Japanese design startup raises funds to take over Europe

Japan design startup Goodpatch today announced a second round of funding today totaling US$3.52 million from DG Innovation, Salesforce Ventures, SMBC Venture Capital, SBI Investment, and wellness startup Finc. Goodpatch previously raised US$880,000 from DG Innovation in December, 2013.

Goodpatch provides support for product and service design, focusing especially on UI and UX. Founder Naofumi Tsuchiya is famous for overcoming cancer and using inheritance money to start the company, but Goodpatch nearly went bankrupt in 2012.
A lucky break designing Japan’s award-winning news curation app Gunosy turned things around. Following Gunosy, Goodpatch worked with other fast-growing companies such as financial management app Money Forward (Good design award 2014), and fashion curation app Mery.

The startup also has its own prototype design software, Prott, which is similar to UI/UX web and app design services like Invision, Balsamiq, and Moqups. Prott is available in English and Japanese and is used by several large Japanese corporations including Yahoo Japan, DeNA, and Recruit.

In 2015 Goodpatch opened an office in Berlin and states in its press release that funds will be used to push further into Europe and help it extend Prott into Taiwan.

While doing well in Japan, Goodpatch can be expected to run into fierce competition now in the English market. There are an abundance of similar design and prototyping apps that fall in three general categories of focusing on paper prototyping like POP, all around players like Invision mentioned earlier, or services that add small nuances to the design like Marvel. With all these apps having the same general pricing schemes and features, it will be curious to see what Goodpatch does to stand out. The language barrier may not be such a problem; after all, the best design needs no explanation.

Tech in Asia has reached out to Goodpatch for further comment on its plans with Finc and new products in Taiwan.

Converted from Japanese Yen. Rate: US$1 = JPY 113.67