See the original story in Japanese.

Kobe City along with 500 Startups held a Demo Day for the 3rd batch of the 500 Kobe Accelerator program in December. The Program held a Pre-Demo Day in Kobe the week prior, while the actual Demo Day took place in Tokyo with the intention of introducing the companies to investors and corporate open innovators. The organizers announced that some 400 people participated.

Beginning with mentoring, the majority of the program content for the 3rd batch took place over a month and a half from October 29th to December 1st at the Design Creative Center Kobe (KIITO). There were 237 applicants for the 3rd batch, of which 20 teams (14 from Japan, 6 from overseas) were selected and participated (from which 18 pitched at the Demo Day).

The following is a short description of the teams and service content (based on materials provided by 500 Startups) in the order that they took the stage.

• Tokyo Techies by Tokyo Techies (Tokyo) … offers a professional education service for cybersecurity, personalized data science and AI for companies and individuals
• Bonyu by Bonyu (Tokyo) …. analyzes the makeup of breast milk and provides dietary guidance and supplements to reduce mother’s stress and give healthy breast milk to children
• Kiara by Jenio (Tokyo) … a video conferencing tool suppoting simultaneous interpretation with subtitles in 120 languages
• Beacon by Lizuna G.K (Tokyo) … an app using big data to detect and prevent online fraud
• Honey Magazine by Okko (Tokyo) … offers virtual novels for iOS and Android, mainly dealing with love comics for women
• T-ICU by T-ICU (Ashiya) … allows remote ICU physicians to monitor the condition of a patient at ICU (intentive care unit) 24/7 and propose appropriate medical treatment to the patient’s non-ICU phyisician
• TeamFinder by Noborder (Tokyo)  … An AI-powered recruiting platform that allows companies to build the best team
• ExCamp by Forent (Tsukuba) … a sharing economy service for using idle land as campgrounds
• BuyandShip by E-Buy Global (China) … an integrated sales and distribution platform for cross-border e-commerce linking Asia and the world (see related article here)
• Doot! by Doot! (South Africa) … a matching service for visitors to Japan to experience traditional food and culture throughout the country
• Clarity by Clarity (Tokyo) … a word-of-mouth platform/database that makes the work environment for companies transparent and allows users to search for jobs based on what it is like to work for the company
• Web2ship by Web2ship (US) … helps online shoppers in Southeast Asia and the US choose an optimal shipping method
• Sagri by Sagri (Hyogo) … a SaaS platform that analyzes and visualizes tacit knowledge of farmers along with space and agricultural land data
• Elxr by Elxr (Singapore) … a fitness support app based on DNA analysis
• Shokunin-san.com by Shokunin-san.com (Kobe) … a job matching site for construction workers
• Pisces by Pisces (Tokyo) … a 3D online business communication tool for teams with their people working remotely
• Visual Design Cafe by Visual Design Cafe (Kobe) … an online library of 3D models to improve the speed and quality of game development
• GPU Eater by Pegara (US) … offers hardware and operating system as PaaS (Platform as a Service) for machine learning (deep learning)

The following two teams were unable to present due to unforeseen circumstances.

• Vaak by Vaak (Tokyo) … leverages computer vision and deep learning to prevent shoplifting and constructing unmanned stores
• Driver Design Studio by Driver Design Studio (Thailand) … allows auto manufacturers to propose products and services to customers based on data collected from their cars.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

See the original story in Japanese.

Silicon Valley-headquartered VC firm 500 Startups and the City of Kobe, Japan today announced the establishment of a collaborative pre-accelerator program. It will be run at the Kobe Institute of Computing located near Kobe-Sannomiya station from 1 August to 9 September. On the last day of the program, a Demo Day will be held for participant teams to show the result of the program, to which partners of 500 Startups will be invited, namely, Dave McClure, Christine Tsai, Zafer Younis, Marvin Liao and Mat Johnson.

The City of Kobe and 500 Startups just started today accepting applications from participant startups via the program’s website. Eventually 15 to 20 teams will be selected from among them, and allowed to join the pre-accelerator program over a one month period. Applicants are limited to startups at seed stage inside / outside Japan, and covering fields including BI (business intelligence) tool, commerce, FinTech, EduTech, healthcare, IoT (Internet of Things), SaaS (Software as a Service) and so on. In particular, for cases on themes which focus on regional challenges in the Kobe area, the teams will be allowed to enter into partnership with sponsoring big companies (as part of Open Innovation support).

As in a former case where 500 startups had engaged in incubation by tying up with local government, one may be reminded of the joint activities with the City of Osaka in 2013. Taking this as an opportunity, currently various events or programs related to startup acceleration have been carried out in the Osaka area, such as an annual startup conference every February like the collaboration HackOsaka, a 4.8 billion yen (about $44 million)-fund Hack Ventures backed by Osaka City / Osaka-based companies, incubation efforts conducted mainly at OIH (Osaka Innovation Hub) / GVH (Global Venture Habitat) in front of Osaka station, or a startups dispatch program to Silicon Valley.

See also:

• 500 Startups’ Expectations for Japan and Beyond – Interview with Dave McClure (Ignition)
• Japan’s startup ecosystem gets lift from Silicon Valley’s Hiroshi Menjo (Beacon Reports)

On the other hand, the City of Kobe has been running startup competition Kobe Global Startup Gateway or a startup support business called Kobe Startup Office which gathers promising startups from within or outside Japan from last year. Looking at startup support activities by local government in Japan other than Tokyo, they are in fierce competition with each others in trying to differentiate their own support plans or to capture startups. For example, Fukuoka City aims at globalization of the community by inviting startups from Taiwan, which is rather close geographically.

It is likely that Kobe decided to rely upon 500 Startups for ‘globalization’; the word also can be seen in the name of the startup competition KOBE Global Startup Gateway which was started as of last year. We hope the startups from Kobe will enhance their presence in global startup hubs including Silicon Valley, triggered by the establishment of this pre-accelerator program.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy