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Japan’s U-note raises funds, aims to be intelligence hub for businesses

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup U-note announced on Thursday that it has received investments from Venture United and Anri. Details were not disclosed, but the amount is thought to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Prior to this funding, the startup raised 11 million yen (approximately $130,000 [1]) from Party Factory, Voyage Ventures, and Movida Japan about a year ago. U-note is an collaborative event summary platform, providing text overviews of presentations, lectures or events. Typical topics could be notable business success stories, secrets for better sales, or useful tips for your work. Their users are mainly business people in their 20s and 30s. When the service was launched in July of 2012, they envisioned the it as a real-time note sharing service rather than an event summarization platform. But according to the company’s co-founder and CEO, Yuto Koide, his team made a change to their service during the last year. The result has been an acceleration in growth. Now they’re positioning U-note as an intelligence hub for business people, and their adjustment has resulted in constant monthly growth of over 140% in pageviews and unique users. Koide tells us a little more about their…

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From the left: Anri Samata (general partner, The Anri fund), Yuto Koide (CEO, U-note), and Satoshi Maruyama (chief venture capitalist, Venture United)

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup U-note announced on Thursday that it has received investments from Venture United and Anri. Details were not disclosed, but the amount is thought to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Prior to this funding, the startup raised 11 million yen (approximately $130,000 [1]) from Party Factory, Voyage Ventures, and Movida Japan about a year ago.

U-note is an collaborative event summary platform, providing text overviews of presentations, lectures or events. Typical topics could be notable business success stories, secrets for better sales, or useful tips for your work. Their users are mainly business people in their 20s and 30s.

When the service was launched in July of 2012, they envisioned the it as a real-time note sharing service rather than an event summarization platform. But according to the company’s co-founder and CEO, Yuto Koide, his team made a change to their service during the last year. The result has been an acceleration in growth. Now they’re positioning U-note as an intelligence hub for business people, and their adjustment has resulted in constant monthly growth of over 140% in pageviews and unique users.

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Koide tells us a little more about their change in strategy:

We changed direction about half a year ago. Until then, we had been focusing on providing reports about speaking events, since we thought that kind of content had great value. Subsequently we found that many business people were looking for such useful tips. So we decided to make the platform serve that need.

We’ve recently seen a rise in media sites curating vertical content, such as Iemo (interior-focused) and Mery (girls interest). U-note is yet another that can be added to that list. Koide hopes to keep running it more as a web service instead of a media site. He explained:

We’d aiming to be somewhat like Cookpad, but for business. Cookpad helps housewives figure out what they’ll cook for a dinner. Similarly we are hoping to help business people with their business decisions. Currently our team creates the content, but we expect to get our users involved in creating content too. We hope our site will have more consumer-generated content.

The platform is publishing almost 20 to 30 articles a day, with the goal of increasing it to 100 articles a day within three months. These articles will be more focused on topics that offer value at all times (so-called ‘evergreen’ content) rather than news tips that lose freshness right away. Their current monetization streams are banner ads and branded content (advertorial articles). But they’re seeking other revenue streams as well.

The company aspires to accumulate 100,000 articles by the end of 2015. Using the funds raised this time, they plan to hire more engineers, enrich their content, and develop a mobile app.

We had a chance to speak with Venture United’s chief venture capitalist Satoshi Maruyama and Anri’s general partner Anri Samata about U-Note. Here’s a little of what they had to say:

Maruyama: When I met with them for the first time, they were still running as a note sharing service. But when I met again last summer, they’d already pivoted. I thought the idea – creating a platform for sharing business intelligence – was interesting.

Samata: It was almost a half year ago when I met with Koide for the first time. The more I meet and talk with him, the more I feel that he is strong-minded. He is a workaholic. Rather than giving his product a good valuation, I thought his attitude at this age will definitely bring a market-disrupting product sooner or later. That’s why I invested in the company.

Maruyama: Through trial and error, Koide has grown up as an entrepreneur. Seeing how fast he has developed, I think he still has much room to grow further.

Koide: Maruyama told me he’s willing to work with us to develop better products. He was the only person who offered to do that. Samata believed in me rather than my product. That’s why I decided to ask them to invest.

Maruyama: This type of service will usually take a while to find success. But I think his team can keep ahead of the curve. From an investor’s perspective, I’ll try to help him make the most of his potential.


  1. Using the currency conversion rate at that time. 

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

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Last Friday at the Infinity Ventures Summit LaunchPad event, Tokyo-based startup U-Note pitched a web solution for taking notes at public events. The company’s CEO, Yuto Koide, explained that they want to transfer event memos online. He says that while many people want to attend local events, they can’t possibly make it to every one – either due to time or money constraints. But U-Note provides user accounts of high profile events on its site, a valuable resource to those who cannot make it in person. In terms of the technology, the interface looks very much like Storify.com, allowing users to drag and drop rich media elements like Tweets, photos, videos, and more, in addition to text content. As for mobile note-taking, they have an Android app already released, and one for iPhone on the way. U-Note has nine categories of events on site, such as talks from celebrities, or startup events just like this one [1]. So far the platform is seeing good progress, and May saw 250% growth over the previous month, says Koide. As for monetization, they have editorial ads that they sell for 150,000 yen. They want the user to enjoy the contents, so the editorial…

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U-Note CEO Yuto Koide pitches at Infinity Ventures Summit

Last Friday at the Infinity Ventures Summit LaunchPad event, Tokyo-based startup U-Note pitched a web solution for taking notes at public events.

The company’s CEO, Yuto Koide, explained that they want to transfer event memos online. He says that while many people want to attend local events, they can’t possibly make it to every one – either due to time or money constraints. But U-Note provides user accounts of high profile events on its site, a valuable resource to those who cannot make it in person.

In terms of the technology, the interface looks very much like Storify.com, allowing users to drag and drop rich media elements like Tweets, photos, videos, and more, in addition to text content. As for mobile note-taking, they have an Android app already released, and one for iPhone on the way.

U-Note has nine categories of events on site, such as talks from celebrities, or startup events just like this one [1].

So far the platform is seeing good progress, and May saw 250% growth over the previous month, says Koide. As for monetization, they have editorial ads that they sell for 150,000 yen. They want the user to enjoy the contents, so the editorial ads aspire to be more interesting so that users are more receptive to them.

The content business is a tough one, but U-Note’s tool is certainly useful, capitalizing on Japan’s love of creating ‘matome’ or list posts. And assuming that people use it frequently enough. The U-Note page could prove a useful destination for event coverage.

U-Note publishing interface
U-Note publishing interface

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

Meet the 5 newest startups from Movida Japan’s acceleration program

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Tokyo-based startup accelerator Movida Japan, led by billionaire Taizo Son, today held its Demo Day unveiling five startups from the third batch of its acceleration program. They pitch their ideas in front of more than 150 people, including investors and media. Here’s a quick rundown on what they’ve been working on. Reep ¶ Pitched by: Hiromasa Yoshikane People take many daily snapshots with their smartphones, but they often forget to which social network or which file sharing service they’ve uploaded pictures. Reep.me aggregates your past snapshots from your many social network accounts, letting you easily see what you’ve shot an year ago for example. Their iPhone app is live as of today. Vise ¶ Pitched by: Keinichiro Nishioka Vise is an alternative document management platform to Google Docs or Microsoft Word. When you edit a document for a client, you may need to exchange it many times, revising the draft again and again. That process results in many revisions, often making it hard to keep track of the newest version. Vise has adopted the Markdown syntax, and its version control feature helps you manage revision history on a document. When you create a new version of your original document, a…

Tokyo-based startup accelerator Movida Japan, led by billionaire Taizo Son, today held its Demo Day unveiling five startups from the third batch of its acceleration program. They pitch their ideas in front of more than 150 people, including investors and media. Here’s a quick rundown on what they’ve been working on.

Reep

reep_logoPitched by: Hiromasa Yoshikane

People take many daily snapshots with their smartphones, but they often forget to which social network or which file sharing service they’ve uploaded pictures. Reep.me aggregates your past snapshots from your many social network accounts, letting you easily see what you’ve shot an year ago for example. Their iPhone app is live as of today.

Vise

3idea_logoPitched by: Keinichiro Nishioka

Vise is an alternative document management platform to Google Docs or Microsoft Word. When you edit a document for a client, you may need to exchange it many times, revising the draft again and again. That process results in many revisions, often making it hard to keep track of the newest version.

Vise has adopted the Markdown syntax, and its version control feature helps you manage revision history on a document. When you create a new version of your original document, a revision on the original document may be automatically reverted to the original as well. Other members sharing the document may also be notified about your revision.

They expect to launch a beta version in July.

vise_pitch

Michi

michimall_logoPitched by: Shun Nakazaki

With the idea of selling Japan-made products to overseas markets, Michi tests a variety of products and then post articles on a Facebook wall to find out what ones get the best response from their global audience. In this way, they’ve gained insights about user tastes, especially about popular nail art.

Many nail artists are working in the Japanese market, but after rapid growth they’re struggling to acquired more customers and revenue in the saturated domestic market. And that’s why they are now looking overseas.

Michi sells artificial nails designed by Japanese nail artists to overseas customers online. It creates a new revenue stream for nail artists whose sales have leveled off, and it allows foreign nail art lovers to buy cute Japanese designs. They’ve already acquire more than 330,000 likes on their Facebook fan page.

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Street Academy

streetacademy_logoPicthed by: Takashi Fujimoto

StreetAcademy gives you a new way to learn. A survey says that Japanese people, ranging from thirty-somethings to seniors, is interested in teaching something to someone. This service provides them with an opportunity for teach.

By listing the thing that you can teach, you can then easily create a page announcing your lecture. Your profile is automatically imported from your Facebook profile, so you don’t need to enter everything from scratch. In terms of venues, lessons usually take place at coffee shops, co-working spaces, or even at a reserved room in a public bath site.

streetacademy_screenshot

U-Note

u-note_logoPicthed by Yuto Koide

There are many learning opportunities and events taking place in any given town. But most likely you’re not able to attend them all. And even if you could, it would cost a lot.

Typically event attendees take notes about what they’ve hear at events. Very often everyone is taking notes about the same stuff in a very similar way. It might be beneficial to share these notes with others who would have liked to attend the event.

The U-note app aims to give people lecture experience without actually real attending. The startup expects to acquire 5 million monthly page views by the end of this year. Its mobile app is available for Android, with an iOS version to follow soon.

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taizoson_speaksThe accelerator’s CEO Taizo Son emphasized that these five presenters do not make up all the graduates from the third batch, because they’ve raised the bar for qualification to pitch at this Demo Day event. He urged the audience to assist (financially or otherwise) all the startups from the accelerator.

Movida Japan is now receiving applications for the next batch of its acceleration program. The deadline is next Monday, May 20th.