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Japan’s Nulab gets first cash injection in 13-year history, poised for exponential growth

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See the original story in Japanese. In an interview with The Bridge back in September of 2015, Nulab CEO Masanori Hashimoto told us that the firm was about to graduate from startup mode toward a sustainable growth but it seems like things were not going as expected. Offering three cloud services such as Backlog, Cacoo and Typetalk, Nulab had been exponentially growing since 2015 when they stopped entrusted system developments but started focusing on the SaaS (software as a service) business. He said jokingly: We couldn’t graduate but still need to repeat years as a startup (laugh). The Fukuoka-based company revealed today that it has secured its first cash injection from an external investor. It’s 100 million yen (about $884,000) funding from East Ventures, a seed round for the 13-year-old company. Nulab has a relatively long history but had been initially focused on entrusted system developments, subsequently making a total shift into the SaaS business in as recently as 2013. Quoting Chatwork (previously known as EC Studio) as an example which has also a 17-year history but shifted into the SaaS business several years ago, Hashimoto explained: We (virtually) started as a startup back in 2013 when we made a…

Masanori Hashimoto, Co-founder and CEO of Nulab
Image credit: Masaru Ikeda

See the original story in Japanese.

In an interview with The Bridge back in September of 2015, Nulab CEO Masanori Hashimoto told us that the firm was about to graduate from startup mode toward a sustainable growth but it seems like things were not going as expected. Offering three cloud services such as Backlog, Cacoo and Typetalk, Nulab had been exponentially growing since 2015 when they stopped entrusted system developments but started focusing on the SaaS (software as a service) business. He said jokingly:

We couldn’t graduate but still need to repeat years as a startup (laugh).

The Fukuoka-based company revealed today that it has secured its first cash injection from an external investor. It’s 100 million yen (about $884,000) funding from East Ventures, a seed round for the 13-year-old company. Nulab has a relatively long history but had been initially focused on entrusted system developments, subsequently making a total shift into the SaaS business in as recently as 2013. Quoting Chatwork (previously known as EC Studio) as an example which has also a 17-year history but shifted into the SaaS business several years ago, Hashimoto explained:

We (virtually) started as a startup back in 2013 when we made a total shift into the SaaS business. That’s why both our mindset and our team members are pretty young.

The company’s user base is currently comprised of 780,000 people across 50,000 companies in Japan using the Backlog project management and collaboration tool as well as 2.8 million people (86.2% of them are from outside Japan) using the Cacoo visual collaboration tool. They introduced a chat communication tool called Typetalk back in February of 2014, allowing users to complete various team work and remote work tasks within the Nulab platform. The Nulab Account single sign-on scheme enables customers to use all the three web services with a single user account.

The Nulab team
Image credit: Nulab

The company has now grown up to a 80-people team based out of Tokyo, New York City, Taiwan and Singapore locations in addition to their headquarters in Fukuoka City. In view of such a high number of users and employees, we can assume that they have less urgent needs in funding because they may generate ample cash flows from their business. However, it seems like that the latest funding at this time around is intended for strengthening global expansion and preparing for a future initial public offering. We can also see the reason behind their choice of East Ventures as a sole investor in this round, which is highly evaluated in terms of global investment and hands-on support.

Hashimoto elaborated:

Based on our achievement, we may create a tunnel that can carry Japanese SaaS products (including third-party products) into the global market. In a way like the global market adopting Japanese project management methods developed by Toyoda, Honda and others, I believe there are many spaces that Nulab and other SaaS companies can expand into.

Regarding the reason why Nulab is looking at an IPO while they used to be less aggressive about funding from an external investor, he added:

Companies and businesses are different. Nulab is a company, and has three businesses (like three startups): Backlog, Cacoo and Typetalk. Now that these so-called startups have further grown up than I thought, I turned to think I need to focus on stabilizing our management base. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to concentrate on their business but might get up shit creek.

Since Nulab is focused on pursuing people’s diversity of both their in-house developers and user community, it employees many international staffers in the team (like a Canadian assistant to Hashimoto-san). As part of this effort, the company revealed that they will set up a new location in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

There are not many Japanese startups looking at the global market yet, but it’s interesting to see a startup from Fukuoka seeing such an exponential growth. Encouraged by their progress, I really hope that more startups from across Japan will be motivated for aggressive global expansion.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s Medley, job board and portal for medical professionals, raises $1.9 million

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Medley announced in December that it had fundraised a total of 230 million yen (about $1.9 million) from Nikkei Business Publications (Nikkei BP), East Ventures, and Japanese angel investor Yuzuru Honda. East Ventures have invested in Medley in the past while Honda is the CEO of Japanese adtech company FreakOut (TSE:6094). The latest funding follows the company’s previous round in June of 2015, having raised 300 million yen (about $2.5 million) from Mitsui Sumitomo Insuarance Capital, MRT (TSE:6034, medical human resource), and Gree (TSE:3632, mobile gaming), as well as other angel investors. Medley provides an online job board for medical professionals, called Job Medley, as well as an online disease encyclopedia called Medley. Coinciding with the latest funds, Medley will partner with Nikkei BP to integrate Job Medley with Nikkei Medical Online, the publisher’s comprehensive information portal site for medical professionals. By utilizing the mutual strengths of both companies, they are looking to develop new services for 510,000 registered users of the portal site, encompassing 130,000 medical doctors. Medley CEO Kohei Takiguchi explained: Combining Nikkei Medical Online with our strength that engineers and medical professionals provide our services, I believe that both…

medley-team
The Medley team: CEO Kohei Takiguchi stands third from left,
Co-CEO/medical doctor Goichiro Toyoda stands on right.

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup Medley announced in December that it had fundraised a total of 230 million yen (about $1.9 million) from Nikkei Business Publications (Nikkei BP), East Ventures, and Japanese angel investor Yuzuru Honda. East Ventures have invested in Medley in the past while Honda is the CEO of Japanese adtech company FreakOut (TSE:6094). The latest funding follows the company’s previous round in June of 2015, having raised 300 million yen (about $2.5 million) from Mitsui Sumitomo Insuarance Capital, MRT (TSE:6034, medical human resource), and Gree (TSE:3632, mobile gaming), as well as other angel investors.

Medley provides an online job board for medical professionals, called Job Medley, as well as an online disease encyclopedia called Medley. Coinciding with the latest funds, Medley will partner with Nikkei BP to integrate Job Medley with Nikkei Medical Online, the publisher’s comprehensive information portal site for medical professionals. By utilizing the mutual strengths of both companies, they are looking to develop new services for 510,000 registered users of the portal site, encompassing 130,000 medical doctors.

Medley CEO Kohei Takiguchi explained:

Combining Nikkei Medical Online with our strength that engineers and medical professionals provide our services, I believe that both companies can better grow their businesses leveraging the mutual strengths.

The capital raised from this fundraising will be used to develop new collaborative services and for their operation. Although there is no official release of service content, they are creating brand new content for healthcare professionals.

We were told that the funds will be used to develop and operate a new service. Details of that are not yet disclosed but the company claimed that it will be something new for medical professionals.

The Job Medley platform has been steadily growing to date, building a sold revenue base for the company. It lists 47,055 positions for job-seeking medical professionals as of this writing. Instead of such a huge number of job postings, however, Takiguchi says that his team have fulfilled only about 10% of their objective which expects to list all positions available online.

Medley, the online medical resource, has attempted to enhance its service coverage, by adding a special feature page for prevention of influenza as well as a hospital search according to symptoms or the method of treatment. These efforts are based on the team’s intention to improve accessibility to existing medical database services for the public.

Takiguchi added:

Since existing medical database services are incomplete, we needed to build our own from scratch. It took more than expected to complete, but we have almost completed gathering and organizing symptoms, medical supplies, hospitals, and other related metadata information. We think that the next step is to provide users value based on our database. Using the symptom-based disease search function as well as the infection risk prediction model, we will explore new types of online medical services for users in 2016.

Medley has been receiving huge funding throughout 2015. The company has been devoted to developing the Job Medley platform to enhance the business prospects while developing the Medley database service to better serve users. They are steadily moving forward to disrupt the medical industry by inventing new online services.

Translated by Mariko Kobayashi via Mother First
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda

Japan’s web access analysis startup User Local raises $2.1 million

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This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based User Local, the Japanese startup that provides big data analysis for website owners, announced today that it has fundraised 260 million yen ($2 million) from YJ Capital and East Ventures. YJ Capital is the investment arm of Yahoo Japan. Use Local will use the funds to enhance its backend infrastructure as well as develop new analysis tools targeting vertical markets, such as Media Insight, which is focused on media sites and was launched on 17 April. Since its launch in 2007 by former Rakuten engineer Masao Ito, User Local has developed a number of web analytics tools including Nakanohito, Ugokuhito, User Insight, and Social Insight. More than 700 companies in Japan have adopted their analytics tools, while freemium tools like Nakanohito and Ugokuhito have served more than 250,000 websites nationwide. As a result, company analyzes more than 7 billion page views every month. Ito said the company developed Media Insight because he has been receiving many requests from users, especially from the media industry, that they want to obtain not only traffic analysis for their websites but also involve social media and viral media traffic, with a statistical…

media-insight_featuredimage

This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese.

Tokyo-based User Local, the Japanese startup that provides big data analysis for website owners, announced today that it has fundraised 260 million yen ($2 million) from YJ Capital and East Ventures. YJ Capital is the investment arm of Yahoo Japan. Use Local will use the funds to enhance its backend infrastructure as well as develop new analysis tools targeting vertical markets, such as Media Insight, which is focused on media sites and was launched on 17 April.

Since its launch in 2007 by former Rakuten engineer Masao Ito, User Local has developed a number of web analytics tools including Nakanohito, Ugokuhito, User Insight, and Social Insight. More than 700 companies in Japan have adopted their analytics tools, while freemium tools like Nakanohito and Ugokuhito have served more than 250,000 websites nationwide. As a result, company analyzes more than 7 billion page views every month.

Ito said the company developed Media Insight because he has been receiving many requests from users, especially from the media industry, that they want to obtain not only traffic analysis for their websites but also involve social media and viral media traffic, with a statistical comparison between their own websites and their competitors’ sites.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson

Thai handmade marketplace Blisby raises $300K from DeNA, East Ventures, 500 Startups

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See the original story in Japanese. Blisby, a Thailand-based handmade marketplace focused on serving the Southeast Asian region, announced today that it has raised $300,000 in a recent round. This round was led by Japan’s DeNA and East Ventures with participation from 500 Durians and 500 Tuk Tuks, regiocentric funds focused on Southeast Asia and Thailand by 500 Startups. Since its launch back in November 2013, Blisby has acquired 1 million pageviews and 350,000 monthly active users as of March, increasing a user base in a month-over-month growth rate of 20%. The company will use the funds to expand their business beyond Thailand to other neighboring markets in the Southeast Asia region. Blisby’s founder Phuvadol Thongthavorn was born and raised in the U.S.; prior to launching Blisby, he worked at Yahoo and Sony in California. In 2010, he decided to move from California to New York but stopped for a short break in Thailand to ordain as a Buddhist monk, where his experience during the visit prompted him to launch Blisby in Thailand without going back to the U.S. by establishing a business of Thai contemporary arts that Thongthavorn had been looking at for a long time. There are many players fiercely competing in…

blisby_screenshot

See the original story in Japanese.

Blisby, a Thailand-based handmade marketplace focused on serving the Southeast Asian region, announced today that it has raised $300,000 in a recent round. This round was led by Japan’s DeNA and East Ventures with participation from 500 Durians and 500 Tuk Tuks, regiocentric funds focused on Southeast Asia and Thailand by 500 Startups.

Since its launch back in November 2013, Blisby has acquired 1 million pageviews and 350,000 monthly active users as of March, increasing a user base in a month-over-month growth rate of 20%. The company will use the funds to expand their business beyond Thailand to other neighboring markets in the Southeast Asia region.

Blisby’s founder Phuvadol Thongthavorn was born and raised in the U.S.; prior to launching Blisby, he worked at Yahoo and Sony in California. In 2010, he decided to move from California to New York but stopped for a short break in Thailand to ordain as a Buddhist monk, where his experience during the visit prompted him to launch Blisby in Thailand without going back to the U.S. by establishing a business of Thai contemporary arts that Thongthavorn had been looking at for a long time.

There are many players fiercely competing in this space, including Etsy and Fab in the U.S., Pinkoi in Taiwan, in addition to Anders/Creema,Tenote and Minne, not to mention Iichi in Japan. Particularly, Etsy will be listed at NASDAQ next Wednesday, which may be the largest for a New York-based technology company in 16 years.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s adaptive learning tech startup Polyglots secures estimated $292,000 in seed round

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Polyglots, a Japanese startup that developed an English newsreader app under the same name, has secured funding from East Ventures in a seed round. Funding details have not been disclosed but it’s likely worth around 35 million yen or $292,000. The mobile app is available for iOS and Android, allowing Japanese users to learn English while reading news updates with many useful features such as managing unfamiliar English words in the app. Polyglots’ adaptive learning engine enables the app to offer optimized content for each user according to his or her learning progress. Since its launch eight months ago, the app has attracted over 140,000 users through viral marketing. The company plans to use the funds to strengthen their business foundation and increase the variety of content. Translated by Masaru Ikeda Edited by Kurt Hanson Proofread by “Tex” Pomeroy

polyglots_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Polyglots, a Japanese startup that developed an English newsreader app under the same name, has secured funding from East Ventures in a seed round. Funding details have not been disclosed but it’s likely worth around 35 million yen or $292,000.

The mobile app is available for iOS and Android, allowing Japanese users to learn English while reading news updates with many useful features such as managing unfamiliar English words in the app.

Polyglots’ adaptive learning engine enables the app to offer optimized content for each user according to his or her learning progress. Since its launch eight months ago, the app has attracted over 140,000 users through viral marketing. The company plans to use the funds to strengthen their business foundation and increase the variety of content.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson
Proofread by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s buzz site for English study abroad ‘School With’ secures funds from East Ventures

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This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based School With, the company behind a buzz site that shares buzz and reviews on language studies abroad, announced that it has fundraised an undisclosed sum from Japanese seed VC fund East Ventures. School With launched a review site under the same name in April 2013, and was incorporated in July 2013. Since the launch, they have focused on English studies abroad and buzz and reviews on over 100 language schools in the Philippines. School With CEO Hideki Ota visited the Philippines to study English a few years ago, and the experience inspired him to launch the business. He plans to expand the coverage of language schools in Australia and Canada in 2015. School With had been running its operations in a bootstrapping mode via grants from Japanese governmental business support initiative SME Support, Japan. While exploring funding opportunities to put more energy into the business, they received a funding offer from East Ventures in November.

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This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.

Tokyo-based School With, the company behind a buzz site that shares buzz and reviews on language studies abroad, announced that it has fundraised an undisclosed sum from Japanese seed VC fund East Ventures.

School With launched a review site under the same name in April 2013, and was incorporated in July 2013. Since the launch, they have focused on English studies abroad and buzz and reviews on over 100 language schools in the Philippines.

School With CEO Hideki Ota visited the Philippines to study English a few years ago, and the experience inspired him to launch the business. He plans to expand the coverage of language schools in Australia and Canada in 2015.

School With had been running its operations in a bootstrapping mode via grants from Japanese governmental business support initiative SME Support, Japan. While exploring funding opportunities to put more energy into the business, they received a funding offer from East Ventures in November.

hideki-ota
School With CEO Hideki Ota

Japanese subculture flea market app A2mato secures funding to accelerate user growth

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This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. A2mato (pronounced as ‘ani-mart’) is a C2C flea market app focused on goods relating to Japanese subculture. Tokyo-based 7-bites, the company behind A2mato, announced today that it has fundraised an undisclosed amount from several Japanese investors. This round was led by CyberAgent Ventures with participation from East Ventures and angel investors like Ryu Okada (DeNA co-founding member) and Osamu Shibata. This follows their previous funding of $295,000 in June 2013. A2mato allows users to sell and buy their anime goods, fanzines, manga books, games, cosplay costumes, figures, and cards. Since its launch in January, the marketplace has listed over 250,000 items. An iOS app is available here. Upon this funding, 7-bites has partnered with Aucfun, the Japanese company behind a price comparison site under the same name. Aucfun acquired an undisclosed amount of 7-bites shares from shareholders in this round. Through this partnership, the two companies will integrate their systems – leveraging Aucfan’s database of prices and profiles for more than 20 million items. 7-bites CEO Shota Sawada explained: As our integration proceeds, users will be allowed to find items listed on A2mato through Aucfan.com. C2C users are less…

a2mato_featuredimage

This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.

A2mato (pronounced as ‘ani-mart’) is a C2C flea market app focused on goods relating to Japanese subculture. Tokyo-based 7-bites, the company behind A2mato, announced today that it has fundraised an undisclosed amount from several Japanese investors. This round was led by CyberAgent Ventures with participation from East Ventures and angel investors like Ryu Okada (DeNA co-founding member) and Osamu Shibata. This follows their previous funding of $295,000 in June 2013.

A2mato allows users to sell and buy their anime goods, fanzines, manga books, games, cosplay costumes, figures, and cards. Since its launch in January, the marketplace has listed over 250,000 items. An iOS app is available here.

Upon this funding, 7-bites has partnered with Aucfun, the Japanese company behind a price comparison site under the same name. Aucfun acquired an undisclosed amount of 7-bites shares from shareholders in this round. Through this partnership, the two companies will integrate their systems – leveraging Aucfan’s database of prices and profiles for more than 20 million items.

shota-sawada
7-bites CEO Shota Sawada

7-bites CEO Shota Sawada explained:

As our integration proceeds, users will be allowed to find items listed on A2mato through Aucfan.com. C2C users are less internet-literate and less familiar with market values. So we will list market quotes in item lists on the A2mato website through the integration.

Nearly a year has passed since our launch, and we’ve seen heavy users spending as much as 100,000 yen ($865) a month. They are mostly fangirls who buy goods of their favorite anime characters.

However, it was slow going for A2mato in its early days and has been struggling to grow the first three months since the launch.

Sawada continued:

We have drastically improved the user interface to enhance the perspicuity, changing one column to two. Results were good, and our users has been increasing in number since April. Today the user growth has reached 20% to 25% on a month-over-month basis, and their retention rate hit more than 40%. After a user submits an item on our app, it takes about five minutes to close the deal. We aim to shorten this time.

Sellers want to sell their items faster; buyers want to buy their items faster. So more users will use various flea market apps, and a fast selling market will win. We will enlarge our user base and accelerate the speed from the discovery of an item to its purchase for users. Because our app is focused on a niche market, it is more likely to matchmake sellers and buyers than other Japanese flea market apps like Mercari and Fril.

7-bites aims to transact 100 million yen a month in six months, 200 million yen a month by November of 2015. They expect their user base to grow by increasing public exposure through advertisements, etc.

The company will use the funds to strengthen marketing, user support, as well as enhance functionality.

Japanese quiz app BrainWars snags $2.8 million in funding from Line and others

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based TransLimit, the startup that develops social quiz app BrainWars, announced on Thursday that it has fundraised 300 million yen (approximately $2.8 million) form Line Ventures, United, East Ventures, Skyland Ventures, and Genuine Startups. Line Ventures is a subsidiary of messaging company Line, focused on managing a $10 million investment fund called ‘Line Game Global Gateway.’ After start-up in August, the fund has already invested in Japanese gaming company Gumi as its first portfolio company. See also: Japanese startup Translimit raises $100,000 to launch social quiz app Japanese startup launches social quiz app ‘BrainWars’ Japanese quiz app BrainWars ranks in the app store top charts As for BrainWars, during the five months following its launch on May 14, over 3 million downloads of the app from across the world have taken place. Coinciding with this announcement, TransLimit secured a partnership with Line and will “line up” a new game title using the Line user base. The gaming company also unveiled a planned development of a smartphone media business with United, another investor in this round.

translimit-team-line
The Translimit team

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based TransLimit, the startup that develops social quiz app BrainWars, announced on Thursday that it has fundraised 300 million yen (approximately $2.8 million) form Line Ventures, United, East Ventures, Skyland Ventures, and Genuine Startups. Line Ventures is a subsidiary of messaging company Line, focused on managing a $10 million investment fund called ‘Line Game Global Gateway.’ After start-up in August, the fund has already invested in Japanese gaming company Gumi as its first portfolio company.

See also:

As for BrainWars, during the five months following its launch on May 14, over 3 million downloads of the app from across the world have taken place.

Coinciding with this announcement, TransLimit secured a partnership with Line and will “line up” a new game title using the Line user base. The gaming company also unveiled a planned development of a smartphone media business with United, another investor in this round.

translimit-team-line2
Line’s CSMO Jun Masda unveils their investment in Translimit at Line Conference Tokyo 2014.

Japan’s job search startup LiB raises $700,000, offering more options for working women

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-baed LiB, an executive job search site for women, announced today that it has raised 70 million yen ($688,000) from CyberAgent Ventures and East Ventures. Since its launch two months ago, LiB will soon surpass 4,000 users, mainly women who earn an annual income of more than 4 million yen ($39,000). In my recent interview with LiB planner Rina Takei, she said that LiB is an IT company rather than a human resources company, so they will hire more engineers to strengthen their team. She elaborated: From our experience over the last couple of months, we realized that women users tend to acclaim a service that gets many inputs from users and provides good agents to consult with. Our website allows users to easily send a message to our agent just by clicking a button, and this function is popular. To make up for a declining workforce in Japan, the Japanese government has been pushing for more women to join the workforce. As a result, many companies are keen to see how the LiB platform fares in cultivating the women’s labor market. She said: Our platform can reach many people not covered by conventional…

LiB-website-top_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-baed LiB, an executive job search site for women, announced today that it has raised 70 million yen ($688,000) from CyberAgent Ventures and East Ventures. Since its launch two months ago, LiB will soon surpass 4,000 users, mainly women who earn an annual income of more than 4 million yen ($39,000).

In my recent interview with LiB planner Rina Takei, she said that LiB is an IT company rather than a human resources company, so they will hire more engineers to strengthen their team. She elaborated:

From our experience over the last couple of months, we realized that women users tend to acclaim a service that gets many inputs from users and provides good agents to consult with. Our website allows users to easily send a message to our agent just by clicking a button, and this function is popular.

To make up for a declining workforce in Japan, the Japanese government has been pushing for more women to join the workforce. As a result, many companies are keen to see how the LiB platform fares in cultivating the women’s labor market. She said:

Our platform can reach many people not covered by conventional job search sites. They are not looking for an immediate job change, but want to think further about their carrier path in order to prepare a better future.

Coinciding with the fundraising, LiB set up an in-house research project aiming to assist companies in hiring more women and offering advice to the government.

A recent survey by the company shows that 80% of users want to keep working after the age of 50 and 90% prefer working at a job that is fulfilling rather than working at a job just to make money. Takei pointed out how LiB supports the needs of working women:

Many people expect companies to have well-organized welfare systems. 80% of working women want options, such as working from home or part-time work after getting married or having a baby. […] So, we aim to support them by giving them more work-style options.

ConnectFree fundraises for making everything around you connected with a tiny chip

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See also the original story in Japanese. Japan-based American serial entrepreneur Kristopher Tate has developed many web services to date. I’ve used many of them including AM6 (morning news delivery service co-developed with Beatrobo co-founder Hiroshi Asaeda) and t.free (tether enabling service for tether-free smartphone handsets without requiring jailbreak). These services have shut down due to some reasons. Kristopher subsequently moved to Kyoto, so I’ve been curious about his next product launch. And we have a news update about him. ConnectFree, the startup that Kristopher has been running, announced today that it has fundraised from Japanese VC firm East Ventures. Details of the investment have not yet been disclosed but he will use the funds raised to disrupt the IoT (Internet of Things) space. We’ve seen several different approaches aimed at motivating people to develop more connected devices by eliminating obstacles. A big problem is that many software engineers are not familiar with how to develop hardware devices. Our readers may recall that London-based Berg has unveiled such a service to accelerate the IoT space where software and hardware products intersect. Kristopher told us what differentiates his project from other solutions like Berg, despite the fact that his project is…

connectfree-chip-featuredimage

See also the original story in Japanese.

Japan-based American serial entrepreneur Kristopher Tate has developed many web services to date. I’ve used many of them including AM6 (morning news delivery service co-developed with Beatrobo co-founder Hiroshi Asaeda) and t.free (tether enabling service for tether-free smartphone handsets without requiring jailbreak). These services have shut down due to some reasons. Kristopher subsequently moved to Kyoto, so I’ve been curious about his next product launch.

Kristopher Tate
Kristopher Tate

And we have a news update about him. ConnectFree, the startup that Kristopher has been running, announced today that it has fundraised from Japanese VC firm East Ventures. Details of the investment have not yet been disclosed but he will use the funds raised to disrupt the IoT (Internet of Things) space.

We’ve seen several different approaches aimed at motivating people to develop more connected devices by eliminating obstacles. A big problem is that many software engineers are not familiar with how to develop hardware devices. Our readers may recall that London-based Berg has unveiled such a service to accelerate the IoT space where software and hardware products intersect.

Kristopher told us what differentiates his project from other solutions like Berg, despite the fact that his project is in stealth mode:

Berg uses their cloud-based technology to absorb what typical hardware startups are not good at. But we will take a different way because that approach cannot guarantee the sustainability and the security level of your service since it’s dependent on the cloud. We will develop a chip to be embedded in your device so that it can guarantee an end-to-end secure communication between your device and your web-based system.

Similarly to browsing SSL-enabled websites using a proxy server, if you use the cloud to connect your device with your web service, it cannot guarantee a secured communication between the both sides with each other. But this approach has been a usual tactic to ease the development of connected devices, where it is difficult for convenience and high security to co-exist.

In my recent discussion with our IoT-focused contributor Yasunori Okajima, he told me that security issues in the IoT space have not received much attention, but he believes there are huge opportunities out there. We have no idea how Kristopher will make it all possible with only a tiny chip, but he can definitely make it happen with a great idea, which the average person like me can never come up with.