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Japanese social recruiting firm Wantedly sets up shop in Hong Kong, Germany

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Wantedly (TSE:3991), a Japanese social recruiting company, announced today that it has established offices in Hong Kong and Germany to strengthen service offering in these markets. This is the first global expansion effort for the company after its IPO following its setting up shop in Singapore last year. The company appointed Bradford Chan as the country manager for the Hong Kong market, who is known for having worked for LinkedIn as the head of APAC sales development. The Hong Kong office is based in the Naked Hub co-working space which was launched in Sheung Wan last year. Details are yet unknown but it seems that the German operation will be headed by Lisa Wäntig, the company’s former head of international growth in Southeast Asia, and be based out of Berlin – the country’s largest startup hub. The firm’s entire global business expansion effort is led by Koichi Goto who was formerly at Google Japan and Twitter Japan. Alongside with the announcement, Wantedly revealed that more than 1,000 companies in Singapore have signed up for the platform as of today. This is equivalent to 4% of the total number of all companies registered as…

Wantedly’s international expansion team, Lisa Wäntig sitting in the center on the front row.
Image credit: Wantedly

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Wantedly (TSE:3991), a Japanese social recruiting company, announced today that it has established offices in Hong Kong and Germany to strengthen service offering in these markets. This is the first global expansion effort for the company after its IPO following its setting up shop in Singapore last year.

The company appointed Bradford Chan as the country manager for the Hong Kong market, who is known for having worked for LinkedIn as the head of APAC sales development. The Hong Kong office is based in the Naked Hub co-working space which was launched in Sheung Wan last year. Details are yet unknown but it seems that the German operation will be headed by Lisa Wäntig, the company’s former head of international growth in Southeast Asia, and be based out of Berlin – the country’s largest startup hub. The firm’s entire global business expansion effort is led by Koichi Goto who was formerly at Google Japan and Twitter Japan.

Alongside with the announcement, Wantedly revealed that more than 1,000 companies in Singapore have signed up for the platform as of today. This is equivalent to 4% of the total number of all companies registered as users on the platform. Launched back in March of last year in Spacemob – the co-working space located near Orchard Road – their Singapore office appointed Weiting Tan as the country manager, who previously worked for HotelQuickly as a marketing manager, and has increased the number of their staffers from four to seven over the past year.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Wantedly’s Hong Kong office resides in Naked Hub Sheung Wan, the island’s characteristic slendder building standing out for its eye-catching graffiti façade.
Image credit: Naked Hub

Wantedly, Japan’s social recruiting startup, files for IPO

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Wantedly, Japan’s social recruiting startup, announced today that its IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Mothers Market on 14 September with plans to offer 50,000 shares for public subscription and to sell 19,500 shares in over-allotment options, for a total of 80,000 shares. Daiwa Securities will lead the underwriting. Its share price range will be released on 28 August with bookbuilding scheduled to start on 7 September and pricing on 6 September. According to the consolidated statement as of August 2016, they posted revenue of 840 million yen (about $7.6 million) with an ordinary profit of 120 million yen ($1.1 million) and a net profit of 77 million yen ($700,000). Wantedly, the company’s flagship service offering business-centric social networking opportunities, has about 800,000 individual users and 23,000 corporate users. About 1.5 million unique users visit the platform a month while 27% of these users visit it at least once a month. Led by the company’s CEO Akiko Naka (69.98%), its major shareholders include CyberAgent (TSE:4751, 11.1%), Shogo Kawada (co-founder and advisor of DeNA, 6.38%), Shinji Kumura (Founder of AnyPay /…

At the press conference introducing Wantedly’s new contact management service Wantedly People in July.
L to R: Akito Sakasegawa (New Business Development, Wantedly), Akiko Naka (CEO, Wantedly), Naoyoshi Aikawa (Lead Engineer, Wantedly)

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Wantedly, Japan’s social recruiting startup, announced today that its IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Mothers Market on 14 September with plans to offer 50,000 shares for public subscription and to sell 19,500 shares in over-allotment options, for a total of 80,000 shares. Daiwa Securities will lead the underwriting.

Its share price range will be released on 28 August with bookbuilding scheduled to start on 7 September and pricing on 6 September. According to the consolidated statement as of August 2016, they posted revenue of 840 million yen (about $7.6 million) with an ordinary profit of 120 million yen ($1.1 million) and a net profit of 77 million yen ($700,000). Wantedly, the company’s flagship service offering business-centric social networking opportunities, has about 800,000 individual users and 23,000 corporate users. About 1.5 million unique users visit the platform a month while 27% of these users visit it at least once a month.

Led by the company’s CEO Akiko Naka (69.98%), its major shareholders include CyberAgent (TSE:4751, 11.1%), Shogo Kawada (co-founder and advisor of DeNA, 6.38%), Shinji Kumura (Founder of AnyPay / Das Capital, 4.13%), Yoshinori Kawasaki (CTO of Wantedly, 3.26%), Archetype (2.02%), Nihon Keizai Shimbun or simply The Nikkei (1.17%), Naoyoshi Aikawa (Lead engineer of Wantedly, 0.59%), Masanori Sugiyama (Chairman and President of Zappalas, 0.42%) and Kosuke Matsumoto (Managing Director of Enish, 0.42%).

Wantedly was founded back in 2010 under its previous name of Fuel by Naka who previously participated in launching Japanese operations of Facebook. Focusing on the potential of referral recruitment business, she launched the Wantedly social recruiting platform.

Wantedly Visit
Image credit: Wantedly Singapore

By stepping into beyond just a recruiting platform, Wantedly has been a taking the position of a LinkedIn-like business-centric social network platform. In order to expand its business by increasing touch-points for businesspersons, the company has launched additional services such as Wantedly Visit (interview scheduling assistant between hiring companies and employee candidates), Wantedly People (business card management) and Wantedly Chat (group chat app).

See also:

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Wantedly, Japan’s social recruiting startup, officially expands into Singapore

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See the original story in Japanese. It has been five years since I first wrote a piece about Wantedly on Penn Olson (now known as Tech in Asia). I remember that I visited the Kayac (TSE:3904) office located in Ebisu to meet CEO Akiko Naka and others. Since Naka was actively providing lectures at many startup conferences such as RISE or Slush Asia (renamed today as Slush Tokyo), I mistakenly thought that Wantedly had already expanded its business globally, but actually this is the first time it is establishing an office overseas (without local offices, it had expanded into Indonesia with a foreign language version of Wantedly services in March of 2015). Wantedly revealed on Thursday that it will commence full-scale sales and promotion activities in the Singapore market, hiring four local staffs. Weiting Tan, who formerly served the last-minute hotel reservation app HotelQuickly as Marketing Manager, has been appointed Country Manager of the local subsidiary Wantedly Singapore. Its office will be established at the co-working space Spacemob near Orchard Road. In commemoration of the full-scale launch, the firm held a party at Red Dot Design Museum in Singapore from 15:30 (local time) this Thursday. Coinciding with the announcement, the…

Image credit: Wantedly Singapore + 123RF (Image composite by Masaru Ikeda)

See the original story in Japanese.

It has been five years since I first wrote a piece about Wantedly on Penn Olson (now known as Tech in Asia). I remember that I visited the Kayac (TSE:3904) office located in Ebisu to meet CEO Akiko Naka and others.

Since Naka was actively providing lectures at many startup conferences such as RISE or Slush Asia (renamed today as Slush Tokyo), I mistakenly thought that Wantedly had already expanded its business globally, but actually this is the first time it is establishing an office overseas (without local offices, it had expanded into Indonesia with a foreign language version of Wantedly services in March of 2015).

Wantedly Singapore team: (L to R) Weiting Tan (Country Manager), Joelle Pang (Int’l Business Development)
Image credit: Wantedly Singapore

Wantedly revealed on Thursday that it will commence full-scale sales and promotion activities in the Singapore market, hiring four local staffs. Weiting Tan, who formerly served the last-minute hotel reservation app HotelQuickly as Marketing Manager, has been appointed Country Manager of the local subsidiary Wantedly Singapore. Its office will be established at the co-working space Spacemob near Orchard Road. In commemoration of the full-scale launch, the firm held a party at Red Dot Design Museum in Singapore from 15:30 (local time) this Thursday.

Coinciding with the announcement, the firm launched the English version of the company visiting app Wantedly Visit for iOS. Although any plan about one for Android is not mentioned at this point, the firm declared that it will accelerate the business development to the Asian countries including Indonesia using the Singapore subsidiary as a hub, so that it seems that the app will also soon become available for Android as it is frequently used in these areas.

The company claims that over 20,000 companies in Japan have registered as users on Wantedly while the number of monthly visiting users have recently reached 1 million.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy, Masaru Ikeda

Wantedly Visit
Image credit: Wantedly

Japan’s social recruiting startup Wantedly unveils portfolio platform to attract creators

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Wantedly, the Japanese startup offering a social recruiting platform under the same name to connect startups with their potential employees, has launched a portfolio showcase platform called Case, aiming to connect creators and companies via products or artworks. Coinciding with the launch, products made by various startups or creative companies in Japan such as Party, Bascule, Bracket, 1->10design, Fablic and Vasily have as launch partners been displayed on the Wantedly website. Case allows users to team up and submit ‘projects.’ Any team already formed at Wantedly can submit projects as that team. When submitting projects, names of people concerned in the artworks or products can be put in the ‘credits.’ Although that is common practice in the advertisement field, names have not been visualized in product development so far. Visualization of names on Case will be appreciated by designers or engineers. Case aims to assist creators upon gaining inspiration or finding companies that provide excellent works through the displaying of products or artworks. However, there already have been many websites available for exhibition of creators’ portfolios or acquisition of inspiration. To distinguish Case itself as a later player from others, Wantedly will hold…

case_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Wantedly, the Japanese startup offering a social recruiting platform under the same name to connect startups with their potential employees, has launched a portfolio showcase platform called Case, aiming to connect creators and companies via products or artworks.

Coinciding with the launch, products made by various startups or creative companies in Japan such as Party, Bascule, Bracket, 1->10design, Fablic and Vasily have as launch partners been displayed on the Wantedly website.

Case allows users to team up and submit ‘projects.’ Any team already formed at Wantedly can submit projects as that team. When submitting projects, names of people concerned in the artworks or products can be put in the ‘credits.’ Although that is common practice in the advertisement field, names have not been visualized in product development so far. Visualization of names on Case will be appreciated by designers or engineers.

case3-620x841

Case aims to assist creators upon gaining inspiration or finding companies that provide excellent works through the displaying of products or artworks. However, there already have been many websites available for exhibition of creators’ portfolios or acquisition of inspiration. To distinguish Case itself as a later player from others, Wantedly will hold the key to success.

Previously on the Wantedly webpages, it was not easy for user companies to provide information about their products or artworks visually. By displaying their own products on Case, these companies can promote their activities more easily. On each company webpage at Case, a button for ‘view job’ is available, in addition to the follow button within Case. Accordingly, user companies will obtain more opportunities to acquire new customers or to recruit creators that match them.

Due to this launch, about 300 pieces of products were collected. The service plans to increase the number of users as targeting creators by having many opportunities to create products, and to attract 2,000 products within several months.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda

Japan-based Wantedly brings its social job platform to Android

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Back in February we told you about the release of a new iOS application from Japan-based Wantedly, allows you to access the startup’s online social job platform on mobile. At the time, the team mentioned to us that they’d like to do a version for Android as well. And just after the iOS launch, it I understand they brought in a new engineer to do just that. Skip to today and Wantedly for Android is now available as a free download from Google Play. I encourage you to check it out.

wantedly-android

Back in February we told you about the release of a new iOS application from Japan-based Wantedly, allows you to access the startup’s online social job platform on mobile.

At the time, the team mentioned to us that they’d like to do a version for Android as well. And just after the iOS launch, it I understand they brought in a new engineer to do just that.

Skip to today and Wantedly for Android is now available as a free download from Google Play. I encourage you to check it out.

wantedly-a wantedly-a

Japanese startup Wantedly tackles contact management with new iPhone app

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I often hear people complain that there is a lack of good contact manager apps available of smartphones. I personally have experimented with a few, most recently Contact Sync for Gmail – which is good, but doesn’t quite cut it for me. So I was delighted to hear recently from the folks at Tokyo-based startup Wantedly that they were working on a contacts management app for iPhone [1]. That app, appropriately dubbed Contact, has just gone public today in the Japanese App Store, so I’m happy to tell you a little about it after having a chance to test it pre-release. When you initially fire up the Contact app, you’ll be asked to authorize access to your mobile’s contacts, and after that your Facebook contacts as well. Note that by authorizing Facebook, you also get a chance to view Wantedly contacts as well (since the Wantedly job platform connects with Facebook), marked with a big blue ‘W’ in the app. Contacts can also be added manually to the app if you wish. Once your contacts have all been added, you can get down to organizing them into handy groups. Like any contact app, groups could be based around anything. But…

contact-by-wantedly

I often hear people complain that there is a lack of good contact manager apps available of smartphones. I personally have experimented with a few, most recently Contact Sync for Gmail – which is good, but doesn’t quite cut it for me. So I was delighted to hear recently from the folks at Tokyo-based startup Wantedly that they were working on a contacts management app for iPhone [1]. That app, appropriately dubbed Contact, has just gone public today in the Japanese App Store, so I’m happy to tell you a little about it after having a chance to test it pre-release.

When you initially fire up the Contact app, you’ll be asked to authorize access to your mobile’s contacts, and after that your Facebook contacts as well. Note that by authorizing Facebook, you also get a chance to view Wantedly contacts as well (since the Wantedly job platform connects with Facebook), marked with a big blue ‘W’ in the app. Contacts can also be added manually to the app if you wish.

Once your contacts have all been added, you can get down to organizing them into handy groups. Like any contact app, groups could be based around anything. But the most important group, labeled with a phone icon, are the people you call on a regular basis. So once you have this group created, you can call out in a flash from within the contacts app.

wantedly-contact

Beyond the phone group, you might organize a group for work (see my The Bridge group above), doing so using simple drag-and-drop, with various icons assigned to each group. If you add someone by mistake, just drag them out of the group and into a trash can that conveniently appears. Wantedly has built in a clever marketing device into its group label icons, letting users earn as many as 120 new icons by sharing about the app on Facebook and Twitter.

Check out the video demo below for a closer look at how the app works:

I was a little curious to hear why Wantedly was branching out to do a contacts app, given that the business of the Wantedly platform is helping people find fitting jobs by leveraging their social graph. During a recent visit to Wantedly HQ, the company’s CEO Akiko Naka explained to me:

Most people recognize Wantedly as a job searching site. But many people are starting to use it as their profile. Not only people who are searching for jobs, but for people who are working. So our team started to think we should start building something for everyone, not just people who are searching for jobs. Organizing your contacts is one of the biggest problems people have. There are many contacts grouping apps, but not of them are that cool, perhaps lacking in design or user interface. I thought we could do it better.

Wantedly CEO Akiko Naka
Wantedly CEO Akiko Naka

And personally, I think they have done it better, because the app looks pretty incredible. Perhaps the only feature additions I would request are data sync or export (perhaps to Dropbox), and maybe a batch delete/move contact option to manipulate multiple contacts, instead of having to drag and drop contacts one-by-one.

Given that the app is only available in Japanese right now [2], I had to ask Akiko the obvious question of whether or not they plan to publish an English version – to which she replied with a very short “Yup.”

Wantedly is a service that I’ve been expecting to launch in overseas markets at just about any moment now. They already have an English interface, so I’m looking forward to seeing them branch out when that day comes. But Akiko noted that if a contacts app like theirs is to succeed in a certain region, it helps if they are a trusted and recognized name in that region:

In Japan people know Wantedly pretty widely, so they aren’t scared to connect your contacts with it. In the US, maybe, then there might be a bit of a hurdle. Maybe Southeast Asia first.

If you have access to the Japanese App Store, I encourage you to give Contact a try. I’ve tried a lot of contact management apps in the past, and this has turned out to be one of my favorites.


  1. See our previous interview with Wantedly CEO Akiko Naka.  ↩

  2. But if you can download it from the App Store, I think there’s no reason you can’t use it even if you don’t speak Japanese. The app is very simple, with very little text.  ↩

A fun LinkedIn alternative, Japan’s Wantedly brings new features to profile pages

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Japanese startup Wantedly has today launched a few new profile features for individual users, letting them add things like projects and portfolio pieces to their profile pages, even tagging team members who they have worked with. You can see a preview of one such profile in the image above. Readers may recall that Wantedly just recently launched an iOS app, making their social recruiting service available on mobile. via CNet Japan

wantedly

Japanese startup Wantedly has today launched a few new profile features for individual users, letting them add things like projects and portfolio pieces to their profile pages, even tagging team members who they have worked with. You can see a preview of one such profile in the image above.

Readers may recall that Wantedly just recently launched an iOS app, making their social recruiting service available on mobile.

via CNet Japan

Wantedly releases new iOS app, built by developers hired on Wantedly

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We spoke to Japan-based startup Wantedly back in December, discussing their online social job platform that leverages your social graph to give you a better chance at the job you love. And as of today, that platform is accessible via a brand new Wantedly iOS app as well. A few weeks back I spoke with the two Wantedly team members who worked on this app, Feras Yasin and Rei Kubonaga [1]. What I found most interesting was that they both come from very different backgrounds – Feras from design and Rei from mathematics – but apparently they found a way to work very well with each other and within their team. The app itself will be familiar to you if you’re accustomed to the web/desktop version of Wantedly. You’ll see a list of projects/jobs, which is just the same as in the PC version. But in the app there is also a “Today’s Pick-up” that features a few selected jobs each day. Feras (pictured right) explained the intention here is to make it seem almost like a news reader here. Initially I thought this section would have to be curated, but he reassured me that they have an algorithm doing…

wantedly-wide

We spoke to Japan-based startup Wantedly back in December, discussing their online social job platform that leverages your social graph to give you a better chance at the job you love. And as of today, that platform is accessible via a brand new Wantedly iOS app as well.

A few weeks back I spoke with the two Wantedly team members who worked on this app, Feras Yasin and Rei Kubonaga [1]. What I found most interesting was that they both come from very different backgrounds – Feras from design and Rei from mathematics – but apparently they found a way to work very well with each other and within their team.

Feras Yasin
Feras Yasin

The app itself will be familiar to you if you’re accustomed to the web/desktop version of Wantedly. You’ll see a list of projects/jobs, which is just the same as in the PC version. But in the app there is also a “Today’s Pick-up” that features a few selected jobs each day. Feras (pictured right) explained the intention here is to make it seem almost like a news reader here. Initially I thought this section would have to be curated, but he reassured me that they have an algorithm doing the dirty work here. He adds:

Visually the app is more like an SNS with the friend-list view. This is one of the features that is unique to the mobile app. It’s a place where you can see who among your friends is using Wantedly [2]. Another button shows the activity of your friends within the app.

Feras tells me that his own development skills are self-taught, having picked up javascript to make the transition from Flash as it became obsolete. This new app was his first foray into Xcode, in fact, so clearly he’s a fast learner.

So why develop a native iOS app, instead of just making their platform into a mobile-friendly web app? Why not make an Android app too? Rei says that they’ve found many Wantedly users access the platform from iOS, and at a rate of about three times that of Android users. But nevertheless, they do hope to make an Android version eventually too.

wantedly-app.png

It’s especially interesting to hear 26-year-old Rei talk about this app, as he confesses he didn’t even use a computer when he studied natural mathematics at the University of Kyoto. But he quickly decided that in order to do more, he wanted to supplement his math skills by learning programming:

In high school I was very good at math, but you can rarely see the impact on society with math. But in business the impact is rapid and easily seen. I wanted to incorporate my math in a way that could be used for business, and that meant learning to code.

Given that Wantedly’s CEO Akiko Naka has some coding background herself, I was curious to hear what kind of development dynamic they had within the team. Often developers are segregated from teams, especially here in Japan – but I had a feeling that wasn’t the case with Wantedly. Their communications rep Nozomi Umenai elaborated on how their meetings typically proceed:

We share the concept of a new project, then Akiko, engineers, and the designer work close together. She knows exactly what she wants, and also what we lack. It’s nice to have someone who has coding background, a more clear vision, and knowledge of the output of the product. […] In Japanese companies, engineers are not often valued as much as they should, and with bosses who have non-coding backgrounds it can be hard to communicate with them.

Rei Kubonaga
Rei Kubonaga

While their product is currently just for Japan’s domestic market (in Japanese only), I understand they’re hoping to have a version for English or some other language soon. Most of the people I’ve spoken with there display an fluency in English that is regrettably uncommon in the Japanese startup scene, so communication won’t be an issue for them.

In a great show of dogfooding, both Feras and Rei were hired using Wantedly, and as far as I can tell they both look like smart pick-ups. And if the company can continue to hire good talent with diverse talents and backgrounds, they should be able to expand their service well.

Above all else, the Wantedly platform does offer a unique value to both employers and job seekers. So I’m really looking forward to seeing how they grow. If you’d like to give the new app a try, get it here.


  1. I’m told there were some others who helped as well, but my understanding is that the app was primarily made by these two.  ↩

  2. You can also see friends that are not using Wantedly, but they are clearly presented with a Facebook icon rather than their own avatar.  ↩

Tokyo Office Tour: Find your dream job with friends on Wantedly

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We recently featured Tokyo-based startup Wantedly as one of the nominees in last week’s CNet Japan Startup Awards. The company has taken an innovative approach to helping people in their job search, providing a platform that leverages your social graph to ensure you find a better fitting job. The ideas is, that by being introduced to jobs by friends and mutual friends, you have a higher chance if finding a job that you’ll love. So far the platform has over 60,000 users and 1800 clients, which is not bad considering that they are just a year and a half old. Their team is growing, and they like to point out that they have brought on new members using the Wantedly platform. In addition to their multi-talented CEO, Akiko Naka, some of folks that I spoke to seem to have ridiculously impressive pedigrees, many coming from places like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, or Goldman Sachs [1]. Wantedly just recently moved into a new office on Meguro, and they were nice enough to allow me to bring my camera by and take some pictures. The office sits just adjacent to a beautiful park, giving the staff a pretty inspiring view, especially at this…

Wantedly CEO Akiko Naka
Wantedly CEO Akiko Naka

We recently featured Tokyo-based startup Wantedly as one of the nominees in last week’s CNet Japan Startup Awards. The company has taken an innovative approach to helping people in their job search, providing a platform that leverages your social graph to ensure you find a better fitting job. The ideas is, that by being introduced to jobs by friends and mutual friends, you have a higher chance if finding a job that you’ll love.

So far the platform has over 60,000 users and 1800 clients, which is not bad considering that they are just a year and a half old. Their team is growing, and they like to point out that they have brought on new members using the Wantedly platform. In addition to their multi-talented CEO, Akiko Naka, some of folks that I spoke to seem to have ridiculously impressive pedigrees, many coming from places like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, or Goldman Sachs [1].

Wantedly just recently moved into a new office on Meguro, and they were nice enough to allow me to bring my camera by and take some pictures. The office sits just adjacent to a beautiful park, giving the staff a pretty inspiring view, especially at this time of year with all the fall foliage still hanging around.

It will be interesting to see what kind of ideas they hatch from this new space. Given that there’s lots of English on their front page right now, I think we can expect Wantedly to make an overseas push in 2014 (or a push to neighboring Asian markets), although for the time being they aren’t saying much on that point. The team has more than a few fluent English speakers, so I think they’ll be far better prepared to go global than most other Japanese startups.

You can check out some of the photos below for a better idea of the layout of their new space, as well as a short video intro from the CEO [2].

wantedly-01
Wantedly office entrance: Ring the bell to say hi
wantedly-03
lounge space
Engineers at work
Engineers at work
wantedly-02
I’ve seen this dog somewhere before…
Engineers at work
More engineers at work
Engineer's super-keyboard of the future
Engineer’s super-keyboard of the future
Busy in the meeting room
Busy in the meeting room

  1. Akiko herself is ex-Facebook. But overall she’s a pretty remarkable talent, who in addition to being a programmer, has also dabbled with making her own manga. As we talked in her office, one of her paintings was propped against the sofa.  ↩

  2. It was really cool of her to give this video a try in English. Not many Japanese startups have dared to do that so far in our series.  ↩

CNet Japan Startup Award nominees: PlanBCD, Talknote, Wantedly

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The quality of start-ups nominated for Tuesday’s CNet Japan Startup Awards is high, and Japanese entrepreneurs are seeking to solve problems on par with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. This is part six of our preview of the nominees. The rest can be found here. PlanBCD, Kaizen Platform Inc. PlanBCD is one of the few startups — globally — attempting to bring high-converting designs to the masses. The closest corresponding product from the US is Optimizely, founded by an ex-Googler 1. While Optimizely’s core product is technology-reliant, PlanBCD is taking a different approach. Users post a job to PlanBCD’s dedicated network of designers, UI/UX specialists who they call ‘Growth Hackers’. These Growth Hackers pick a job they would like to take on, and the user chooses their favorite, which is then tested for 28 days. Payment is based on performance 2. Its human factor sets Kaizen Platform aside from similar products: Optimizely uses Amazon’s Analytics SDK and Google’s UI optimization tool, Content Experiments. We expect that PlanBCD is a product that will stay on our radars for awhile. Wantedly Wantedly is a social recruiting tool based on Facebook. The CEO and founder Akiko Naka’s ethos aligns with the product, aspiring to connect…

kaizen-wantedly-talknote

The quality of start-ups nominated for Tuesday’s CNet Japan Startup Awards is high, and Japanese entrepreneurs are seeking to solve problems on par with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. This is part six of our preview of the nominees. The rest can be found here.

PlanBCD, Kaizen Platform Inc.

kaizen-wantedly-talknote

PlanBCD is one of the few startups — globally — attempting to bring high-converting designs to the masses. The closest corresponding product from the US is Optimizely, founded by an ex-Googler 1. While Optimizely’s core product is technology-reliant, PlanBCD is taking a different approach. Users post a job to PlanBCD’s dedicated network of designers, UI/UX specialists who they call ‘Growth Hackers’. These Growth Hackers pick a job they would like to take on, and the user chooses their favorite, which is then tested for 28 days. Payment is based on performance 2.

Its human factor sets Kaizen Platform aside from similar products: Optimizely uses Amazon’s Analytics SDK and Google’s UI optimization tool, Content Experiments. We expect that PlanBCD is a product that will stay on our radars for awhile.

Wantedly

wantedly-icon

Wantedly is a social recruiting tool based on Facebook. The CEO and founder Akiko Naka’s ethos aligns with the product, aspiring to connect potential employers with talent through the social graph. She believes opportunities found through friends (and mutual friends) create better cultural fits and happier work environments.

“Invest in people, not ideas” is a saying repeatedly spoken by VCs and investors in the US. It is apparently working well in Japan, as Wantedly reports they have over 1,800 clients and more than 61,000 users.

Talknote

talknote-icon

If I were still living in America, it would be very easy to dismiss Talknote as just another Yammer clone. But here on the ground in Tokyo, it’s clear why Talknote acquired so many customers. There are many archaic infrastructures out there and the restaurant industry is certainly one of them. Countless establishments still have no website and even accept fax requests for reservations or food deliveries. Haruo Koike, the CEO and founder of Talknote, is the perfect person to push this industry forward, as he has been in the restaurant business for 10 years.

Disruption starts with little baby steps like these, and it will be exciting to track Talknote’s progress. There’s also a part of me that wishes an American start-up would take Koike-san’s approach, as the food industry in the US could use a big change as well.

Talknote’s Facebook page is also very engaging, and I love how the CEO uses and supports products in the start-up community.


  1. Fitting, as Google is known for its thorough A/B testing, the most well known, Marissa Mayer’s 41 shades of blue test. ↩
  2. There’s nothing online that describes their growth hacker acquisition strategy – the closest I found was this job-share posting found here. Since the founders are ex-Recruit, I’m assuming they have techniques unavailable for public knowlege.  ↩