See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based crowdsourced bookkeeping startup MerryBiz announced this week that it has fundraised an undisclosed amount of funding from Opt Ventures, the investment arm of Japanese leading online ad agency Opt Holding (TSE:2389). As an investment from Opt Ventures Fund Part-I, this follows the VC firm’s recent investment in Japanese translation startup WOVN.io. For MerryBiz, this follows their previous funding from Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital back in May 2014. MerryBiz provides a bookkeeping service under the same name by reading photocopies of withdrawal details on passbooks, credit card utilization bills and payment statements in addition to receipts for expenses. Under the title derived from a name of goat species, the company has rolled out a new function every three months. In January this year, MerryBiz started receiving outsourced bookkeeping and tax return processing services for freelancers in association with Japanese legal portal Bengo4.com. MerryBiz CEO Hiroki Kudo told The Bridge that he will strengthen his engineering team and marketing efforts for customer acquisition: We will hire engineers from overseas to develop our service for Japanese users, meaning building a global team in the company. Since everything changes so fast in the online industry, we…
Tokyo-based crowdsourced bookkeeping startup MerryBiz announced this week that it has fundraised an undisclosed amount of funding from Opt Ventures, the investment arm of Japanese leading online ad agency Opt Holding (TSE:2389). As an investment from Opt Ventures Fund Part-I, this follows the VC firm’s recent investment in Japanese translation startup WOVN.io. For MerryBiz, this follows their previous funding from Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital back in May 2014.
MerryBiz provides a bookkeeping service under the same name by reading photocopies of withdrawal details on passbooks, credit card utilization bills and payment statements in addition to receipts for expenses. Under the title derived from a name of goat species, the company has rolled out a new function every three months. In January this year, MerryBiz started receiving outsourced bookkeeping and tax return processing services for freelancers in association with Japanese legal portal Bengo4.com.
MerryBiz CEO Hiroki Kudo told The Bridge that he will strengthen his engineering team and marketing efforts for customer acquisition:
We will hire engineers from overseas to develop our service for Japanese users, meaning building a global team in the company.
Since everything changes so fast in the online industry, we need to be close contact with each others onsite in the team so that we can move forward quicker. Having new employees, we want to build up an artificial intelligence or machine learning-based system.
We were told that the company is employing a Swedish engineer for now while still screening for new engineering applicants from Germany, Spain and India. Their engineers will focus on enhancing features for the Japanese market for the time being, but the company wants to adopt the service into the global market so that it can accept reading receipts issued in different countries.
See the original story in Japanese. This is part of our ‘Tokyo Office Tour’ series (RSS), a modest attempt to better understand how folks in the local startup scene are working every day. Tokyo-based crowdsourced bookkeeping startup MerryBiz relocated their office to Omotesando, Tokyo, in September. The company had been operating out of 01Booster, a co-working space near Tokyo Tower, since its launch in 2011. MerryBiz snagged funding from Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital in May to boost their business. CEO Hiroki Kudo explained the reason for the office move: It was a good opportunity for us to mix with other startups at 01 Booster. However, we decided to move to the next stage in our business as our service concept had sufficiently jelled. Given our upcoming requirement to apply for the PrivacyMark certification, we believed it was the right time to move to an independent office. Securing funds was a big factor in the decision. The uniqueness of our service is not so prominent so we have to execute it as soon as possible to win the game. The financing was indispensable for us. While Kudo had been exploring fundraising for several years, it was a challenge to receive…
This is part of our ‘Tokyo Office Tour’ series (RSS), a modest attempt to better understand how folks in the local startup scene are working every day.
Tokyo-based crowdsourced bookkeeping startup MerryBiz relocated their office to Omotesando, Tokyo, in September. The company had been operating out of 01Booster, a co-working space near Tokyo Tower, since its launch in 2011. MerryBiz snagged funding from Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital in May to boost their business.
CEO Hiroki Kudo explained the reason for the office move:
It was a good opportunity for us to mix with other startups at 01 Booster. However, we decided to move to the next stage in our business as our service concept had sufficiently jelled. Given our upcoming requirement to apply for the PrivacyMark certification, we believed it was the right time to move to an independent office.
Securing funds was a big factor in the decision. The uniqueness of our service is not so prominent so we have to execute it as soon as possible to win the game. The financing was indispensable for us.
While Kudo had been exploring fundraising for several years, it was a challenge to receive a favorable response from investors. In this situation, prominent investors and businesspersons like Terry Hayashiguchi (CyberAgent Ventures), Satoshi Maruyama (Venture United), Etsuji Otsuka (Trium Partners), and Tokyo-based Australian serial entrepreneur Terrie Lloyd, gave Kudo advice and helped him polish his business plan, which led to winning the funding in May.
They developed and rolled out their first web interface in July using the funds. Japanese cloud-based accounting startup Freee recently introduced an entire back-office solution for businesses; MerryBiz wants to take a different approach to better serve users. Kudo explained:
We don’t aim to replace certified accountants with our service. We’ll focus on providing outsourced paperwork services and help accountants focus on giving advice to their clients. We want our users to select convenient features from among our services and use them rather than providing them with a one-stop (full back-office) solution. So we have integrated with third-party services such as MoneyForward (online account book service) and Scanman (outsourced book scanning service).
Typical tech startups tend to market for user acquisitions via digital manners because their products are usually in digital form. However, Kudo thinks this approach has limits in reaching potential users so he plans to establish complementary partnerships with public accountants and other business professionals. Young accountants, many of whom have not been running businesses for very long, may be good partners for MerryBiz.
This space has competitors like F&M (JASDAQ:4771), which runs outsourced bookkeeping service TaxHouse. However, Kuro believes that MerryBiz can be a top player by bringing more technology-based solutions to the industry. As there are many fintech startups in Tokyo he has begun holding meet-ups to encourage people to connect in the fintech space. The second edition of the meet-up will take place on 26 November.
The team has two engineers but is hiring now to accelerate their system development efforts.
An awesome skyline towards Shinjuku from the MerryBiz office.The building of the MerryBiz office is facing Aoyama Dori, one of major thoroughfares in Tokyo. Their neighbors include fintech companies like Paypal Japan and Square Japan.
See the original story in Japanese. MerryBiz is a Tokyo-based startup that provides a crowdsourced bookkeeping service for companies. The company announced today it has renewed its service line-up and rolled out a web interface. Coinciding with this, the company has rebranded its name from Libv K.K. to MerryBiz Inc. MerryBiz was launched in October 2012 and fundraised 55 million yen ($550,000) from Mitsui Sumitomo Insuarance Venture Capital in May. In their previous service, until today, when you mailed a portion of receipts for company expenses to the company, they subsequently e-mailed back a list of expense records in your preferred file format, such as Excel, CSV, or importable formats for other online accounting platforms like MoneyForward. With the launch of the new web app this time around, you can download these files any time you want, as well as browse scanned images of recorded receipts especially when you, or your accountant, need to confirm evidence for any company expenses you have paid. We’ve seen several startups providing a similar function in this space, such as Dr. Wallet‘s “Receipt Bin” (crowdsourced bookeeping service) or CrowdCast (improving efficiency accounting tasks by a mobile receipt-scanning app). So what’s the advantage of MerryBiz?…
MerryBiz is a Tokyo-based startup that provides a crowdsourced bookkeeping service for companies. The company announced today it has renewed its service line-up and rolled out a web interface. Coinciding with this, the company has rebranded its name from Libv K.K. to MerryBiz Inc.
MerryBiz was launched in October 2012 and fundraised 55 million yen ($550,000) from Mitsui Sumitomo Insuarance Venture Capital in May. In their previous service, until today, when you mailed a portion of receipts for company expenses to the company, they subsequently e-mailed back a list of expense records in your preferred file format, such as Excel, CSV, or importable formats for other online accounting platforms like MoneyForward. With the launch of the new web app this time around, you can download these files any time you want, as well as browse scanned images of recorded receipts especially when you, or your accountant, need to confirm evidence for any company expenses you have paid.
We’ve seen several startups providing a similar function in this space, such as Dr. Wallet‘s “Receipt Bin” (crowdsourced bookeeping service) or CrowdCast (improving efficiency accounting tasks by a mobile receipt-scanning app). So what’s the advantage of MerryBiz? In a response to this question, the company’s founder and CEO Hiroki Kudo explained:
For those who are less familiar with bookkeeping, the categorization process of expenses is quite difficult. So we hired certified public accountants with over three years of experience in this field as our crowdsourced workers. We can also accept your requests that are unique to your company, such as a certain type of expense for dining with someone that should be categorized as a meeting expense.
Online accounting platforms like Freee or MoneyForward are becoming popular in the Japanese startup scene. But we understand that MerryBiz will not provide accounting services but will be more focused on bookkeeping services by converting paper-based receipts to digital records. That’s why MerryBiz’s new web app allows you to download files in formats for other Japanese major accounting platforms like MoneyForward, Yayoi Kaikei, and Kaikeio. In the future, I think MerryBiz may introduce an API (application program interface) for integrating with other online services, which will not require you to import or export data files.
The company expects certified public accountant offices to also encourage their clients to use the MerryBiz platform. Kudo told us about this:
Since the accountant market is becoming saturated in Japan, they are very conscious about their competitiveness. New and small accountant offices may be our potential competitors, because they need to receive any tasks including bookkeeping from their clients.
However, mature accountant offices want to provide more value-added services for their clients, so they are likely to outsource bookkeeping operations. Our platform allows them to browse scanned images of receipts as expense evidences of their clients. We’ve been earning a good reputation from accountant offices that are using our service.
The company can improve the routine of their crowdsourced operations with the launch of the new app, which has enabled them to change its pricing to three types of monthly flat rate plans. The plan depends on how many expense records you request for bookkeeping in a month.
I’ve known Kudo for some time. But I realized in the interview that they had not been providing a web interface or mobile app to date. What we can learn from this is that not all tech startups have to have their web interface or mobile app for their business. Especially for B2B services, you can decide not to start developing a web interface or mobile app until your work flow is well streamlined and users validate your service, which greatly helps you to not increase the burn rate.
The launch of the web interface this time around will enable them to partner and integrate with other platforms and may bring them huge business potential.
MerryBiz 
Masaru Ikeda
