See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Lancers, the Japanese startup providing a major crowdsourcing platform under the same name, announced on Wednesday that the IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Mothers Market on December 16 with plans to offer 2,270,000 million shares for public subscription and to sell up to 1,100,600 shares in over-allotment options, for a total of 5,067,400 shares. Daiwa Securities will lead the underwriting. Its share price range will be released on November 17 with bookbuilding scheduled to start on November 29 and pricing on December 6. According to the consolidated statement as of March 2019, they posted revenue of 2.52 billion yen (about $23.2 million) with an ordinary loss of 93 million yen ($854,000), serving 33,000 companies in Japan while unit sales per client reaches 194,000 yen (about $1,780). See also: Can crowdsourcing startups change Japan’s employment landscape? Lancers CEO Yosuke Akiyoshi on obstacles facing crowdsourcing in Japan Japanese crowdsourcing startup Lancers launches matchmaking platform for regional businesses Since its launch back in 2008, the company has been offering a platform allowing companies outsource tasks to freelancers. The traditional concept of crowdsourcing…
Tokyo-based Lancers, the Japanese startup providing a major crowdsourcing platform under the same name, announced on Wednesday that the IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Mothers Market on December 16 with plans to offer 2,270,000 million shares for public subscription and to sell up to 1,100,600 shares in over-allotment options, for a total of 5,067,400 shares. Daiwa Securities will lead the underwriting.
Its share price range will be released on November 17 with bookbuilding scheduled to start on November 29 and pricing on December 6. According to the consolidated statement as of March 2019, they posted revenue of 2.52 billion yen (about $23.2 million) with an ordinary loss of 93 million yen ($854,000), serving 33,000 companies in Japan while unit sales per client reaches 194,000 yen (about $1,780).
See also:
Can crowdsourcing startups change Japan’s employment landscape?
Since its launch back in 2008, the company has been offering a platform allowing companies outsource tasks to freelancers. The traditional concept of crowdsourcing has been that someone in a remote location helps you finish minor tasks at an affordable rate. But platforms like Lancers are being used for more, serving as a primary income stream for some.
Led by CEO Yosuke Akiyoshi (62.47%), the company’s major shareholders include Globis Capital Partners (15.62%), KDDI (5.95%), Persol Holdings (5.38%), GMO Venture Partners (3.05%), Shinsei Bank (2.3%), and Gree Ventures (1.18%, now known as Strive).
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Lancers, the Japanese startup providing a major crowdsourcing platform under the same name, announced last month that it had raised 1 billion yen (about $9 million) from Persol Holdings (TSE:2181) and Shinsei Bank (TSE:8303). Concluding business partnership contracts with both companies concurrently, Lancers will commence its new financing business targeting freelance workers. According to Lancers, the current number of freelancers in Japan is 11.22 million comprising 17% of the entire working population, showing a 5% increase from last year. It is said that more and more Japanese workers are coming to choose a ‘new work style’ which is neither full-time nor contract work. On the other hand, Persol Group, one of the investors this time, has developed various businesses that enhance job mobility of the Japanese working population, by using temporary staff company Tempstaff (TSE:2476) or staffing agency Persol Career (TSE:4757, formerly known as Intelligence) that it owns. While the two companies had been affiliated through investment via Persol Career, by adding Shinsei Bank into this framework, they aim to develop and provide a new loan service to individual workers who need equipment investment or education / training upon starting new business. At…
Tokyo-based Lancers, the Japanese startup providing a major crowdsourcing platform under the same name, announced last month that it had raised 1 billion yen (about $9 million) from Persol Holdings (TSE:2181) and Shinsei Bank (TSE:8303). Concluding business partnership contracts with both companies concurrently, Lancers will commence its new financing business targeting freelance workers.
According to Lancers, the current number of freelancers in Japan is 11.22 million comprising 17% of the entire working population, showing a 5% increase from last year. It is said that more and more Japanese workers are coming to choose a ‘new work style’ which is neither full-time nor contract work. On the other hand, Persol Group, one of the investors this time, has developed various businesses that enhance job mobility of the Japanese working population, by using temporary staff company Tempstaff (TSE:2476) or staffing agency Persol Career (TSE:4757, formerly known as Intelligence) that it owns.
While the two companies had been affiliated through investment via Persol Career, by adding Shinsei Bank into this framework, they aim to develop and provide a new loan service to individual workers who need equipment investment or education / training upon starting new business.
At the press conference held last April, Lancers announced that its sales in 2016 exceeded 2.1 billion yen and then revealed a new concept of Open Talent Platform as its business strategy out of an otherwise conventional online work matching platform. It presented several action plans for gearing up of its service operation as part of the concept, such as start of individual skill matching platform Pook or the spin-off of Quant for corporate customers.
The loan business to individuals announced this time is an extension of the concept, and is expected to be a system enabling individual workers to receive credit examination or third-party evaluation as with full-time workers. Specifically, they plan to visualize individual workers’ skill or work style as ‘Talent Score’ based on evaluation data accumulated by Persol Group or Lancers, and input it into business activities leveraging Shinsei Bank’s financial know-how.
Yohsuke Akiyoshi, CEO of Lancers, explained that the firm will jointly develop Talent Score as an evaluation criterion for the establishment of ‘Lancer Economies’:
Our cumulative fundraised amount is 2.3 billion yen (about $21 million) including this round. I see the two companies as partners to establish Talent Score together in order to increase freelancers’ working option under the framework of Open Talent Platform.
With Persol Holdings, we will jointly develop an evaluation system of freelancer’s work style and skill. Even in Lancers or Persol, full-time workers taking up freelance works as side jobs have been appearing.
Akiyoshi said the kind of workers that are expected to benefit most through this business partnership is those who hold full-time jobs and freelance work concurrently, called ‘parallel worker’:
Conventionally, work contents or performance evaluation were completely separated between the main job and the extra job.
However, in the economic area we are going to create, users can receive higher salary in their main job reflecting feedback of the subsidiary job performance at Lancers, or vice versa.
With the other partner Shinsei Bank, Lancers plans to carry out activities related to credit examination based on the score, according to Akiyoshi:
We also develop Talent Score with Shinsei Bank. Although Lancers has own unique data, the bank has a strength in individual credit data in terms of quality and quantity.
By cooperating with the institution, we will upgrade Talent Score and invest in Lancers users who are scored at a certain level, in order to change the current situation where it is harder for freelancers to borrow money than full-time workers. Imagine how we can improve their work style together as well as their life generally.
With respect to the concept of scoring individuals, Japan’s Crowd Works had also announced a similar lending service called Crowd Cash. The two players seem to lead the construction of infrastructure surrounding the Japanese new work style now in formation.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based crowdsourcing startup Lancers was launched in December 2008. It has since acquired over 100,000 companies and 410,000 crowdsourced users. Lancers announced today that it has fundraised about 1 billion yen (or about $8.45 million) from KDDI (telco), Intelligence Holdings (employment service), Colopl (gaming company), Gree Ventures, Globis Capital Partners, and GMO Venture Partners. The company will use the funds to cultivate crowdsourceing needs in the market, support freelancers using the crowdsourcing platform, hire new people, and strengthen their system development efforts. Coinciding with the funds, Lancers has partnered with KDDI, Intelligence, and Gree, and will help these companies use crowdsourced forces for their content production activities. See also: Japanese crowdsourcing startup Lancers launches matchmaking platform for regional businesses Lancers CEO Yosuke Akiyoshi on obstacles facing crowdsourcing in Japan Japanese crowdsourcing marketplace Lancers raises $2.9 million Can crowdsourcing startups change Japan’s employment landscape?
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.
Tokyo-based crowdsourcing startup Lancers was launched in December 2008. It has since acquired over 100,000 companies and 410,000 crowdsourced users.
Lancers announced today that it has fundraised about 1 billion yen (or about $8.45 million) from KDDI (telco), Intelligence Holdings (employment service), Colopl (gaming company), Gree Ventures, Globis Capital Partners, and GMO Venture Partners. The company will use the funds to cultivate crowdsourceing needs in the market, support freelancers using the crowdsourcing platform, hire new people, and strengthen their system development efforts.
Coinciding with the funds, Lancers has partnered with KDDI, Intelligence, and Gree, and will help these companies use crowdsourced forces for their content production activities.
Tokyo-based Lancers operates one of Japan’s most popular crowdsourcing platforms. The company recently announced it has also launched a business matchmaking platform in closed beta, with the goal of connecting non-IT and regional business operators with potential clients. The new site is called Lancers Place, developed as a part of an effort to explore new business with Japanese telco KDDI. By leveraging crowdsourced online workers, Lancers has been helping clients fulfill their IT needs in areas like web design, brochure layouts, and mobile app coding. But the company has been planning to expand beyond IT. KDDI has had a program for small and medium-sized enterprises since 2010, helping members find appropriate business fulfillment services. By connecting their user bases each other, the two companies expect to create more business opportunities that span geographical locations and business sectors. Lancers aims to get about 100,000 regional businesses listed on the platform by the end of FY2014, and will work on member acquisition prior to launching the matchmaking function. Via CNET Japan
Tokyo-based Lancers operates one of Japan’s most popular crowdsourcing platforms. The company recently announced it has also launched a business matchmaking platform in closed beta, with the goal of connecting non-IT and regional business operators with potential clients. The new site is called Lancers Place, developed as a part of an effort to explore new business with Japanese telco KDDI.
By leveraging crowdsourced online workers, Lancers has been helping clients fulfill their IT needs in areas like web design, brochure layouts, and mobile app coding. But the company has been planning to expand beyond IT. KDDI has had a program for small and medium-sized enterprises since 2010, helping members find appropriate business fulfillment services. By connecting their user bases each other, the two companies expect to create more business opportunities that span geographical locations and business sectors.
Lancers aims to get about 100,000 regional businesses listed on the platform by the end of FY2014, and will work on member acquisition prior to launching the matchmaking function.
This is part of our coverage of Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto 2013 See the original article in Japanese We conducted many interviews about consumer-to-consumer (C2C) businesses at the recent Infinity Ventures Summit. Today we have a conversation from that event that we had with Yosuke Akiyoshi, the CEO of Lancers, a leading startup in Japan’s crowdsourcing space. The Bridge: Here I’ve been interviewing many people from the C2C businesses. One of the hot topics among those people lately is Crowdworks’ recent fund raising. Akiyoshi: Looking back on the five years since we launched our crowdsourcing business, the space has really changed a lot. We target people with basic knowledge of the internet, and among those people, words such as ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘Lancers’ became better known. It took four years for the total number of users (workers who receive orders) to reach 100,000. The number rapidly grew to 200,000 this October, and 220,000 last month. It could surpass 300,000 early next year. But some users still feel they don’t fully understand the system. So, we need to better educate them. In that sense, the 1.1 billion yen (raised by Crowdworks) means a lot in developing the industry. The Bridge: You announced…
We conducted many interviews about consumer-to-consumer (C2C) businesses at the recent Infinity Ventures Summit. Today we have a conversation from that event that we had with Yosuke Akiyoshi, the CEO of Lancers, a leading startup in Japan’s crowdsourcing space.
The Bridge: Here I’ve been interviewing many people from the C2C businesses. One of the hot topics among those people lately is Crowdworks’ recent fund raising.
Akiyoshi: Looking back on the five years since we launched our crowdsourcing business, the space has really changed a lot. We target people with basic knowledge of the internet, and among those people, words such as ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘Lancers’ became better known. It took four years for the total number of users (workers who receive orders) to reach 100,000. The number rapidly grew to 200,000 this October, and 220,000 last month. It could surpass 300,000 early next year. But some users still feel they don’t fully understand the system. So, we need to better educate them. In that sense, the 1.1 billion yen (raised by Crowdworks) means a lot in developing the industry.
The Bridge: You announced today that Lancers will have partnership with GMO Epsilon Inc.
Akiyoshi: GMO Epsilon offers payment services, and lots of work opportunities will arise due to the implementation of the service. Many of such work orders will be placed on Lancers.
The Bridge: The fast-growing aspects of crowdsourcing tend to get a lot of attention. But many services struggle to build a solid culture for C2C and B2C businesses. What kind of issues do you face?
Akiyoshi: Users are increasing, and I don’t see any problem with that. The problem lies on the side of the companies. Currently, there are a core group of companies who are accustomed to the system. But the goal is for any company to use the system. And there are issues that need to be overcome.
The Bridge: I see.
Akiyoshi: First, direction. When a company places an order, it needs to divide the work. But many companies get stuck at this point.
The Bridge: For example, for a web-design work order, work needs to be divided into coding, writing, and programming, with an order made for each. We plan to solve this issue by holding seminars for companies and dividing up the process control of the system. Also, product managers who can understand and handle the process are needed. We aim to implement more training to increase the amount of such product mangers. We need to enlighten companies.
The Bridge: When you enlighten companies, so to speak, which advantages of Lancers do you emphasize?
Akiyoshi: We tell them the overall advantages in speed, cost and resources.
The Bridge: What about users who receive orders? How do you educate them? I heard you often visit local areas.
Akiyoshi: I have already visited about 15 regions. I realized it is important to have face-to-face communication and to solve such issues. … There are few jobs in local regions. Businesses in Tokyo take jobs from the local. There are few useful communities where you can find opportunities, unlike Tokyo.
The Bridge: How long do you think it will take for crowdsourcing to be accepted as a new kind of work style?
Akiyoshi: It depends on how we measure the success, although we have set a metric. Right now, there are about 200 workers who can make a living just from their Lancers work. We’d like to increase that figure to 10,000 by 2017. But it will take much longer to completely change people’s way of working.
The Bridge: It will certainly take a while. So what number or metric do you currently care about the most?
Akiyoshi: Focusing on improving the users’ experiences, we pay attention to the repeat customer rate. Of course we look at the number of the work orders and the member total at the same time.
The Bridge: Thank you for your time.
I got the impression that more workers understand the concept of crowdsourcing these days. But there are still lots of obstacles that get in the way of companies using crowdsourcing. It’s not only about speed and cost, but quality needs to be considered. And it requires more understanding from companies about how to use the system and handle the process control. That knowledge is not open enough, and it becomes an obstacle.
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese crowsourcing marketplace Lancers announced today that it has raised 300 million yen ($2.9 million) from Globis Capital Partners (GCP) and GMO Venture Partners (GMO-VP). Coinciding with this funding, GCP partner Shinichi Takamiya has joined Lancers’ the board of directors. Readers may recall that we previously wrote about Lancers back in April. Since the service launched in 2008, it has acquired about 140,000 members (crowdsourced workers) and has transactioned about 7 billion yen ($68.3 million). The amount of the transactions reached 3.5 billion yen ($34.2 million) in the previous fiscal year, which is same amount as its total dealings up to that point (i.e. from 2008 and 2011). The company recently moved its headquarters from Shibuya to Kamakura, just outside of Tokyo. Why now? Lancers’ CEO Yosuke Akiyoshi explained why they raised funds at this particular point: Our business is growing well, and we’re not suffering from cash flow issues. However, we made up our minds to fundraise so we can massively speed up our business at this time. […] Now we need to focus on standardizing the format of crowdsourcing projects. By enhancing its database of crowdsourcing workers, the startup is now exploring…
Japanese crowsourcing marketplace Lancers announced today that it has raised 300 million yen ($2.9 million) from Globis Capital Partners (GCP) and GMO Venture Partners (GMO-VP). Coinciding with this funding, GCP partner Shinichi Takamiya has joined Lancers’ the board of directors. Readers may recall that we previously wrote about Lancers back in April.
Since the service launched in 2008, it has acquired about 140,000 members (crowdsourced workers) and has transactioned about 7 billion yen ($68.3 million). The amount of the transactions reached 3.5 billion yen ($34.2 million) in the previous fiscal year, which is same amount as its total dealings up to that point (i.e. from 2008 and 2011).
The company recently moved its headquarters from Shibuya to Kamakura, just outside of Tokyo.
Why now?
Lancers’ CEO Yosuke Akiyoshi
Lancers’ CEO Yosuke Akiyoshi explained why they raised funds at this particular point:
Our business is growing well, and we’re not suffering from cash flow issues. However, we made up our minds to fundraise so we can massively speed up our business at this time. […] Now we need to focus on standardizing the format of crowdsourcing projects.
By enhancing its database of crowdsourcing workers, the startup is now exploring partnerships with other category-focused crowdsourcing services such as ADFlow (crowdsourcing banner ad design) or MugenUp (crowdsouring illustration or cartoon-drawing work).
Cultivating local workers in local markets
Regarding expanding their business in local markets, he explains:
In order to make our business grow further, I believe it’s also important to help freelancers grow. They aren’t our employees but we need to invest in cultivating these workforces. If you compare outsourcing tasks to overseas markets with doing so in local markets, there will be no significant gap in terms of cost. But there’s a big gap in the volume of the tasks between the two. We’d like to gather more users and partners by promoting the new freelance working style as well as our own platform.
The startup is planning to launch a new system in the future, where they will conduct interviews to find potential leaders among freelancers at many locations across the country. They will be approved as ‘qualified freelancers’ and lead projects with other workers located at various locations.
People typically see crowdsourcing as a sort of quick and dirty solution. To overcome this stigma, Akiyoshi plans to increase the amount of quality deals on the marketplace.
We actually get more offers from corporate users, [although] we’re haven’t intensified our sales efforts. Once a company uses our service, we’ve seen that its subsidiaries or group companies follow suit.
The company also plans to provide further support to workers, with health insurance or welfare services, and from a freelancer’s point of view that certainly helps make this sort of work become an attractive option.
This article is based on an interview published on our Japanese-language site (see part one and two). It has been partially modified for our global audience. Lancers, CrowdWorks Employment in Japan has traditionally been a cradle-to-grave sort of system, but given modern day economic challenges, many people are facing difficulties. Many workers are faced with finding alternatives when the notion of a full-time job doesn’t work out. Recent government statistics show that 94% of 4.5 million Japanese companies only have a single office. Larger companies with more than 10 offices across multiple locations only account for 0.4% of all Japanese business. But in which category of business do most employees fall under? 31% of the entire national workforce belongs to the 0.4% of big companies. Out of the entire Japanese workforce of 62.3 million people, 55 million of those are employed by someone else, and 7 million people are self-employed or working with their family businesses [1]. These figures show that many workers are concentrated among a very small number of big companies here in Japan. Given that this distribution will likely not change soon, how can Japanese workers prepare for what will happen to the national economy in the future? Being a so-called ‘crowdsourced’ worker…
This article is based on an interview published on our Japanese-language site (see part one and two). It has been partially modified for our global audience.
Lancers, CrowdWorks
Employment in Japan has traditionally been a cradle-to-grave sort of system, but given modern day economic challenges, many people are facing difficulties. Many workers are faced with finding alternatives when the notion of a full-time job doesn’t work out.
Recent government statistics show that 94% of 4.5 million Japanese companies only have a single office. Larger companies with more than 10 offices across multiple locations only account for 0.4% of all Japanese business.
But in which category of business do most employees fall under? 31% of the entire national workforce belongs to the 0.4% of big companies. Out of the entire Japanese workforce of 62.3 million people, 55 million of those are employed by someone else, and 7 million people are self-employed or working with their family businesses [1].
These figures show that many workers are concentrated among a very small number of big companies here in Japan. Given that this distribution will likely not change soon, how can Japanese workers prepare for what will happen to the national economy in the future?
Being a so-called ‘crowdsourced’ worker is an alternative solution when it comes to finding employment. Crowdsourcing (in the context of this discussion) is a concept that matches task requests with individuals who can do the work. The most notable examples of this process are US-based services oDesk and Elance. These days some people can even make a living from such jobs.
Mr. Akiyoshi says that with his Lancers service, some workers can earn as much as 7 or 8 million yen ($70,000 to $80,000).
The traditional concept of crowdsourcing has been that someone in a remote location helps you finish minor tasks at an affordable rate. But recently platforms like Lancers are being used for more, serving as a primary income stream for some. Mr. Akiyoshi shared a few key indicators from his platform:
The platform is home to 120,000 freelancers from all around Japan.
1,000 of those users are earning about 50,000 yen (approximately $500) a month
70% of users reside in suburban areas or countryside.
Some people make more than 3 million yen (about $30,000) using the platform. Needless to say, that’s enough to make a living.
There are now about 10,000 tasks listed on the platform, three times the amount of tasks listed last year.
Akiyoshi adds:
We saw the rapid growth since 2011. Our operations have expanded from two people in 2008, to 11 people in 2011, to the 30-person team we have now.
Helping people work regardless of geographical location is the startup’s concept. And true to that notion, Lancer itself is based in the quiet Tokyo suburb of Kamakura, where they can concentrate more on the service development.
Recently they are seeing a decent number of task proposals including jobs like copywriting, proposal writing, web design, or sales outsourcing.
With the platform, Akiyoshi hopes to contribute to creating a world where people can find good work and better living.
CrowdWorks: An opportunity to work and live better ¶
CrowdWorks’ CEO Koichiro Yoshida
CrowdWorks is another key player in this field, and its website features many voices from people who use the platform. When I asked CrowdWorks’ CEO Koichiro Yoshida if crowdsourced work has become a mainstream working style, he answered me by relating the following story from a housewife who lives in Tokushima Prefecture and uses their app.
I’m glad to see a world I’ve never seen before, getting in touch with the interests of the younger generation. I’m also amazed that the platform provides us with equal accessibility to tasks regardless of where we live. I retired and moved to the countryside but the platform gives me the great opportunity to keep working at home.
For most people, their daily work is more than just earning money. It’s also a means of giving your life a sense of purpose. Crowdsourcing can help them find such a purpose in their lives as well.
Every worker has a preferred style for working. And CEO Yoshida says that freelancers can pursue a sort of career optimization in finding the projects that best suit their needs and style.
Take for example, PC operating systems. These days we have many choices ranging from licensed systems (like Windows or Mac) to open source (Linux) systems. Likewise, people employed at governmental offices or big companies can be seen as a ‘licensed’ way of working. What we’re proposing is to develop an open source way of working. Some people use the platform to finding a side job, and others use it to making a living. It’s meaningless to try to figure out which is the better route, but what’s important is give people more options, more ways to work.
The service was launched in March of 2012, and has acquired more than 5,000 corporate clients who are posting jobs on the platform. So far projects worth more than $12 million have been matched in the year since the launch. Back in last October, Crowdworks raised a total amount of $3.75 million (300 million yen) from Itochu Technology Ventures, Digital Garage, and Suneight Investment, with aiming to expand their business in the South East Asian region.
Working styles changed after the 2011 earthquake
We’ve asked the both startups about why the Japanese crowdsourcing market has been on an upswing during the last few years. Both Akiyoshi and Yoshida say that it appears to have stemmed from the tragic 2011 earthquake. That disaster also encouraged several Japanese crowdfunding sites to launch as well.
Akiyoshi pointed out that the disaster might have triggered the recent boom in the crowdsourcing market. It has brought us newly-coined phrases like ‘nomad working,’ and it has prompted many companies to permit their employees to work from home.
These crowdsourcing startups are presenting a fascinating alternative to conventional working styles in Japan, and in the process they are creating an employment ecosystem that’s helping many individual workers face the challenges of our current economy.
Lancers 
Takeshi Hirano
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Masaru Ikeda
