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

Rick Martin 2013.05.24

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…

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 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.

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Dave McClure and Shinya Akamine talk ‘Tales from Silicon Valley’

Rick Martin 2013.05.23

This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Sapporo, Japan. You can read more of our reports from this event here. On day one of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Sapporo Japan, we heard from 500 Startups founding partner Dave McClure as well as Shinya Akamine from Core Ventures Group on a panel entitled ‘Tales from Silicon Valley VCs’. The moderator was venture capitalist Gen Isayama. Dave started out talking about incremental innovations, noting that people tend to put Silicon Valley up on a pedestal, and they want to copy the sexiest hardest things, when many of those thing are destined for failure. I’m not saying there won’t be a Japanese Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg – there already are some of those (he mentions Rakuten’s Mikitani and others) but copying 99% of an existing model, and innovating the other 1% may be much easier. ¶ Dave mentions a table top ordering device that 500 Startups invested in. He cites ordering in a restaurant as a big problem, one that people experience everyday. A device that helps you get the waiter’s attention is a great problem to solve, says Dave. “This is not creating…

This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Sapporo, Japan. You can read more of our reports from this event here.

On day one of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Sapporo Japan, we heard from 500 Startups founding partner Dave McClure as well as Shinya Akamine from Core Ventures Group on a panel entitled ‘Tales from Silicon Valley VCs’. The moderator was venture capitalist Gen Isayama.

Dave started out talking about incremental innovations, noting that people tend to put Silicon Valley up on a pedestal, and they want to copy the sexiest hardest things, when many of those thing are destined for failure.

I’m not saying there won’t be a Japanese Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg – there already are some of those (he mentions Rakuten’s Mikitani and others) but copying 99% of an existing model, and innovating the other 1% may be much easier. ¶

Dave mentions a table top ordering device that 500 Startups invested in. He cites ordering in a restaurant as a big problem, one that people experience everyday. A device that helps you get the waiter’s attention is a great problem to solve, says Dave. “This is not creating rocketships, it’s a very simple thing – but it’s a huge market” He explains that not many startups are attacking this area, and this is particularly true in Japan. “Doing real innovation is incredibly hard, he explains, “but incorporating existing ones and improving them are much easier.”

Everybody eats. Restaurants don’t have customer lists. Retention marketing is the easiest thing, and most restaurants don’t do that. It could be made so much better. ¶

It’s worth mentioning that 500 Startups has invested in about 30 food companies already.

He points to internet marketing as a huge innovation, noting that while there’s lots of amazing tech out there, the greatest opportunity in the time that we live in is the fact that everyone is online. And most businesses are not reaching them.

For most existing companies, their business model works. There is an opportunity to attack their weak points of poor internet marketing and high overhead. You can find some big dumb business that makes money but kind of sucks. You can copy that model, reduce overhead, and improve marketing. ¶

Dave’s slides, which he describes as ‘intentionally bad’ so you’ll remember them, are below . (We don’t think they’re that bad!)

Founder vs Product ¶

Shinya followed Dave’s presention with a little about Core Ventures Group. He noted that the first focus of his fund is seed stage investment, and they also look at people who are developing advanced technologies. They also look at B2B companies, ones that sell products to other companies.

He explains says that many of the founders that he gets behind, he knows them before they leave their company to launch a new startup. He points to Feed.fm as an example of a company with a great founder.

The variable that has the most impact is the quality of the founders. Because I’m a seed investor, I really try to identify great founders, work with them and try to unleash their powers. Of course many VCs try to do this, and it’s not unique to just me. ¶

Dave followed Shinya by noting that 500 Startups doesn’t always know if a founder is amazing, and it might take them six months or so to figure it out. He explains that product is something that his company looks at a little bit more:

We screen based on product. To me the product is the mirror of the soul of that team. The three things we look at are engineering, design, and marketing. Those are the three things that get a team off the ground. We need to see that those things are there somewhere. ¶

Shinya says he is excited that many entrepreneurs in Japan are becoming world class entrepreneurs, and they are actually teaching the VCs. He gives the examples of Gengo and Peatix as world class entrepreneurs, who would be at the top of any startup ecosystem in the world. In addition to attracting world class investors, they are bringing in Japanese investors.

Dave agrees that such local role models are great for the ecosystems. And success stories like Rakuten, GREE, and DeNA are going to inspire more entrepreneurs to take risks.

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5 great ideas from Hub Tokyo’s Spark Plug event

Masaru Ikeda 2013.05.18

The Hub is the world’s largest network of co-working spaces, with venues at more than 40 locations worldwide, and 100 more coming soon. At its most recently-launched branch in Tokyo, a ‘Spark Plug’ meet-up event was held yesterday. Five startups pitched their ideas to an enthusiastic audience. Hub Tokyo was officially launched on February 11th of this year. I’ve met with some of the people behind the co-working space, but I visited the venue for the first time just yesterday. Most Hub locations around the world are located in the very heart of a given city, typically in a nicely designed or renovated building. But this Tokyo branch is surprisingly a 10-minute walk from Meguro station on Tokyo’s central Yamanote line, a cozy space set up in a former print factory. The venue’s co-founder, Shingo Potier de la Morandière, explains: Unlike our other locations in Europe or the rest of the world, we need to pay much more to rent a venue here in Tokyo. Even with some sponsorships from big companies, it’s very hard to make our business sustainable and keep operations running. However, we are really keen to help Japanese entrepreneurs connect to the global community. We’ll intensify…

Hub Tokyo was officially launched on February 11th of this year. I’ve met with some of the people behind the co-working space, but I visited the venue for the first time just yesterday. Most Hub locations around the world are located in the very heart of a given city, typically in a nicely designed or renovated building. But this Tokyo branch is surprisingly a 10-minute walk from Meguro station on Tokyo’s central Yamanote line, a cozy space set up in a former print factory.

The venue’s co-founder, Shingo Potier de la Morandière, explains:

Unlike our other locations in Europe or the rest of the world, we need to pay much more to rent a venue here in Tokyo. Even with some sponsorships from big companies, it’s very hard to make our business sustainable and keep operations running. However, we are really keen to help Japanese entrepreneurs connect to the global community. We’ll intensify interactive community-based activities with our global network, including person-to-person exchanges with foreign startups.

Hopefully we can see more great work coming out of this space in the future. But for now, let’s hear about the five startups that pitched at this Spark Plug event.

Gamba ¶

Website: getgamba.com
Pitched by: Masahiro Morita

Some of our readers may recall that we featured this startup in our recent coverage of Samurai Venture Summit.

Gamba is a corporate communication platform that facilitates the submission of daily reports. It has deployed short status message input on its business communication platform, which helps office workers share what they are doing with colleagues and management. Interestingly, the app is not only used among SMEs or startups but also bigger companies.

Competitors in this space include Chatwork, Co-work, and Talknote.

Pint ¶

Website: N/A
Pitched by: Mayumi Kataoka and Yasuhiro Myodo

This (somewhat oddly named) startup wants to establish a portal of online resources for people who are depressed. In order to overcome many of the problems they face, they typically need to contact a variety of professionals, like a social worker, a labor/social security attorney, a medical doctor, etc. Currently there’s no one-stop solution for these patients, and they usually have to consult a variety of bulky books to find useful information.

The Pint team has developed an online portal that allows patients to easily find information, tagging many resources that contain advice from medical and consulting professionals. They aim to help create a society that helps depressed individuals get better and return to a regular and healthy life.

LaunchApp by Zaoria ¶

Website: launchapp.jp
Pitched by: Shinya Inoue

LaunchApp is a crowdsourced usablity testing service that allows app developers to oursource usability testing. It’s available for testing Android apps, iOS apps, and web apps, and allows you to set a deadline (24 hours at the minimum) to get feedback from crowdsourced testers.

It is thought that the usability testing market in Japan will be worth 35 billion yen (approximately $340 million) in three years, and the startup believes this market has big potential.

In terms of differentiation from other competitors like Japan’s UI Scope or Malaysia’s Netizen Testing, LaunchApp focuses on providing clients with more insightful, text-based reporting and conducting focus group interviews.

LogBar

Website: logbar.jp
Pitched by: Takuro Yoshida

Some of our readers may recall when I wrote about an interesting new bar back in March. When you step inside the bar, you receive an iPad upon which you should sign in with a username and password. Every order of beverages, alcohol, and appetizers is to be made on the iPad. You can also interact with bartenders and other customers on the app, which have been specifically designed for the bar.

Almost two months have passed since the launch, and the Yoshida explains that no visitor has not enjoyed interacting with others using the app.

They are planning to hold a casual meet-up event at Mixi headquarters in June, and they will also hold a 1000-person gathering in France in July.

Sukima Chu-ring (bicycle parking lots) ¶

Website: sukima-chu-ring.launchrock.com
Pitched by: Masaru Nakajima

For Japanese people living in urban areas, it’s hard finding a space to park your bicycle, especially at train stations. Local governments provide parking lots for bicycles, but they are typically not close to stations and thus are inconvenient to access.

If you park your bicycle in a prohibited area, it will likely be taken away by a patrol officer. When you get your bicycle back, you will be typically have to pay a penalty money of more than $50.

What this startup aims to do is partnering with housing or apartment companies, providing them with simple equipment to set up bicycle parking lots. They also established a website that allows you to easily find a parking lot nearby, thanks to Google Maps integration.

As of July 1st, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government will enforce a new act for bicycle usage which obliges companies or retailers to provide bicycle parking lots for their employees or customers. That’s why the startup is planning its launch on that date.

The Spark Plug event will take place every month. If you have a chance to visit Japan’s capital, Hub Tokyo should be a must-see spot if you’d like to connect with local entrepreneurs.

Check out their website for more details and event updates.

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Meet the startups from Open Network Lab’s latest Demo Day in Tokyo

Masaru Ikeda 2013.05.16

Tokyo startup accelerator Open Network Lab, led by MIT Media Lab’s director Joi Ito, held its demo day event today. We had a chance to check out a wide range of startups, not only from this latest batch, but also from the program’s previous five batches. Here’s a quick overview below. From the sixth batch 1. Zenclerk ¶ Website: zenclerk.com We can’t disclose much about their business because they’re in stealth mode, expected to launch next month. But you can infer what they’re working on from their website, as well as this short introductory video (in Japanese). They did not pitch at the event. 2. Papelook / Pape.mu girls ¶ Website: papelook.co.jp Pitched by: Ichiro Ozawa As some of our readers may remember that we previously featured Papelook, a photo collage/cropping app that allows users to share your fashion snapshots with others. It has now passed 5 million downloads since its initial launch back in March of 2012, growing at the impressive rate of 500,000 downloads a month. Almost 50% of all Japanese female smartphone users aged from 15 to 29 are using the app. In terms of differentiation from competing photo apps like Decopic and Snapeee, Papelook makes it…

From the sixth batch

1. Zenclerk ¶

Website: zenclerk.com

We can’t disclose much about their business because they’re in stealth mode, expected to launch next month. But you can infer what they’re working on from their website, as well as this short introductory video (in Japanese). They did not pitch at the event.

2. Papelook / Pape.mu girls ¶

Website: papelook.co.jp
Pitched by: Ichiro Ozawa

As some of our readers may remember that we previously featured Papelook, a photo collage/cropping app that allows users to share your fashion snapshots with others. It has now passed 5 million downloads since its initial launch back in March of 2012, growing at the impressive rate of 500,000 downloads a month. Almost 50% of all Japanese female smartphone users aged from 15 to 29 are using the app.

In terms of differentiation from competing photo apps like Decopic and Snapeee, Papelook makes it easier to sort good pictures from bad ones, which should keep your camera roll from being filled with unnecessary pictures.

Papelook alone does not make much money, but it transfers users to Pape.mu girls, their cash cow. Pape.mu girls is a fashion app that presents a variety of pictures and updates curated from models’ blogs or fashion brands. The app has 250,000 downloads so far, with 500,000 active users generating six million page views a month. What’s most impressive is the retention time of their users, logging an astounding 50 minutes per visit on average.

In this way, the photo collage app brings users on board, which then creates opportunities for brands to promote products with the fashion app. The startup has already managed to partner with Fashionwalker.com, one of Japan’s largest fashion e-commerce sites. The company is planning business expansion to the US and Mainland China soon.

3. Lang-8 ¶

Website: lang-8.com
Pitched by: Yangyang Xi

Some of our readers may remember we featured Yangyang Xi, the founder and CEO of language learning platform Lang-8 in an exclusive interview back in February. The startup launched back in 2007 but since then has been operated by the founder on his own.

Mr. Xi was allowed to participate in the last batch of the acceleration program, hiring a CTO who previously worked at recipe sharing site Cookpad, as well as a designer.

With these fresh faces, Lang-8 has been seeing improvements in its access metrics. The growth rate of paid users is twice what it was a year ago, and revenue has almost doubled compared to a year ago. Business is finally in the black, and they can now begin developing a mobile app.

There’s no CGM-based language learning service using a mobile app, so that they expect to be on top of this space soon.

From previous batches

1. Kiddy ¶

Website: kiddy-photo.com
Pitched by: Hiromichi Ando, Compath.me

Back in December of 2011, Companth.me’s co-founder/CEO Hiromichi Ando explained his first app to me in an interview. They’ve been developing a number of apps since then, and the newest one is Kiddy.

Parents typically want to record the growth of their children with pictures, but most would prefer not to share all those snapshots with people on social network platforms who they might not be very close to. To address this problem, Kiddy is a photo sharing app that lets parents to share snapshots of their kids within a family group.

The app was launched last January, and more than 1,000 households have signed up for it so far. Comparing to other photo sharing apps, the Kiddy app is showing good user retention, and the ratio of weekly active users among its entire user base is between 40% to 50%, meaning that about one in every two users makes use of the app at least once a week.

With the potential to generate a great lifetime value, the startup expects to enhance the app as a platform for sharing pictures among family members. They have several monetization ideas including photo printing, or new e-commerce services that propose that you buy something that fits the specific occasion/time of your photo.

2. Voyagin ¶

Website: govoyagin.com
Pitched by: Masashi Takahashi, Entertainment Kick

This service initially set out to create a travel experience marketplace for tourists visiting Japan. But subsequently they enhanced their ideas to cover five Asian countries: Japan, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. They are focusing on the Asian market because there are about 42 million travelers that hit region each year, with the market estimated to be worth over $4.2 billion.

Voyagin is planning to move its headquarters to Singapore by the end of this year.

3. SpathSchool ¶

Website: spath.jp
Picthed by: Koichiro Sumi

This service is being operated a pair of developer co-founders. They are often asked by other developers to create smartphone apps, and were wondering why developers outsource development work to other developers. Finally they reached a conclusion. System developers in their 20s are familiar with programming languages like Objective-C or Ruby on Rails, but those in their 30s are better versed in conventional technologies like MySQL or Java.

With this insight the startup identified a sort of technology generation gap in the developer community. And it’s a gap that they aim to fill.

They’ve established set up a 20 to 60 hour lecture program for less experienced developers to learn about app development, and a range of related topics. They are also planning to providing some new courses for IT companies to train their employees.

After all the presentations were made, Kaoru Hayashi, the CEO of the accelerator’s parent company Digital Garage, announced that the top prize at the Demo Day event was awarded to the aforementioned Papelook.

The Open Network Lab accelerator is now accepting applications for the next batch of its acceleration program. The deadline is May 31st at noon.

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Learning from recent trends in the Asian startup space [Echelon Japan 2013 panel]

Takuya Tsuchiya 2013.04.25

See also the original story in Japanese. At e27’s Echelon satellite event in Tokyo today,We had a chance to hear a panel discussion with co-founders of emerging tech news media from the Asian region. The panelists included [1]: Mohan Belani, co-founder, e27, Singapore Rama Mamuaya, co-founder, Daily Social, Indonesia Masaru Ikeda, co-founder, SD Japan Moderator: Rick Martin, editor-in-chief, SD Japan How do your respective countries help support startups or entrepreneurs? Rama: Our western city of Bandung is one of the hottest places right now. Jakarta is where the money is. The investment people and those who are making money around the startup scene, such as VC firms or incubators are based in Jakarta. Typically entrepreneurs might meet and talk with advertisers or VC firms every week in Japan. Jakarta is not so open to accept entrepreneurs who might make some crazy business – however Bali welcomes them. (laugh) Our government does not actually help us much. And typically Indonesian entrepreneurs launch their business without governmental support. Masaru: Compared to other countries, Japan is very conservative. But it is fortunate that many incubators and accelerators have launched in the last few years. Some Japanese giant IT companies established subsidiaries that specializing in investing…

See also the original story in Japanese.

At e27’s Echelon satellite event in Tokyo today,We had a chance to hear a panel discussion with co-founders of emerging tech news media from the Asian region. The panelists included [1]:

Mohan Belani, co-founder, e27, Singapore
Rama Mamuaya, co-founder, Daily Social, Indonesia
Masaru Ikeda, co-founder, SD Japan
Moderator: Rick Martin, editor-in-chief, SD Japan

How do your respective countries help support startups or entrepreneurs?

Rama: Our western city of Bandung is one of the hottest places right now. Jakarta is where the money is. The investment people and those who are making money around the startup scene, such as VC firms or incubators are based in Jakarta. Typically entrepreneurs might meet and talk with advertisers or VC firms every week in Japan. Jakarta is not so open to accept entrepreneurs who might make some crazy business – however Bali welcomes them. (laugh) Our government does not actually help us much. And typically Indonesian entrepreneurs launch their business without governmental support.

Masaru: Compared to other countries, Japan is very conservative. But it is fortunate that many incubators and accelerators have launched in the last few years. Some Japanese giant IT companies established subsidiaries that specializing in investing in startups. In terms of creating an environment where entrepreneurs can take risk, these new entities are a great support for them.

Mohan: The Singaporean government provides pretty good support for our local startup scene. When you launch a company in Singapore, if your business meets the criteria, you will receive the maximum amount of up to $5 million, not as an investment but as a grant.

Japanese IT businesses and investors are busy in South East Asia. How are they doing?

Mohan: I think DeNA is doing well, and Gumi has also a presence. And we’ve seen many Japanese VC firms in Singapore. Typically they set up a subsidiary in Singapore and expand to other SE Asia countries to invest in local startups. I think this is a good choice. Because for local startups, the government tells you where you should go for a job, which developers you should partner with, and necessary information for their localization efforts.

Rama: Compared to funding from Indonesian local VC firms, it would be better to get funds from Japanese VC firms. Among them, GREE Ventures is pretty active. DeNA is likely to come next. CyberAgent Ventures has already started investment, and they also brought their subsidiaries (such as MicroAd) to the Indonesian market. In Indonesia, Japanese companies typically are investing in local startups and bringing their portfolio companies over.

The latest startup trends

Rama: Tiket is an impressive service, and they succeeded in raising funds and are pretty aggressive. Mobile gaming and social networking services are very hot. Some Indonesian mobile gaming startups are reaching foreign AppStores in the US, UK, and Japan. (cites TouchTen as an example)

Mohan: We’re hosting satellite events all across the region, and winning teams from those startup pitch sessions are basically teams of professional people. For example, there’s a startup providing a telemedicine service for doctors. These things remind Singaporean entrepreneurs that they shouldn’t keep developing just simple social apps, and they might start providing serious solutions for serious problems in spaces like the construction, medical, and legal industries.

Answers are paraphrased and not quoted verbatim. ↩

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9 great ideas from the 7th Samurai Venture Summit

Masaru Ikeda 2013.04.22

This past weekend at the Microsoft Japan office in Tokyo, the 7th edition of the Samurai Venture Summit took place. This is a semi-annual startup exhibition event run by Samurai Incubate. Here’s a quick rundown of the startups that caught our eye at the event. WebPay San Francisco and Tokyo-based startup FluxFlex has developed a card payments solution for web developers called WebPay. Generally speaking, cross-border transactions are not permitted under international card transaction rules, and all card payments in a specific country should be processed by a company in the that country. WebPay aspires to fill card transaction needs for web payment services in the Japanese market. In 2010 the startup launched a Github-integrated cloud service, but that has been completely shut down. They’re now focusing on this payment solution in partnership with GMO Payment Gateway, Japan’s oldest card solution provider, a subsidiary of one of Japan’s largest web conglomerates. Festival Lover Festival Lover is a social networking platform and bulletin board for sharing experiences around music festival events all over Japan. When you attend an interesting event, you can share your experience with other users, and record what you’ve seen and enjoyed. Carnol Carnol is a service that…

WebPay

San Francisco and Tokyo-based startup FluxFlex has developed a card payments solution for web developers called WebPay.

Generally speaking, cross-border transactions are not permitted under international card transaction rules, and all card payments in a specific country should be processed by a company in the that country. WebPay aspires to fill card transaction needs for web payment services in the Japanese market.

In 2010 the startup launched a Github-integrated cloud service, but that has been completely shut down. They’re now focusing on this payment solution in partnership with GMO Payment Gateway, Japan’s oldest card solution provider, a subsidiary of one of Japan’s largest web conglomerates.

Festival Lover

Festival Lover is a social networking platform and bulletin board for sharing experiences around music festival events all over Japan. When you attend an interesting event, you can share your experience with other users, and record what you’ve seen and enjoyed.

Carnol

Carnol is a service that give users an opportunity to test drive a new car. Japanese auto makers are struggling because the younger generation in the country is less interested in owning a car, especially in highly populated metro areas such as Tokyo or Osaka. Car dealers also having a tough time because they have no good way to reach new potential customers.

Samurai Infinity, the startup behind the service, is expecting to establish partnerships with many regional dealers, giving consumers a chance to test-ride a car they might like. In this way, dealers can access a new customer base that they might have previously had difficulty reaching.

The startup won the silver prize at CyberAgent’s mockup plan contest in 2012, and is now backed by Samurai Incubate.

Passta and PassSquare

Both of these services are provided by Monoplane. The Tokyo-based startup targets real store owners and specializes in providing customer engagement solutions using Apple’s Passbook technology.

Passta is a web app that allows merchants to create Passbook coupons for their potential customers. Using templates, users can make coupons that link to the merchant’s website, logo, and location.

As for PassSquare is a consumer solution where users can obtain Passbook coupons for nearby shops or merchants. For merchants issuing these coupons, they can reach more consumers with this coupon distribution network.

Documotion

Documotion is a work-flow management system that includes a document scanning feature. On the Japanese business side, especially at old-fashioned or more hierarchical companies, every task is fully processed on formatted documents with the management’s official seal. When faced with many documents, some companies struggle and there’s lots of inefficient paperwork that really doesn’t have anything to do with making money.

This app lets users scan those documents, and they can also forward them to their management if they are in need of special permission. Unfortunately there is no OCR feature, so you’ll need enter figures and descriptions manually.

Solution WiFi

Foreign travelers visiting Japan often have difficulty finding a network connection here. 3G roaming services provided by local mobile carriers are costly, any many people buy a pre-paid SIM card or rent a wi-fi dongle upon arrival at airport – but this is still costly. Local wifi services are primarily for local people who subscribe to local carriers’ services. In Japan, all public WiFi providers are required by the government to authenticate users and to record usage logs, so that law enforcement can track and identify crimes or other illegal matters.

Solution WiFi lets merchants give their customers complimentary wi-fi access with Facebook authentication and a ‘like.’ For consumers, there’s no complicated process to authenticate or sign up. For merchants, it helps when customers like their Facebook fan page, thus contributing to customer engagement online as well offline.

Otoshimono.com

otoshimonotag_on_iphone Otoshimono.com is an online ‘lost and found’ service. Typically when you find a lost item, you’d usually bring it to your nearby police office. But in Japan, you’ll usually also be requested to answer many questions by officers, as well as complete a report form. This usually takes a long time and may discourage you from bringing in a lost item, even if you’d like to help out.

Otoshimono.com has invented a sticker upon which a unique QR code for their toll-free hotline is printed. It encourages someone who has picked up your lost article to report it, and subsequently you can easily find it article even online. The sticker is available on Amazon Japan, at a price of $13 dollars for two.

Colotown

Colotown is a location-based community that helps neighbors connect. There are many social network services that let users connect each other regardless of their location. But the inventor of Colotown thought there was a need for a space where users could share information or updates about their neighborhoods. With this service, you will be allowed to register up to three town areas, letting you know what’s happening in those areas, such as a time-limited offers at a supermarket.

The developer expects to attract housewives with these neighborhood-focused services, or people who typically spend their time in a relatively small area. They also hope to facilitate electronic sign-boards in neighborhoods, showing tweets to encourage passers-by to connect with online community and learn what’s happening in the area.

Gamba

If you work in a company, you’ll might sometimes be requested to submit a report to your management at the end of your day, describing what tasks you’ve completed or what you’ll do on the following day. This can be troublesome, but of course if you skip it, you’ll likely run into problems with your management.

Gamba is a corporate communication platform specializing in submitting daily reports. It has deployed Twitter- or Facebook-like short message input on its business communication platform, which helps office workers communicate what they are doing with their colleagues and management.

The startup was founded in 2012 by Masahiro Morita who previously worked with NTT R&D, KLab, and Rakuten Travel.

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5 more fun startups from Japan’s KDDI Mugen Labo

Masaru Ikeda 2013.03.24

KDDI Mugen Labo, the tech startup incubator from Japan’s second largest telco, recently unveiled five startups which qualified to participate in the fourth batch of its incubation program. They will start further development and receiving mentoring very shortly. Let’s see what kind of services were chosen, and learn a little about the folks behind them. Class ¶ Class is an alternative social network that lets you experience a sort of virtual reunion by creating a network of ten strangers from the same generation as you. When you sign to the service, you’ll be requested to enter your date of birth. From there, the system will randomly choose someone whom you’ve probably never met but will likely get along with. The service aims to help adults experience the sort of friendships they’ve experienced back when they were students. To help break the ice, the app presents a discussion topic of the day. But interestingly it is a time-limited experience, so the network will be completely gone one month after you create it. Class is being developed by Tokyo-based startup We-b, which is also known for having developed a film or book-oriented Pinterest clone called Log. The app is still in beta…

kddi_mugen_labo_logo KDDI Mugen Labo, the tech startup incubator from Japan’s second largest telco, recently unveiled five startups which qualified to participate in the fourth batch of its incubation program. They will start further development and receiving mentoring very shortly. Let’s see what kind of services were chosen, and learn a little about the folks behind them.

Class ¶

Class is an alternative social network that lets you experience a sort of virtual reunion by creating a network of ten strangers from the same generation as you. When you sign to the service, you’ll be requested to enter your date of birth. From there, the system will randomly choose someone whom you’ve probably never met but will likely get along with. The service aims to help adults experience the sort of friendships they’ve experienced back when they were students. To help break the ice, the app presents a discussion topic of the day. But interestingly it is a time-limited experience, so the network will be completely gone one month after you create it.

Class is being developed by Tokyo-based startup We-b, which is also known for having developed a film or book-oriented Pinterest clone called Log. The app is still in beta but has acquired more than 2,000 users in three days since the launch.

Kawaii Museum JPN ¶

Inspired by Tokyo Otaku Mode (a subculture media service that has more than 11 million Facebook likes) Kawaii Museum JPN aspires to be a news source about Japanese characters for global audiences. So far it has 3.6 million likes. For monetization, they plan to develop an e-commerce platform specifically for selling character products, and to lead users to stores where they can buy them.

Kawaii Museum JPN is currently being developed by Ruby programmer Taketo Tanaka who previously worked with DeNA.

Canvas creator ¶

Canvas Creator is a tool that helps developers easily design a HTML5-based web app without the need for any coding skills, although the prototype is not yet finalized. The app is being developed by Wataru Miyazaki and his team who are still attending the University of Tokyo, but have won many awards at hackathons or business plan competitions in Tokyo.

Mygrow.jp ¶

Mygrow.jp is a tool for teachers which allows them to share and record the growths of their students. The app is developed by Tokyo-based startup Life is Tech, which has been running a bootcamp program for elementary and junior school students to master IT skills. The app visualizes how each students progresses on his or her learning path, helping teachers do their job a little better equipped with this new insight.

Trapro ¶

Trapro aims to solve big social issues such as the low birth rate or global warming. According to the platform’s developer Toshiki Abe, the biggest factors that prevent us from trying to solve social issues are: very few people are interested in it, there’s no information hub about such things, and few people have a solution readily at hand. Trapro allows you to post an article about social issues which you are conscious about, and then invite other users to work on it together.

Mr. Abe is attending the University of Tokyo and organizes a study community called Ridilover. It encourages university students to pay more attention to current social issues.

This 4th batch for the incubator program will start very shortly, and we can expect to see the results of their efforts at their presentation event three months from now.

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14 standout financial solution startups from Japan

SCORE 1,102

Masaru Ikeda 2013.03.22

These days in Japan, there are a bunch of startups providing accounting or financial solutions, both for personal and business use. Let’s take a quick rundown of some of the more popular ones. BizNote by CrowdCast ¶ BizNote is a cloud-based accounting app that helps SME owners and startup managers handle their cash flows using their PC or smartphone. The app aims to simplify accounting, thus letting business spend their time on more important tasks. BizNote won the top award at the Yayoi App Contest, an Android app competition run by Japan’s largest accounting software company. It recently added key features like receipt scanning as well as data integration with major accounting software packages. It’s available in English and Japanese, and for free for the first 30-days. Apps are available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Google Chrome. The app was developed by CrowdCast, a company founded in 2011 by Takashi Hoshikawa. He previously worked with Microsoft Japan and DEC Japan. Coiney ¶ Coiney is Japan’s first-ever smartphone-based credit card processing service. It’s similar to services like Square, Paypal Here, and Swiff. The company was founded by ex-Paypal Japan employee Naoko Samata and won the top prize at Rising Expo…

These days in Japan, there are a bunch of startups providing accounting or financial solutions, both for personal and business use. Let’s take a quick rundown of some of the more popular ones.

BizNote by CrowdCast ¶

BizNote is a cloud-based accounting app that helps SME owners and startup managers handle their cash flows using their PC or smartphone. The app aims to simplify accounting, thus letting business spend their time on more important tasks.

BizNote won the top award at the Yayoi App Contest, an Android app competition run by Japan’s largest accounting software company. It recently added key features like receipt scanning as well as data integration with major accounting software packages. It’s available in English and Japanese, and for free for the first 30-days. Apps are available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Google Chrome.

The app was developed by CrowdCast, a company founded in 2011 by Takashi Hoshikawa. He previously worked with Microsoft Japan and DEC Japan.

Coiney ¶

coiney_logo Coiney is Japan’s first-ever smartphone-based credit card processing service. It’s similar to services like Square, Paypal Here, and Swiff. The company was founded by ex-Paypal Japan employee Naoko Samata and won the top prize at Rising Expo 2012, a startup showcase competition event held by CyberAgent Ventures.

The startup announced in February that it had fundraised 100 million yen (over $1 million) from four investors including East Ventures, CyberAgent Ventures, and Shinji Kimura (the founder of ad platform developer AtLantis). It has partnered with Sumitomo Mitsui Card, the largest issuer/acquirer of Visa-affiliated credit cards in Japan, and is working together with them to accelerate merchant acquisition.

I previously spoke with the team when the service was launched last October, so check that out for more details.

Freee by CFO K.K. ¶

The recently launched Freee is a cloud-based accounting solution that aims to set SME owners free of tedious accounting tasks. By synchronizing your account to this cloud system (which is integrated with web services provided by banks and credit companies) your payments will be logged in the system using web-scraping technology. They are sorted into the appropriate categories corresponding to the items you’ve purchased.

It was developed by CFO K.K., a company founded in July of 2012 by ex-Googler Daisuke Sasaki and ex-Sony engineer Ryu Yokoji. They’ve been developing the service as a stealth project at their home, and fundraised 50 million yen (about $523,000) from notable US-based VC firm DCM in December.

Hottoscope ¶

hottoscope_logo Hottoscope is a data-mining company that provides market analysis and prediction based on the aggregated information from social media. It provides analysis to Bloomberg Terminal, one of the most famous information resources for stock traders.

The company was launched about 12 years ago as a kind of a hobby/study group at the University of Tokyo. Since then it has been providing various tools for analyzing social updates to prevent companies from being financially damaged by harmful rumors and misinformation.

Kanmu’s Card Link ¶

By associating coupons with your credit card, Kanmu allows you to get discounts from participating merchants when paying with a credit card. For merchants, you’ll be charged on a performance basis, and can reduce transfer fees while easily targeting a specific segment of customers. For the consumers, you even don’t need to print coupons beforehand or present virtual coupons with your smartphone at storefronts.

The startup was founded by Wataru Yamaki who previously worked with several web startups as an intern. He also has developed Marketgeek.

Makeleaps ¶

makeleaps_logo Makeleaps is a web-based invoicing solution that targets startups and SME owners. It was founded in 2010 by Tokyo-based (Australian) entrepreneur Jason Winder who’s also known for organizing Hacker News Tokyo. They launched the service in Japan because people here aggressively pursue product quality, which is why he believes his business can work globally once it succeeds here. In addition to invoice delivery via snail mail and fax, the startup provides an optional dunning service too.

Misoca by Stand Firm ¶

Misoca is an online invoice-issuing solution for startups and SMEs, a service provided by Nagoya-based company Stand Firm. The app is totally cloud-based and has features to send invoices to your clients via snail mail or fax.

Money Forward

Money Forward provides online personal accounting for individuals, allowing them to easily manage their daily expenses by integrating with their bank passbooks and credit purchase history with information scraped from their web account. The startup was spun-off from Tokyo’s famous online stock brokerage Monex in 2012. It recently raised 100 million yen (over $1 million) from several angel investors and WIT Corporation, a TLO (technology licensing organization) under Waseda University.

Mycredit.jp ¶

Mycredit.jp provides a credibility report of your finances, a sort of Japanese version of Experian or Equifax. By authenticating your identity over the phone, you will be able to get the report in just about 10 minutes after placing the order. This is intended as a service to check your credibility prior to applying for a house mortgage. Subsequently you can find a way to improve your standing for future borrowing from financial institutions.

The startup was founded by serial entrepreneur Russell Cummer who’s also running Acqush, a Tokyo-based social lending startup, backed by Dave McClure’s 500 Startups.

Paygate by Royal Gate ¶

Paygate is a credit card processor that works as an attachment to tablets and smartphones. Using it together with a small printer, merchants can issue receipts to customers at purchase. The product is intended for people like motorcycle messengers, or insurance canvassers.

The service was developed by a 5-year-old IT company, and fundraised a total of 100 million yen (over $1 million) from NTT Investment Partners and Mizuho Capital in its final seed round in 2011.

ReceReco by Brain Pad ¶

Tokyo-based data mining company Brain Pad launched an iOS app called ReceReco (receipt recording) last month. By scanning receipts with your iPhone camera, the personal accounting app can recognize what you’ve paid for, visualize it in diagrams, and even lets you to share to Evernote or Facebook.

Brain Pad was founded in 2004 and was ranked 23rd place on Deloitte’s Fast50 Japan, a ranking of 50 Japanese tech companies based on revenue growth in Japan.

Totte Okuru ¶

Totte Okuru is an iPhone app developed by Tokyo-based startup Pirika Works. The app allows users to easily record expenses by scanning your receipts. Unlike similar services, scanned images will be transferred to keypunchers and entered to the system manually, which enables reading of not only machine-printed receipts but also hand-written ones.

The service uses people living in the Tohoku region for keypunching, which goes a little ways towards helping some people affected by the 2011 East Japan Earthquake.

Ubiregi ¶

Ubiregi is a cloud-based POS (point of sales) system that uses an iPad at the storefront. Compared to conventional systems, it can be reasonably deployed and easily maintained, especially for individual merchants like small restaurants, standing bars, and accessory shops.

The startup was launched by Keita Kido in August of 2010, and raised around 20 million yen (over $200,000) from Voyage Ventures and Kronos Fund. It also has a capital tie-up with SalesForce.com.

Zaim ¶

zaim_logo Zaim is a smartphone app that allows you to input your expenses into an assortment of categories, thus gaining some insight into your spending habits thanks to its graphic analysis. The startup has partnered with OCN Kakeibo, a cloud-based household accounting solution run by NTT Communications, and allows users to shorten the time requirements of their bookkeeping tasks.

It was launched in 2011 by Japan’s notable geek girl Takako Kansai. Zaim was incorporated last September, and raised 42 million yen (about $450,000) from Japan’s top recipe sharing site Cookpad. My colleague Rick spoke with her a little more about the service in this Tech in Asia article.

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Japan’s Open Network Lab now taking applications for its incubation program

Masaru Ikeda 2013.03.14

See also this story in Japanese. Open Network Lab (aka OnLab), a Tokyo-based tech incubator backed by Digital Garage and NetPrice.com, has today started receiving applications for the 7th batch of the seed accelerator incubation program. The amount of funds for each qualified startup is 2 million yen (over $20,000), which is double what it was in the past. A special training course called the ‘Onlab Hacker Program‘ allows participating engineers to work with the incubator’s portfolio startups, thus forming an ecosystem where ‘succeeding’ startups can help new entries at the incubator. It’s often said that in order to launch a startup, we need to have three kinds of people: hustlers (management), hipsters (designers/creatives), and hackers (engineers). The incubator now serves all three of these, with doubling the funding for hustlers to work with, UI and UX mentoring from Adaptive Path founder Janice Fraser and AQ CEO Chris Palmieri, and now, they’ve established this program for hackers as well. Incubators usually need to figure out a way to differentiate themselves from others, and OnLab has made a good effort to do that here. Similarly, KDDI Mugen Labo, the tech incubator by Japan’s second largest telco, has set up a special application category…

See also this story in Japanese.

Open Network Lab (aka OnLab), a Tokyo-based tech incubator backed by Digital Garage and NetPrice.com, has today started receiving applications for the 7th batch of the seed accelerator incubation program. The amount of funds for each qualified startup is 2 million yen (over $20,000), which is double what it was in the past. A special training course called the ‘Onlab Hacker Program‘ allows participating engineers to work with the incubator’s portfolio startups, thus forming an ecosystem where ‘succeeding’ startups can help new entries at the incubator.

It’s often said that in order to launch a startup, we need to have three kinds of people: hustlers (management), hipsters (designers/creatives), and hackers (engineers). The incubator now serves all three of these, with doubling the funding for hustlers to work with, UI and UX mentoring from Adaptive Path founder Janice Fraser and AQ CEO Chris Palmieri, and now, they’ve established this program for hackers as well.

Incubators usually need to figure out a way to differentiate themselves from others, and OnLab has made a good effort to do that here. Similarly, KDDI Mugen Labo, the tech incubator by Japan’s second largest telco, has set up a special application category for HTML5-engineering startups, and OnLab and Movida Japan have begun seeking high potential startups in cities beyond Tokyo. These efforts are good to see, representing a range of new entrepreneurship opportunities for creative minds out there.

Applications for OnLab’s seventh batch open today (March 14th), and the deadline is set for May 31st. If you’d like to apply, you can do so here. Good luck!

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Incubate Fund forms new $21.4M fund, plans to invest in 100 startups in 3 years

Masaru Ikeda 2013.03.04

Tokyo-based VC Incubate Fund recently announced that it had established a new 2 billion yen fund (about $21.4 million), with the aim of investing in seed startups and young venture capitalists. Specifically, the firm expects to invest in 100 startups within the next three years. To establish the fund, the firm fundraised from Infocom Corporation (the publisher of a bilingual news blog on Japan-made Android apps), Sega, SME Support, D2C (a joint venture of Dentsu and NTT Docomo), Nissay Capital (an investment arm of Japan’s second largest life insurance company), Mixi, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital. Until now, the firm has been known for investing in a number of notable Japanese startups including game companies Gumi, Pokelabo, Aiming, and Axel Mark; as well as San San, who runs a business card-based CRM solution. In the past several months, the firm has been expanding its scope beyond gaming startups, investing in seed and early startups like Coffee Meeting (people-to-people matchmaking on a chat over coffee), Storys.jp, Designclue, Voip, and Booklap.

To establish the fund, the firm fundraised from Infocom Corporation (the publisher of a bilingual news blog on Japan-made Android apps), Sega, SME Support, D2C (a joint venture of Dentsu and NTT Docomo), Nissay Capital (an investment arm of Japan’s second largest life insurance company), Mixi, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital.

Until now, the firm has been known for investing in a number of notable Japanese startups including game companies Gumi, Pokelabo, Aiming, and Axel Mark; as well as San San, who runs a business card-based CRM solution. In the past several months, the firm has been expanding its scope beyond gaming startups, investing in seed and early startups like Coffee Meeting (people-to-people matchmaking on a chat over coffee), Storys.jp, Designclue, Voip, and Booklap.

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Class ¶

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BizNote by CrowdCast ¶

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