THE BRIDGE

tag Holoash

weBelong, social network app for teenage minorities, raises $670K+ in pre-seed round

SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. HoloAsh announced on Monday that it has secured 73 million yen (over $670,000 US) in a pre-seed round. Participating investors include Akatsuki’s Heart Driven Fund, Miraise as well as angel investors like Kenji Kasahara (founder of Mixi), Hiroshi Tomishima (formerly at Mixi), and Shokei Suda (CEO of Enigmo). At the same time, the company also announced that it will pivot its main business to a community app for teenage minorities. Founded back in 2018, the company secured a pre-seed round from Hiroshi Takato (Momentum) in 2019 following an angel round from INDEE Japan, Takeshi Soga (SGcapital), Takashi Shibayama (BLANQ), and Osamu Ogasahara (ABBALab) in 2018. The latest round brought the company’s funding sum to date up to about 100 million yen (about $925,000 US). Founded by Yoshua Kishi, who himself has been also suffering from ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), his startup has been aiming to alleviate the symptoms leveraging technology. Following his first product of a cognitive science-based holographic interface, he launched a mobile app called Nao allowing users to receive the experience similar to the aforementioned product with a virtual character using a messaging app. The Delaware-incorporated startup consisted of French, Indian,…

See the original story in Japanese.

HoloAsh announced on Monday that it has secured 73 million yen (over $670,000 US) in a pre-seed round. Participating investors include Akatsuki’s Heart Driven Fund, Miraise as well as angel investors like Kenji Kasahara (founder of Mixi), Hiroshi Tomishima (formerly at Mixi), and Shokei Suda (CEO of Enigmo). At the same time, the company also announced that it will pivot its main business to a community app for teenage minorities.

Founded back in 2018, the company secured a pre-seed round from Hiroshi Takato (Momentum) in 2019 following an angel round from INDEE Japan, Takeshi Soga (SGcapital), Takashi Shibayama (BLANQ), and Osamu Ogasahara (ABBALab) in 2018. The latest round brought the company’s funding sum to date up to about 100 million yen (about $925,000 US).

Founded by Yoshua Kishi, who himself has been also suffering from ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), his startup has been aiming to alleviate the symptoms leveraging technology. Following his first product of a cognitive science-based holographic interface, he launched a mobile app called Nao allowing users to receive the experience similar to the aforementioned product with a virtual character using a messaging app.

The Delaware-incorporated startup consisted of French, Indian, and Nigerian members in addition to Japanese CEO Kishi has been focusing on the global market since their day one. The company lauched the weBelong social community app in January, intended for teens of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer), Black, Hispanic and other minorities in the US and the rest of the world.

Functions of the weBelong app
Image credit: HoloAsh

In an interview with Bridge, Kishi says,

Our app targets minority teenagers who are less understood by society about their gap. 76% of LGBTQ kids say they don’t belong according to Human Rights Campaign’s survey. They are confined to their homes, less understood by their parents about their gap, and in some cases they are abused.

TikTok is becoming popular in the US but it is mostly white girls receiving attention there. In contrast, our app wants to create a community where minority kids can belong and they could upvote each other. When I was a little boy, I had the experience of getting a hug from my school’s principal for brushing my teeth well, which filled my heart with joy. I want to deliver that kind of experience through the app.

With the recent emergence of various social networks, it has been reported that some users, in order to satisfy their desire for self-expression and approval, over-present themselves, resulting in mental exhaustion. It is also interesting that weBelong is designed to promoting peace of mind and encouraging users to motivate but never to hate each other, as the content posted “ephemerally” disappears.

Currently, weBelong has more than a few hundred users. By country, 70-80% of the users are from the US, followed by Canada, the UK, and Japan. The average time spent by users per day is about 40 minutes, which is longer than that of Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. In this particular niche , Dubsmash, a short video app for minorities, was acquired by Reddit last year while other notable apps include LEX (LGBT community app), Blue Fever (community app for Gen Z), and Quilt (minority community for adults).

YC Startup School grad uses holographic AI to evolve developmental disorder therapy

SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a developmental condition that affects people by making it difficult prioritize, manage time, focus on details, and follow-through with work. One of the challenges faced by people with ADHD is that tasks tend to go unfinished regardless of whether they are personal or work-related and despite the intentions of the person. As a result, they tend to get reprimanded, causing them to lose their self-confidence and motivation. CEO Yoshua Kishi has also been diagnosed with ADHD and is aiming to reduce the symptoms with the help of technology. Kishi’s current project is Holoash, a holographic interface based on cognitive science. A character presented as a hologram speaks with the user, who suffers from ADHD, in an attempt to raise their self-confidence. This method is called “motivation interviewing” or “therapeutic communication”. The dialogue contained on Holoash is similar to that used by the AiOS “Samantha” in the movie Her. Following the company’s successful crowdfunding at Campfire held at the beginning of this year, it is currently in the process of hypothesis verification using its mobile app (video below) and conducting product/market fit research. Recently, it was adopted as a participant…

Holoash’s Yoshua Kishi
Image credit: Masaru Ikeda

See the original story in Japanese.

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a developmental condition that affects people by making it difficult prioritize, manage time, focus on details, and follow-through with work.

One of the challenges faced by people with ADHD is that tasks tend to go unfinished regardless of whether they are personal or work-related and despite the intentions of the person. As a result, they tend to get reprimanded, causing them to lose their self-confidence and motivation. CEO Yoshua Kishi has also been diagnosed with ADHD and is aiming to reduce the symptoms with the help of technology.

An image of Holoash

Kishi’s current project is Holoash, a holographic interface based on cognitive science. A character presented as a hologram speaks with the user, who suffers from ADHD, in an attempt to raise their self-confidence. This method is called “motivation interviewing” or “therapeutic communication”.

The dialogue contained on Holoash is similar to that used by the AiOS “Samantha” in the movie Her. Following the company’s successful crowdfunding at Campfire held at the beginning of this year, it is currently in the process of hypothesis verification using its mobile app (video below) and conducting product/market fit research. Recently, it was adopted as a participant of Y Combinator’s Startup School and was chosen as a finalist of the Accenture HealthTech Innovation Challenge. Additionally, the opportunities for use abroad are clearly discernible.

Kishi had the following to say about why holograms are the solution.

It is important to have something to focus on right in front of us in order to avoid distraction. And, since humans are not good at focusing on two dimensional objects, we want to stick to creating an environment where users see things in 3D and can then concentrate on them.

In recent times, apart from those trying to overcome ADHD, the surge in smartphone and social network usage has seen an increase in “healthy individuals” with ADHD. Kishi refers to this as “Digital Dementia”, and it is safe to assume that most everyone has experienced the never-ending barrage of push notifications from smartphones, etc., drawing their attention away from what needs to be done, and leading to difficulty maintaining priorities or even forgetting them altogether.

Kishi pitching at Silicon Valley’s TVLP (Technology Venture Launch Program)
Image credit: TVLP

In other words, everyone may have similar obstacles to overcome, some big some small, be it someone who has been diagnosed with ADHD by a doctor, or simply a modern human. If Holoash’s hypothesis is proven true, its possibilities are sure to expand. In the near future, the company has plans to introduce a scheduling (one of the obstacles faced by people diagnosed with ADHD) feature, and if it is equipped with Amazon Alexa or similar we can expect use cases other than as a smart speaker.

Earlier this year Holoash raised funds from Indee Japan, Soga Takeshi (SGcapital), Takashi Shibayama (Blanq), Osamu Osagahara (AbbaLab) in the angel round for development of Holoash’s hardware prototype. The company has recently started raising funds in the pre-seed round. This month a visiting researcher in the field of medical therapy from Stanford University joined the team as an advisor and it is expected that the company will collaborate with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and perform joint research with academia.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda