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Japan’s Samurai Incubate launches new $18M fund for African startups

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Thursday, 6pm JST – Update: Minor correction applied into Yoneyama’s previous position, Samurai Africa Fund II’s targeted geographical markets, and my misunderstanding that the first fund’s investment capacity is still remaining. Tokyo-based VC firm Samurai Incubate announced on Thursday that it has launched a new fund focused on starups in Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria. The fund is titled Samurai Africa Fund II, aiming to acquire 2 billion yen (about $18.3 million US) for investments. As for the ticket sizes, the fund invests a minimum cheque size of 5 million to 50 million yen (about $46,000 to $460,000 US) for startups in the seed to series A stage while targeted verticals are FinTech / InsureTech, logistics, MedTech / healthcare, retail and e-commerce, AgriTech, transport and mobility, and entertainment. Since the fund is called in that way, some of our readers may be wondering when its first fund was formed, but it seems to refer to Leapfrog Ventures, a seed-stage fund jointly launched in May of 2018 by Samurai Incubate and its former employee Takuma Terakubo. According to their corporate history, the firm rebranded Leapfrog Ventures into Samurai Incubate Africa back in June of 2019. As of June last year when…

From left: Hironari Kubo (Senior Manager / Fund Controller, Samurai Incubate), Rena Yoneyama (Senior Manager, Samurai Incubate / Managing Partner, Samurari Incubate Africa), Kentaro Sakakibara (CEO, Samurai Incubate / CEO, Samurai Incubate Africa), Nao Koike (Manager, Samurai Incubate), Yoshihiro Honma (Executive Officer, Corporate Group, Samurai Incubate)
Image credit: Samurai Incubate

Thursday, 6pm JST – Update: Minor correction applied into Yoneyama’s previous position, Samurai Africa Fund II’s targeted geographical markets, and my misunderstanding that the first fund’s investment capacity is still remaining.

Tokyo-based VC firm Samurai Incubate announced on Thursday that it has launched a new fund focused on starups in Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria. The fund is titled Samurai Africa Fund II, aiming to acquire 2 billion yen (about $18.3 million US) for investments. As for the ticket sizes, the fund invests a minimum cheque size of 5 million to 50 million yen (about $46,000 to $460,000 US) for startups in the seed to series A stage while targeted verticals are FinTech / InsureTech, logistics, MedTech / healthcare, retail and e-commerce, AgriTech, transport and mobility, and entertainment.

Since the fund is called in that way, some of our readers may be wondering when its first fund was formed, but it seems to refer to Leapfrog Ventures, a seed-stage fund jointly launched in May of 2018 by Samurai Incubate and its former employee Takuma Terakubo. According to their corporate history, the firm rebranded Leapfrog Ventures into Samurai Incubate Africa back in June of 2019.

As of June last year when the African investment vehicle was rebranded, we can confirm Terakubo was still serving the company as CEO at that time but Samurai Incubate CEO Kentaro Sakakibara has taken over the position by now. With all these facts, we can understand that the vehicle has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Samurai Incubate for their startup investments in Africa. According to reliable sources, Terakubo is currently preparing for his own new fund for African startups. We’ll keep you updated about his progress when it becomes available.

Rena Yoneyama, Managing Partner of Samurai Incubate Africa, will play a management role for the second fund. Prior to Samurai Incubate, she previously worked with the Development Bank of Japan and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation followed by serving Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Moroccan office as an assistant Project Formulation Manager and Tokyo-based Techfund as a director. Samurai Incubate Africa is commissioned by JICA to conduct research on promoting entrepreneurship and finding out the local startup ecosystem in Africa. The firm says the work doesn’t in any way imply in evaluating the fund.

The first fund has chosen Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa as the geographical region as their focus while Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania are removed and Nigeria is added for that of the second fund.

(The firm told Bridge that they are NOT intended to remove Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania from their targeted geographical markets.)

Seeing a remarkable growth, Nigeria boasts the largest market in the Sub-Saharan region. With this in mind, it seems that Samurai Incubate Africa has re-shuffled their targeting markets to put the limited resources into places with the potential largest output. At the time of launching the first fund, they said they were aiming to invest in about 80 startups. It has now become clear that they have invested in 18 companies in Africa, which is equivalent to about a quarter of the initial target.

The first fund was so far invested in the Senri sales optimization platform for manufacturing and distribution businesses in Africa, Kenya-based sales bot and SaaS startup Biashara, and Rwandan regional FinTech startup Exuus. The first fund appears to have investment capacity remaining, but it is still unclear whether the fund’s focused investment region will remain the same or will follow the second one.

(In addition to 500 million yen as the initial target size of Leapfrog Ventures, Samurai Africa Fund I incorporated 10% of Samurai Incubate Fund VI (3.45 billion yen) which was launched back in February last year. The first Africa fund has no further investment capacity remaining since it has completed investing. We can assume the ticket size per startup was larger than initially expected while the number of investees is less than a quarter of their initial target.)

In this area, there are some companies in Japan offering corporate advisory and startup support initiatives in Africa, such as Tokyo-based Double Feather Partners.

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Leading Japanese system integrator to hold first FinTech hackathon in Israel

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Leading Japanese system integration company TIS Intec Group unveiled today that it will hold a FinTech-focused hackathon in Israel on July 19th and 20th, called TIS – Japan Cashless Hackathon. In association with Japanese credit card company JCB as well as Japanese startup accelerator Samurai Incubate which has a local office in Tel Aviv, the event will take place at Rise by Barclays, a FinTech startup hub located in the most startup-dense neighborhood of the ‘Startup Nation’. Prior to the event, TIS Intec Group is looking for 15 talented teams to attend with innovative cashless payment ideas with interest in expanding around the world including Japan, especially for the verticals of artificial intelligence, IoT (Internet of Things) and Blockchain. The winning team will win a trip to Tokyo to discuss future collaboration and business opportunity with TIS Intec Group’s executives while the second and third runner-ups will get the opportunity to work with the firm also. Starting with the first FinTech hackathon by local bank Leumi Group in 2013, MasterCard, IBM Watson and other many global giants have hosted FinTech-focused hackthon events in Israel to find diamonds in the rough. The country is now considered as one of the world’s…

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CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr by Andrew Eland

Leading Japanese system integration company TIS Intec Group unveiled today that it will hold a FinTech-focused hackathon in Israel on July 19th and 20th, called TIS – Japan Cashless Hackathon. In association with Japanese credit card company JCB as well as Japanese startup accelerator Samurai Incubate which has a local office in Tel Aviv, the event will take place at Rise by Barclays, a FinTech startup hub located in the most startup-dense neighborhood of the ‘Startup Nation’.

Prior to the event, TIS Intec Group is looking for 15 talented teams to attend with innovative cashless payment ideas with interest in expanding around the world including Japan, especially for the verticals of artificial intelligence, IoT (Internet of Things) and Blockchain. The winning team will win a trip to Tokyo to discuss future collaboration and business opportunity with TIS Intec Group’s executives while the second and third runner-ups will get the opportunity to work with the firm also.

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Image credit: TIS Intec Group

Starting with the first FinTech hackathon by local bank Leumi Group in 2013, MasterCard, IBM Watson and other many global giants have hosted FinTech-focused hackthon events in Israel to find diamonds in the rough. The country is now considered as one of the world’s most busiest birthplaces of prominent FinTech startups, represented by FundBox, Payoneer, and eToro.

In addition to representatives from TIS Intec Group and Samurai Incubate, CTO Yoav Intrator of Israel’s Bank Hapoalim as well as Dorel Blitz, Head of FinTech at KPMG Israel, will join the board of judges during the event. If you are interested in joining this, check out the details and fill the form right here.

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Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Israeli FinTech companies – click to enlarge (image credit: Carmel Ventures)

Japan’s Samurai Incubate launches ‘Accelerate Program Israel’

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo- and Tel Aviv-based startup accelerator Samurai Incubate announced last week that they have begun recruiting Japanese companies to participate in the Accelerate Program Israel, their goal being to accelerate M&A as well as R&D of the latest technology in the region by fostering Israeli startups. Accelerate Program Israel will be a three-month program run on the basis of Samurai Incubate’s wealth of experience in the incubation of startups in both Japan and Israel. The company says that they will be able to make use of their co-working space in Tel Aviv, Samurai House in Israel, as well as the large social network they have built in the country. In July 2014, Samurai Incubate expanded into Israel, establishing their incubation office Samurai House in the city of Tel Aviv. In January of this year they established a new fund called the Samurai Incubate Fund No.5 and has been investing in Israeli pre-seed round startups. Additionally, the company invested in Tel Aviv-based startup incubator Startup East in May, and has been strengthening exchange between the Japanese and Israeli startup communities and cooperation between the two ecosystems. Samurai Incubate director Shouta Morozumi says that compared to…

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Samurai Incubate CEO Kentaro Sakakibara in Jerusalem

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo- and Tel Aviv-based startup accelerator Samurai Incubate announced last week that they have begun recruiting Japanese companies to participate in the Accelerate Program Israel, their goal being to accelerate M&A as well as R&D of the latest technology in the region by fostering Israeli startups.

Accelerate Program Israel will be a three-month program run on the basis of Samurai Incubate’s wealth of experience in the incubation of startups in both Japan and Israel. The company says that they will be able to make use of their co-working space in Tel Aviv, Samurai House in Israel, as well as the large social network they have built in the country.

In July 2014, Samurai Incubate expanded into Israel, establishing their incubation office Samurai House in the city of Tel Aviv. In January of this year they established a new fund called the Samurai Incubate Fund No.5 and has been investing in Israeli pre-seed round startups. Additionally, the company invested in Tel Aviv-based startup incubator Startup East in May, and has been strengthening exchange between the Japanese and Israeli startup communities and cooperation between the two ecosystems.

Samurai Incubate director Shouta Morozumi says that compared to China and Korea, Japan’s business presence in Israel is relatively small.

Acquisition cases of Israeli startups by Chinese businesses such as Alibaba are increasing, and Samsung is now launching an accelerator program in Israel called Runway, so compared to those kinds of developments the movement of Japanese business is quite small as of now.

In Japan there are precedents of incubation programs such as IBM BlueHub which is carried out together with IBM Japan, but the company is hoping they’ll be able to elect five or so startups with a similar framework and successfully hold a three-month accelerator program in Israel.

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Samurai House in Israel

Translated by Connor Kirk
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

Japan’s Samurai Incubate invests in Israeli startup incubator Startup East

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-headquartered startup incubator Samurai Incubate announced today that it has invested an undisclosed sum in Israeli startup incubator Startup East. Startup East was founded about 1.5 years ago, aiming to invite Asia startup to Israei as well as encourage Israeli startup to more penetrate in the Asian region. Especially for startups in Asia, the Israeli incubator appeals that it can provide a gateway to the global market leveraging a solid relationship between the local startup community and Silicon Valley. According to Amos Avner, founder partner of Startup East, they can’t disclose details but are in talks to fundiraise from and partner with unnamed local incubators in Singapore and South Korea as well as one of the governments in the Asia region. On the other hand, Startup East has not received any financial support from the Israeli government because they are a totally private incubation initiative. They have a total of about 10 portfolio startups to date, and are focused on nourishing technology-oriented startups developing something like image processing and business intelligence. In partnership with Startup East, Samurai Incubate wants to encourage startups in Japan and Israel to communicate each others and strengthen integrating the…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-headquartered startup incubator Samurai Incubate announced today that it has invested an undisclosed sum in Israeli startup incubator Startup East. Startup East was founded about 1.5 years ago, aiming to invite Asia startup to Israei as well as encourage Israeli startup to more penetrate in the Asian region. Especially for startups in Asia, the Israeli incubator appeals that it can provide a gateway to the global market leveraging a solid relationship between the local startup community and Silicon Valley.

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Amos Avner, Founding partner of Startup East

According to Amos Avner, founder partner of Startup East, they can’t disclose details but are in talks to fundiraise from and partner with unnamed local incubators in Singapore and South Korea as well as one of the governments in the Asia region. On the other hand, Startup East has not received any financial support from the Israeli government because they are a totally private incubation initiative. They have a total of about 10 portfolio startups to date, and are focused on nourishing technology-oriented startups developing something like image processing and business intelligence.

In partnership with Startup East, Samurai Incubate wants to encourage startups in Japan and Israel to communicate each others and strengthen integrating the two ecosystems. As part of this effort, the two incubators will co-organize an event on 9 June having five Israeli companies: Startup East and its portfolio startups. This is part of Startup East’s roadshow tour visiting Japan, Korea, and Singapore, and participating startups will explore potential funding opportunities, acquiring clients, and making media exposures during the visit.

Since its expansion to Israel back in July 2014, Samurai Incubate set up anincubation office called Samurai House in Tel Aviv where they have been nourishing Japanese entrepreneur-led startups like Aniwo.

Edited by Kurt Hanson

IBM BlueHub holds demo day, showcases five teams from its first accelerator batch

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See the original story in Japanese. IBM BlueHub, IBM Japan’s startup accelerator program in association with Tokyo-based incubator Samurai Incubate, held a demo day for its first batch earlier this week, showcasing five teams graduated from the recent three-month program starting in December. According to Catherine Solazzo, Director for Performance Marketing at IBM, who leads the accelerator program, the best team from the first batch will be selected upon voting at IBM XCITE Spring 2015, which will take place in Tokyo on 19 and 20 of May. As I wrote when the first batch was started, IBM Japan is expecting to help these startups foster their services as the one representing the Japanese tech industry by the year of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Games. So Norihiko Nakabayashi, big data and analytics architect at IBM Japan, who also leads the acceleration initiative, confirmed that the company will keep supporting these startups even after their graduation from the batch. Yoshiaki Ishii, Director of New Business Policy Office, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, delivered a guest speech in the beginning of the event, where he claimed that the Japanese government wants to massively support a global company like IBM conducting…

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See the original story in Japanese.

IBM BlueHub, IBM Japan’s startup accelerator program in association with Tokyo-based incubator Samurai Incubate, held a demo day for its first batch earlier this week, showcasing five teams graduated from the recent three-month program starting in December.

According to Catherine Solazzo, Director for Performance Marketing at IBM, who leads the accelerator program, the best team from the first batch will be selected upon voting at IBM XCITE Spring 2015, which will take place in Tokyo on 19 and 20 of May.

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Catherine Solazzo, IBM BlueHub

As I wrote when the first batch was started, IBM Japan is expecting to help these startups foster their services as the one representing the Japanese tech industry by the year of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Games. So Norihiko Nakabayashi, big data and analytics architect at IBM Japan, who also leads the acceleration initiative, confirmed that the company will keep supporting these startups even after their graduation from the batch.

Yoshiaki Ishii, Director of New Business Policy Office, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, delivered a guest speech in the beginning of the event, where he claimed that the Japanese government wants to massively support a global company like IBM conducting such an activity in the country.

So now let’s have a quick look down about how the participating startups have been advanced in the last three months.

Gene Quest

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From the left: Gene Quest’s Shoko Takahashi, her mentor IBM BluHub’s Norihiko Nakabayashi

Gene Quest provides a large-scale human genome analytics service for consumers via the Internet. The company’s personal genome service can detect the largest variety of detectable potential diseases in Japan, which can be adopted to many areas including disease prevention, custom-made medical treatment, avoiding from prescribing medicines which may cause a side effect for a patient by learning his/her genetic risk beforehand.

When you ask for analyze your genome sample using a genetic inspection kit, your ‘my page’ will be provided on the company’s website where precautions for your health are provided in addition to continuously updating when a new medical or pharmaceutical update comes in.

Gene Quest analyzes and anonymizes genetic data collected from users, planning to provide the analytics to pharmaceutical companies and clinical research organizations with the aim of contributing to the invention of new medicines and the development of medical industry. As differentiation from competitors, the company can offer the service on a white-brand basis, so they have been partnering with the Health Data Lab service on Yahoo Japan since last October.

Shoko Takashi, who leads the company, has been majored in molecular biology at the graduate school of the University of Tokyo. She shared her passion that her team wants to contribute to society by providing feedback to the medical and pharmaceutical research rather than pursuing profitability.

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Brand Pit

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From the Left: BrandPit’s T. T. Chu, his mentor Samurai Incubate’s Mariko Yazawa

About 1.8 billion photos are being posted on social media every day, but 80% of them has no text profiles such as hash tag. Brand Pit analyzes visual context in these photos, helps brand managers understand consumer behaviors and learn new markets that they consider to expanding into. Brand Pit CEO T. T. Chu showed the audience a sample data as an example, which was acquired using Dutch beer brand Heineken as a keyword (see below [in Japanese]).

Brand Pit has already partnered with global big companies such as health care manufacturer Unilever and marketing agency Ogilvy & Mather. The company offers customer-made reporting and online dashboard for brand managers on a monthly charging but an annual subscription basis. Their technology can recognize context in still images for now, considering to advance it to motion images.

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Terrace Mile

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Terrace Mile CEO Yuichi Ikoma

While it is said that farmer’s earnings are decreasing every year, the Japanese market is still as big as valued at 8 trillion yen ($67.3 billion) in agriculture, seeing a 100 trillion yen ($841 billion) market if consolidated with the food industry. Yuichi Ikoma, CEO of Terrace Mile, believes that they can help farmers make their business more profitably by offering them a data-driven agriculture methodology. Upon a series of interviews with more than 200 people farming 100 different types of crops, Ikoma has been devoted to developing the solution which helps farmer better run their business with visualized management system, sales forecast, and metrics showing how supply chains work.

The company has developed an iOS app called TeraScope during the accelerator program, which will be released in late April. With the app, farmers can visualize data about their business just only by entering the amount of harvested crops to be shipped or produced. TeraScope was developed aiming to increase a farmer’s income to 140% for the current state.

The company intends to offer the service consisting of the mobile app and the crowd service for free for three years from now. They will also provide an analytics service called TeraReport for JA Zen-noh(Japan’s National Federation of Agricultural Co-operative Associations) and local governments, giving them three-times detailed metrics for the one-third cost of other conventional services. They will participate in Jump Start Nippon, the entrepreneurship encouragement program by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), from April to further polish up the service.

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Link Sports

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From the left: Link Sports’ Shinya Koizumi, his mentor Samurai Incubate’s Mariko Yazawa

People enjoying sports in a casual way tend to have a common problem. When they have a team match with other teams, they typically have the following problems:

  • Hard to share updates and adjust schedules among team members because more than a half of them still use feature phones.
  • Hard to record and manage scores. 95% of amateur sports players record scores on paper, copy them to an Excel file to share with other team members.
  • Hard to collect money or for splitting  the bills for match venue rent and drinking party after the match.

Link Sports has developed a mobile app to solve all these issues, which will be released in late April. When a manager posts updates like the schedule of an upcoming team match game, it will be delivered via push notification from the app, in-app alert as well as e-mail so as to enable even feature phone users updates to be kept.

Planned monetization streams include crowd storage for sport-training movies, paywalled features, recruiting supplementary members for a game match as well as sales of sports items, uniforms, and sports insurance. Based on assumption that 5% of all sports teams in Japan use the service, Link Sports expects to generate a 150 million yen ($1.26 million) monthly sales in the future.

The company has already partnered with Nihon University, Waseda University, Japan’s National Institute of Fitness and Sports, Bluetag.jp (online athlete supporting platform), Mizuno (sports equipment and sportswear company), YKK Group (manufacturing company famous for making zippers), and Jognote (cloud-based exercise tracking platform).

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Yamap

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From the left: Yoshihiko Haruyama, his mentor Samurai Incubate’s Ryo Tamaki

Yamap is a mobile app that lets users find where they are even when outside mobile telephony range. The app was to develop a system to prevent mountain climbers, anglers and outdoor-goers from getting lost.

Since it launched back in March 2013, the app has acquired 100,000 downloads while map data for the app have surpassed 430,000 downloads. The app will hit the 300,000 downloads and 1 million map downloads milestone in 2015, where more than 1 million photos are uploaded by users onto the app’s social network function.

Going forward, Sefuri, the company behind the app, expects to generate annual sales of 100 million yen ($841,000) sales from premium membership and that of 600 million yen ($5 million) from Yamap Gears, a planned price comparison site that reviews mountain climbers and outdoor gears. Our readers may recall that the company won a pitch competition at B Dash Camp 2015 Spring in Fukuoka last week.

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Following a series of these pitches, Samurai Incubate’s CEO Kentaro Sakakibara delivered a closing speech to participating startups and the audience. In relation to his current base in Israel, he joked that IBM has started this accelerator program in Japan as the second market following Israel.

He sent hearty cheers to the graduating teams and explained that Samurai Incubate join forces with IBM because he thought leveraging the power that such a huge global company has would definitely help startups better gain the potential in making their business more successful.

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Samurai Incubate CEO Kentaro Sakakibara (left)

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Samurai Incubate launches new fund focused on Israeli and Japanese startups

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based incubator and investment firm Samurai Incubate announced today that it has started forming a new fund called Samurai Incubate Fund No. 5. Coinciding with this, the firm also announced that it has invested in two Israeli-based startups by Japanese entrepreneurs, Aniwo and an disclosed company. The investment in these two startups has been disbursed from Samurai Incubate’s No. 4 fund. According to Samurai Incubate CEO Kentaro Sakakibara, they have raised about 500 million yen ($4.2 million) for the new fund, but aim to raise about 1 billion to 2 billion yen ($8.3 million to $16.7 million) by the time the funding is closed in June. The company plans to invest 4.5 million yen ($37,600) in every promising startup in Japan in the seed round as well as about 10 million yen ($83,400) in every pre-seed round startup in Israel. Since 2014, Samurai Incubate has been organizing startup showcase events in many cities in Japan in partnership with Deloitte’s Tohmatsu Venture Support, called Zenkoku Startup Day or literally All-Japan Startup Day. The incubation company wants to invest in about 70 promising startups discovered through this initiative. Samurai Incubate also plans to invest in Israeli…

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Samurai Incubate team, Israeli entrepreneurs and investors meet together at Samurai Office in Tel Aviv. Samurai Incubate CEO Kentaro Sakakibara sits in the middle in the front row.
(Courtesy: Samurai Incubate)

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based incubator and investment firm Samurai Incubate announced today that it has started forming a new fund called Samurai Incubate Fund No. 5. Coinciding with this, the firm also announced that it has invested in two Israeli-based startups by Japanese entrepreneurs, Aniwo and an disclosed company. The investment in these two startups has been disbursed from Samurai Incubate’s No. 4 fund.

According to Samurai Incubate CEO Kentaro Sakakibara, they have raised about 500 million yen ($4.2 million) for the new fund, but aim to raise about 1 billion to 2 billion yen ($8.3 million to $16.7 million) by the time the funding is closed in June. The company plans to invest 4.5 million yen ($37,600) in every promising startup in Japan in the seed round as well as about 10 million yen ($83,400) in every pre-seed round startup in Israel.

Since 2014, Samurai Incubate has been organizing startup showcase events in many cities in Japan in partnership with Deloitte’s Tohmatsu Venture Support, called Zenkoku Startup Day or literally All-Japan Startup Day. The incubation company wants to invest in about 70 promising startups discovered through this initiative.

Samurai Incubate also plans to invest in Israeli startups. Details have not been disclosed because it’s still before the execution of investments, but their expected incubatees include many startups focused on technologies, which makes the Israeli startup scene unique, such as developers of a wearable air purifying device, a voice input/output control for Twitter and Facebook postings, and a footprint scanning-based customized shoe e-commerce service.

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Samurai Incubate set up an incubation office in Tel Aviv in July, where they have been organizing meet-up events aiming to connect Japanese startups with Israeli entrepreneurs and investors. The company held a hackathon event in October in partnership with Toyota InfoTechnology Center, the R&D arm of Japan’s No. 1 automaker, where attendees developed exceptional services like one that allows drivers to avoid rainy areas by leveraging GPS and weather update systems, as well as one that makes it unnecessary for drivers to apply the brake until they reach their destination by predicting the timing of traffic signals and advising the best driving speed through the integration of intelligent transport systems.

According to Sakakibara, the Jewish communities in Israel and the US are well connected, so if something becomes popular in Israel, it will automatically be followed in the US. Mobile apps like Viber and Yo gained a global reputation this way. Sakakibara expects to produce more startups from Israel following their example.

I will visit Israel this year to report on their startup scene.

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Samurai Incubate team in Tel Aviv. (Courtesy: Samurai Incubate)

5 great startup ideas from the latest Samurai Venture Summit in Tokyo

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based incubator Samurai Incubate held its periodical startup showcase event called Samurai Venture Summit Vol. 10 at the Microsoft Japan headquarters in Tokyo last week. Despite the fact that there were a number of startup events like SF Japan Night and the Infogr.am meetup taking place on the same day, it seemed they had a larger crowd of attendees than past editions of the event. Let’s have a quick rundown of some interesting teams showcased as always. Virtual mountain climbing by Yama Reco Yama Reco is an online community for mountain-climbing afficianados. They showcased what is called a virtual mountain-climbing system using a head-mounted display. Their users have collected and shared 360-degree pictures online of shots from famous mountaintops. So if you download any of these image data from the website, you can virtually experience the feeling when you take in the vista from the top of these mountains. Because their photos are limited only to ones from the top, it is unlikely to be called virtual mountain-climbing. If they can collect sequential pictures on the way to the top in the way similar to Google StreetView, it may provide a more realistic virtual experience using a head-mounted display as well as an exercise machine. Zugyuuun! There are some companies…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based incubator Samurai Incubate held its periodical startup showcase event called Samurai Venture Summit Vol. 10 at the Microsoft Japan headquarters in Tokyo last week. Despite the fact that there were a number of startup events like SF Japan Night and the Infogr.am meetup taking place on the same day, it seemed they had a larger crowd of attendees than past editions of the event.

Let’s have a quick rundown of some interesting teams showcased as always.

Virtual mountain climbing by Yama Reco

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Yama Reco is an online community for mountain-climbing afficianados. They showcased what is called a virtual mountain-climbing system using a head-mounted display. Their users have collected and shared 360-degree pictures online of shots from famous mountaintops. So if you download any of these image data from the website, you can virtually experience the feeling when you take in the vista from the top of these mountains.

Because their photos are limited only to ones from the top, it is unlikely to be called virtual mountain-climbing. If they can collect sequential pictures on the way to the top in the way similar to Google StreetView, it may provide a more realistic virtual experience using a head-mounted display as well as an exercise machine.

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Unclear because this captured the screen of a head-mounted display. But you can see Mt. Fuji far off over multiple ridges in this frame.

Zugyuuun!

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There are some companies that want to allow people to develop ‘connected’ hardware products with software engineering skills only. Some of these examples include Berg in London and Connect Free in Kyoto. Zugyuun is also pursuing the potential that helps people develop hardware products as easily as possible.

Raspberry Pi is used as a platform, and you can use it by inserting an SD card having the company’s operating system Zugyuuun OS. You can write source codes in HTML or JavaScript to command the device, which has to be stored in a repository like GitHub in advance. When you start up your hardware product, it will connect to your Zugyuuun account and operate in accordance with your source codes.

There may be some concerns about security and operational stability. In fact, the Zugyuuun team had been struggling to stabilize the internet connectivity for their demonstration because their booth was located on a very high floor which makes it difficult to catch cellphone signals. But it is certain that their solution lowers technical barriers in making ‘connected’ hardware products. Even elementary school students can develop something using this for their holiday research projects.

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Astero

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We featured a Korean startup called Notivo in our Japanese edition before, which was showcased at Korea’s annual startup competition beLAUNCH 2014. It is a mobile app that notifies you about updates or alerts if you register topics you wouldn’t like to miss out such as flash sales, flight delays, ticket sales start and suchlike.

The concept of Astero is very similar to that of Notivo. The app’s engine keeps scouring multiple news source websites or monitoring updates via APIs so that it would let you know as soon as any event you want to know happens.

Scuel

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Photo courtesy: Moneyless Hareyama

Scuel is an online database of medical organizations and pharmacies launched in early September. In addition to providing iOS and Android apps, it publicizes an API so that third-party developers can create their information services using the Scuel database. It has partnered with Japanese medical news site CareNet, fitness club operator RenascenceGoo Healthcare, disabled jobseekers’ community Welbe, atopic dermatitis patients’ community Untikle, poop-logging app Unlog and kidney disease patients’ community Jinlab.

I often keep my eyes on the intensity of information about medical organizations in the world for my own business reasons. We are lucky to have easy access to this kind of information in Japan because there’s no list or phone directory of medical organizations in some countries. However, even in Japan, some resources are not up-to-date or provide no semantic information. So it will be interesting to see how they set up a hub and provide medical information in a form that people can use easily.

KiSSonix

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KiSSonix is a sound-encoding service that lets you experience a 3D sound effect with only two speakers. When you record sounds, you don’t require stereo or surround recordings. Their technology is compatible with two of any type of speakers from any brands.

If you give them your sound, they will encode it and give you back the output in 3D. Their booth staff said, “Your brain will play a decoder role in understanding the encoded sound when you listen to it.”

While Occulus-like head-mounted display products or smart glasses devices are trendy, there will be increased needs for technologies to enable 3D hearing. I forgot to ask them whether or not it’s possible but  if their technology does it may have a great potential in application since it will enable live encoding that lets you hear a sound in accordance with the direction you are headed.

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Japan’s Samurai Incubate and Toyota to hold hackathon event in Israel in October

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Tokyo-based startup incubator Samurai Incubate and Toyota InfoTechnology Center, the R&D arm of Japan’s No. 1 automaker, announced today that they will jointly hold a hackathon in Tel Aviv, Israel, 23–24 October. Samurai Incubate established a local subsidiary in Israel in April, with the aim to help more Japanese companies work with Israeli startups as well as find prominent startups to invest in the startup hub of the Middle East. Toyota InfoTechnology Center has been researching big data solutions leveraging metrics accumulated from more than 100,000 Toyota automobiles. Through the hackathon, the company aims to work with Israeli engineers to co-develop mobile apps using big data. Samurai Incubate founder and CEO Kentaro Sakakibara relocated to Tel Aviv earlier this year, where he recently set up a co-working space called Samurai House to invite startups and entrepreneurs from Japan, Israel, and the rest of world to gather. By lobbying the Israeli government, he wants to encourage their national airline to establish a direct flight connecting Tel Aviv and Tokyo to bridge local startup communities in the two countries. Event details, such as venue and agenda, have not been announced, so check visit their website for more information.

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Tokyo-based startup incubator Samurai Incubate and Toyota InfoTechnology Center, the R&D arm of Japan’s No. 1 automaker, announced today that they will jointly hold a hackathon in Tel Aviv, Israel, 23–24 October.

Samurai Incubate established a local subsidiary in Israel in April, with the aim to help more Japanese companies work with Israeli startups as well as find prominent startups to invest in the startup hub of the Middle East.

Toyota InfoTechnology Center has been researching big data solutions leveraging metrics accumulated from more than 100,000 Toyota automobiles. Through the hackathon, the company aims to work with Israeli engineers to co-develop mobile apps using big data.

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Samurai House, Tel Aviv

Samurai Incubate founder and CEO Kentaro Sakakibara relocated to Tel Aviv earlier this year, where he recently set up a co-working space called Samurai House to invite startups and entrepreneurs from Japan, Israel, and the rest of world to gather. By lobbying the Israeli government, he wants to encourage their national airline to establish a direct flight connecting Tel Aviv and Tokyo to bridge local startup communities in the two countries.

Event details, such as venue and agenda, have not been announced, so check visit their website for more information.

3 great startup ideas from the latest Samurai Venture Summit in Tokyo

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See the original article written in Japanese Last weekend at the Microsoft Japan Office here in Tokyo, the ninth edition of the Samurai Venture Summit took place. This is a semi-annual startup event organized by Samurai Incubate, and is a great opportunity for investors to find startups in the early seed stages. Here is a quick rundown of the startups that caught our eye at the event. Wine It! Wine It is an app that identify the kind of wine you are drinking by taking picture of the label with a smartphone camera. The app contains data for nearly 11,000 wine brands, including information such as grape variety, the place of production, and cuisines that match the wine. There is an app called Sakenote that helps you to keep track of Japanese sake that you drink. But the main feature of Sakenote is to keep a record of your experience, Wine It is more like a wine encyclopedia. If you can’t find a certain brand of wine in the app, the information will be transferred to a sommelier, and it will be added to the database later on. Wine It! has not succeeded in monetizing just yet, but it could…

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See the original article written in Japanese

Last weekend at the Microsoft Japan Office here in Tokyo, the ninth edition of the Samurai Venture Summit took place. This is a semi-annual startup event organized by Samurai Incubate, and is a great opportunity for investors to find startups in the early seed stages. Here is a quick rundown of the startups that caught our eye at the event.

Wine It!

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Wine It is an app that identify the kind of wine you are drinking by taking picture of the label with a smartphone camera. The app contains data for nearly 11,000 wine brands, including information such as grape variety, the place of production, and cuisines that match the wine.

There is an app called Sakenote that helps you to keep track of Japanese sake that you drink. But the main feature of Sakenote is to keep a record of your experience, Wine It is more like a wine encyclopedia. If you can’t find a certain brand of wine in the app, the information will be transferred to a sommelier, and it will be added to the database later on.

Wine It! has not succeeded in monetizing just yet, but it could be possible to create an e-commerce service such as a Sake subscription service.

This initiative began as an incubated startup at D2C, a joint venture of NTT Docomo and ad agency Dentsu.

STARted

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Many aspiring fashion designers have dreamt of launching their own brand. But doing so requires a very complicated process. In addition to creating your designs, you need to look for factories and then convince retailers or online stores to sell it.

But using a service like STARted, you need only upload a hand-drawn design of your dress, and STARted takes over the rest of the process. It’s a little early to talk about the potential of the service since it is still in the closed testing phase right now, with plans to launch this summer.

However, if the startup successfully builds a solid platform, perhaps implementing a crowdfunding system, it could become a place that helps designers do business without the usual required capital or risk.

Edulio

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Edulio is an online learning platform that launched in Japan earlier this month. The first ‘O’ in MOOC stands for ‘open’, but in contrast, Edulio is a platform that runs closed online courses. It has about 180 clients including training companies and private preparatory schools. The platform lets clients to provide online courses for a closed group of users, and it has a dashboard where clients can track the learning progress of the participants and manage tests and results.

As Youngme Moon, the dean of Harvard Business School’s MBA program, mentioned at the recent New Economy Summit, the audience is not forced to engage, so it is important to build a system that motivates them to participate in learning. Edulio currently lets users who are taking the same course share their achievements, with future plans to strengthening this feature later on.

In conversation with Japan’s Samurai Incubate, Anydoor about early-stage startups (Part 3 of 3)

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See the original article in Japanese The partnership between investors and entrepreneurs is an interesting one. In the seed money round, investors not only invest funds, but they cooperate with entrepreneurs on many aspects of the business. But what’s actually going during the very early funding round? We spoke with an investor and an entrepreneur to find out more about this. Kentaro Sakaibara is the CEO of Samurai Incubate, a pioneer among independent incubators in Japan. Naoki Yamada is the CEO of Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, a portfolio startup of Samurai Incubate. In the previous article, they talked about how they cooperated on the Conyac translation service early on. This conversation is the third and final part, where Sakakibara talked about his long term goals. History of Anydoor Feburary 2009: Naoki Yamada and Tomohiro Onuma founded Anydoor. May 2009: Conyac, crowdsourced translation service, was launched. March 2010: Yamada met Sakakibara, and became one of the first portfolios of Samurai Incubate. December 2011: Anydoor fundraised from United. February 2013: Conyac for Business was launched. October 2013: Anydorr fundraised from three VCs. Yamada: How do you support young startups recently? Sakakibara: For the first half a year after…

See the original article in Japanese

The partnership between investors and entrepreneurs is an interesting one. In the seed money round, investors not only invest funds, but they cooperate with entrepreneurs on many aspects of the business. But what’s actually going during the very early funding round? We spoke with an investor and an entrepreneur to find out more about this. Kentaro Sakaibara is the CEO of Samurai Incubate, a pioneer among independent incubators in Japan. Naoki Yamada is the CEO of Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, a portfolio startup of Samurai Incubate.

In the previous article, they talked about how they cooperated on the Conyac translation service early on. This conversation is the third and final part, where Sakakibara talked about his long term goals.

History of Anydoor

Feburary 2009: Naoki Yamada and Tomohiro Onuma founded Anydoor.
May 2009: Conyac, crowdsourced translation service, was launched.
March 2010: Yamada met Sakakibara, and became one of the first portfolios of Samurai Incubate.
December 2011: Anydoor fundraised from United.
February 2013: Conyac for Business was launched.
October 2013: Anydorr fundraised from three VCs.

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Yamada: How do you support young startups recently?

Sakakibara: For the first half a year after investment, I use more schemes when I give advice, more than before. Hands-on for half a year, and then changing the meetings to twice a week… things like that.

Yamada: It’s more formulated rather than working together through trial and error.

Sakakibara: Right.

Yamada: Do you still have the Excel spreadsheet we used before?

Sakakibara: Yes, the form has changed though.

Yamada: Wow, I miss that. I struggled with filling out the tables, but I think that sheet helped me a lot in finding the next investor. The template made it easier for me to pitch in front of investors.

Sakakibara: Actually, some don’t like the sheet. They feel like they’re being controlled.

Yamada: Will you continue to support startups this way? Will you look at startups in Japan from a broader point of view?

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Sakakibara: I think both perspectives are important. Some startups, incubators and CVCs were founded because of our influence. But I personally feel I shouldn’t be in Japan; I should create successful startups overseas.

Yamada: Are you going overseas? I remember when we were in the US, you’d been saying you want to try there.

Sakakibara: I’d rather go to Israel than the US, actually. I’d like to move on from Kobayashi-san to take a chance in Silicon Valley, and make connections on my own with investors in the Middle East and create a chance for startups in Japan to get investment from them.

Yamada: What is your final goal?

Sakakibara: The Nobel Peace Prize.

Yamada: You are very consistent about that. At our first meeting at Tully’s Coffee, you mentioned that. I thought you might be a crazy…

Sakakibara: Really? Did I say that then?

Yamada: And you mentioned Eiichi Shibusawa half a year later [1].

Sakakibara: Actually when I looked up business people related to the Nobel Peace Prize, I found information about Eiichi Shibusawa. He founded 521 companies, so I thought I would create 522 companies by the year 2020. You know, if I become a successful incubator in developing countries and contribute to making those countries richer, then it would be possible to win the prize.

Yamada: Quite a simple plan.

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The Bridge: How do you spend your free time?

Yamada: When I used to spend weekends in Samurai House, I asked Sakakibara-san what he does. I remember he said that he watched DVDs, and I thought he was sort of introverted. We went to a rental video shop together, and I recommended him all the good DVDs for half an hour. But every time he replied he’d already watched them.

Sakakibara: Yeah, at GEO in Ekoda [2].

Yamada: The rental fee was very low, like 50 yen for each. He watched them all and had nothing left to watch.

Sakakibara: Haha. Right.

Yamada: I’m sure you will miss those days 10 years later. You will look back at the old days from Israel. Don’t you have a partner?

Sakakibara: No. Startups are my girlfriend.

Yamada: Ahhhh….

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The Bridge: You got married, Yamada-san. Right?

Yamada: We started our relationship when I was 18 years old. We went to the US together. Quite a long relationship. A bit complicated though.

Sakakibara: Onuma-san told me that this subject is taboo.

Yamada: The funny thing is when we got investment from Sakakibara-san, Onuma’s marriage was then fixed. And when the next investment was settled, I got married. After our recent capital increase, the marriage of our CTO was fixed.

Sakakibara: Haha. Marriage-raising, eh?

The Bridge: I think we’ll end there. Thanks guys.


  1. Referred to as the father of Japanese capitalism.  ↩

  2. GEO is a movie rental chain in Japan.  ↩