See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based insuretech startup JustInCase announced on Wednesday that it has raised additional seed funding from 500 Startups Japan and Naoki Aoyagi. Aoyagi is the former CFO of Japanese internet giant Gree (TSE:3632) and now the CEO of MerPay, the financial services subsidiary of Japanese C2C commerce unicorn startup Mercari. Aoyagi participated in this round as an angel investor while 500 Startups Japan made a follow-on investment after their participation in the previous seed round. Although JustInCase has not yet clarified the amount of each individual funding, it did confirm that the cumulative funding amount including this follow-on round along with last year’s is 45 million yen (about $414K US). The company is preparing its first product “Sumaho Hoken (Smartphone Insurance)”, an insurance service to cover repair costs in the event of a malfunction for smartphone users. It uses AI (artificial intelligence) algorithms to analyze user behavior patterns, and conducts a risk assessment for each user allowing the company to provide a service with optimum premiums. As a result, it will be cheaper than Apple Care and other major telecom carriers’ insurance fees for smartphone users. In preparation of launching the official Sumaho Hoken service,…
Front row from the left: Hiroo Koizumi (CTO, justInCase), Kazy Hata (CEO, justInCase), Shinnichi Nasukawa (CFO, justInCase) Back row from the left: James Riney (Head, 500 Startups Japan), Naoki Aoyagi, Yohei Sawayama (Managing Partner, 500 Startups Japan) Image credit: justInCase
Tokyo-based insuretech startup JustInCase announced on Wednesday that it has raised additional seed funding from 500 Startups Japan and Naoki Aoyagi. Aoyagi is the former CFO of Japanese internet giant Gree (TSE:3632) and now the CEO of MerPay, the financial services subsidiary of Japanese C2C commerce unicorn startup Mercari. Aoyagi participated in this round as an angel investor while 500 Startups Japan made a follow-on investment after their participation in the previous seed round. Although JustInCase has not yet clarified the amount of each individual funding, it did confirm that the cumulative funding amount including this follow-on round along with last year’s is 45 million yen (about $414K US).
The company is preparing its first product “Sumaho Hoken (Smartphone Insurance)”, an insurance service to cover repair costs in the event of a malfunction for smartphone users. It uses AI (artificial intelligence) algorithms to analyze user behavior patterns, and conducts a risk assessment for each user allowing the company to provide a service with optimum premiums. As a result, it will be cheaper than Apple Care and other major telecom carriers’ insurance fees for smartphone users.
In preparation of launching the official Sumaho Hoken service, the company is coordinating with a local bureau of the Japanese Ministry of Finance to register as a small short-term insurance company but prior to the official launch, taking advantage of the exclusion provision of the Insurance Business Law (Article 2 of the Business Law), the company began an invitation-only service for pre-registered users from Wednesday.
Upon completion of the small short-term insurance company registration, the advance service is expected to shift to an official service. Due to the restrictions of applicable laws and the like, there is a possibility that the products and insurance premium conditions of the official service will be different from those of the advance service.
Sumaho Hoken is classified as a “P2P (peer-to-peer) insurance” which applies the concept of a sharing economy to insurance, i.e. friends and groups of users (pools) who are interested in insurance against the same risk pay the insurance premiums, and a system is adopted whereby insurance money is paid out from this pool. P2P insurance has various merits including the risk being easier to calculate compared with conventional insurance, insurance products that were impossible in the past can be easily developed, insurance money fraud and moral hazard problems are less likely to occur, and ex-post facto premiums can be kept cheap (through cash back, etc.).
In this space, we’ve seen emerging P2P insurance startups such as Sure (having raised $10.6M US so far), Lemonade (recently raised $120M US from Softbank, GV or Google Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Allianz last yearend), and Berlin-based Friendsurance (raised more than $15M US from Horizon Ventures, the investment firm of Hong Kong biliionaire Li Ka-Shing.
Translated by Amanda Amasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based InsurTech startup JustInCase announced last week that it had fundraised from 500 Startups Japan in a seed round. The raised amount was not disclosed but is estimated to be a few hundred thousand dollars. justInCase was founded in 2016 by Kazuya Hata (CEO) who had served the leading actuary consultancy Milliman and has been providing risk management services such as Asset Liability Management (ALM) to insurance companies, Hiroo Koizumi (CTO) who had engaged in modeling / data analysis of assets and liabilities, Shinichi Nasukawa (CFO) who had been involved in development of advertisement business platform at an ad agency as a data scientist and others. The team consists of technology-driven members as CEO and CFO that have engineering background, in addition to CTO. Smartphone Insurance — justInCase’s first product planned for launch soon — is a repair cost insurance service for smartphones. By analyzing users’ activity patterns with Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm and evaluating risk for each user, it provides insurance service with optimized fee. With this method, the firm realizes a cheaper service than AppleCare or ones provided by major carriers to smartphone users. Since this field is a niche market which…
Tokyo-based InsurTech startup JustInCase announced last week that it had fundraised from 500 Startups Japan in a seed round. The raised amount was not disclosed but is estimated to be a few hundred thousand dollars.
justInCase was founded in 2016 by Kazuya Hata (CEO) who had served the leading actuary consultancy Milliman and has been providing risk management services such as Asset Liability Management (ALM) to insurance companies, Hiroo Koizumi (CTO) who had engaged in modeling / data analysis of assets and liabilities, Shinichi Nasukawa (CFO) who had been involved in development of advertisement business platform at an ad agency as a data scientist and others. The team consists of technology-driven members as CEO and CFO that have engineering background, in addition to CTO.
Smartphone Insurance Image credit: JustInCase
Smartphone Insurance — justInCase’s first product planned for launch soon — is a repair cost insurance service for smartphones. By analyzing users’ activity patterns with Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm and evaluating risk for each user, it provides insurance service with optimized fee. With this method, the firm realizes a cheaper service than AppleCare or ones provided by major carriers to smartphone users.
Since this field is a niche market which major insurance companies do not deal with, it is possible to generate new insurance demand and to establish cooperative relationships with conventional players. justInCase has been coordinating activities with the Kanto Local Finance Bureau in order to be registered as a small amounts and short term insurance provider, and plans an official launch of the service within 2018. Furthermore, it started accepting user pre-registrations on its website from the day.
While the details about Smartphone Insurance have not been revealed yet, it is thought to be an app capable of self-diagnosis when insuring /claiming insurance in addition to carrying out user activity analysis like Sure, a similar service in the US. The Sure team behind the service is in its third year since its foundation and had raised $10.6 million in total including the series A round fundraising conducted this year.
This is a guest post by Joey Ho Nihei, a volunteer supporter for Kyoto-based hardware startup accelerator Makers Boot Camp as well as a student from National University of Singapore (Department of Global Studies). The accelerator holds the Monozukuri Hub Meetup event in Kyoto on a monthly basis. Additionally, all photos in this article were taken by professional photographer Kengo Osaka. Makers Bootcamp is Japan’s leading hardware accelerator and the organizer of the wildly successful Monozukuri Hub meetups. These meetups aim to build, support and inspire a community of makers by acting as a platform for international collaboration and knowledge exchange. In the latest edition of 2016 Monozukuri Hub meetup titled “The Power of Storytelling”, Makers Bootcamp has brought together some of the tech industry’s most seasoned storytellers, investors and start-up founders for an evening packed with insights on how to build and leverage on compelling stories for startups. This meetup largely revolved around the theme of how powerful and effective storytelling is quintessential to startups in every single way — from picking investor’s initial interest to effectively projecting a startup’s value to consumers. Simply put, storytelling is a powerful tool that must be harnessed by startups in order to secure not only investments…
Joey Ho Nihei
This is a guest post by Joey Ho Nihei, a volunteer supporter for Kyoto-based hardware startup accelerator Makers Boot Camp as well as a student from National University of Singapore (Department of Global Studies). The accelerator holds the Monozukuri Hub Meetup event in Kyoto on a monthly basis.
Additionally, all photos in this article were taken by professional photographer Kengo Osaka.
Makers Bootcamp is Japan’s leading hardware accelerator and the organizer of the wildly successful Monozukuri Hub meetups. These meetups aim to build, support and inspire a community of makers by acting as a platform for international collaboration and knowledge exchange.
In the latest edition of 2016 Monozukuri Hub meetup titled “The Power of Storytelling”, Makers Bootcamp has brought together some of the tech industry’s most seasoned storytellers, investors and start-up founders for an evening packed with insights on how to build and leverage on compelling stories for startups.
This meetup largely revolved around the theme of how powerful and effective storytelling is quintessential to startups in every single way — from picking investor’s initial interest to effectively projecting a startup’s value to consumers. Simply put, storytelling is a powerful tool that must be harnessed by startups in order to secure not only investments but also its survival.
Three main perspectives dominated the evening’s presentations: the perspectives of the story consultant, the investor and the startups. The beauty of this meetup was in seeing the storytelling process from these closely related yet distinct perspectives.
The evening was kicked-off by Sabrina Sasaki from Makers Bootcamp who succinctly introduced the art of storytelling and its significance to a startup’s growth to get everyone warmed up for the magic that was about to happen in the following presentations. Her presentation served as an easily digestible introduction to those unacquainted to the art of storytelling (myself included). One key message that she conveyed in her presentation was how stories play a crucial role in a startup’s marketing and how it is no less important than building a revolutionary product.
Björn Eichstädt, Managing Partner, Storymaker
The first speaker for the evening, Storymaker‘s Björn Eichstädt, offered the perspective of the consultant, sharing snippets from his vast experiences managing a story-oriented communications consulting, PR and digital communications firm. He spoke about how having a powerful story to communicate a company’s identity and value is increasingly important in a world constantly bombarded with a multitude of information, and how originality (instead of jumping onto trends) is the only real way ahead. One of his sharings that left a particular impression on his audience was when he drew parallels between a story and dashi (Japanese soup stock), saying “a story is just like dashi – it can only be made with the right ingredients, and this dashi can be expressed in so many different ways. If customers and the media like it, they will retell it”.
James Riney, Head of 500 Startups Japan, followed Björn’s sharing by presenting the investor’s perspective to story-telling: What are investors really looking out for when they listen to pitches? One theme that he constantly emphasised on was the need for simplicity when presenting their idea and value and the need to earn trust and confidence quickly in the little bit of time they have to present to investors. The best way to do this, he advices, is to highlight the key strengths of the startup either in terms of traction, team, target market, media coverage or fundings from highly sought-after investors and funds. Simply put, all you need to do is to convey “why this? why now? And why you?” and just KISS (Keep-it-simple-stupid). He also highlighted the importance of keeping things simple when startups ask for funding — just share with investors how much you need, what you will use it for, and how long this is going to last you.
The second half of the presentations saw Atsushi Nakanishi (AT) and Shota Takase sharing the stories of Dfree and Blincam respectively. Their stories were living proof of how startups can effectively leverage on powerful stories in order to propel their startups forward.
Atsushi Nakanishi, CEO of Dfree
Dfree CEO Atsushi Nakanishi has pooped his pants before — and he’s not ashamed to share it with the world because that was exactly what inspired the world’s first wearable device that aims to maintain every human’s dignity by using ultrasound to monitor changes in the body to predict toilet timings. His product’s vision to create “a world where nobody has to soil their pants” was as revolutionary as the way he presented his story — he began by asking the audience if “anyone pooped their pants before?” ensuing in a roar of laughter. Such personal, relatable anecdotes peppered with embarrassing examples have proven to be a key element in storytelling which values originality and surprise elements. To close his presentation, he shared Dfree’s future trajectories — a trajectory that would vastly change the way everyone lives in the future by “predicting everything” from toilet timings, appetites, menstrual cycles, aging and even one’s lifespan.
The last presentation for the evening was by Shota Takase, CEO & Founder of Blincam. Blincam’s story started by coincidence at a Startup Weekend session and has since been fueled by Shota’s strong desire capture natural and beautiful photographs of his family. The key inspiration behind Blincam was how Shota could never take candid photographs of his daughter because she would always make funny faces at the camera when she knew her photo was being taken. This desire to capture candid, beautiful pictures of our own children resonated with many people and this vision-turned-startup was what Blincam was all about: A wearable, hands-free camera that captures candid pictures with a blink of an eye. Shota then carried on to share every step of his journey from starting up in a garage all the way to securing a whopping 2640% of funding in Makuake and another 150% in Indiegogo just recently.
This event saw some of the most insightful stories and had some of the industry’s most seasoned storytellers and listeners (investors). Makers Bootcamp would once again like to extend our warmest regards to every single person who participated and we hope this meetup enriched you as much as it did for us! We hope to see everyone again soon!
Click here if you would like to check the presentation deck from all speakers, with detailed information about each one.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Angers, running a mobile app for Anglers under the same name, last week fundraised from 500 Startups Japan and mobile game developer Ignis (TSE:3689), as well as undisclosed individual investors. The secured amount was nowt disclosed but is estimated at tens of millions of yen (hundreds of thousands of dollars). The financing stage is considered an intermediate position between the seed round and the series A round. 500 Startups Japan acquires the share options in accordance with a term sheet of J-KISS, the convertible notes-based funding scheme published by the firm back in April. For Anglers, this fundraising is subsequent to the angel round funding from Japanese angel investor Nobuyoshi Yamagishi conducted in December of 2015. Anglers was founded in October of 2012 (the former company name was Fixa) and subsequently launched the official version of the app in July of 2013. This June, the firm revealed that the number of daily angling results registered topped 1,000 and the cumulative user number reached 270,000. While Swedish FishBrain or Fukuoka-based Tsuriba-Camera provide similar types of service allowing Anglers to share their angling results, Anglers’ strength is the “number” of angling results, according to Anglers…
Tokyo-based Angers, running a mobile app for Anglers under the same name, last week fundraised from 500 Startups Japan and mobile game developer Ignis (TSE:3689), as well as undisclosed individual investors. The secured amount was nowt disclosed but is estimated at tens of millions of yen (hundreds of thousands of dollars). The financing stage is considered an intermediate position between the seed round and the series A round. 500 Startups Japan acquires the share options in accordance with a term sheet of J-KISS, the convertible notes-based funding scheme published by the firm back in April. For Anglers, this fundraising is subsequent to the angel round funding from Japanese angel investor Nobuyoshi Yamagishi conducted in December of 2015.
Anglers was founded in October of 2012 (the former company name was Fixa) and subsequently launched the official version of the app in July of 2013. This June, the firm revealed that the number of daily angling results registered topped 1,000 and the cumulative user number reached 270,000.
The growth of the number of angling results registered on the Anglers app
While Swedish FishBrain or Fukuoka-based Tsuriba-Camera provide similar types of service allowing Anglers to share their angling results, Anglers’ strength is the “number” of angling results, according to Anglers COO Norio Fujii. Generally, Anglers hate telling other Anglers little-known fishing spots, so that angling results are not shared very much. Considering risks that the favorite spots are spoiled by others or the number of catches decreases, this angler psychology can easily be understood.
Although each fishing app basically uses the same method to save angling results, Angler users utilize the app for improvement of angling skills or motivation for himself / herself rather than boasting or sharing results. Thus, Anglers succeeded in acquiring an overwhelmingly large number of angling results to its number of users or downloads. Since the app has easily-usable functions as a social media for information sharing, real close-friend Anglers create closed groups and share pinpointed fishing spot information.
With the money secured this time, Anglers will add a system for sharing angling results by area or time-period. Also, the firm will start construction of a C2C (consumer-to-consumer) marketplace allowing users to sell fish they caught.
Fujii explains the need for angling information:
Many of the angling news about where and what kinds of fish can be caught are still
provided by angler hotels and are uneven. Generally, Anglers visiting his / her fishing spot anew want to obtain information about the spot in advance: which time frame to go or what kind of lure to use. On the other hand, angling requires fresh information.
Anglers’ current income source is mainly holding events supported by major fishing tackle manufacturers. Looking forward, the firm has an idea to implement functions enabling accommodation reservation of angler hotels or fishing agents seamlessly via Angler app, aiming to diversify the monetization stream. In addition, the firm plans to establish a fishing tackle review website for Anglers, just as Sefuri’s climbing app Yamap manages a climbing tool review website Yamap Gears.
The firm also implied the possibility of international development for the mobile app. That may be one of the purposes for taking on 500 Startups Japan as its investor this time as it is backed by the US parent.
Fujii explains his view regarding global development:
Fishing tackle manufacturers renowned worldwide are all Japanese companies such as Shimano or Daiwa. Even FishBrain with the largest user number in the world has only about 700,000 angling results to its 1.5 million users, while Anglers boasts a lopsided registration ratio as to angling results.
In India or China, there were lots of people who angle just to eat thus far, but the number of people who seek enjoyment in angling is increasing. Since the angler psychology of wanting keep favorite fishing spots secret is the same around the world, we can impact the world by leveraging the know-how obtained in Japan.
As an aside, Anglers graduated from the second batch of Tokyo-based startup accelerator Movida Japan, along with above-mentioned Sefuri developing Yamap. It is an interesting coincidence that Yamap intends services for users enjoying the mountains and Anglers intends that for users enjoying the sea.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. This is part of our ‘Tokyo Office Tour’ series (RSS), a modest attempt to better understand how folks in the local startup scene are working every day. On July 1st, Global Business Hub Tokyo (GBHT) officially opened in Otemachi, the city’s financial district near Tokyo station. Thus, a new startup hub has additionally appeared in the area filled with various co-working spaces or event spaces such as Egg Japan, FINOLAB and 3×3 Lab Future. 500 Startups Japan, a 500 Startup’s micro-fund for the Japanese market, bases itself at this GBHT, and will likely frequently hold events like an “office hours” with entrepreneurs or a meet-up utilizing the public space, a bragging right for GBHT. See also: Tokyo’s FinTech startup hub FINOLAB holds its first growth hack seminar In the first $30 million-sized fund launched by 500 Startups Japan last September, Mixi, Mizuho Bank, Mistletoe and angel investor Kotaro Chiba participated as LP (limited partner), and recently it was revealed that Egg Japan and Mitsubishi Estate (which is also part of GBHT’s management matrix) had joined the LP. Although 500 Startups Japan is a fund originated in Silicon Valley, it is also a ‘made-in-Japan startup…
This is part of our ‘Tokyo Office Tour’ series (RSS), a modest attempt to better understand how folks in the local startup scene are working every day.
On July 1st, Global Business Hub Tokyo (GBHT) officially opened in Otemachi, the city’s financial district near Tokyo station. Thus, a new startup hub has additionally appeared in the area filled with various co-working spaces or event spaces such as Egg Japan, FINOLAB and 3×3 Lab Future. 500 Startups Japan, a 500 Startup’s micro-fund for the Japanese market, bases itself at this GBHT, and will likely frequently hold events like an “office hours” with entrepreneurs or a meet-up utilizing the public space, a bragging right for GBHT.
In the first $30 million-sized fund launched by 500 Startups Japan last September, Mixi, Mizuho Bank, Mistletoe and angel investor Kotaro Chiba participated as LP (limited partner), and recently it was revealed that Egg Japan and Mitsubishi Estate (which is also part of GBHT’s management matrix) had joined the LP. Although 500 Startups Japan is a fund originated in Silicon Valley, it is also a ‘made-in-Japan startup fund’ in whicn most of the LPs are composed of Japanese companies or investors.
Since the fund’s launch last fall, 500 Startups Japan unveiled that it had invested in meeting space-sharing service Spacee, followed by Pocket Menu which runs an O2O (online-to-offline) service for restaurants named Pocket Concierge (series A round), a virtual reality content developer Dverse (seed round) and Sora, which runs MagicPrice that emanated from Tech Lab Paak 3rd batch (seed round).
According to partners James Riney and Yohei Sawayama of 500 Startups Japan, two strategies upon investment are pointed out as factors for differentiating 500 Startups Japan, other than financials and its mentor network.
One is the “time machine” business. Like Spacee or Pocket Menu cases in their portfolio, some kind of business synergy are sought with startups in the same profession which already exists in US 500 Startups’ portfolio. Or, another case can be considered where US startups aiming to expand into Japan cooperate / combine / purchase Japanese startups in advance in the Japanese market. It is based on the idea of ‘buying time.’ Looking at 500 Startups as a whole, plural startups in the portfolio are able to associate and provide one worldwide services quickly, resulting in higher valuation.
The other corresponds to Dverse. Even if startups focusing on edge (specialized) technologies have the potential for global development, it is not unusual that they are not good at marketing. To support such tech-focused startups to enable global marketing by leveraging a network of journalists around the world is one of 500 Startups’ mission.
When The Bridge started up its English version under the name of SD, I mentioned that Western investors who do not speak Japanese see the Japanese startup community as a black box. Riney and Sawayama noted that 500 Startups Japan has close ties to Silicon Valley which wants to make its ability to act becoming a guide for global investors as one of the company’s strength in order to make them more interesting to the Japanese startups and to call in further investment activities.
Upon locating its genuine base, 500 Startups Japan is currently recruiting a Marketing & Community Manager for management of events including office hours, meet-ups or for deepening engagement with startups, as well as an Executive Assistant or intern. Do check them out if interested.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
500 Startups Japan 
Masaru Ikeda
The Bridge
