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This Japanese startup wants to open source its DNA amplifier

Rick Martin 2013.12.04

This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto 2013 At Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto, we saw a few new startups pitching at the Launchpad event. One of the most notable was the very last to come on stage, as Shingo Hisakawa, the founder of hardware startup Tori Ningen [1], pitched a DNA amplifier device. This amplification step is a sort of prerequisite, I understand, for many biological experiments. Shingo posited the problem that DNA sampler devices typically cost $4000 to $10000. But his company wants to reduce that by 1/10, and then offer it open source. The details of how the device actually works were relatively complex (and I won’t venture to summarize it based on a simultaneous translation). But the results of a test sample, after they are processed, can be viewed in a Chrome browser, so it doesn’t require any special software. The hardware itself can be viewed below, and at the end of the video above. In my view, this was the most passionate pitch, the founder proclaiming that ’the internet is part of our own DNA, and we should use it to leave a legacy behind. They have already has started selling…

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

At Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto, we saw a few new startups pitching at the Launchpad event. One of the most notable was the very last to come on stage, as Shingo Hisakawa, the founder of hardware startup Tori Ningen [1], pitched a DNA amplifier device. This amplification step is a sort of prerequisite, I understand, for many biological experiments.

Shingo posited the problem that DNA sampler devices typically cost $4000 to $10000. But his company wants to reduce that by 1/10, and then offer it open source. The details of how the device actually works were relatively complex (and I won’t venture to summarize it based on a simultaneous translation). But the results of a test sample, after they are processed, can be viewed in a Chrome browser, so it doesn’t require any special software. The hardware itself can be viewed below, and at the end of the video above.

In my view, this was the most passionate pitch, the founder proclaiming that ’the internet is part of our own DNA, and we should use it to leave a legacy behind.

They have already has started selling domestically here in Japan, but they want to bring it overseas as well. In fact, they are already selling in Malaysia, and hope to open a factory in China.

Update: I previously referred to the device as a DNA sampler, which is incorrect.

He used to make aircraft, hence the name ‘Tori Ningen’, or ‘bird person’. He says the company is comprised of himself, his wife, and his cat. ↩

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Hairmo: Another Japanese startup that wants to match stylists and models

Rick Martin 2013.12.04

This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto 2013 One of the early pitches at the Infinity Ventures Summit in Kyoto was Hairmo.jp. What this startup proposed was not a unique solution: matching aspiring hair-stylists (or hair-stylist assistants) with models to style for practice. “We are not the first,” they said, “but none of the others have been successful.” Our readers may recall that we have already featured a few of them. They pointed out two issues facing any startup in this space. Customer’s level of trust in beauty salon assistants is low. (i.e. Some might even lie and say they are stylists assistants when they are not.) Difficulty in making reservations in a smooth manner. Hairmo claims to have cracked this problem, since they are funded by a company that already has a large network of hair salons, so by using this network they aim to solve this problem by implementing a sort of ‘authorized’ mark for stylists. The other problem is reservation, which they hope to simplify with an easy calendar, and a streamlined confirmation and payment process. Hairmo already has 5000 users, having benefitted from some TV features. “We want our assistants to…

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

One of the early pitches at the Infinity Ventures Summit in Kyoto was Hairmo.jp. What this startup proposed was not a unique solution: matching aspiring hair-stylists (or hair-stylist assistants) with models to style for practice. “We are not the first,” they said, “but none of the others have been successful.” Our readers may recall that we have already featured a few of them.

They pointed out two issues facing any startup in this space.

Customer’s level of trust in beauty salon assistants is low. (i.e. Some might even lie and say they are stylists assistants when they are not.)
Difficulty in making reservations in a smooth manner.

Hairmo claims to have cracked this problem, since they are funded by a company that already has a large network of hair salons, so by using this network they aim to solve this problem by implementing a sort of ‘authorized’ mark for stylists.

The other problem is reservation, which they hope to simplify with an easy calendar, and a streamlined confirmation and payment process.

Hairmo already has 5000 users, having benefitted from some TV features. “We want our assistants to become full stylists,” they proclaimed.

It will be interesting to see how they fare in this competitive area. But if you’d like to try them out, you can get their app over on the App Store.

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TapLingual: The mobile solution to Japan’s language woes?

Rick Martin 2013.06.06

Last month at the Infinity Ventures Summit in Sapporo Japan, we had a chance to see a number of great startups during the LaunchPad pitch event. We had to hustle to cover as many of them as we could, but one that we didn’t get a chance to discuss was TapLingual. The startup pointed out in its pitch that while the number of tourists coming to Japan is expected to grow in the coming years, there’s still a significant language barrier for those in the tourism or service industries. TapLingual’s proposed solution is to enlist the help of a real translator who is sort of conferenced into the conversation, face-to-face, using its smartphone app. As a part of its on-stage pitch at LaunchPad, TapLingual gave a short video demo (included below) that presented the situation of a Chinese tourist visiting a shop in Japan. The linguistically challenged shopkeeper brings out the TapLingual apps, and is promptly rescued by the smartphone translator. The service would cost such a retailer 3000 yen per month to use (or about $30), and so far it supports Chinese, English, and Korean. While serving foreign tourists is most certainly a problem here in Japan, I’m not…

Last month at the Infinity Ventures Summit in Sapporo Japan, we had a chance to see a number of great startups during the LaunchPad pitch event. We had to hustle to cover as many of them as we could, but one that we didn’t get a chance to discuss was TapLingual.

The startup pointed out in its pitch that while the number of tourists coming to Japan is expected to grow in the coming years, there’s still a significant language barrier for those in the tourism or service industries. TapLingual’s proposed solution is to enlist the help of a real translator who is sort of conferenced into the conversation, face-to-face, using its smartphone app.

As a part of its on-stage pitch at LaunchPad, TapLingual gave a short video demo (included below) that presented the situation of a Chinese tourist visiting a shop in Japan. The linguistically challenged shopkeeper brings out the TapLingual apps, and is promptly rescued by the smartphone translator.

The service would cost such a retailer 3000 yen per month to use (or about $30), and so far it supports Chinese, English, and Korean.

While serving foreign tourists is most certainly a problem here in Japan, I’m not quite certain if this can be an easy solution. Most shops probably have specialized, frequently used vocab, and I think a translating solution would need to address that to ensure great quality. But TapLingual’s proposal is bold if nothing else, and I’ll be curious to see how their early trials go.

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Japan’s U-Note wants to make sure you don’t miss out on important events

Rick Martin 2013.05.28

Last Friday at the Infinity Ventures Summit LaunchPad event, Tokyo-based startup U-Note pitched a web solution for taking notes at public events. The company’s CEO, Yuto Koide, explained that they want to transfer event memos online. He says that while many people want to attend local events, they can’t possibly make it to every one – either due to time or money constraints. But U-Note provides user accounts of high profile events on its site, a valuable resource to those who cannot make it in person. In terms of the technology, the interface looks very much like Storify.com, allowing users to drag and drop rich media elements like Tweets, photos, videos, and more, in addition to text content. As for mobile note-taking, they have an Android app already released, and one for iPhone on the way. U-Note has nine categories of events on site, such as talks from celebrities, or startup events just like this one [1]. So far the platform is seeing good progress, and May saw 250% growth over the previous month, says Koide. As for monetization, they have editorial ads that they sell for 150,000 yen. They want the user to enjoy the contents, so the editorial…

Last Friday at the Infinity Ventures Summit LaunchPad event, Tokyo-based startup U-Note pitched a web solution for taking notes at public events.

The company’s CEO, Yuto Koide, explained that they want to transfer event memos online. He says that while many people want to attend local events, they can’t possibly make it to every one – either due to time or money constraints. But U-Note provides user accounts of high profile events on its site, a valuable resource to those who cannot make it in person.

In terms of the technology, the interface looks very much like Storify.com, allowing users to drag and drop rich media elements like Tweets, photos, videos, and more, in addition to text content. As for mobile note-taking, they have an Android app already released, and one for iPhone on the way.

U-Note has nine categories of events on site, such as talks from celebrities, or startup events just like this one [1].

So far the platform is seeing good progress, and May saw 250% growth over the previous month, says Koide. As for monetization, they have editorial ads that they sell for 150,000 yen. They want the user to enjoy the contents, so the editorial ads aspire to be more interesting so that users are more receptive to them.

The content business is a tough one, but U-Note’s tool is certainly useful, capitalizing on Japan’s love of creating ‘matome’ or list posts. And assuming that people use it frequently enough. The U-Note page could prove a useful destination for event coverage.

In fact, someone on U-Note actually put together a roundup of the startups competing at the LaunchPad event. ↩

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How do you create a strong management team? Japanese internet execs discuss.

Takeshi Hirano 2013.05.28

See the original story in Japanese. Below is a condensed, translated version. For startups in their launching phase, sometimes the founders may have interpersonal issues, and the team may fall apart as a result. In order to find some insight from some of Japan’s more successful companies, we recently heard from the executives of three Japanese internet giants, giving us a behind-the-scenes look at their management systems. The panel, which took place at last week’s Infinity Ventures Summit, included: Yoshikazu Tanaka, CEO at GREE Kotaro Yamagishi, executive vice president at GREE Yusuke Hidaka, vice president at CyberAgent Tetesuhito Soyama, managing director at CyberAgent Yasuhiro Hagino, managing director at Mixi Yuichi Kawasaki, executive officer at Mixi Moderator: Etsuko Okajima, CEO at Pronova Most executives at GREE have been working together for a long time. Yoshikazu Tanaka, the company’s CEO explains: GREE’s Tanaka: At some companies, growth heavily relies on the founder’s effort. I previously worked at Rakuten where I saw how Hiroshi Mikitani managed the company, I sometimes wanted to work in a way that followed his management style. From my perspective, mobility of personnel is not essential as long as the company keeps growing. But for a startup founder, if…

See the original story in Japanese. Below is a condensed, translated version.

For startups in their launching phase, sometimes the founders may have interpersonal issues, and the team may fall apart as a result. In order to find some insight from some of Japan’s more successful companies, we recently heard from the executives of three Japanese internet giants, giving us a behind-the-scenes look at their management systems. The panel, which took place at last week’s Infinity Ventures Summit, included:

Yoshikazu Tanaka, CEO at GREE
Kotaro Yamagishi, executive vice president at GREE
Yusuke Hidaka, vice president at CyberAgent
Tetesuhito Soyama, managing director at CyberAgent
Yasuhiro Hagino, managing director at Mixi
Yuichi Kawasaki, executive officer at Mixi
Moderator: Etsuko Okajima, CEO at Pronova

Most executives at GREE have been working together for a long time. Yoshikazu Tanaka, the company’s CEO explains:

GREE’s Tanaka: At some companies, growth heavily relies on the founder’s effort. I previously worked at Rakuten where I saw how Hiroshi Mikitani managed the company, I sometimes wanted to work in a way that followed his management style. From my perspective, mobility of personnel is not essential as long as the company keeps growing. But for a startup founder, if you still keep a large stake in your company, your management board does not work anymore – because all the other board members do is just follow your judgment.

To avoid this particular issue, GREE is working on adding external people to its board of directors.

GREE’s Yamagishi: Our business has been rapidly expanding in the last few years, we actually have many issues to address in our management process. Recently we invited someone new to our board of directors, and asked him to provide some general business advice. He’s 65 years old but has been working in the global manufacturing business.

CEO Tanaka described the external director as a sort of mirror, since he can restrain himself based on things that person points out. When asked by the moderator about a possible change of board members, Tanaka responded he would add more people as the company becomes larger.

In a contrast with GREE, CyberAgent takes a different approach to deliver a improved and efficient management. The system is called CA8, and changes the board members every two years. This was deployed to eliminate employees’ anxiety that they might have no chance to join the board of directors in the future.

CyberAgent’s Hidaka: Our CEO Fujita has alone decided everything about the CA8 system. He said we would create the rules of personnel management and employee welfare from the scratch. If a rule works appropriately, we’ll keep using it in the company. To be honest, the system has some negative effects, but the positive aspects surpass the negative one.

A person from the audience asked if the company has any intention to invite a non-employee to become an executive at a future subsidiary. In response, Hidaka explained:

CyberAgent’s Hidaka: For an entrepreneur running a startup, if you can understand our corporate culture, we can acquire your startup and invite you to our team, which will work well. We haven’t yet done this because we haven’t found such a high-potential talent or startup. We are used to growing a business with our own employees rather than acquiring new business from outside the company. This trend will continue.

Perhaps by this he means that the company requires no drastic changes as long as its business keeps growing.

Mixi’s Ogino: Unlike the other two companies, our growth is in a crucial stage right now. In this situation, some of our employees started to stand in the way of their most competitive colleagues. That is unfortunate. In the beginning of 2010, my previous company was acquired and I joined the team. At that time our people were always following what their boss said, and they had no interest in competing with other internet companies or aiming for the top in the global markets.

In the crucial moments for management or executives, unless you change your mind significantly, your people are likely to see that you are not seriously determined to make things happen. But I learned the entire company may change if a small number of people change their mind.

Mixi acquired Naked Technology back in 2011, and Kamado in 2012. Those startups’ co-founders Yusuke Asakura and Yuichi Kawasaki joined Mixi, and now its board is filled with experienced entrepreneurs.

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Japan’s Trapro brings people together around important social issues

Rick Martin 2013.05.27

Civic startups, or startups that try to achieve some social good, are especially rare in Japan. But at the Infinity Ventures Summit LaunchPad event last week, we saw a pitch from Trapro proposing a sort of Wikipedia for social issues. The startup is an interesting one that plans and organizes tours around important social issues, and helps people interested in those issues to participate in a tour related to that issue. So that could mean a 10-person tour of a local NPO, where each person pays 5000 yen, or about $50. So if an NPO were to conduct such a tour several times a month, it could represent a significant revenue stream for them. The tours will take place on the weekend so as to not interrupt the NPO’s business. Of course the big knock against civic startups is that they don’t often make much money. Trapro hopes to give 70% of the your earnings to the NPO, so there’s still a decent chunk left for them. Whether or not it enough to be sustainable remains to be seen. Founder Toshiki Abe explains: This is something that people have trouble finding out about, so I want to make a system…

Civic startups, or startups that try to achieve some social good, are especially rare in Japan. But at the Infinity Ventures Summit LaunchPad event last week, we saw a pitch from Trapro proposing a sort of Wikipedia for social issues.

The startup is an interesting one that plans and organizes tours around important social issues, and helps people interested in those issues to participate in a tour related to that issue. So that could mean a 10-person tour of a local NPO, where each person pays 5000 yen, or about $50. So if an NPO were to conduct such a tour several times a month, it could represent a significant revenue stream for them. The tours will take place on the weekend so as to not interrupt the NPO’s business.

Of course the big knock against civic startups is that they don’t often make much money. Trapro hopes to give 70% of the your earnings to the NPO, so there’s still a decent chunk left for them. Whether or not it enough to be sustainable remains to be seen. Founder Toshiki Abe explains:

This is something that people have trouble finding out about, so I want to make a system that makes it easier. There are some things you can’t understand unless you go in person. When you come back from a trip, you can write your impressions and add photos, thus raising awareness of that issue. ¶

So far Trapro has had over 60 such social issue tours with more than 2000 participants. They hope to involve public schools as well. Currently Tokyo University students can earn credit by planning these trips. The startup plans to have people go on issue-related tours around the world and have fun learning about them.

Trapro tied for fifth place at the LaunchPad pitch event, but it was one of my favorites as founder Toshiki Abe gave an enthusiastic and convincing pitch. We’ve often spoke about how difficult it is to be an entrepreneur in risk-averse Japan, and I think it requires an extra large pair to do a idealistic, socially-minded startup like this one. I sincerely hope it does well.

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Speedy wants Japanese students to take their study mobile

Rick Martin 2013.05.27

At the Infinity Ventures Summit event last week in Sapporo, there was no shortage of great startups pitching their ideas at the LaunchPad event. One of the standouts, in my view, was Speedy, a service that incorporates a mobile platform where high school students can capture and share their study notes online. The solution was pitched by Marie Kojima of Scryva Inc (pictured below), who pointed out that lots of students use smartphones to stay connected particularly on platforms like Line or Twitter. Naturally using mobile devices for study is something that Japanese users would embrace, since paper is heavy and cumbersome in comparison to your mobile, which is always with you. Speedy proposes that students digitize their notes by taking a picture and then uploading it to their platform so they can review it while on a train or bus, or even share with friends. The sharing process, Kojima points out, can help students deepen their understanding through discussion. Speedy hopes to encourage this process by making it more fun with stickers too, which can be added overtop of notes to brighten up the commentary. The platform will also let students call for help if they need. So on…

At the Infinity Ventures Summit event last week in Sapporo, there was no shortage of great startups pitching their ideas at the LaunchPad event. One of the standouts, in my view, was Speedy, a service that incorporates a mobile platform where high school students can capture and share their study notes online.

The solution was pitched by Marie Kojima of Scryva Inc (pictured below), who pointed out that lots of students use smartphones to stay connected particularly on platforms like Line or Twitter. Naturally using mobile devices for study is something that Japanese users would embrace, since paper is heavy and cumbersome in comparison to your mobile, which is always with you. Speedy proposes that students digitize their notes by taking a picture and then uploading it to their platform so they can review it while on a train or bus, or even share with friends. The sharing process, Kojima points out, can help students deepen their understanding through discussion. Speedy hopes to encourage this process by making it more fun with stickers too, which can be added overtop of notes to brighten up the commentary.

The platform will also let students call for help if they need. So on the night before a test, for example, if they can’t solve a problem, they post a question. At that point a tutor (tutors are mostly university students) gets an alert that a student has a question, and they can record and return their answer in the same way. The process is entirely mobile.

What’s most interesting here is that Speedy plans to build a database of such answers so they can be repurposed in the future. And such a bank of information, if organized correctly, should prove popular.

So far students have been enthusiastic, and in a survey the company conducted, 55% of students responded that they would like to use such a service. As for payment, users would need a credit card (so they’ll have to ask their parents) to pay the 2980 yen fee each month, but that would get them access to unlimited tutoring advice.

Speedy will be launching in June, with the goal of bringing on 500,000 free users, and then converting some of those to its paid plan.

Check out Speedy’s demo video above to find out more about how it works.

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With 10% of its users Japan, Strikingly officially launches localized service

Rick Martin 2013.05.27

At Infinity Ventures Summit in Sapporo, Japan, we briefly caught up with David Chen, the CEO of Strikingly, a service that lets you create small websites that look great on mobile with minimal effort. The service is now going after the Japanese market, and Strikingly.jp just went live late last week with a Japanese-language interface. Surprisingly, ten percent of the company’s users already come from Japan, and that’s without any efforts to localize or promote the service in the country. Perhaps even more important is that many Japanese users are also paid customers, though maybe that’s not so surprising given that Japan’s internet can be thought of largely as a mobile internet. Strikingly’s designs are entirely responsive, and look good on any sized device — a key feature for any such service here in Japan. I’ve used some similar services in the past, most notably About.me which is pretty simple. That service, however, when viewed on mobile does a better job of promoting About.me than it does its users. Personally I like the idea of just using Github Pages, but if you’d prefer to save yourself the trouble and the difficulty, Strikingly is a great option, especially if it’s for…

david-chen-strikingly — David Chen of Strikingly, at Infinity Ventures Summit

At Infinity Ventures Summit in Sapporo, Japan, we briefly caught up with David Chen, the CEO of Strikingly, a service that lets you create small websites that look great on mobile with minimal effort. The service is now going after the Japanese market, and Strikingly.jp just went live late last week with a Japanese-language interface.

Surprisingly, ten percent of the company’s users already come from Japan, and that’s without any efforts to localize or promote the service in the country. Perhaps even more important is that many Japanese users are also paid customers, though maybe that’s not so surprising given that Japan’s internet can be thought of largely as a mobile internet. Strikingly’s designs are entirely responsive, and look good on any sized device — a key feature for any such service here in Japan.

I’ve used some similar services in the past, most notably About.me which is pretty simple. That service, however, when viewed on mobile does a better job of promoting About.me than it does its users. Personally I like the idea of just using Github Pages, but if you’d prefer to save yourself the trouble and the difficulty, Strikingly is a great option, especially if it’s for your business.

So for example, many of the startups we cover on this site could certainly use such a service to create beautiful pages for their apps. I whipped up a sample photography page for myself in just five minutes using the new Japanese site. As you can see below, the process is as simple as choosing your type of site, selecting a theme, and then editing the content.

Strikingly is backed by Y-Combinator, but as we heard from David on when he spoke at the Infinity Ventures Summit, the startup has faced a number of obstacles in getting where it is today.

Check out the new localized version over on Strikingly.jp.

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Japan’s LifeTimer is redefining the calendar app

Rick Martin 2013.05.25

This is part of our coverage of the startup LaunchPad event from the Infinitity Ventures Summit in Sapporo, Japan. To read about other startups who pitched, you can read our other reports here. One of the most interesting startups to pitch at the IVS Launchpad event was Pickles Inc. Readers may recognize the Tokyo-based mobile app development studio as the team that developed the clever Stamp Messenger app for Facebook messaging which we recently featured. But the service the brought to Sapporo this week was drastically different, as CEO Minoru Tanaka presented LifeTimer, a sort of personal scheduling or calendaring app that makes you think about time a little differently. LifeTimer shows you your important life events as a countdown, thus conveying a sense of urgency, a kind of constant reminder that we might not have as much time as we think. The clock is after all ticking for us all, and LifeTimer is a good reminder of that. Upon first opening the app, you have the option of connecting to your Facebook account, thus importing many if the events that may be on your schedule. You are also asked for your birthday, and when I did so it resulted…

This is part of our coverage of the startup LaunchPad event from the Infinitity Ventures Summit in Sapporo, Japan. To read about other startups who pitched, you can read our other reports here.

One of the most interesting startups to pitch at the IVS Launchpad event was Pickles Inc. Readers may recognize the Tokyo-based mobile app development studio as the team that developed the clever Stamp Messenger app for Facebook messaging which we recently featured. But the service the brought to Sapporo this week was drastically different, as CEO Minoru Tanaka presented LifeTimer, a sort of personal scheduling or calendaring app that makes you think about time a little differently.

LifeTimer shows you your important life events as a countdown, thus conveying a sense of urgency, a kind of constant reminder that we might not have as much time as we think. The clock is after all ticking for us all, and LifeTimer is a good reminder of that.

Upon first opening the app, you have the option of connecting to your Facebook account, thus importing many if the events that may be on your schedule. You are also asked for your birthday, and when I did so it resulted in a countdown showing me when I’m going to turn forty! [1] I understand they are also looking at Google Calendar integration as well.

You can input your working hours, when you wake up or go to sleep, as well as important birthdays or other custom events. Repeating events can be set to recur yearly, monthly, or daily.

In this way, says Tanaka, they hope to dissect your day so that you can have a better understanding of time, and improve your life as a result. So far users appear to be responding well, with very positive ratings and reviews. For monetization, so far the app depends on ads, but premium features or add-ons will also be part of its business.

The nine-person team is planning to produce a version of LifeTimer in English, so stay tunes for that. But for now, if you’d like to try the Japanese version of the app, it’s available for download over on Apple’ App Store or on Google Play.

Thankfully I still have over five years left, but it’s nice to have a constant reminder to tell me that I’m not as young as I used to be. ↩

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At Infinity Ventures Summit, Asian startups discuss taking on global markets

Rick Martin 2013.05.24

This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Sapporo, Japan. You can read more of our reports from this event here. On day two of the Infinity Ventures Summit, we heard from three up-and-coming startups who related how they are taking on global markets. So far all of these companies have seen some success in global markets, but for all three that only came after lots of failure. The panelists included: John Lai Founder & CEO MixerBox Inc. Peter Yen, CEO, Pinkoi David Chen, CEO, Strikingly Moderator: Akio Tanaka, Co-founder & Managing Partner, Infinity Venture Partners The discussion started out with Peter, who explained that Taiwan-based Pinkoi has 65,000 unique products, 3,000 brands, and 8,000 designs. Most are from its home market of Taiwan (about 70%), but they are getting more from other countries. They plan to add more languages to their service to aid in their international growth. Interestingly, Peter had seven failed products before finally finding success with Pinkoi. And so far while their growth has been mostly organic, it has been very strong as you can see in the charts below. Pinkoi has 100,000 members, and saw $610,000 in total sales in…

This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Sapporo, Japan. You can read more of our reports from this event here.

On day two of the Infinity Ventures Summit, we heard from three up-and-coming startups who related how they are taking on global markets. So far all of these companies have seen some success in global markets, but for all three that only came after lots of failure. The panelists included:

John Lai Founder & CEO MixerBox Inc.
Peter Yen, CEO, Pinkoi
David Chen, CEO, Strikingly
Moderator: Akio Tanaka, Co-founder & Managing Partner, Infinity Venture Partners

The discussion started out with Peter, who explained that Taiwan-based Pinkoi has 65,000 unique products, 3,000 brands, and 8,000 designs. Most are from its home market of Taiwan (about 70%), but they are getting more from other countries. They plan to add more languages to their service to aid in their international growth.

Interestingly, Peter had seven failed products before finally finding success with Pinkoi. And so far while their growth has been mostly organic, it has been very strong as you can see in the charts below. Pinkoi has 100,000 members, and saw $610,000 in total sales in 2012. As you may have guessed, Pinkoi targets female users. And such cute services certainly have a global appeal.

John describes that his company had 10 failed products before Mixerbox. Japan is now its biggest user base, but it has been the number one music app in 13 countries. Their app tries to make it easy to create playlists and share them with friends, sort of like digitizing the mixed tape process.

You can also browse other people’s playlists and subscribe to those too. In the beginning he says there was lots of pressure to succeed, since he had left an established family business to branch out on his own. But he had faith that eventually he would hit the right product.

As for David, he relates starting out with Strikingly out of a messy room in San Francisco. They managed to run the startup in the early days on a meagre budget of $1,600 per month – and that included their rent. From those beginnings Strikingly emerged, a solution for creating simple mobile-first websites in a very easy way. David points to one of their users who is blind, but managed to create a website on the iPad using Strikingly.

They have 40% monthly growth in revenue in the last eight months, with users in 178 countries. Their biggest user base is the US, but the second biggest market is Japan, without any localization efforts until now. So far there have been over 40,000 websites created on the platform to date. David tells about how they were first rejected from the Y-Combinator incubator, but managed to get in the second time. But their initial failures, he says, have been famously well-documented in publications like Forbes and The New York Times.

The common thread among these three entrepreneurs is persistence in the face of failure. And like most startups that eventually find wide-spread success, that experience becomes an asset. For Japanese startups, this willingness to take risks and fail is a good lesson to learn from.

Infinity Ventures Summit

This Japanese startup wants to open source its DNA amplifier

Hairmo: Another Japanese startup that wants to match stylists and models

TapLingual: The mobile solution to Japan’s language woes?

Japan’s U-Note wants to make sure you don’t miss out on important events

How do you create a strong management team? Japanese internet execs discuss.

Japan’s Trapro brings people together around important social issues

Speedy wants Japanese students to take their study mobile

With 10% of its users Japan, Strikingly officially launches localized service

Japan’s LifeTimer is redefining the calendar app

At Infinity Ventures Summit, Asian startups discuss taking on global markets

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