THE BRIDGE

tag launchpad-2013

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

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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…

taplingual

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.

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

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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…

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U-Note CEO Yuto Koide pitches at Infinity Ventures Summit

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.

U-Note publishing interface
U-Note publishing interface

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

Japan’s Trapro brings people together around important social issues

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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…

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Toshiki Abe pitches Trapro

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.

trapro

Speedy wants Japanese students to take their study mobile

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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.

speedy

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.

Speedy

Japan’s LifeTimer is redefining the calendar app

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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…

lifetimer-logo

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.

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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.

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lifetimer


  1. 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.  ↩

Japanese startup CocoPPa lets you collaboratively create the cutest iPhone homescreen

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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. Accounting startup CFO won the Infinity Ventures Launchpad event with Freee, its financial service for small business. But it was followed in second place by CocoPPa, a very clever service that lets you customize you iPhone icons and homescreen. While there are many services out there that let you do such customizations to your mobile, where CocoPPa is unique is that it offers a platform where users around the world can share and collaborate on these kind of designs. So for example, if a person in Japan creates a cute icon, someone on the other side of the world could create a wallpaper to match. This collaborative process is, I think, what sets it apart from other customization services. While you could make a design in practically any style you wish, it looks like many of the creations that users are submitting fall into the kawaii category. And as we have seen in the past, such Japan-made apps that offer cute services like this have great appeal…

CocoPPa
CocoPPa pitches at Infinity Ventures Summit

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.


Accounting startup CFO won the Infinity Ventures Launchpad event with Freee, its financial service for small business. But it was followed in second place by CocoPPa, a very clever service that lets you customize you iPhone icons and homescreen. While there are many services out there that let you do such customizations to your mobile, where CocoPPa is unique is that it offers a platform where users around the world can share and collaborate on these kind of designs.

So for example, if a person in Japan creates a cute icon, someone on the other side of the world could create a wallpaper to match. This collaborative process is, I think, what sets it apart from other customization services.

While you could make a design in practically any style you wish, it looks like many of the creations that users are submitting fall into the kawaii category. And as we have seen in the past, such Japan-made apps that offer cute services like this have great appeal with overseas users.

The service was originally launched last July, and since then they have seen over 7.5 million downloads, with half of those coming from the US. They have 1.35 million monthly active users, and are seeing impressive growth. The word-of-mouth buzz around CocoPPa is good, with users sharing their screen designs on social platforms like Pinterest and Instagram (for example, see screens from Pinterest user lindsayw72 below).

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Back in April they released a web version, and and Android version of the service will be coming soon too. As for monetization, currently the startup depends on ad revenue, but they will be looking to other options as well in the future.

For more information, you can check out CocoPPa’s promo video below.

Accounting startup Freee walks ways the winner from Infinity Ventures’ Launchpad competition

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This is part of our coverage of the startup LaunchPad event from the Infinitity Ventures Summit in Sapporo, Japan. Back in March we featured cloud-based accounting solution Freee, which was just emerging from stealth mode at the time. The service was developed by Tokyo-based startup CFO, and was pitch at the Infinity Ventures Summit Launchpad competition by CEO Daisuke Sasaki. While the company isn’t going to win any awards for the names of their company or service, they did walk away proudly with the top prize from this startup competition in Sapporo. Freee offers n accounting solution for small and mid-size businesses who may not have so much accounting knowledge. It allows you to view your transaction statements on site, conveniently categorize and visualized. If you need to create invoices there is a function for that as well, with the capability to change status to ‘paid’ or ‘unpaid’ accordingly. It’s especially useful for self-employed people when they have to file their taxt reports. Sasaki says that Freee helps you do your taxes as much as 50 times faster, which is certainly a big plus. Regrettably, Japan is a little bit slow adopting cloud services, so the startup will have some…

freee
Freee wins Launchpad event – CEO Daisuke Sasaki

This is part of our coverage of the startup LaunchPad event from the Infinitity Ventures Summit in Sapporo, Japan.


Back in March we featured cloud-based accounting solution Freee, which was just emerging from stealth mode at the time. The service was developed by Tokyo-based startup CFO, and was pitch at the Infinity Ventures Summit Launchpad competition by CEO Daisuke Sasaki. While the company isn’t going to win any awards for the names of their company or service, they did walk away proudly with the top prize from this startup competition in Sapporo.

Freee offers n accounting solution for small and mid-size businesses who may not have so much accounting knowledge. It allows you to view your transaction statements on site, conveniently categorize and visualized.

freee-logo

If you need to create invoices there is a function for that as well, with the capability to change status to ‘paid’ or ‘unpaid’ accordingly. It’s especially useful for self-employed people when they have to file their taxt reports. Sasaki says that Freee helps you do your taxes as much as 50 times faster, which is certainly a big plus.

Regrettably, Japan is a little bit slow adopting cloud services, so the startup will have some work to do in terms of bringing users on board. So among the users they have already won over, Sasaki figures that over 3300 accounting hours have already been saved.