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Japan’s Anydoor, offering crowdsourced translation service, acquired for $14M

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See the original story in Japanese. Japanese translation service giant Rosetta (TSE:6182) announced today that it would take the entire stake in Tokyo-based Anydoor, the company behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, for about 1.4 billion yen (about $14 million).  In this deal, the startup plans to exchange its 49.88% stake for the acquirer’s share and receive a value for the remaining 50.12% stake in cash. Established in February of 2009 by Naoki Yamada, who had studied abroad, Conyac is a product of his experience as he was often asked to translate short messages. According to the company’s website, it has acquired over 80,000 crowdsourced translators across 100 countries as of this month. After winning seed money at a business competition hosted by Skylight Consulting, Yamada paired up with his buddy Tomohiro Onuma and kicked it into gear by encountering Tokyo-based startup accelerator Samurai Incubate. Since then, Anydoor has successfuly secured funds totaling $600,000 from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and SMBC Venture Capital in October of 2013 while receiving funding from Japanese VC firm ngi group (now known as United) as well as venture capitalist Anri Samata. See also: Japan’s Conyac now provides more than translation, better helping companies go global Japan’s…

naoki-yamada
Anydoor co-founder and CEO Naoki Yamada

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese translation service giant Rosetta (TSE:6182) announced today that it would take the entire stake in Tokyo-based Anydoor, the company behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, for about 1.4 billion yen (about $14 million).  In this deal, the startup plans to exchange its 49.88% stake for the acquirer’s share and receive a value for the remaining 50.12% stake in cash.

Established in February of 2009 by Naoki Yamada, who had studied abroad, Conyac is a product of his experience as he was often asked to translate short messages. According to the company’s website, it has acquired over 80,000 crowdsourced translators across 100 countries as of this month.

After winning seed money at a business competition hosted by Skylight Consulting, Yamada paired up with his buddy Tomohiro Onuma and kicked it into gear by encountering Tokyo-based startup accelerator Samurai Incubate.

Since then, Anydoor has successfuly secured funds totaling $600,000 from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and SMBC Venture Capital in October of 2013 while receiving funding from Japanese VC firm ngi group (now known as United) as well as venture capitalist Anri Samata.

See also:

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s Conyac now provides more than translation, better helping companies go global

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind a crowdsourced translation service called Conyac, launched a new platform called Conyac Market on Thursday, aiming to support global expansion of companies in more comprehensive ways beyond translation services. The new platform allows users to outsource many tasks required for their global business expansion, such as localization of their service, conducting on-site research in their targeting market, and copywriting the service’s name relevant to their targeting market. Conyac has acquired more than 45,000 crowdsourced bilingual or multilingual translators from over 70 languages. The company had been receiving requests from users asking to deal with comprehensive business services beyond translation, such as proofreading documents by native foreign-language speakers, transcribing documents and composing press releases in foreign languages. In order to leverage the skills of their crowdsourced translators and meet increasing demand from ordering users, we were told that Anydoor has decided to launch the new platform. Anydoor CEO Naoki Yamada told us his comment on what they expect upon the launch: Conyac was originally launched to help people break through language barriers rather than providing translation services. While our crowdsourced translators have been increasing in number, demands from our ordering users have become  more diversified….

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind a crowdsourced translation service called Conyac, launched a new platform called Conyac Market on Thursday, aiming to support global expansion of companies in more comprehensive ways beyond translation services. The new platform allows users to outsource many tasks required for their global business expansion, such as localization of their service, conducting on-site research in their targeting market, and copywriting the service’s name relevant to their targeting market.

Conyac has acquired more than 45,000 crowdsourced bilingual or multilingual translators from over 70 languages. The company had been receiving requests from users asking to deal with comprehensive business services beyond translation, such as proofreading documents by native foreign-language speakers, transcribing documents and composing press releases in foreign languages. In order to leverage the skills of their crowdsourced translators and meet increasing demand from ordering users, we were told that Anydoor has decided to launch the new platform.

Anydoor CEO Naoki Yamada told us his comment on what they expect upon the launch:

naoki-yamada_portrait
Anydoor CEO Naoki Yamada

Conyac was originally launched to help people break through language barriers rather than providing translation services. While our crowdsourced translators have been increasing in number, demands from our ordering users have become  more diversified. In order to make the best of our translators’ skills, we launched Conyac Market to allow them to receive tasks in addition to crowdsourced translation work.

For corporate or individual users, translation is not a purpose but a means. I believe that our translators can provide more to help users achieve their purpose. I expect that this new service to help more corporations and individuals better connect with the global community.

In order to use Conyac Market services, you need to sign up for the Conyac translation platform as an ordering user to request translation tasks instead of using a crowdsourced translator. No monthly fee is needed, but a commission ranging from 2% to 10% for an outsourced task deal transacted through the platform will be charged.

While crowdsourced services fit well within the needs of tasks requiring faster performance and cost efficiency, it is difficult for users to gain feedback on their crowdsourced workers in a continuous job for future performance improvement.

Conyac Market is not a crowdsourcing platform but an outsourcing one, where you can appoint a specific worker who can comply with your detailed demands. With the new platform, corporate users will find it easier to maintain confidentiality despite ordering their business tasks of a third party, thus availing more options to companies in need of translation or other demands for global expansion.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Translations startups targeting non-tech Japanese SMEs

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This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology. Translations startups like Shibuya-headquartered Gengo and anydooR, the Conyac crowdsourced translations operator, took part in Tokyo Business Summit 2014 held late last week at the waterfront Big Sight convention facilities. This year’s event had more tech-related firms showcasing their wares than ever before, including those related to use of the space environment. This was the first time for Gengo to set up a booth at the event, which in the past brought together non- and low-tech Japanese small and medium-sized Enterprises for the most part. Gengo’s marketing manager Nozomi Umenai said, Gengo is expanding to mass market, as exemplified by Tokyo Business Summit participants. We wanted to showcase how easy and affordable it is to use Gengo API. Many of the participants are currently looking to expand overseas business dealings, both outbound as well as inbound (especially those related to the free trade agreement with Australia, as exemplified by meat products, and Trans-Pacific Partnership), so the venue provided a ready pool of Japanese SMEs for contact by translations outfits. Conyac — whose operation is based in Kanda, Tokyo known for…

This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology.


tokyo-business-summit_featuredimage
Image credit: Tokyo Business Summit

Translations startups like Shibuya-headquartered Gengo and anydooR, the Conyac crowdsourced translations operator, took part in Tokyo Business Summit 2014 held late last week at the waterfront Big Sight convention facilities. This year’s event had more tech-related firms showcasing their wares than ever before, including those related to use of the space environment.

This was the first time for Gengo to set up a booth at the event, which in the past brought together non- and low-tech Japanese small and medium-sized Enterprises for the most part. Gengo’s marketing manager Nozomi Umenai said,

Gengo is expanding to mass market, as exemplified by Tokyo Business Summit participants. We wanted to showcase how easy and affordable it is to use Gengo API.

Many of the participants are currently looking to expand overseas business dealings, both outbound as well as inbound (especially those related to the free trade agreement with Australia, as exemplified by meat products, and Trans-Pacific Partnership), so the venue provided a ready pool of Japanese SMEs for contact by translations outfits.

Conyac — whose operation is based in Kanda, Tokyo known for its many low-tech SMEs — also had a booth out at the event, which was held for the 28th time since 1988.

The Conyac booth staff also noted,

We just released a website translation management tool called ‘Conyac Front‘ last month. At the summit, we’re looking for the testers for the Conyac Front(β).

Other firms of interest this year were those focused on Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and other emergency-related businesses.

Further info on Tokyo Business Summit is available at http://www.business-summit.jp/tbs/

Japan’s Conyac launches new platform that turns a website into a multilingual environment

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation platform Conyac, unveiled a new translation platform called Conyac Front in beta last week. The platform allows website owners to turn their sites into multilingual versions using crowdsourced translation forces. The fee includes a hosting charge (about $100 a month for each language), a translation charge, and other optional charges when needed. The company is inviting monitor users, where up to 20 companies can use the new platform without paying translation and optional charges until December. Anydoor CEO Naoki Yamada says they will start charging for the service next January. Conyac Front helps companies develop multilingual websites. The localization process, including translation, usually requires a massive workload, where the most difficult part is selecting correct words in translation. We also have the English version, and we know the word picking process in translation for delivering right context is quite difficult. We have to see if translation results are naturally expressed for native speakers and terminology is also common to many people in the industry. So we understand that many startups postponed launching multilingual websites despite the fact that they have typically announced their global expansion. How will…

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credit: Free Grunge Textures – www.freestock.ca via FindCC

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation platform Conyac, unveiled a new translation platform called Conyac Front in beta last week. The platform allows website owners to turn their sites into multilingual versions using crowdsourced translation forces.

The fee includes a hosting charge (about $100 a month for each language), a translation charge, and other optional charges when needed. The company is inviting monitor users, where up to 20 companies can use the new platform without paying translation and optional charges until December. Anydoor CEO Naoki Yamada says they will start charging for the service next January.

Conyac Front helps companies develop multilingual websites. The localization process, including translation, usually requires a massive workload, where the most difficult part is selecting correct words in translation.

We also have the English version, and we know the word picking process in translation for delivering right context is quite difficult. We have to see if translation results are naturally expressed for native speakers and terminology is also common to many people in the industry. So we understand that many startups postponed launching multilingual websites despite the fact that they have typically announced their global expansion.

How will the new platform solve this problem? Yamada said that the platform enables the translation of websites dynamically using a proxy server. Conyac Front crawls a website and lists an index of webpages. Website owners can point to the part that is common across these webpages (such as menu or site description) and order a translation.

Website owners do not need to build a multilingual interface. When a user visits a website, the platform will detect their access location. If the access is from outside your language region, the platform will transfer the access to a proxy server and show translated results.

Translated results will be dynamically updated, which will allow website owners to adopt the platform even for websites using content management systems such as WordPress. But the company says that some membership-based websites, which typically require a user login process or a paywall, may not work properly in transferring user access to the proxy server.

The platform is more suited for translating corporate websites rather than news websites like The Bridge, where content is not often updated and very few technical terms are used.

In conversation with Japan’s Samurai Incubate, Anydoor about early-stage startups (Part 3 of 3)

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See the original article in Japanese The partnership between investors and entrepreneurs is an interesting one. In the seed money round, investors not only invest funds, but they cooperate with entrepreneurs on many aspects of the business. But what’s actually going during the very early funding round? We spoke with an investor and an entrepreneur to find out more about this. Kentaro Sakaibara is the CEO of Samurai Incubate, a pioneer among independent incubators in Japan. Naoki Yamada is the CEO of Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, a portfolio startup of Samurai Incubate. In the previous article, they talked about how they cooperated on the Conyac translation service early on. This conversation is the third and final part, where Sakakibara talked about his long term goals. History of Anydoor Feburary 2009: Naoki Yamada and Tomohiro Onuma founded Anydoor. May 2009: Conyac, crowdsourced translation service, was launched. March 2010: Yamada met Sakakibara, and became one of the first portfolios of Samurai Incubate. December 2011: Anydoor fundraised from United. February 2013: Conyac for Business was launched. October 2013: Anydorr fundraised from three VCs. Yamada: How do you support young startups recently? Sakakibara: For the first half a year after…

See the original article in Japanese

The partnership between investors and entrepreneurs is an interesting one. In the seed money round, investors not only invest funds, but they cooperate with entrepreneurs on many aspects of the business. But what’s actually going during the very early funding round? We spoke with an investor and an entrepreneur to find out more about this. Kentaro Sakaibara is the CEO of Samurai Incubate, a pioneer among independent incubators in Japan. Naoki Yamada is the CEO of Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, a portfolio startup of Samurai Incubate.

In the previous article, they talked about how they cooperated on the Conyac translation service early on. This conversation is the third and final part, where Sakakibara talked about his long term goals.

History of Anydoor

Feburary 2009: Naoki Yamada and Tomohiro Onuma founded Anydoor.
May 2009: Conyac, crowdsourced translation service, was launched.
March 2010: Yamada met Sakakibara, and became one of the first portfolios of Samurai Incubate.
December 2011: Anydoor fundraised from United.
February 2013: Conyac for Business was launched.
October 2013: Anydorr fundraised from three VCs.

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Yamada: How do you support young startups recently?

Sakakibara: For the first half a year after investment, I use more schemes when I give advice, more than before. Hands-on for half a year, and then changing the meetings to twice a week… things like that.

Yamada: It’s more formulated rather than working together through trial and error.

Sakakibara: Right.

Yamada: Do you still have the Excel spreadsheet we used before?

Sakakibara: Yes, the form has changed though.

Yamada: Wow, I miss that. I struggled with filling out the tables, but I think that sheet helped me a lot in finding the next investor. The template made it easier for me to pitch in front of investors.

Sakakibara: Actually, some don’t like the sheet. They feel like they’re being controlled.

Yamada: Will you continue to support startups this way? Will you look at startups in Japan from a broader point of view?

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Sakakibara: I think both perspectives are important. Some startups, incubators and CVCs were founded because of our influence. But I personally feel I shouldn’t be in Japan; I should create successful startups overseas.

Yamada: Are you going overseas? I remember when we were in the US, you’d been saying you want to try there.

Sakakibara: I’d rather go to Israel than the US, actually. I’d like to move on from Kobayashi-san to take a chance in Silicon Valley, and make connections on my own with investors in the Middle East and create a chance for startups in Japan to get investment from them.

Yamada: What is your final goal?

Sakakibara: The Nobel Peace Prize.

Yamada: You are very consistent about that. At our first meeting at Tully’s Coffee, you mentioned that. I thought you might be a crazy…

Sakakibara: Really? Did I say that then?

Yamada: And you mentioned Eiichi Shibusawa half a year later [1].

Sakakibara: Actually when I looked up business people related to the Nobel Peace Prize, I found information about Eiichi Shibusawa. He founded 521 companies, so I thought I would create 522 companies by the year 2020. You know, if I become a successful incubator in developing countries and contribute to making those countries richer, then it would be possible to win the prize.

Yamada: Quite a simple plan.

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The Bridge: How do you spend your free time?

Yamada: When I used to spend weekends in Samurai House, I asked Sakakibara-san what he does. I remember he said that he watched DVDs, and I thought he was sort of introverted. We went to a rental video shop together, and I recommended him all the good DVDs for half an hour. But every time he replied he’d already watched them.

Sakakibara: Yeah, at GEO in Ekoda [2].

Yamada: The rental fee was very low, like 50 yen for each. He watched them all and had nothing left to watch.

Sakakibara: Haha. Right.

Yamada: I’m sure you will miss those days 10 years later. You will look back at the old days from Israel. Don’t you have a partner?

Sakakibara: No. Startups are my girlfriend.

Yamada: Ahhhh….

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The Bridge: You got married, Yamada-san. Right?

Yamada: We started our relationship when I was 18 years old. We went to the US together. Quite a long relationship. A bit complicated though.

Sakakibara: Onuma-san told me that this subject is taboo.

Yamada: The funny thing is when we got investment from Sakakibara-san, Onuma’s marriage was then fixed. And when the next investment was settled, I got married. After our recent capital increase, the marriage of our CTO was fixed.

Sakakibara: Haha. Marriage-raising, eh?

The Bridge: I think we’ll end there. Thanks guys.


  1. Referred to as the father of Japanese capitalism.  ↩

  2. GEO is a movie rental chain in Japan.  ↩

In conversation with Japan’s Samurai Incubate, Anydoor about early-stage startups (Part 2 of 3)

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See the original article in Japanese The partnership between investors and entrepreneurs is an interesting one. In the seed money round, investors not only invest funds, but they cooperate with entrepreneurs on many aspects of the business. But what’s actually going during the very early funding round? We spoke with an investor and an entrepreneur to find out more about this. Kentaro Sakaibara is the CEO of Samurai Incubate, a pioneer among independent incubators in Japan. Naoki Yamada is the CEO of Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, a portfolio startup of Samurai Incubate. In the previous article, they talked about how they first met, and how they started working on a translation service. In the following conversation, they continued to discuss the early stages of their cooperation. History of Anydoor * February 2009: Naoki Yamada and Tomohiro Onuma founded Anydoor. * May 2009: Conyac, a crowdsourced translation service, was launched. * March 2010: Yamada met Sakakibara, and became one of the first portfolio startups of Samurai Incubate. * December 2011: Anydoor raises funds from United. * February 2013: Conyac for Business was launched. * October 2013: Anydoor raises funds from three VCs. The Bridge: How was your…

See the original article in Japanese

The partnership between investors and entrepreneurs is an interesting one. In the seed money round, investors not only invest funds, but they cooperate with entrepreneurs on many aspects of the business. But what’s actually going during the very early funding round? We spoke with an investor and an entrepreneur to find out more about this. Kentaro Sakaibara is the CEO of Samurai Incubate, a pioneer among independent incubators in Japan. Naoki Yamada is the CEO of Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, a portfolio startup of Samurai Incubate.

In the previous article, they talked about how they first met, and how they started working on a translation service. In the following conversation, they continued to discuss the early stages of their cooperation.

History of Anydoor
* February 2009: Naoki Yamada and Tomohiro Onuma founded Anydoor.
* May 2009: Conyac, a crowdsourced translation service, was launched.
* March 2010: Yamada met Sakakibara, and became one of the first portfolio startups of Samurai Incubate.
* December 2011: Anydoor raises funds from United.
* February 2013: Conyac for Business was launched.
* October 2013: Anydoor raises funds from three VCs.

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The Bridge: How was your cooperation at the beginning?

Yamada: First we decided to make KPIs. Before that, we had been just trying to increase our users. But we decided it’d be better to set another measurement. Me and Sakakibara-san had meetings every week to evaluate the performance of the previous week, and we then decided our plan for the coming week.

Sakakibara: We provided the service for free, temporary.

Yamada: Yes, right. After half a year, we realized we were totally in the red. The more the service was used, the more our loss increased. We had difficulties setting the right price for quite a long time.

Sakakibara: Onuma-san had lots of information about services outside Japan, and we got some ideas from that.

Yamada: Yeah, during a small chat. We enjoyed that kind of small talk, since we concentrated so hard on the work.

Sakakibara: Onuma-san was a sort of healer.

Yamada: The toughest time for me was when I was juggling the business and my other part-time jobs. So Sakakibara-san was really a sort of angel for me.

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Sakakibara: Conyac is now widely recognized, but it was quite hard to get the recognition those days. I feel now I should have put more effort in to get the recognition. It was hard to raise funds as well.

Yamada: It had been quite hard until the investment from United (formerly ngigroup) was fixed. In the first year, even the term ‘crowdsourcing’ was not well known. We had to use overseas cases to explain.

Sakakibara: And the market condition was not so good either. Even Nobot was struggling.

The Bridge: Sakakibara-san was the one who proceeded with negotiation with VCs?

Sakakibara: No, I was supporting other aspects like human relations, since Yamada-san was better at creating concrete documents. I had thought VCs don’t like it when investors actively make suggestions, but I heard that is changing. It depends on the person though.

Yamada: For almost a year after we raised funds from United, we had no clear direction and couldn’t used the funds. We’d been providing our service only for consumers.

Sakakibara: It took time to change the target to corporate users. We used to meet almost every month at the time.

Yamada: We should have focused more on data analysis earlier. We should have looked at the data and the users.

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Sakakibara: I recently visited Silicon Valley. We visited there a lot together.

Yamada: Yes, we visited many places.

Sakakibara: Our recognition among overseas VCs is improving. Perhaps we could raise funds from them now.

Yamada: We and Kiyo-san (Kiyo Kobayashi, CEO of Nobot, acquired by KDDI) used to visit Silicon Valley together. We visited many VCs, but it was tough when they couldn’t catch what we were saying.

Sakakibara: It was exciting.

Yamada: We struggled together like partners, beyond the business-like relations between VC or incubator and an entrepreneur.

Sakakibara: You joined our visits to Silicon Valley a lot.

Yamada: I kind of felt like I had to…

Sakakibara: Many people used to join the visit, three years ago. But they don’t join anymore.

Yamada: What makes you keep visiting there?

Sakakibara: I’d like to develop services that succeed overseas. To achieve that, it is necessary to make connections with local angel investors, such as Sean Parker.

Yamada: Sean Parker… what a big name.

Sakakibara: But actually, the connections I’ve been building long term help recently. So, I’m going to work harder on that.

Yamada: Now that I think about it, Samurai’s first startups were quite bold, like jumping outside Japan without connections.

Sakakibara: Many startups now first focus on the domestic market, since they think it would be impossible to be successful overseas.

Yamada: The first time we flew together to Silicon Vallley, I had no plan honestly. Sakakibara-san said “We’ll go see VCs there”, so I replied “Okay, let’s go.” Then I was totally knocked down by them. I got negative comments like “Is there a market for such a translation service in English-speaking countries?”


They developed their business step-by-step though trial and error. They continued to talk about how they grew their business. And we’ll cover that in the next article.

Talking early stage startups: In conversation with Japan’s Samurai Incubate, Anydoor (Part 1 of 3)

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See the original article in Japanese The partnership between investors and entrepreneurs is an interesting one. In the seed money round, investors not only invest funds, but they cooperate with entrepreneurs on many aspects of the business. But what’s actually going during the very early funding round? We spoke with an investor and an entrepreneur to find out more about this. Kentaro Sakaibara is the CEO of Samurai Incubate, a pioneer among independent incubators in Japan. Naoki Yamada is the CEO of Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, a portfolio startup of Samurai Incubate. Anydoor was found in February, 2009. Yamada came up with the idea having been frequently asked to translate short sentences. He won the seed money at a business contest, and launched the startup with his friend, Tomohiro Onuma. His encounter with Samurai Incubate opened the way for them to start their business. Anydoor raised funds from United (previously known as ngi group) in December 2011, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and SMBC Venture Capital in October 2013. Almost broke Yamada: It was in 2010 at Tully’s Coffee in Shinjuku when we met for the first time, right? Sakakibara: Most of the first meetings with startups in…

conyac samurai

See the original article in Japanese

The partnership between investors and entrepreneurs is an interesting one. In the seed money round, investors not only invest funds, but they cooperate with entrepreneurs on many aspects of the business. But what’s actually going during the very early funding round? We spoke with an investor and an entrepreneur to find out more about this. Kentaro Sakaibara is the CEO of Samurai Incubate, a pioneer among independent incubators in Japan. Naoki Yamada is the CEO of Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, a portfolio startup of Samurai Incubate.

Anydoor was found in February, 2009. Yamada came up with the idea having been frequently asked to translate short sentences. He won the seed money at a business contest, and launched the startup with his friend, Tomohiro Onuma. His encounter with Samurai Incubate opened the way for them to start their business.

Anydoor raised funds from United (previously known as ngi group) in December 2011, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and SMBC Venture Capital in October 2013.

Almost broke

Yamada: It was in 2010 at Tully’s Coffee in Shinjuku when we met for the first time, right?

Sakakibara: Most of the first meetings with startups in the early days at Samurai were at fast food restaurants. I remember, you had only 5000 yen left in your bank account, right?

Yamada: Actually, I had more. I think, a bit more than 10,000 yen.

Sakakibara: In the corporate account, not personal one.

Yamada: We met at a TechCrunch Japan on the previous Friday. The one organized by Hirano-san [1]. After the event I got an e-mail from Sakakibara-san, introducing Samurai Incubate. It seemed dubious and I deleted it right away.

Sakakibara: Wha!? I’ve been saying I want to make something like “Honyaku Konnnyaku” [2], then someone told me about the event. And you were the only person I contacted after the event.

Yamada: Really!?

Sakakibara: Yes. Only you.

sakakibara

Yamada: But you seemed indifferent to our product when I talked about it. And I said I have little money left in my bank account. Then you told me all of a sudden “I’m gonna invest you.”

Sakakibara: Yeah? Was it like that?

Yamada: So, I answered I that I needed time to think. I returned to my office, and asked Onuma if he knew Samurai Incubate. And he said “No." I asked our first investor about Samurai Incubate. It turned out that person knew Taiga-san (Taiga Matsuyama, East Ventures) and Sakakibara-san. That way, I was convinced I could trust you, and I decided to accept the offer.

Sakakibara: I didn’t know that story.

Yamada: At the time, my bank balance was only 5000 yen. And the money was transferred on the following Monday. I was so relieved!

Sakakibara: Sounds like we are a consumer money lender…

Yamada: Haha.

Sakakibara: But it was good that you had a corporate account. Some freelance app-developers don’t have one. Sometimes, I accidentally transfer money to them, and ask them to transfer it back.

Yamada: I had part-time jobs back then.

Sakakibara: You worked at a carpet shop, right?

Yamada: Actually, I rented a space at a carpet shop. I sometimes helped them sell Persian carpets. And I worked at a cafe during the day, and at a transportation company at nights. I worked on Conyac in my spare time. I was working like that in the first year. I had decided not to use the money I had raised from Skylight Consulting for salary.

Anyway, I had only 100,000 yen in my bank account at the time when I left my previous workplace. I was quite broke.

yamada sakakibara

The Bridge: What was your first impression on Yamada-san?

Sakakibara: Brown-dyed hair…

Yamada: Ha ha.

Sakakibara: I mean, he looked similar to some people around me. Harada-san (Daisaku Harada, CEO of Zawatt) at Zawatt and I dye our hair brown as well. I also felt Yamada-san was very humble. Before I met him, I thought he might be a bit arrogant, but actually he just seemed pretty broke.

Yamada: Haha. Looking broke is not really good. I expected to meet someone way older than me, so it was surprise that you looked very casual and open-minded. You wore a suit with a tie.

Sakakibara: But with brown-dyed hair.

Yamada: Before I met you, I had visited quite a lot of VCs, about 25. But I was rejected by all of them. Now that I think about it, there were some little known VCs. Then, you, an active and cheerful investor showed up. I was pretty suspicious. Things like “Samurai” sounded quite dubious. But the more I talked with you, the more I realized your personality was very nice. Then I decided to accept the offer.

Sakakibara: I rarely make the move first. But had been just thinking how to collaborate to develop a Honyaku Konnyaku.

Yamada: I searched for Samurai on the internet, but couldn’t find any results but a Wikipedia page.

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Sakakibara: We had already made many investments at that time though. Kobayashi-san, (Kiyo Kobayashi, CEO of Nobot, subsequently acquired by KDDI) was the third case. And the first company we invested was Synclogue.

Yamada: We were close to the end of the fiscal term, the end of March. We thought we couldn’t get through the term. We were really on the edge.

The legendary Samurai House

Sakakibara: These things happened quite recently, but I sometimes feel like it was long time ago. You joined Samurai House at the time [3].

Yamada: Samurai Hause was already open then?

Sakakibara: Yes, we had already opened it.

Yamada: When we got investment in March, we were still using the carpet shop as an office. So we visited Samurai House. Then I thought there’s something wrong with the place. (laughs) I seriously tried to judge which was better — the carpet shop or this messy room at Samurai House.

Sakakibara: Really!?

Yamada: I thought Samurai House was not really very good, but at the same time I thought since you were always there it would be easy to have meetings and I wouldn’t get disturbed by customers like in the carpet shop.

sakakibara yamada

Sakakibara: It was in Kotakemukaihara. Those days were exciting.

Yamada: I was on the upper floor in the house, and we would meet each other two or three times a week. I was a kind of like a leader in this Japanese-style room.

Sakakibara: We had lunch together sometimes. To Ekoda, it was only five minutes to get to Samurai House. When I missed talking to someone, I visited your room.

Yamada: I thought you visited my room when you were really tired.

Sakakibara: We had about 20 residents at our peak. And around five of them actually lived there. Some rooms were not even equipped with an air conditioner.

Yamada: The toughest thing was to bear was the snoring by Haruki-san (Seiha Haruki, the CEO of Joy).

Sakakibara: I know. He snored extremely loud.

Yamada: It was so loud that I couldn’t focus on my work. I could hear his snoring over my headphones.

The Bridge: What are they all doing now?

Sakakibara: Some joined other startups, and some rebuilt their companies. All of them still work in the startups field.

Yamada: We stayed there until SSI (Samurai Startup Island) was founded. Oh yeah, and the earthquake. After the earthquake, I discussed with Onuma and decided to relocate our office to Kanda. Because it might be impossible to return the office in Samurai House when natural disasters occur. So we moved two years ago. Now when I think of that, I can’t believe I lived in Samurai House.

The two went on to discuss how they started growing the translation service “Conyac”. We’ll cover that in the next article.


  1. They met at an event called TokyoCamp organized by the author.  ↩

  2. Honyaku Connyaku is an imaginary gadget for translation, which appears in a Japanese anime series Doraemon.  ↩

  3. Samurai House was an incubation office by Samurai Incubate, a house in Kotakemukaihara.  ↩

Translation startup Conyac partners with World Jumper, introduces new API

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Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, announced today that it has partnered with Yaraku, the provider of website translation tool World Jumper. Since its launch back in 2009, Anydoor has been providing translation services between multiple languages using crowdsourced workers. The company recently set up its first overseas office in San Francisco, and is intensifying its global expansion efforts to better serve users worldwide and diversify the language base of its crowdsourced workers. To date the startup has raised a total of approximately 40 million yen ($431,000) from several Japanese investors. World Jumper was launched last year, and has been a translation service mainly for website owners. The company outsources orders to third-party agencies (such as Conyac or Gengo), but it also accumulates frequently-used translation requests and results in its database for future reference. This results in better translation results without the need to outsource to agencies, and it helps keep translation costs down while the quality improves as time goes by. The company raised 110 million yen (about $1.1 million) from several Japanese investors back in May. By joining forces, the two startups expect to serve more translation needs, but at affordable rates. Surely this sector…

conyac-worldjumper-logos

Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, announced today that it has partnered with Yaraku, the provider of website translation tool World Jumper.

Since its launch back in 2009, Anydoor has been providing translation services between multiple languages using crowdsourced workers. The company recently set up its first overseas office in San Francisco, and is intensifying its global expansion efforts to better serve users worldwide and diversify the language base of its crowdsourced workers. To date the startup has raised a total of approximately 40 million yen ($431,000) from several Japanese investors.

World Jumper was launched last year, and has been a translation service mainly for website owners. The company outsources orders to third-party agencies (such as Conyac or Gengo), but it also accumulates frequently-used translation requests and results in its database for future reference. This results in better translation results without the need to outsource to agencies, and it helps keep translation costs down while the quality improves as time goes by. The company raised 110 million yen (about $1.1 million) from several Japanese investors back in May.

By joining forces, the two startups expect to serve more translation needs, but at affordable rates. Surely this sector will be positively impacted by recently announced Tokyo Olympic Games coming up in 2020. With the partnership, Conyac also changed its web interface today and released a new API that allows third-party developers to integrate the translation solutions with their apps.