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CAPTCHA startup Capy wins Tokyo pitch event, moves on to Slush 2014 in Helsinki

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See the original story in Japanese. Finland’s annual startup conference Slush held a pitch competition for a number of startups at the Goodpatch office in Tokyo on Friday. CAPTCHA startup Capy won first prize and advances to Slush 2014 to be held in Helsinki, Finland, on November 18 and 19. (These dates incidentally coincide with TechCrunch Tokyo). Capy is a Delaware-registered and Tokyo-based startup that is developing an alternative security technology to replace CAPTCHA. The company was recently selected by Microsoft Ventures as one of 11 startups that will join its fifth batch of incubation program in Tel Aviv, Israel. They also attended last year’s Slush preliminary competition in Tokyo. See also: Capy offers text-free, mobile-friendly captchas Here is a quick rundown of the pitch competition. Yocondo Yocondo is a semantic product search engine that helps users find products when they do not quite know what they are looking for. For instance, a user can find a product by entering a phrase like “gift for girlfriend.” Okuyuki Okuyuki is a crowdfunding platform focused on 3D printing of character figures. (See also: Japanese service brings manga characters to life with 3D printing) Navvi (a project by Rosette Research) Navvi is a…

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Click to enlarge. (photo courtesy: Boris Friedrich Milkowski, Goodpatch)

See the original story in Japanese.

Finland’s annual startup conference Slush held a pitch competition for a number of startups at the Goodpatch office in Tokyo on Friday. CAPTCHA startup Capy won first prize and advances to Slush 2014 to be held in Helsinki, Finland, on November 18 and 19. (These dates incidentally coincide with TechCrunch Tokyo).

Capy is a Delaware-registered and Tokyo-based startup that is developing an alternative security technology to replace CAPTCHA. The company was recently selected by Microsoft Ventures as one of 11 startups that will join its fifth batch of incubation program in Tel Aviv, Israel. They also attended last year’s Slush preliminary competition in Tokyo.

See also:

Here is a quick rundown of the pitch competition.

  • Yocondo
    Yocondo is a semantic product search engine that helps users find products when they do not quite know what they are looking for. For instance, a user can find a product by entering a phrase like “gift for girlfriend.”
  • Navvi (a project by Rosette Research)
    Navvi is a navigation platform for those who can read maps. Instead of presenting a map image, this app guides users by showing arrow signs in 3D over an actual image through a smartphone camera so that a user will be able to reach their destination without getting lost.
  • Anicool
    Anicool is an anime production-focused crowdfunding platform. It is available in Japanese, Chinese, English, French, and Korean. Campaign backers can watch outcomes from their supporting projects via DVD or online. Anipipo is a competitor.
  • Mobingi
    Mobingi is an automated cloud environment set-up tool that allows users to create and launch a server instance on Amazon Web Services with just three mouse clicks.
  • Matcha Latte Media
    Matcha Latte Media delivers Japanese culture to global consumers. As the first of these efforts, this startup launched an e-commerce marketplace called Yunomi.us that gives the global tea market access to Japanese tea producers and farmers.
match-latte-media-at-slush-tokyo
(photo courtesy: Boris Friedrich Milkowski, Goodpatch)

Japan’s CAPTCHA startup Capy accepted into Microsoft Ventures accelerator in Tel Aviv

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Capy is a Delaware-registered and Tokyo-based startup that is developing an alternative security technology to replace CAPTCHA. The company announced on Friday that it has been selected by Microsoft Ventures as one of 11 startups that will join its fifth batch of incubation program in Tel Aviv, Israel. According to Microsoft Ventures, of the nearly 300 applications from 32 countries only 11 finalists were selected, including Capy, after several preliminary selection processes. See also: Capy offers text-free, mobile-friendly captchas Capy CTO Koki Shimada and other team members will spend several months at the Microsoft R&D center in Tel Aviv to further develop the security level of their recently announced risk-based authentication technology, while receiving support from several dozen mentors from companies like Akamai and Jerusalem Venture Partners. Capy raised a seed round funding from angel investors in 2012, and subsequently secured a series A funding worth about 100 million yen ($1 million) from Japanese investment firm Jafco in 2013. The company won the IVS launchpad award at Infinity Ventures Summit in Kyoto last year. On a related note on Japanese startups selected by Microsoft Ventures, head-mounted display developer Fove was recently accepted to join the latest batch of Microsoft Ventures’ accelerator…

Participants in the fifth batch of incubation program, Microsoft Ventures accelerator Tel Aviv.
Selected startups into the fifth batch of incubation program, Microsoft Ventures accelerator Tel Aviv.
(Capy CTO Koki Shimada is the forth from the right in the top row.)

Capy is a Delaware-registered and Tokyo-based startup that is developing an alternative security technology to replace CAPTCHA. The company announced on Friday that it has been selected by Microsoft Ventures as one of 11 startups that will join its fifth batch of incubation program in Tel Aviv, Israel. According to Microsoft Ventures, of the nearly 300 applications from 32 countries only 11 finalists were selected, including Capy, after several preliminary selection processes.

See also:

Capy CTO Koki Shimada and other team members will spend several months at the Microsoft R&D center in Tel Aviv to further develop the security level of their recently announced risk-based authentication technology, while receiving support from several dozen mentors from companies like Akamai and Jerusalem Venture Partners.

Capy raised a seed round funding from angel investors in 2012, and subsequently secured a series A funding worth about 100 million yen ($1 million) from Japanese investment firm Jafco in 2013. The company won the IVS launchpad award at Infinity Ventures Summit in Kyoto last year.

On a related note on Japanese startups selected by Microsoft Ventures, head-mounted display developer Fove was recently accepted to join the latest batch of Microsoft Ventures’ accelerator program in London. The team appeared on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco earlier this week.

Capy’s pitch at Startup Asia Tokyo, September 4th, 2014.

Japanese mobile captcha startup Capy wins IVS Launchpad, has more plans ahead

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This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto 2013 Last week I had a chance to catch up with the folks from Capy in an office they’re working out of in Shibuya. The founder of the up-and-coming Japanese startup and CEO Mitsuo Okada first developed the concept behind his secure captcha service while studying at Kyoto University. Capy’s value proposition, for those unfamiliar with it, is that it’s less frustrating than the twisted letter solution of convention captchas, replacing it with a sort of sliding image puzzle that robots cannot complete (see below). While talking with Okada and his colleagues last week, I happened to mention that I’d be attending the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Kyoto. “Oh, we’ll be there too,” said Okada. Skip to a week later where Okada pitched his captcha technology in front of a packed hall at the Westin Hotel Kyoto. They were one of 12 startups that took to the stage, but Capy was judged to be the best of them all. We first interviewed Okada about Capy way back in August, so they aren’t a newcomer to us. But among Japanese startups, the company does stand out in that…

This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto 2013

Last week I had a chance to catch up with the folks from Capy in an office they’re working out of in Shibuya. The founder of the up-and-coming Japanese startup and CEO Mitsuo Okada first developed the concept behind his secure captcha service while studying at Kyoto University. Capy’s value proposition, for those unfamiliar with it, is that it’s less frustrating than the twisted letter solution of convention captchas, replacing it with a sort of sliding image puzzle that robots cannot complete (see below).

capy-demo-2

While talking with Okada and his colleagues last week, I happened to mention that I’d be attending the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Kyoto.

“Oh, we’ll be there too,” said Okada.

Skip to a week later where Okada pitched his captcha technology in front of a packed hall at the Westin Hotel Kyoto. They were one of 12 startups that took to the stage, but Capy was judged to be the best of them all.

We first interviewed Okada about Capy way back in August, so they aren’t a newcomer to us. But among Japanese startups, the company does stand out in that it has taken a pretty global approach from the very beginning, initially launching the business in the US [1].

Even though conventional captchas can be frustrating, I’ve always admired the elegance of reCAPTCHA which makes us of user input not as a security precaution, but also as a means of digitizing books. Two birds with one stone. But Capy will be able to do something similar as well, and I think that’s why it has such great potential.

capy-awards
Okada-san all smiles on stage after winning IVS Launchpad

Websites that use Capy can repurpose its validation screen as a space to advertise, and that’s especially useful given how precious space is on a typical smartphone screen. Capy will have free and premium versions, the free version being ad-supported, and with the premium version, a publisher can use whatever image they want. Right now, the company is focusing on developing the premium version. In addition to advertising, there are other purposes for which Capy images could be used. They’re hoping to attend SxSW next year, and so I expect that many of the things they are currently working on should be ready for showtime by then.

Okada tells me that currently Capy is providing 50,000 captchas per day across three or four clients here in Japan. This is the perfect test market he says, because Japan is very closed. They still have improvements they want to make in user interface and experience, but I’m told they still need more engineers. Currently they are still just a team of four with only two engineers.

Their mentor and angel investor is security expert William Saito, with series A funding last May. I expect that a lot more eyes will be on Capy after their win at IVS Launchpad. So look forward to hearing more from them in the next year or so.

capy-aws

capy-microsoft

capy-freee


  1. Capy is incorporated in Delaware.  ↩

Capy offers text-free, mobile-friendly captchas

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See the original story in Japanese. Most of our readers are likely familiar with ‘Captchas’, the short online security tests that are easy for humans to pass but difficult for spam bots. People use captchas more than 280 million times a day. But because they can contain very hard-to-recognize characters, it is said that more than 10% of users give up on the attempt to pass this step. To address this problem, Kyoto native and entrepreneur Mitsuo Okada launched a startup in the US last year. He has been developing a spam filter technology for smartphones and tablet devices called Capy. We recently spoke to him about his plans for the service. Capy doesn’t use twisted characters like Captcha validation, but instead presents them as image-based puzzles. As a user, in order to to complete validation you simply drag and drop a piece to complete the puzzle, making you feel like you’re enjoying a sort of mini game. For smartphone users this is especially handy since you don’t need to enter any characters but instead simply move a puzzle piece with one stroke. There are many tools out there that allow malicious users to attack conventional Captcha security, but puzzle-based…

capy_featured

See the original story in Japanese.

Most of our readers are likely familiar with ‘Captchas’, the short online security tests that are easy for humans to pass but difficult for spam bots. People use captchas more than 280 million times a day. But because they can contain very hard-to-recognize characters, it is said that more than 10% of users give up on the attempt to pass this step.

To address this problem, Kyoto native and entrepreneur Mitsuo Okada launched a startup in the US last year. He has been developing a spam filter technology for smartphones and tablet devices called Capy. We recently spoke to him about his plans for the service.

Capy doesn’t use twisted characters like Captcha validation, but instead presents them as image-based puzzles. As a user, in order to to complete validation you simply drag and drop a piece to complete the puzzle, making you feel like you’re enjoying a sort of mini game. For smartphone users this is especially handy since you don’t need to enter any characters but instead simply move a puzzle piece with one stroke. There are many tools out there that allow malicious users to attack conventional Captcha security, but puzzle-based Captcha technology like Capy is a different animal.

Since Capy is an image-based Captcha technology, web developers can easily customize puzzles using their own images. It can take as little as 30 minutes to implement it on your website, since the technology is compatible with various development environments like PHP, Ruby, and Python. The program is being provided in private bata, and it’s available upon request by submitting a form. According to Dr. Okada, the startup is already in talks with major portal sites and telecom operators.

Capy launches in the US for the world to see

Okada came up with the original concept back in 2010 when he was study digital watermarking technology at graduate school in Kyoto University. During this research, he had the idea of creating a more enjoyable Captcha process, and that subsequently became Capy.

A typical smartphone does not have a big screen and therefore has little space to advertise.

His product was first introduced last November, but he has been exhibiting at many academic conferences and events before that. His startup was chosen as one of the top 50 companies at this year’s TiE50, an annual Silicon Valley event.

The company also won nine notable awards including the top prize at the Entrepreneur and Innovation track at MIT Sloan School.

Since Okada graduated from a university in the US, it was natural for him to launch the business there. And because US-based services receive many spam attacks from around the world, people there are typically very conscious about user authentication security and spam countermeasures. Of course, there are many competitors in this space, including reCaptcha (which was acquired by Google), Solvemedia, Nucaptcha, and Are you a human. In contrast with other solution providers who focusing only on their strict security, Capy aims to develop a stress-free and user-friendly program that also works as it should.

As for monetization, the service adopts a freemium model. The free version uses third party ads for images in the Captcha puzzle. But paying users can choose any images they want. If Capy could replace all of the world’s Captchas, it would generate an annual revenue worth more than $150 million.

For website developers, you can vary the security strength by increasing or decreasing the amount of puzzle pieces used. Okada explains:

Captcha and ads work well together. A typical smartphone does not have a big screen and therefore has little space to advertise. But with our technology, you can place an ad in the middle of your user validation screen. It might be even more effective than pay-per-view ads.

We also asked him if he had any advice for Japanese startups looking to expand globally.

In terms of both fundraising and exploring partnerships, registering a company in Delaware works for us. In Japan, some people say it’s just cost-consuming but is good for convincing our potential partners or investors that we mean business. People in the US are typically unfamiliar with the Japanese legal systems, so perhaps California- or Delaware-registered companies can take advantage of funding proposals.

Capy-demo

For Japanese companies looking to grow globally, sometimes you need to abandon your preconceived notions. When you market a service in the US, you should consider that much of what you have learned in Japan will never work in that market. When Japanese entrepreneurs set up their base in the Bay Area, many of them typically rely on Japanese people living there. But Okada says, since very few Japanese entrepreneurs are active in the area, if you only rely on them, your business will never get beyond that tiny network. So you must get in touch with people who are influential in the area, regardless of their race or nationality.

According to Okada, their current version is just phase one. They’re aiming to keep developing an interface that is more optimized for evolving devices. He adds:

Passwords are still an old-fashioned technology. It still uses a keyboard even though our devices have been changed. In terms of authenticating a user, we want to propose more intuitive approaches. Capy is one of them. In this space, many developers have been pursuing security, but no one care about usability. Even if our approach results in a decrease its security, the technology with better usability will make users feel more comfortable in completing user validations. And this will contribute to raising people’s overall awareness of security.

The startup is hiring English-speaking programmers and designers, and also inviting websites which want to use the Capy service for their validation walls. If you are interested, feel free to sign up for it here.