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Space Market wins B Dash Camp pitch arena competition in Fukuoka

B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014

Masaru Ikeda 2014.07.24

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014. On Day 2 at the B Dash Camp event taking place last week in Fukuoka, there was a session where prominent startups from Japan and the rest of Asia completed each other. According to the organizer, 35 finalists among all 100 applicants from six countries were invited to the event and could received a preliminary screening chapter which took place on Day 1. As a result of that, only 10 startups plus other 2 invited startups could have a chance to pitch in front of a crowd of awesome investors and ambitious entrepreneurs. Let’s have a quick rundown about which startups have achieved a good result in the competition. <Top award winner> Space Market (Japan) Space Market is a platform that connects permanently- or temporarily-unused venues or facilities owned by established companies with people who are interested in using these assets for organizing an event like a big conference, a shareholder meeting, and a employee training etc. Logbook (Japan) This platform helps you find the issues to solve in your web app or mobile app. Since this complies with service analyics framework AARRR, you will be able…

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014.

On Day 2 at the B Dash Camp event taking place last week in Fukuoka, there was a session where prominent startups from Japan and the rest of Asia completed each other. According to the organizer, 35 finalists among all 100 applicants from six countries were invited to the event and could received a preliminary screening chapter which took place on Day 1. As a result of that, only 10 startups plus other 2 invited startups could have a chance to pitch in front of a crowd of awesome investors and ambitious entrepreneurs.

Let’s have a quick rundown about which startups have achieved a good result in the competition.

<Top award winner> Space Market (Japan)

Space Market is a platform that connects permanently- or temporarily-unused venues or facilities owned by established companies with people who are interested in using these assets for organizing an event like a big conference, a shareholder meeting, and a employee training etc.

Logbook (Japan)

This platform helps you find the issues to solve in your web app or mobile app. Since this complies with service analyics framework AARRR, you will be able to adopt this to improve any service regardless of its business category. Our readers may recall we have featured their platform before.

Tees.co.id (Indonesia)

This service allows you to customize or design products like t-shirt, jacket, and smartphone cases, as well as sell them online. Instead of you, the company takes responsibilities for receiving orders, manufacturing, shipping, and customer support.

Bounty Hunter (Taiwan)

This platform helps brands like Gogle, Blizzard, Gigabyte, Lexus, Kabam, and Playboy receive a best deal with a best proposal from marketing companies. Launched in Taiwan, they are now based in San Francisco Bay Area.

MindQuake (Korea)

MindQuake has developed a series of mobile services and products intended for infants and babies. Nester, one of their products, encourage children to stop using a smartphone with a children-friendly interface when they exceeded their preset usage hours per day.

Akippa (Japan)

Akippa helps customers find an available parking space online. When you book a time slot for it using your desktop or smartphone, you will be allowed to park your car there by paying up to 500 yen ($5) a day. It also allows parking lot owners to easily manage their venues via the platform as well. Our readers may recall the company recently fundraised several hundred thousand US dollars from DeNA and angel investors.

Lezhin Comics (Korea)

Lezhin Comics allows you to enjoy browsing a number of web cartoon titles for free. The company raised about $5 million from Korea’s major online gaming developer NC Soft this spring.

iChef（Taiwan)

iChef provides iPad-based quick and versatile POS (point-of-sales) solutions for restaurants. Now they have 200 restaurants using their solution in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and they are planning to expand to Japan as well. You can read more about them in our recent interview.

Textat (Korea)

Developed by Korean startup Scatter Lab, this app gives you insights about your relationship with other people by analyzing messages you have exchanged via messaging apps Line, KakaoTalk and WhatsApp.

Shakr (Korea)

Designed for small business owners, Shake Media allows you to crate a customized video only by choosing templates designed by advertising professionals. Most video clips are available for 10 to 60 US dollars.

<Invited> Keukey (Korea)

Keukey is focusing on making improvements for smartphone keyboards. It aims to improve the smartphone user experience by addressing keyboard and text input problems. Correcting typos without backspace is first solution of the company.

<Invited> Drivemode (USA/Japan)

Recently founded by entrepreneurs from Zipcar and Tesla Motors, Drivemode is a software and hardware product that gives you the coolest technology experience ever using your car and your Android.

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Japan’s Gree unveils $100M investment plan for non-game businesses

Takeshi Hirano 2014.07.18

See the original story in Japanese. This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014. Japanese internet company Gree unveiled that it will invest about 10 billion yen ($98.7 million) in non-game businesses in the coming 12 months. This was disclosed by the company’s managing director Naoki Aoyagi at his speech at B Dash Camp Fukuoka today. In his presentation about Gree’s recent efforts in new businesses, he pointed out that they need to assess the feasibility of each business as frequently as every three months, similar to what US-based incubator Y Combinator does in terms of frequency of feasibility assessment. In view of the mature state of the Japanese startup ecosystem, he said Gree should not launch a business to compete with other startups: We have to do something different from what other companies are doing. We have enough money since we’ve been providing social games for a long time. We’ll keep primarily investing in the gaming business, but we secured a $100 million budget for investing in non-game businesses. According to Aoyagi, this concept is called “the incubation and acquisition strategy” at GREE and a business scheme different from the company’s investment initiative Gree…

See the original story in Japanese.

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014.

Japanese internet company Gree unveiled that it will invest about 10 billion yen ($98.7 million) in non-game businesses in the coming 12 months. This was disclosed by the company’s managing director Naoki Aoyagi at his speech at B Dash Camp Fukuoka today.

In his presentation about Gree’s recent efforts in new businesses, he pointed out that they need to assess the feasibility of each business as frequently as every three months, similar to what US-based incubator Y Combinator does in terms of frequency of feasibility assessment.

In view of the mature state of the Japanese startup ecosystem, he said Gree should not launch a business to compete with other startups:

We have to do something different from what other companies are doing. We have enough money since we’ve been providing social games for a long time. We’ll keep primarily investing in the gaming business, but we secured a $100 million budget for investing in non-game businesses.

According to Aoyagi, this concept is called “the incubation and acquisition strategy” at GREE and a business scheme different from the company’s investment initiative Gree Ventures.

Aoyagi introduced HotelQuickly, the Thai startup that Gree recently invested in.

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Nobot founder launches tech talent marketplace Remotus to meet hiring needs of startups

Takeshi Hirano 2014.07.17

See the original story in Japanese. This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014. Japanese serial entrepreneur Kiyo Kobayashi is best knwon for his successful exit by having sold his smartphone ad network startup Nobot to Mediba, the ad solution company of Japan’s second largest telco KDDI. His San Francisco-based new startup Chanoma unveiled the alpha version of remote hiring platform Remotus today. Kobayashi told us what has triggered him to launch the platform: The IT industry in the US is suffering from increasing labor costs of their engineers. To address this issue, our platform matches US companies in need of engineers with human resources outside the country. Especially for startups suffering from a lack of engineers, you can find potential employees who are ready to relocate to your location to work by presenting a wage proposal in the form of competitive bidding. This hiring process is same with US-based talent marketplace Hired which successfully fundraised $15 million in a series A round back in March. Hired takes a commission fee from a company when a hiring deal is done. Although Kobayashi didn’t disclose details, it seems he found a way to provide the service…

See the original story in Japanese.

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014.

Japanese serial entrepreneur Kiyo Kobayashi is best knwon for his successful exit by having sold his smartphone ad network startup Nobot to Mediba, the ad solution company of Japan’s second largest telco KDDI.

His San Francisco-based new startup Chanoma unveiled the alpha version of remote hiring platform Remotus today.

Kobayashi told us what has triggered him to launch the platform:

The IT industry in the US is suffering from increasing labor costs of their engineers. To address this issue, our platform matches US companies in need of engineers with human resources outside the country. Especially for startups suffering from a lack of engineers, you can find potential employees who are ready to relocate to your location to work by presenting a wage proposal in the form of competitive bidding.

This hiring process is same with US-based talent marketplace Hired which successfully fundraised $15 million in a series A round back in March. Hired takes a commission fee from a company when a hiring deal is done. Although Kobayashi didn’t disclose details, it seems he found a way to provide the service for a lower fee than that of Hired. He explained:

After my relocation to San Francisco, I learned that many local startups and entrepreneurs have been suffering in the hiring of software developers, while big companies like Google or Facebook are keeping them by paying high salaries. So I wanted to solve problems of hiring for startups. Some startups using our service present a remote work style option.

While most companies prefer mid- or long-term employment (over six months), the fact is many projects are finished in less than a month. We want to provide a workaround to fill this gap via Remotus.

Talented workers are scattered all around the world, and wage ranges vary greatly. In the US, there’s no remote hiring platform other than Odesk, or you need to depend on someone’s introduction. I think hiring with a relocation package will become more common. We want to establish a platform that allows startups to hire talented people from around the world.

Many Japanese entrepreneurs who have made successful exits have launched other businesses, and obviously Kobayashi will follow them, but in the Silicon Valley. We’ll share more details about his business as they become available.

Disclosure: Kiyo Kobayashi is an advisor for The Bridge.

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Japan’s B Dash Ventures to form $60M second fund by yearend

Takeshi Hirano 2014.07.17

See the original story in Japanese. This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014. At the reception party for the B Dash event, we heard from the organizer and B Dash Ventures CEO Hiroyuki Watanabe that they are currently forming a new fund. He told us it will be valued at around 6 billion yen (about $59 million) and has secured almost 50% of funding towards its planned closing by end of 2014. Their previous fund formed in September 2011 was worth 2 billion yen ($20 million) and attracted investment from big companies like Docomo Ventures, Gree, Septeni, Biglobe, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital. The have invested to date in startups including Gumi (game publishing), Gunosy (news curation app), Oh My Glasses (glasses-focused vertical e-commerce), and our readers may recall their portfolio startup ScaleOut was acquired by Mediba, a KDDI company, back in August last year. The Bridge: Are investors in the new fund the same as those for the previous one? Watanabe: We can’t disclose that yet. But our investors include internet companies and their executives. We’ll let more corporate investors join the fund from now on. The Bridge: Your portfolio companies range widely from…

See the original story in Japanese.

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014.

At the reception party for the B Dash event, we heard from the organizer and B Dash Ventures CEO Hiroyuki Watanabe that they are currently forming a new fund. He told us it will be valued at around 6 billion yen (about $59 million) and has secured almost 50% of funding towards its planned closing by end of 2014.

Their previous fund formed in September 2011 was worth 2 billion yen ($20 million) and attracted investment from big companies like Docomo Ventures, Gree, Septeni, Biglobe, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital.

The have invested to date in startups including Gumi (game publishing), Gunosy (news curation app), Oh My Glasses (glasses-focused vertical e-commerce), and our readers may recall their portfolio startup ScaleOut was acquired by Mediba, a KDDI company, back in August last year.

The Bridge: Are investors in the new fund the same as those for the previous one?

Watanabe: We can’t disclose that yet. But our investors include internet companies and their executives. We’ll let more corporate investors join the fund from now on.

The Bridge: Your portfolio companies range widely from undisclosed investees to rapidly growing companies like Gumi or Gunosy. Do you have a focus for the new fund?

Watanabe: While the previous fund was focused on seed-, early-, and later-stage companies, the fund will include middle-stage companies as our investee. Because of the huge funding needs from middle- and later-stage companies, we’ll invest several million dollars in them respectively, and strengthen relatively smaller investments in seed- and early-stage companies as well.

The Bridge: We’ve seen several exits like ScaleOut (acquired by Mediba) and FreakOut (recently IPO-ed) in the ad-tech space, and gaming publisher Gumi, one of your portfolio companies, is planning to go IPO by yearend. Do you have any focus on specific spaces to invest in?

Watanabe: I’m keeping my eyes on smartphone-based media startups like Gunosy and Iemo, as well as the other spaces like Adtech, gaming, and e-commerce. I’m sure that more new smartphone services will disrupt conventional businesses, so we’ll invest in various startups taking that approach.

The Bridge: Thank you.

B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014