like Line’s stickers)
Partnering with content/brand owners to make coloring pages
In-app purchases, cross promotion and revenue share.

In the future their business may expand to include things like game integration (use your character in a game), an SDK for third party app developers, and they may provide an authoring tool for users to create their own coloring books/pages.

So far the company has raised US$200,000 in seed funding back in New Zealand, their current base, and are now seeking series A funding of $1.5 million.

Kelly emphasized the fact that their app engages not only kids, but entire families. Many children these days might lose themselves in a mobile game, colAR is an activity that is more involved. And certainly, the animated end result will be something that kids will love to show off.

Their app is available for free on both iOS and Google Play. It’s one of those jaw-dropping AR services that feels like it should have been made in Japan. So I’m glad to see they’ll be coming here!

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5 great ideas from the 8th Samurai Venture Summit

Masaru Ikeda 2013.10.05

Last weekend at the Microsoft Japan office in Tokyo, the eighth edition of the Samurai Venture Summit took place. This is a semi-annual startup exhibition event run by Samurai Incubate. Here’s a quick rundown of the entrepreneurs that caught our eye at the event. Quick Money Recorder Quick Money Recorder (or ‘Okanereco’ in Japanese) is a personal finance app (for iOS and Android) that allows you to record your daily expenses on mobile. Our readers may recall similar apps such as Dr. Wallet, Zaim, Money Forward, ReceReco, and Money Tree. But this app recently ranked number one in the Japanese App Store’s finance app category, and is currently ranked second. Smart Idea’s Shohei Ejiri, an ex-Nokia Japan employee and the creator of the app, says the appeal of the app is that it lets you input an expense in as little as two seconds. The app was developed in Vietnam, where system development is very cost effective. Flip Friday When a new fashion season arrives for retailers, there are usually many items left unsold. Retailers look for discounters to buy up leftovers, but it’s difficult since the stock is already out of season or not current. Flip Friday has a…

Last weekend at the Microsoft Japan office in Tokyo, the eighth edition of the Samurai Venture Summit took place. This is a semi-annual startup exhibition event run by Samurai Incubate. Here’s a quick rundown of the entrepreneurs that caught our eye at the event.

Quick Money Recorder

Quick Money Recorder (or ‘Okanereco’ in Japanese) is a personal finance app (for iOS and Android) that allows you to record your daily expenses on mobile. Our readers may recall similar apps such as Dr. Wallet, Zaim, Money Forward, ReceReco, and Money Tree. But this app recently ranked number one in the Japanese App Store’s finance app category, and is currently ranked second.

Smart Idea’s Shohei Ejiri, an ex-Nokia Japan employee and the creator of the app, says the appeal of the app is that it lets you input an expense in as little as two seconds. The app was developed in Vietnam, where system development is very cost effective.

Flip Friday

stocklotsale — Flip Friday’s Yoshihisa Shiomi (right)

When a new fashion season arrives for retailers, there are usually many items left unsold. Retailers look for discounters to buy up leftovers, but it’s difficult since the stock is already out of season or not current.

Flip Friday has a warehouse in Los Angeles, buying branded fashions from local retailers for discount prices. The company will deliver them to Japan, selling them to fashion concious folks for affordable rates using its fashion e-commerce site.

The company was originally launched as an incubated startup at D2C, a joint venture of NTT Docomo and ad agency Dentsu.

Egao no Hon (books for smiles)

When the earthquake hit Japan in 2011, many people not only lost their family members, but also photos and photobooks of family as well. Watching the news about the tragedy, Mr. and Mrs. Ota wanted to invent something to help people get over losing memorable photos.

The startup has developed a photobook app that allows users to keep videos or photos in a well-organized format. If you lose your device, there’s no need to worry about data loss since everything is stored in the cloud. Albums are also provided in e-pub format, so users can browse photos with an e-pub compatible browser even if the startup were to shut down.

The company is backed by Tokyo-based incubator Movida Japan.

Paid

Similar to ApexPeak which recently launched in Singapore, Paid provides advanced payments on your billings to your clients. It can also take over your invoicing or billing work, as well as payment collection. In this way, you don’t need to worry about possible delays in collections or demands for payments.

Tokyo-based Raccoon, the company behind the service, has been a middleman service in the fashion industry, giving fashion retailers a chance to deal with well-established suppliers.

Fly Me To Minami

Also presenting was Japanese entrepreneur Yorihiko Paul Kato, who is based in Singapore. He has produced a movie filmed in Hong Kong, Seoul, and Osaka, staring up-and-coming actors from those countries. The movie, entitled Fly Me To Minami will be showing from December and early-bird ticket buyers can put their names in the end credits. Minami, literally meaning the south in Japanese, is an alias for the southern district of central Osaka.

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Japanese startup replaces formal job interviews with drinking parties

Almen
JIA

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.10.05

Some of our readers may recall when we wrote about Wild Card, a platform that tries to make job hunting a little easier. Another Japanese company looking to tackle the same market, with its recently released Almen. Launched in September, Almen matches job seekers and employers by holding small drinking parties. Anyone over the age of 20 with a Facebook account can use the service. Instead having a formal (and often awkward) job interviews, Almen gives both parties an opportunity to reveal their true colors with a little help from alcohol. A normal job interview process begins by selecting candidates from many resume submissions, but Almen skips this entirely and lets job seekers to apply to employer interviews directly. For employers, Almen restricts party attendance to the president of the company. So targeted employers for this kind of service are small to mid-size businesses. This could be good for their business, since many companies of smaller sizes lack qualified applicants, since candidates often seek stability by applying to larger companies. In addition to the job seekers and employers, restaurants can apply to use Almen too. Restaurants can provide service for 3,500 yen (or about $36) per person, with 500 yen…

Some of our readers may recall when we wrote about Wild Card, a platform that tries to make job hunting a little easier. Another Japanese company looking to tackle the same market, with its recently released Almen. Launched in September, Almen matches job seekers and employers by holding small drinking parties. Anyone over the age of 20 with a Facebook account can use the service.

Instead having a formal (and often awkward) job interviews, Almen gives both parties an opportunity to reveal their true colors with a little help from alcohol. A normal job interview process begins by selecting candidates from many resume submissions, but Almen skips this entirely and lets job seekers to apply to employer interviews directly.

For employers, Almen restricts party attendance to the president of the company. So targeted employers for this kind of service are small to mid-size businesses. This could be good for their business, since many companies of smaller sizes lack qualified applicants, since candidates often seek stability by applying to larger companies.

In addition to the job seekers and employers, restaurants can apply to use Almen too. Restaurants can provide service for 3,500 yen (or about $36) per person, with 500 yen going to Almen as commission.

JIA, the company behind Almen, hopes to acquire 300,000 job-seekers and 1,000 recruiting companies within its first year. Here’s a short introductory video to Almen below.

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Japan’s cloud-based invoicing platform Misoca raises $300,000

Junya Mori 2013.10.02

See the original story in Japanese. Nagoya-based Standfirm, the startup behind cloud-based invoicing platform Misoca, recently announced that it has raised 30 million yen (about $300,000) from Incubate Fund. The platform lets you to edit and manage estimates, invoices, statements of delivery using a handy dashboard. You can even ask the startup to print and mail these items to your clients on your behalf. With these funds, the company plans to intensify hiring and marketing efforts. Their upcoming focus areas will be: Starting inbound marketing efforts Improving user experience Integrating with CRM or ERP solution services Develop an entirely online platform to deliver of invoices/estimates. Since their launch back in June of 2011, Misoca has acquired more than 8,000 users, and more than 700 of them are using the service on a monthly basis.

See the original story in Japanese.

Nagoya-based Standfirm, the startup behind cloud-based invoicing platform Misoca, recently announced that it has raised 30 million yen (about $300,000) from Incubate Fund.

The platform lets you to edit and manage estimates, invoices, statements of delivery using a handy dashboard. You can even ask the startup to print and mail these items to your clients on your behalf. With these funds, the company plans to intensify hiring and marketing efforts. Their upcoming focus areas will be:

Starting inbound marketing efforts
Improving user experience
Integrating with CRM or ERP solution services
Develop an entirely online platform to deliver of invoices/estimates.

Since their launch back in June of 2011, Misoca has acquired more than 8,000 users, and more than 700 of them are using the service on a monthly basis.

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Couples app Pairy wins top prize at Docomo Innovation Village demo day

Masaru Ikeda 2013.09.30

See the original story in Japanese. Docomo Innovation Village, the incubation initiative of Japan’s NTT Docomo, hosted a demo day event on Thursday, showcasing startups graduating from the first batch of its incubation program. The event invited a number of guest speakers and judges including Docomo president Kaoru Kato, 500 Startups’ partner George Kellerman, and Skype co-founder/Atomico partner Niklas Zennström. Presenters were the six startups that qualified for the first batch back in April. It has been interesting to see how they have evolved over the past several months. Based on the qualification by the telco’s employees and the initiative’s mentors, grand prize and the ‘best stretch’ awards were presented to two out of the participating six startups. The award winner will receive a trip to Silicon Valley including a visit to 500 startups’ incubation office. Grand prize winner: Pairy ¶ Pitched by Toshimasa Takahashi, Pairy is a mobile app for couples that lets them to look back on the events they shared together. According to a survey, more than 40% of all couples in Japan look history back to see what they have talked about as far as a month back on social media. But it’s not easy to…

See the original story in Japanese.

Docomo Innovation Village, the incubation initiative of Japan’s NTT Docomo, hosted a demo day event on Thursday, showcasing startups graduating from the first batch of its incubation program. The event invited a number of guest speakers and judges including Docomo president Kaoru Kato, 500 Startups’ partner George Kellerman, and Skype co-founder/Atomico partner Niklas Zennström.

Presenters were the six startups that qualified for the first batch back in April. It has been interesting to see how they have evolved over the past several months.

Based on the qualification by the telco’s employees and the initiative’s mentors, grand prize and the ‘best stretch’ awards were presented to two out of the participating six startups. The award winner will receive a trip to Silicon Valley including a visit to 500 startups’ incubation office.

Grand prize winner: Pairy ¶

Pitched by Toshimasa Takahashi, Pairy is a mobile app for couples that lets them to look back on the events they shared together. According to a survey, more than 40% of all couples in Japan look history back to see what they have talked about as far as a month back on social media. But it’s not easy to retrieve your interactions from all the messages you’ve exchanged with other people. Pairy is designed specifically for interactions within couples, with the intention of eliminating this searching process.

To date the startup has acquired 120,000 users, which rose by 156% three months ago when it joined the incubation program. The service’s main userbase is people in their 20s. It has 6 million monthly pageviews and there are 50,000 ‘date spots’ registered.

Their users are growing by 120% a month without any massive promotional activities, and they expect it to reach one million and become the top apps of its kind by October of 2014. The startup is planning to monetize by adding three functions: photobook creation, premium service, and advertising. It’s now looking to raise 60 million yen ($600,000) from potential investors, with plans to launch another app for couples to use after they get married.

“Best stretch” award winner: Coromo ¶

Presented by Hokuto Inoue, Coromo allows you to change your smartphone homescreen to suit any occasion: work, leisure, or home — all using a NFC card. If you install the app, you can create your own home screen with HTML5 as well.

The startup recognizes that a home screen is something that you see more than any other apps or screen. It is planning to partner with conferences or venues and provide them with this solution that can show event updates to their attendees. According to Inoue, it has been decided that this year’s Tokyo Motor Show will provide updates to their attendees using the platform. When you leave the event venue, you will be sent to the platform’s e-commerce site, the Coromo Store, in the app. This helps user retention and B2C-based monetization. Even if smartphones are replaced by wearable devices in the future, there will be still potential in the business since the concept of homescreens will remain.

DecoAlbum and Drawchat ¶

DecoAlbum is a mobile app that allows users to decorate and share photos. Readers may recall that we interviewed them back in May. To date the app has 2 million users, almost double what it was before joining the incubation program. 70% of users are from outside Japan, although Japan and Thailand represent the biggest userbases.

The company recently unveiled a mobile app called Drawchat, which lets users to exchange hand-drawn images using Facebook’s messaging feature. They plan to keep introducing apps using Facebook APIs, and they hope to reach 10 million downloads by 2014.

FunPicty ¶

FunPicty is a set of funny photo apps, available for both iOS and Android. Most funny photo decoration apps are usually short-lived. For developers, it’s tough to see how to prolong the life of such apps. So the startup put a bunch of these apps together in a single app, thus creating a platform where users can share funny apps.

To date it has seen 5 million downloads and acquired 300,000 monthly active users. The company expects this will reach 1 million users by 2014. The service was pitched by Kou Honna, of Soda.

Kumitasu ¶

Kumitasu is an app for people with a food allergy, helping you buy allergy-free ingredients from e-commerce sites by specifying what allergen ingredients are contained in a food product. The idea was pitched by Mayu Ishikawa of Willmore.

In Japan, 14.2% of households have children with a food allergy, and at schools many children have to be served with allergy-free meals at lunch. So now it has become an unavoidable issue for the entire community. The startup received help from 30 housewives and developed a database with ingredients for more than 40,000 food products available on the Japanese market. Users can easily find a cookie product, for example, which contains no egg.

The company expects to generate annual sales of 1.5 billion yen ($15 million) in the next three years through subscription-based business models and affiliates traffic to partner e-commerce sites like Lotte, D Shopping, Mogumogu, and Radish-boya. The startup is also planning to sell allergy-focused ingredient data to food distributors, and hopes to introduce a mobile app by the end of this year. Their upcoming features recipes for allergy-free meals, premium services that helps users find allergy-free menu at restaurants, and additional features for diabetics and others with dietary-restrictions

The startup just launched their service but is exploring a series A funding with hopes to acquire 500,000 users in a year and 3 million users in three years.

Nanovel ¶

Nanovel was developed by Takashi Asami, who previously worked as a film producer. In the past, he established a project to gather story ideas for the theme “Can a 10-minute story impress people?” Building on this, his colleague subsequently made a film titled La Maison en Petits Cubes (The House of Small Cubes) and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2009.

Inspired by the concept, Asami developed a platform where people can subscribe to novels comprised of less than 2,000 Japanese characters. These short novels are written by 50 professionals, including high profile script writers and copywriters, and users can read up to 16 different novels a month for free. Their user retention rate a remarkably high as 68.5%.

We will be keeping our eyes on how these startups can evolve the local startup scene by speaking with them as often as we can. Docomo Innovation Ventures is now inviting applicants for the second batch of the incubation program here.

Startups

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Japanese startup hopes you have space in your living room for their photo tiles

Cooori: A web-based spaced repetition system for learning Japanese

Japanese ecommerce service boasts 70% returning users