See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based ‘For Startups‘ (previously known as Net Jinzai Bank), the Japanese company offering an executive and talent search service for startups in Japan, announced today that it has integrated the Startup DB platform with US-based Crunchbase. Japanese startup profiles on the Startup DB platform will be migrated into Crunchbase, and vice versa.

Originally launched as Cotobe back in April of 2016, Startup DB was then aligned the service model with market needs and rebranded as the current name back in May of 2018. The platform now boasts a database of over 10,000 startups, and recently launched a new function showing startup profiles in English which can be considered as part of their prepartion for the integration with Crunchbase.

There is also a possibility that data linkage will be started one by one from now on, and the details such as the range and timing to be linked are unknown at present. Also on CrunchBase, information about startups created by third parties other than CrunchBase (mainly non-Western ones) may be posted, but these may be reflected in STARTUP DB via CrunchBase. In addition, CrunchBase includes some inaccurate information due to its wiki-like nature, but it may be necessary to screen this information to some extent.

Since the data integration is starting from now, no details about how often and how much of the data will be integrated each other are known yet. Curnchbase has also listed profiles of startups from third-party data providers (mostly regarding startups from the US and European markets), and these data may be also incorporated into StartuDB. In addition, Crunchbase sometimes contain inaccurate information due to its wiki-like nature, and it may be necessary for Startup DB to screen data before importing.

Crunchbase is always monitoring articles from tech- and startup-focused media outlets. When a new article covering a startup comes up, they manually add a link to it and funding update in the startup’s profile if necessary. It is expected that the US company will keep data update in the similar way regarding the integration with Startup DB. By no means, it’s good to hear that funding updates on Japanese startups will be more easily accessible to Western investors. Eventually, I hope this effort may contribute to getting foreign investors and businesses more interested in working with Japanese startups.