news

Japan’s deli food delivery company Okan raises from CyberAgent Ventures and Oisix

Junya Mori 2014.06.05

See the original story in Japanese. Our readers may recall we told you that Tokyo-based startup Okan has launched delivery service for Japanese deli foods for corporate customers. [1] The company announced today that it has raised an undisclosed sum from Japanese investment firm CyberAgent Ventures and food delivery company Oisix (TSE:3182). With the service Office Okan, corporate customers will receive Japanese deli once a month, since the deli lasts about a month. These can be refrigerated, and users can buy it by dropping coins to the collection box on the fridge and prepare it in about minutes. The service was launched in close beta back in November and subsequently officially launched back in March. The company plans to use the funds to strengthen their operating foundations including improving service operations as well as intensifying system development and marketing efforts. They also plan to explore sharing logistics and sales channels with Oisix for more efficient operations. Okan was previously known as Chisan. ↩

See the original story in Japanese.

Our readers may recall we told you that Tokyo-based startup Okan has launched delivery service for Japanese deli foods for corporate customers. [1] The company announced today that it has raised an undisclosed sum from Japanese investment firm CyberAgent Ventures and food delivery company Oisix (TSE:3182).

With the service Office Okan, corporate customers will receive Japanese deli once a month, since the deli lasts about a month. These can be refrigerated, and users can buy it by dropping coins to the collection box on the fridge and prepare it in about minutes. The service was launched in close beta back in November and subsequently officially launched back in March.

The company plans to use the funds to strengthen their operating foundations including improving service operations as well as intensifying system development and marketing efforts. They also plan to explore sharing logistics and sales channels with Oisix for more efficient operations.

Okan was previously known as Chisan. ↩

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CyberAgent Ventures now accepting startups to pitch at Rising Expo 2014 in Tokyo

Junya Mori 2014.06.03

See the original story in Japanese. Japanese startup-focused VC firm CyberAgent Ventures announced on Monday that it has started accepting applications to pitch at Rising Expo 2014 in Japan, the company’s annual startup conference which will take place in Tokyo on August 8th. Some of our readers may recall that the company held Rising Expo 2013 last September, where mobile live-broadcasting app TwitCasting won the top prize. Unlike the event’s past editions, CyberAgent Ventures is hosting local preliminary rounds in four Asian cities (Jakarta, Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo) prior to the main event. If you want to apply, your business should be already live and you should be exploring funding worth more than 100 million yen ($1 million). Startups passing the preliminary screening process will be invited to pitch to major Japanese VC firms and business executives.

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese startup-focused VC firm CyberAgent Ventures announced on Monday that it has started accepting applications to pitch at Rising Expo 2014 in Japan, the company’s annual startup conference which will take place in Tokyo on August 8th.

Some of our readers may recall that the company held Rising Expo 2013 last September, where mobile live-broadcasting app TwitCasting won the top prize. Unlike the event’s past editions, CyberAgent Ventures is hosting local preliminary rounds in four Asian cities (Jakarta, Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo) prior to the main event.

If you want to apply, your business should be already live and you should be exploring funding worth more than 100 million yen ($1 million). Startups passing the preliminary screening process will be invited to pitch to major Japanese VC firms and business executives.

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Meet the Japanese startup looking to streamline hiring with big data

Masaru Ikeda 2014.05.08

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Hatch is developing a hiring platform that uses machine learning and big data solutions. The company announced today that it has raised seed funding of 75 million yen (approximately $750,000) from CyberAgent Ventures and Anri. They will use these funds to intensify development and marketing efforts for their hiring support platform, which will be called Talentio. The company was launched last August by Akihito Nihomiya (CEO), Ichiro Sadahira (COO and CFO), and Yoshinobu Kinugasa (CTO). They initially thought they would launch a business in the edutech space by analyzing behavior, but when they found it will take time to make that area monetizable, then shifted their target to exploring opportunities in hiring. They have been developing their platform for almost half an year in stealth mode. Growth hacking for hiring The issues that the company wants to address with the new platform can be summarized in two points: First, the process of managing applicants profiles is still being handled manually at most companies, often with profiles stored in an Excel file. It can be difficult to find out who among your colleagues interviewed an applicant or what kind of jobs the person…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup Hatch is developing a hiring platform that uses machine learning and big data solutions. The company announced today that it has raised seed funding of 75 million yen (approximately $750,000) from CyberAgent Ventures and Anri. They will use these funds to intensify development and marketing efforts for their hiring support platform, which will be called Talentio.

The company was launched last August by Akihito Nihomiya (CEO), Ichiro Sadahira (COO and CFO), and Yoshinobu Kinugasa (CTO). They initially thought they would launch a business in the edutech space by analyzing behavior, but when they found it will take time to make that area monetizable, then shifted their target to exploring opportunities in hiring. They have been developing their platform for almost half an year in stealth mode.

hatch-cofounders — Hatch management
From the left: Akihito Ninoymiya (CEO), Ichiro Sadahira (COO and CFO), Yoshinobu Kinugasa (CTO)

Growth hacking for hiring

The issues that the company wants to address with the new platform can be summarized in two points:

First, the process of managing applicants profiles is still being handled manually at most companies, often with profiles stored in an Excel file. It can be difficult to find out who among your colleagues interviewed an applicant or what kind of jobs the person has experienced before.

Conversely, job seekers find it difficult to identify what kind of skills are needed or the amount of salary they can receive in a given industry.

We understand the company wants to implement a growth hack concept (often seen in the gaming industry these days) in the hiring and job seeking processes. They are planning to hold a ‘Secret Release Party’ soon, where they will showcase their products to selected potential users, so we encourage you to visit there if you want to check it out.

Companies have many options to streamline the hiring process using executive search provided by big companies and hiring support platforms operated by startups. And recruiting personnel are keen to find promising talent by making the most of such services. We’re told that Hatch doesn’t intend to compete with other operators or platform developers. As far as I can tell, their solution will be able to integrate with third-party hiring platforms, in the same way that many financial aggregation tools scrape updates from multiple online banking services. In this way, the platform lets you see information from multiple sources using a single interface.

While we’ve already seen Silicon Valley-based startup Jobvite in this space, Hatch is exploring global expansion opportunities from Asia, with initial plans to expand the business to Taiwan and Korea.

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Japanese payment startup WebPay raises $1.1 million

Junya Mori 2014.02.26

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based WebPay Holdings [1], a startup providing Stripe-compatible payment processing solutions for web services, announced yesterday that it has raised 110 million yen (approximately $1.1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures and two other undisclosed VC firms. Prior to this round, the company raised an undisclosed amount of funding from CyberAgent Ventures, Architype, and GMO Payment Gateway upon its launch back last year. The company says they plan to use the funds for hiring more engineers to improve their solution’s usability in order to serve their users better. Previously known as FluxFlex. ↩

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based WebPay Holdings [1], a startup providing Stripe-compatible payment processing solutions for web services, announced yesterday that it has raised 110 million yen (approximately $1.1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures and two other undisclosed VC firms. Prior to this round, the company raised an undisclosed amount of funding from CyberAgent Ventures, Architype, and GMO Payment Gateway upon its launch back last year.

The company says they plan to use the funds for hiring more engineers to improve their solution’s usability in order to serve their users better.

Previously known as FluxFlex. ↩

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Japanese language learning startup Lang-8 secures funding from CyberAgent Ventures

Takeshi Hirano 2014.01.20

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Lang-8, which runs a language learning platform based on peer corrections, announced today that it has raised funding from CyberAgent Ventures. The exact details of the funding were not disclosed. Lang-8 has acquired over 730,000 users from 219 countries and regions around the world, with about 70% coming from outside Japan. According to the company’s CEO Yangyang Xi, they plan to use these funds to develop a new service, and add three more engineers to their current three-person team. Xi initially launched the language learning platform when he was attending Kyoto University. Seven years have passed since then up until this funding. He notes that he has received much assistance from other entrepreneurs: Many people gave me advice for fundraising, including, Kensuke Furukawa (Nanapi), Ryusuke Matsumoto (Community Factory), Kiyo Kobayashi (serial entrepreneur, ex-CEO of Nobot), and Taku Harada (Peatix). But since I was running a service with a small team, I wanted to keep doing it ourselves without fundraising. But we started to explore funding opportunities back last July, and got a good response. When I met with Koichiro Yoshida (Crowdworks), he told me to meet with all available VC firms around…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup Lang-8, which runs a language learning platform based on peer corrections, announced today that it has raised funding from CyberAgent Ventures. The exact details of the funding were not disclosed.

Lang-8 has acquired over 730,000 users from 219 countries and regions around the world, with about 70% coming from outside Japan. According to the company’s CEO Yangyang Xi, they plan to use these funds to develop a new service, and add three more engineers to their current three-person team.

Xi initially launched the language learning platform when he was attending Kyoto University. Seven years have passed since then up until this funding. He notes that he has received much assistance from other entrepreneurs:

Many people gave me advice for fundraising, including, Kensuke Furukawa (Nanapi), Ryusuke Matsumoto (Community Factory), Kiyo Kobayashi (serial entrepreneur, ex-CEO of Nobot), and Taku Harada (Peatix). But since I was running a service with a small team, I wanted to keep doing it ourselves without fundraising. But we started to explore funding opportunities back last July, and got a good response. When I met with Koichiro Yoshida (Crowdworks), he told me to meet with all available VC firms around him and try to raise funds.

Takanori Yokoi (Increments) also gave me sound advice. I’ve been sticking to metrics and logic, but he told me I should speak with more courage and not sweat the small stuff.

Every time I talked with Xi, he tended to be a little nervous about doing something new, despite the fact that his service has great potential. If he kept going in this way, I think he wouldn’t be able to create a disruptive service. After this new fundraising, perhaps he will be more aggressive.

And while I can’t disclose too much at this time, he actually is preparing to launch a new service. We’ll take a further look at it when the time comes.

news

Japan’s Toyro brings life insurance online, raises funds from CyberAgent Ventures

Junya Mori 2013.11.22

See the original article in Japanese Toyro, a startup which operates an online insurance products platform called Insnext, announced that it has raised funds from CyberAgent Ventures, a figure in the tens of millions yen. Toyro is a startup founded by former members from Zynga Japan. They have formerly launched comap, a curation service based on location information. Their mission was to fill people’s information gap in some way, and after researching many industries, they found that a particularly severe information gap in the life insurance and pharmaceutical industry. The CEO, Kazuhisa Sase utilized his network in the financial industry that he built while working for Opt, an e-marketing company. Subsequently this launched a new life insurance service. Toyro had been running the service without having raised any funds. They were approach by CyberAgent Ventures only 15 minutes after their first service location curation service “comap” was launched. And they got along right away. Subsequently, and as mentioned above, Toyro would go on to raise tens of millions of yen from CyberAgent Ventures as they launch this new service, Insnext. In Japan, life insurance is considered as a kind of service where customers feel they are talked into buying. But…

See the original article in Japanese

Toyro, a startup which operates an online insurance products platform called Insnext, announced that it has raised funds from CyberAgent Ventures, a figure in the tens of millions yen.

Toyro is a startup founded by former members from Zynga Japan. They have formerly launched comap, a curation service based on location information. Their mission was to fill people’s information gap in some way, and after researching many industries, they found that a particularly severe information gap in the life insurance and pharmaceutical industry.

The CEO, Kazuhisa Sase utilized his network in the financial industry that he built while working for Opt, an e-marketing company. Subsequently this launched a new life insurance service.

Toyro had been running the service without having raised any funds. They were approach by CyberAgent Ventures only 15 minutes after their first service location curation service “comap” was launched. And they got along right away. Subsequently, and as mentioned above, Toyro would go on to raise tens of millions of yen from CyberAgent Ventures as they launch this new service, Insnext.

In Japan, life insurance is considered as a kind of service where customers feel they are talked into buying. But Toyro believes that it is important for customers to compare different insurance products on their own and choose the best one to fit their own life plan. Insnext is a service reflecting that vision.

One of the more interesting functions provided on Insnext is a life simulator. Users enter their annual earnings, their amount of savings, and how many children they have. Then a projected chart of their future savings and some financial advice will appear, as well as their expected lifetime earnings and expenses. In addition, insurance services needed to prepare for potential risks will also be displayed. And on the next page, users can compare different kinds of life insurances.

Typically when an insurance sales representative suggest a product to customers, they start with laying out on an ideal life plan with the customer. Therefore, Insnext focuses on their life simulator as a way to lead users to the best choice.

Regarding their monetization plans, Sase, the CEO of Toyro, tells us;

In the insurance industry, you need a license to sell services/products. We are currently studying to attain this license. Insurance products are hard to sell without having face-to-face communication with a customer. […] We plan to help users narrow down their choices, so we can then collect customers on Insnext, and proceed with final contracts in partnerships with real insurance agencies.

I think more insurance companies will intensify their online platforms, so it could become normal for people to look for insurance on the internet. In order to stay ahead of this trend, we will start our insurance agent business in 2014. In April we aim to start working using agency agreements with a few insurance companies.

Focus on users

Existing insurance companies have a tendency to focus on selling the most profitable products possible. But Toyro aims to focus on users and operate their service according to their mission.

Someday, I’d like hear our customers to say “I started thinking about my life plan seriously because of Insnext."

By building a user-focused service as part of its new system, Insnext aims to earn a place in the insurance industry where it can hopefully thrive.

news

15 Japanese startups pitch at Rising Expo 2013, TwitCasting takes top prize

Masaru Ikeda 2013.09.09

See our Japanese coverage of Rising Expo here On Friday, Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures held its annual Rising Expo 2013 event which showcased up-and-coming 15 startups to a crowd of local investors and entrepreneurs [1]. Last year smartphone-based credit card payment provider Coiney won the top prize of 2 million yen (about $20,000), and the startup subsequently raised 100 million yen ($1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures, East Ventures, and an individual angel investor. Among the 15 participating startups this time around, TwitCasting was chosen as the audience favorite by way of voting. TwitCasting is a mobile live-broadcasting application that was launched back in February of 2010. Its userbase is currently around 3 million, a larger total than Ustream currently has in Japan. Almost 20% of it user base comes from the overseas, and it is getting more and more popular in places like Brazil and the Middle East. It raised 64.8 million yen (approximately $648,000) from East Ventures and Japanese entrepreneur Masao Ito (who runs User Local). TwitCasting was pitched by Yosuke Akamatsu (@Yoski) of Moi Corp. For this competition, every single finalist had 10 minutes for their pitch, longer than most other startup events. This gave Akamatsu a chance to…

See our Japanese coverage of Rising Expo here

On Friday, Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures held its annual Rising Expo 2013 event which showcased up-and-coming 15 startups to a crowd of local investors and entrepreneurs [1]. Last year smartphone-based credit card payment provider Coiney won the top prize of 2 million yen (about $20,000), and the startup subsequently raised 100 million yen ($1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures, East Ventures, and an individual angel investor. Among the 15 participating startups this time around, TwitCasting was chosen as the audience favorite by way of voting.

TwitCasting is a mobile live-broadcasting application that was launched back in February of 2010. Its userbase is currently around 3 million, a larger total than Ustream currently has in Japan. Almost 20% of it user base comes from the overseas, and it is getting more and more popular in places like Brazil and the Middle East. It raised 64.8 million yen (approximately $648,000) from East Ventures and Japanese entrepreneur Masao Ito (who runs User Local).

TwitCasting was pitched by Yosuke Akamatsu (@Yoski) of Moi Corp. For this competition, every single finalist had 10 minutes for their pitch, longer than most other startup events. This gave Akamatsu a chance to explain the app’s user experience by showing a live online chat being broadcast by some high school girls. In a response to his question “Why you are TwitCasting”, the girls answered “Because its fun”. This impressed the audience a lot, possibly because typical middle-aged men usually have no chance to talk with young girls!

Like Coiney, which won the grand prize award at last year’s event, TwitCasting is expected to accelerate its global expansion and user acquisition moving forward.

To learn about all the other startups that pitched at Rising Expo, check out our overview below.

15 Startups from Rising Expo ¶

1. Kosodate Share (co-operative childcare), pitched by Keiko Koda (Asmama)

This service allows you to ask other users in your neighborhood to take care of your children. Available tasks vary from babysitting to taking them to schools or kindergartens when you can’t manage. For parents, when you ask someone for a nursery task using the service, it will charge 500 yen (about $5) as a usage fee. The fee covers insurance in case of emergency, and which will ease your concerns about your child’s safety. To date the service has acquired more than 3,000 users.

2. Conyac.cc, pitched by Naoki Yamada (Anydoor)

Conyac is a crowdsourced translation service for individual and corporate users. The company recently set up a San Francisco office and is intensifying its global service expansion. In terms of user demographic, the company’s major clients include buzz marketing sites, media websites, and social gaming studios. The startup has fundraised 40 million ($400,000) from United, Skylight Consulting, angel investor Anri Samata.

3. Cafetalk, pitched by Kohtaro Hashizume (Small Bridge)

Cafetalk is a C2C marketplace focused on learning foreign languages online. The service itself does not provide any learning service but rather it connects teachers with students. To date it has acquired 15,000 students and 2,000 teachers who have posted more than 1,000 available lessons. The company has recently seen more than a few teachers who can make a living through this marketplace only. According to a Searchina interview with CEO Hashizume with, the service is in high demand among females in their 30s, who typically want to learn foreign languages as a hobby.

4. Factelier, pitched by Toshio Yamada (Life Style Accent)

This startup claims to enable fashion enthusiasts buy Louis Vuitton-class fashions for prices as reasonable as Uniqlo. By eliminating the middleman between fashion retailers and clothing factories, the startup succeeded in bringing low-priced but high-quality Japan-made clothes to consumers worldwide. Prior to launching this startup, CEO Toshio Yamada worked at Gucci Paris when attending university, and he subsequently worked at Fashionwalker.com, one of Japan’s leading fashion e-commerce sites and the host of Tokyo Girls Collection. Readers may recall that my colleague Yukari Mitsuhashi previously spoke with him about how the company plans to change the industry.

5. Kawaii Museum JPN, pitched by Taketo Tanaka

Kawaii Museum is a global platform for distributing Japanese character franchises. To date it has acquired more than 4 million likes on Facebook and several tens of thousand users for its Pinterest-like curation website. The startup is currently being developed by Ruby programmer Taketo Tanaka (below) who previously worked with DeNA. It was chosen back in March to be included in the fouth batch of KDDI Mugen Labo’s incubation program.

6. Relux, pitched by Takaya Shinozuka (Loco Partners)

Relux is a satisfaction-guaranteed marketplace for Japanese inns. Every month its user number grows by 1.5 times, and the company expects to see more traffic from all around the world. To date the startup has received investments worth 60 million yen ($600,000) from CyberAgent Ventures and Recruit Incubation Partners. You can also check out our previous interview with Shinozuka.

7. Base, pitched by Yuta Tsuruoka (Base)

Base is a Shopify-like instant e-commerce platform developed by Project Liverty, a tech savvy team led by entrepreneur Kazuma Ieiri. Since its launch back in November of 2012, the company has acquired more than 40,000 merchants. It raised 23 million yen ($230,000) back in January, and is aiming to transact 100 million yen ($1 million) in deals by the end of this year.

8. Event Regist, pitched by Kosuke Hirayama (Event Regist)

Event Regist provides a platform for event organizers to market their events and issue tickets online. The service is available in Japanese, English, Indonesian, Thai, and traditional Chinese. Many players are fiercely competing in C2C-based ticket deals (e.g. Ticket Street or Ticket Camp), and its B2C business is dominated by box office companies (e.g. Ticket Pia). So the startup has decided to focus on the B2B business model. It raised seed investment from East Ventures, Skyland Ventures, and Shinwa Agency back in June, and has exclusively handled ticket issuing for events like the Tokyo Game Show 2013 and CEATEC 2013 Japan.

9. Ubiregi, pitched by Keita Kido

Ubiregi is a cloud-based POS (point of sales) system that uses an iPad at storefronts. Compared to conventional systems, it can be eailsy deployed and maintained, especially for individual merchants like small restaurants, standing bars, and accessory shops. The startup was launched by Keita Kido in August of 2010, and raised around 20 million yen (over $200,000) from Voyage Ventures and Kronos Fund. It also has a capital tie-up with SalesForce.com. To date it has acquired 7,000 merchants nationwide, with the expectation of reaching 20,000. That would account for 1% of the Japanese cash register market.

10. WebPay, pitched by Kei Kubo (FluxFlex)

WebPay is an easy-to-install, API-based card payment solution for Japanese e-commerce companies. In order to give developers an easy interface for payments, the startup partnered with GMO Payment Gateway, one of the oldest and biggest payment processing companies in Japan. Upon its official launch, the company also received an undisclosed amount of funding from CyberAgent Ventures, Architype, and GMO Payment Gateway.

11. SLASH 7, pitched by Nobuhiro Hayashi (pLucky)

Slash–7 aims to gives website owners sophisticated data analysis for reasonable rates. Many executives at Japanese companies are becoming increasingly interested in making the most of big data analysis to improve their business. This company’s CEO believes it has an advantage over similar services (like Mixpanel) in terms of offering a variety of features for a cost. The company previously raised 20 million ($200,000) from CyberAgent Ventures and Incubate Fund.

12. planBCD, pitched by Kenji Sudo (KAIZEN platform)

PlanBCD is a platform that helps developers improve the user interface of their web services. It provides developers with an A/B testing environment, especially useful for improving web content and interfaces. Using the service, you can also crowdsource the UI and UX improvement process. It raised seed funding worth $800,000 from Gree Ventures, GMO Venture Partners, and CyberAgent Ventures back in August.

13. Seconds, pitched by Miku Hirano (Spicy Cinnamon)

Seconds is a mobile app for sharing photos between intimate friends or family members. You just take a photo, and choose your desired album for upload. Photos added are immediately visible to members who have access to that album, and those members can also upload pictures as well. The app was launched back in April, and it has acquired more than 40,000 users from three Asian countries in two months. It was incorporated in Singapore back in October and has engineers in HoChi Minh City (Vietnam) and Bangkok (Thailand). It received seed funding back in December from CyberAgent Ventures and other angel investors.

14. TwitCasting (see above)

15. Candy, pitched by Yosuke Fukada (Yoyo Holdings)

Incorporated in Singapore, this company plans to form a mobile economic ecosystem in emerging markets such as the Philippines. Since very few people pay with credit cards in these upcoming Southeast Asian markets, the company believes there are huge opportunities to cultivate business around monetary needs over there. Candy is a platform that gives users rewards which can be used to pay their cellphone bills in return for completing ‘microtasks’ such as participating in an online survey.

Disclaimer: I was involved in a preliminary screening process at the competition to choose the finalists with the other judges. ↩

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CyberAgent Ventures now accepting startups to pitch at Rising Expo 2013

Masaru Ikeda 2013.07.02

Japanese VC firm CyberAgent Ventures announced on Monday that it would hold this year’s edition of the Rising Expo, the company’s annual startup conference, on September 6th. At last year’s edition, 51 other VC firms and 21 companies were invited to attend conference, where a number of outstanding startups and entrepreneurs pitched their ideas to the crowd. Smartphone-based credit card payment provider Coiney won the top prize of 2 million yen (about $20,000), and the startup subsequently raised 100 million yen ($1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures, East Ventures, and an individual angel investor. CyberAgent Ventures just started accepting applications for those who want to pitch at this year’s event. Applicants must meet the criteria listed below: Your business must be IT- or internet-related. Your service is already live, and has acquired some userbase or revenue. You should be exploring funding worth more than 100 million yen ($1 million) There will be preliminary screening process prior to the event. Applying companies do not need to be registered in Japan. As many of our readers may know, CyberAgent Ventures has many offices and representatives all around Asia, so that if you have an idea that you want to develop in the region,…

Japanese VC firm CyberAgent Ventures announced on Monday that it would hold this year’s edition of the Rising Expo, the company’s annual startup conference, on September 6th.

At last year’s edition, 51 other VC firms and 21 companies were invited to attend conference, where a number of outstanding startups and entrepreneurs pitched their ideas to the crowd. Smartphone-based credit card payment provider Coiney won the top prize of 2 million yen (about $20,000), and the startup subsequently raised 100 million yen ($1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures, East Ventures, and an individual angel investor.

CyberAgent Ventures just started accepting applications for those who want to pitch at this year’s event. Applicants must meet the criteria listed below:

Your business must be IT- or internet-related.
Your service is already live, and has acquired some userbase or revenue.
You should be exploring funding worth more than 100 million yen ($1 million)

There will be preliminary screening process prior to the event. Applying companies do not need to be registered in Japan.

As many of our readers may know, CyberAgent Ventures has many offices and representatives all around Asia, so that if you have an idea that you want to develop in the region, they are one of the best teams that you could work with.

If you’re interested, you can apply here. The deadline is July 29th at 11am, Japan Standard Time.

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Big data startup Hapyrus raises $925,000 from Japanese investors

Masaru Ikeda 2013.06.23

Silicon Valley-based big data startup Hapyrus announced this week that it has raised $925,000 from several investors in Japan and the US. This follows its previous round of seed funding from CyberAgent back in November of 2011. The investors this time are: Shigeru Urushibara (president of Japanese systems integrator UL Systems) Shogo Kawada (co-founder of DeNA) CyberAgent Ventures Kiyoshi Nishikawa (president of NetAge) Nissay Capital William Lohse (former president of Ziff-Davis publishing, angel investor for Pinterest) The startup was launched back in March of 2011 by Japanese entrepreneur Koichi Fujikawa. He previously worked at Yahoo Japan and at Japanese location-based ad platform startup Sirius Technology (acquired by Yahoo Japan in 2010). Japan’s governmental IT promotion agency heralded him as a “genius talent” in the computer industry with his Hadoop middleware project for scripting Ruby DSL (domain specific language). The startup launched a new service called FlyData for Amazon Redshift back in April, which allows automatic uploading and migration of data to Amazon Redshift, the data-warehouse service that can scale to petabyte size. For developers, the service allows you to control and send log files on your server to your own Amazon Redshift cluster over Amazon S3 at a frequency of…

Silicon Valley-based big data startup Hapyrus announced this week that it has raised $925,000 from several investors in Japan and the US. This follows its previous round of seed funding from CyberAgent back in November of 2011. The investors this time are:

Shigeru Urushibara (president of Japanese systems integrator UL Systems)
Shogo Kawada (co-founder of DeNA)
CyberAgent Ventures
Kiyoshi Nishikawa (president of NetAge)
Nissay Capital
William Lohse (former president of Ziff-Davis publishing, angel investor for Pinterest)

The startup was launched back in March of 2011 by Japanese entrepreneur Koichi Fujikawa. He previously worked at Yahoo Japan and at Japanese location-based ad platform startup Sirius Technology (acquired by Yahoo Japan in 2010). Japan’s governmental IT promotion agency heralded him as a “genius talent” in the computer industry with his Hadoop middleware project for scripting Ruby DSL (domain specific language).

The startup launched a new service called FlyData for Amazon Redshift back in April, which allows automatic uploading and migration of data to Amazon Redshift, the data-warehouse service that can scale to petabyte size. For developers, the service allows you to control and send log files on your server to your own Amazon Redshift cluster over Amazon S3 at a frequency of once every five minutes. This helps you easily conduct an almost realtime-like big data analysis over the cloud.

They have another service called FlyData for Heroku, which also allows the automatic upload of log data on Heroku to Amazon EC3.

On a related note, Treasure Data, another notable Japanese startup focused on big data solutions, also received angel investment worth $2.75 million back in 2012, with funds coming from several investors including Jerry Yang (Yahoo co-founder) and Yukihiro ‘Matz’ Matsumoto (the inventor of the Ruby language).

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Japanese data analysis startup pLucky raises funds from CyberAgent Ventures

Junya Mori 2013.05.30

See the original story in Japanese. pLucky is the Tokyo-based startup behind the user behavior analysis tool Slash-7. The company announced today that it has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from CyberAgent Ventures. We figure that it’s worth about 20 million yen ($200,000). Slash-7 aims to gives website owners sophisticated data analysis for reasonable rates. Many executives at Japanese companies are becoming increasingly interested in making the most of big data analysis to improve their business. But for website managers, it’s a time consuming task and may also result in additional costs or a possible delay spilling over into your regular projects. The Slash-7 tool is based on Google BigQuery, a database engine for analyzing large amounts of data. It gives you access to ‘cohort analysis‘, helping measure user engagement over time. This allows users to monitor user retention rates by traffic source or measure conversion rates for a specific user group before or after a promotional campaign. The startup was launched back in 2011 by Nobuhiro Hayashi. He has been working in the web industry for almost 10 years, and previously worked at notable Japanese startups, including Tonchidot.

See the original story in Japanese.

pLucky is the Tokyo-based startup behind the user behavior analysis tool Slash-7. The company announced today that it has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from CyberAgent Ventures. We figure that it’s worth about 20 million yen ($200,000).

Slash-7 aims to gives website owners sophisticated data analysis for reasonable rates. Many executives at Japanese companies are becoming increasingly interested in making the most of big data analysis to improve their business. But for website managers, it’s a time consuming task and may also result in additional costs or a possible delay spilling over into your regular projects.

The Slash-7 tool is based on Google BigQuery, a database engine for analyzing large amounts of data. It gives you access to ‘cohort analysis‘, helping measure user engagement over time. This allows users to monitor user retention rates by traffic source or measure conversion rates for a specific user group before or after a promotional campaign.

The startup was launched back in 2011 by Nobuhiro Hayashi. He has been working in the web industry for almost 10 years, and previously worked at notable Japanese startups, including Tonchidot.

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