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Japan’s MakeLeaps, cloud-based invoicing startup, announces acquisition by Ricoh

The Bridge The Bridge
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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based MakeLeaps, the startup behind a cloud-based invoicing platform under the same name, announced on Friday that it has agreed to be acquired by Japanese photocopier giant Ricoh (TSE:7752). The acquisition price is not disclosed but Nikkei estimated it to be tens of million US dollars in their report. Ricoh is scheduled to complete acquiring all MakeLeaps shares on November 30. As far as has been disclosed, MakeLeaps raised several million US dollars from Rakuten Ventures in a series A round back in July of 2016, an undisclosed sum from Kima Ventures (a seed startup-focused fund led by renowned French entrepreneur Xavier Niel) in a seed round back in September of 2014, plus $600,000 from AngelList, Dave McClure and other investors in an angel round back in August of 2014. See also: Cloud-based invoicing startup MakeLeaps wins IE-KMD Venture Day in Tokyo Since its launch in October 2011 by Australian serial entrepreneur Jay (Jason) Winder, MakeLeaps has been offering an invoicing platform that targets freelancers as well as small/medium-sized enterprises. Their users can simplify and streamline their process of issuing estimates, purchase orders, bills, receipts, etc. in addition to even mailing all these to…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based MakeLeaps, the startup behind a cloud-based invoicing platform under the same name, announced on Friday that it has agreed to be acquired by Japanese photocopier giant Ricoh (TSE:7752). The acquisition price is not disclosed but Nikkei estimated it to be tens of million US dollars in their report. Ricoh is scheduled to complete acquiring all MakeLeaps shares on November 30.

As far as has been disclosed, MakeLeaps raised several million US dollars from Rakuten Ventures in a series A round back in July of 2016, an undisclosed sum from Kima Ventures (a seed startup-focused fund led by renowned French entrepreneur Xavier Niel) in a seed round back in September of 2014, plus $600,000 from AngelList, Dave McClure and other investors in an angel round back in August of 2014.

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MakeLeaps CEO Jay Winder delivers his pitch at B Dash Camp 2015 Spring in Fukuoka.
Image credit: Masaru Ikeda

Since its launch in October 2011 by Australian serial entrepreneur Jay (Jason) Winder, MakeLeaps has been offering an invoicing platform that targets freelancers as well as small/medium-sized enterprises. Their users can simplify and streamline their process of issuing estimates, purchase orders, bills, receipts, etc. in addition to even mailing all these to their clients.

According to Ricoh’s announcement, the company expects to integrate MakeLeaps solutions to its photocopiers and multi-functional printing machines while adding on to various third-party systems for customer management, accounting and sales management, aiming to transform into a B2B platform operator by helping enterprises digitalize their workflows. MakeLeaps CEO Winder says in his statement that there will be no change in service offerings and terms of delivery even after the acquisition.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

 

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Cloud-based invoicing startup MakeLeaps wins IE-KMD Venture Day in Tokyo

Masaru Ikeda Masaru Ikeda
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See the original story in Japanese. Madrid’s IE Business School and the Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University (KMD) jointly held their second Venture Day event for entrepreneurs in Tokyo. This year’s event took place at Keio Mita Campus and attracted a large audience of investors, entrepreneurs, and mentors from Japan and Europe. See also: Madrid’s IE Business School and Keio University hold joint entrepreneur event in Tokyo While 10 teams from Europe, Japan, and KMD students competed in a pitch session, Tokyo-based MakeLeaps, a startup that provides a cloud-based invoicing solution, won the top prize. As we have seen familiar faces of MakeLeaps’ people at many events in the local startup scene, it would be better to call them an authority rather than a startup. However, in view of the small number of B2B startups providing SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions in Tokyo, MakeLeaps has been boldly challenging and aiming to better serve local businesses, which won over the judges. MakeLeaps fundraised $600,000 from 500 Startups and AngelList in August. MakeLeaps CEO Jason Winder said they are planning to integrate other services like customer relationship management next year. Makeleaps’ won two roundtrip tickets between Tokyo and…

ie-kmd-venture-day_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Madrid’s IE Business School and the Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University (KMD) jointly held their second Venture Day event for entrepreneurs in Tokyo. This year’s event took place at Keio Mita Campus and attracted a large audience of investors, entrepreneurs, and mentors from Japan and Europe.

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While 10 teams from Europe, Japan, and KMD students competed in a pitch session, Tokyo-based MakeLeaps, a startup that provides a cloud-based invoicing solution, won the top prize. As we have seen familiar faces of MakeLeaps’ people at many events in the local startup scene, it would be better to call them an authority rather than a startup. However, in view of the small number of B2B startups providing SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions in Tokyo, MakeLeaps has been boldly challenging and aiming to better serve local businesses, which won over the judges.

ie-kmd-makeleaps-award-presenting
MakeLeaps CEO Jason Winder (left) receiving prizes.

MakeLeaps fundraised $600,000 from 500 Startups and AngelList in August. MakeLeaps CEO Jason Winder said they are planning to integrate other services like customer relationship management next year.

Makeleaps’ won two roundtrip tickets between Tokyo and Madrid from Turkish Airlines, as well as a complimentary three-month residency at Venture Generation, a co-working and incubation space near Tokyo station.

2nd prize winner: Wovn.io

ie-kmd-wovn.io-award-presenting
Jeff Sandford, co-founder of Minimal Technologies, the company behind Wovn.io (left)

Wovn.io provides multilingual support for your website or blog, bringing your content to the world. Site visitors can quickly toggle between languages using the Wovn.io widget. All editing and management of your translated content can be done from the convenience of your browser. By adding a single JavaScript code to a website source, Wovn.io instantly turns a website into a multilingual environment. It is available in 11 languages including Chinese, English, and French.

According to co-founder Jeff Sandford, almost 70% of Internet users in the world are non-English speakers. Operators of websites in English can reach almost double the number of users by turning their website into a multilingual environment. Wovn.io has translated six million web pages to date. Some 30% of their users are in the US and 29% are in Japan.

Wovn.io won a roundtrip ticket between Tokyo and Madrid from Turkish Airlines, as well as a complimentary three-month residency at Venture Generation.

3rd prize winner: Breezy not Wheezy

ie-kmd-breezy-not-wheezy-award-presenting
The ‘Breezy not Wheezy’ team

The Breezy not Wheezy team was selected from a KMD session. Asthma is a common affliction among children around the world. One of the co-founders of Breezy not Wheezy has suffered from it since she was a child, and this inspired the team to develop Breezy not Wheezy.

A peak flow meter is a device used to measure lung air flow and is effective for asthma management. The Breezy not Wheezy team connected a peak flow meter to a smartphone to record peak patterns on the cloud. This information will help parents to better manage their child’s asthma by leveraging a med companion connected to the solution.

Breezy not Wheezy won a complimentary three-month residency at Venture Generation.

ie-kmd-breezy-not-wheezy-pitch

IE Business School is headquartered in Mardid, Spain, and it is counted as one of top five business schools in line up with other institutions like INSEAD in France. Their Venture Day events have seen a rapid worldwide expansion, being held in over 20 countries to date, with 16 events in 2014 alone.

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Japan’s invoicing solution startup MakeLeaps secures $600K funding through AngelList

Masaru Ikeda Masaru Ikeda
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Tokyo-based MakeLeaps, the startup behind a cloud-based invoicing platform under the same name, announced today that it has raised $600,000 through AngelList. Participating investors in this round include Naval Ravikant (AngelList), Richard Chen (Hatena) and Dave McClure (500 Startups). Since its launch in October 2011 by Australian serial entrepreneur Jason Winder, MakeLeaps provides an invoicing platform that targets freelancers as well as small/medium-sized enterprises, having acquired over 15,000 users. According to the company, the service saw a 20% user revenue growth rate in three months from April to June. MakeLeaps plans to use the funding to enhance the service and integrate it with other enterprise resource planning or B2B payment services so that more big companies will be able to put the platform into their in-house invoicing operations. In addition, MakeLeaps said it will increase sales representatives in order to boost marketing of the service to enterprise users.

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Tokyo-based MakeLeaps, the startup behind a cloud-based invoicing platform under the same name, announced today that it has raised $600,000 through AngelList. Participating investors in this round include Naval Ravikant (AngelList), Richard Chen (Hatena) and Dave McClure (500 Startups).

Since its launch in October 2011 by Australian serial entrepreneur Jason Winder, MakeLeaps provides an invoicing platform that targets freelancers as well as small/medium-sized enterprises, having acquired over 15,000 users. According to the company, the service saw a 20% user revenue growth rate in three months from April to June.

MakeLeaps plans to use the funding to enhance the service and integrate it with other enterprise resource planning or B2B payment services so that more big companies will be able to put the platform into their in-house invoicing operations. In addition, MakeLeaps said it will increase sales representatives in order to boost marketing of the service to enterprise users.

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  3. Responding to Japanese customer demand, MakeLeaps now does delivery slips

Responding to Japanese customer demand, MakeLeaps now does delivery slips

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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We have previously discussed Tokyo-based startup MakeLeaps, which offers an online quotes and invoicing solution for freelancers and businesses in Japan. Today the company announced a third service to its repertoire of offerings, rolling out the capability to create delivery slips from its system as well. This is the most requested feature that they receive from their customers, they say. These slips are important notifications used very heavily in Japan to confirm the delivery of purchased electronic goods and services. If you’ve never had to manage delivery slips (like me!), the significance of this offering was not immediately obvious. But I had a chance to browse some of the feedback from their customers, and it looks like this feature can significantly save them time and manual effort in their day-to-day workflow. Bringing management of quotes, invoices, and delivery slips together under its platform, MakeLeaps is centralizing document management for freelancers and businesses. According to its announcement, the company had been providing this delivery slip feature to a group of beta testers, obtaining feedback from those users so they could refine and improve it before today’s official launch. Back in June MakeLeaps announced that it had surpassed 10,000 business users. They’re…

nouhinsho

We have previously discussed Tokyo-based startup MakeLeaps, which offers an online quotes and invoicing solution for freelancers and businesses in Japan. Today the company announced a third service to its repertoire of offerings, rolling out the capability to create delivery slips from its system as well. This is the most requested feature that they receive from their customers, they say.

These slips are important notifications used very heavily in Japan to confirm the delivery of purchased electronic goods and services. If you’ve never had to manage delivery slips (like me!), the significance of this offering was not immediately obvious.

But I had a chance to browse some of the feedback from their customers, and it looks like this feature can significantly save them time and manual effort in their day-to-day workflow.

Bringing management of quotes, invoices, and delivery slips together under its platform, MakeLeaps is centralizing document management for freelancers and businesses. According to its announcement, the company had been providing this delivery slip feature to a group of beta testers, obtaining feedback from those users so they could refine and improve it before today’s official launch.

Back in June MakeLeaps announced that it had surpassed 10,000 business users. They’re aiming to grow that to 25,000 companies by July of 2014.

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Tokyo-based invoicing solution MakeLeaps is now used by 10,000 business

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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Tokyo-based invoicing system MakeLeaps has announced (PDF) today that the company has reached its previously stated goal of 10,000 business users. The service was initially launched back in 2009, and last year it acquired competing invoicing service Noroshi, a significant step for the company. At the time, the CEO of MakeLeaps’ parent company Webnet IT corporation, Jason Winder, hoped that the acquisition would bring them to 10,000 businesses by August 2013. Now they have reached that benchmark with time to spare. Companies in Japan have not been as quick to jump on the cloud computing band wagon as in the US market. But they’re coming around, says Winder, largely thanks to cloud success stories like Salesforce which is used by many prominent Japanese companies. He adds: Our biggest challenge is really just letting people know that these solutions now exist, and they’re low cost, and easily available. Our biggest competitor is not a competing software package, it’s still very much Microsoft Excel, since that’s what most Japanese companies are using to create/send their documents. Back in April MakeLeaps also added Evernote integration (PDF) so that users can sync their quotes and invoices into an Evernote notebook. About 20% of Evernote’s…

make-leaps

Tokyo-based invoicing system MakeLeaps has announced (PDF) today that the company has reached its previously stated goal of 10,000 business users.

The service was initially launched back in 2009, and last year it acquired competing invoicing service Noroshi, a significant step for the company. At the time, the CEO of MakeLeaps’ parent company Webnet IT corporation, Jason Winder, hoped that the acquisition would bring them to 10,000 businesses by August 2013. Now they have reached that benchmark with time to spare.

Companies in Japan have not been as quick to jump on the cloud computing band wagon as in the US market. But they’re coming around, says Winder, largely thanks to cloud success stories like Salesforce which is used by many prominent Japanese companies. He adds:

Our biggest challenge is really just letting people know that these solutions now exist, and they’re low cost, and easily available. Our biggest competitor is not a competing software package, it’s still very much Microsoft Excel, since that’s what most Japanese companies are using to create/send their documents.

Back in April MakeLeaps also added Evernote integration (PDF) so that users can sync their quotes and invoices into an Evernote notebook. About 20% of Evernote’s users come from Japan, so this is a pretty wise addition.

MakeLeaps has been growing an average of 18% each month this year (see chart below), and is now focused on reaching 25,000 companies by July of 2014.

chart_makeleaps

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  3. Responding to Japanese customer demand, MakeLeaps now does delivery slips

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