Japanese Startups / Useful Notes

Useful Notes / Japanese Startups

Go To

This page discusses various Japanese internet companies and internet startups.

Public companies

Companies that have Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, usually on the Mothers index.

Yahoo! Japan

Launched in 1996 as a joint venture with SoftBank. Yahoo! held a 35% stake, while Soft Bank (through a variety of subsidiaries) held a plurality stake of 43%. Unlike the U.S. parent company of its namesake, however, Y! Japan has been extremely successful in Japan due to being operated like a traditional Japanese company instead of a western company (avoiding culture clash in the progress), and is the country's largest general internet services. Its primary business is in web search and online/smartphone advertising^note, C2C/B2C e-commerce through Yahoo! Auctions^note, travel/restaurant reservations, mobile gamedev, and other areas. They also have an ADSL/FTTH broadband reselling ISP called Yahoo! BB. At the peak of the dotcom bubble, shares of Yahoo! Japan reached 100 million yen ($100 million US) per share. Unfortunately, the dotcom burst hit Y! Japan hard, but SoftBank's continued investment in the company (one of Masayoshi Son's few direct investments in Japanese tech companies), plus the U.S. parent company's successful investments in Alibaba, have allowed them to make a comeback, and now they're closing on 1 trillion yen in revenues.

Rakuten

Rakuten is best known for its C 2 C e-commerce platform Rakuten Ichiba

, and a billion other things: travel (Rakuten Travel), e-books (Kobo), messaging apps (Viber), payment gateways (Rakuten Checkout), NFC contactless payment platforms (Rakuten Edy). They're also the main partner for FC Barcelona, one of the few soccer partnerships by companies in baseball-mad Japan. Founder Hiroshi Mikitani is the third richest person in Japan, behind Uniqlo founder Tadashi Yanai and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son.

GMO

DeNA

CyberAgent

The other main smartphone advertising player in Japan, behind Yahoo! Japan. Their primary money maker besides smartphone advertising is a diverse media portfolio centered around the smartphone-based social network and gaming platform, Ameba. CyberAgent also has a music streaming platform, AWA, and an internet TV service, AbemaTV (in partnership with TV Asahi).

Cookpad

LINE

mixi

dwango

Kakaku.com

Wantedly

Money Forward

UUUM

Japan's largest MCN, representing over 4,000 Japanese YouTubers, including Hikakin and Hajime Syacho

Private startups

Companies that can be broadly classified as startups (either early-stage venture capital, late-stage VC, private equity, or subsidiary). This list will emphasize startups concerned with disruptive technologies.