On Saturday at Microsoft’s Japan office in Tokyo, there was a finalist selection event for the upcoming SF New Tech Japan Night. The event will spotlight the talent of Japan’s emerging tech start-ups to potential investors and the tech community in the San Francisco Bay Area. The event is sponsored by SF-based web consultancy Btrax, Inc and its coming event is scheduled to take place in San Francisco on November 3. (Live streaming is also planned.)
The preliminary selection event started with a keynote speech by Brandon Hill, who is a Japanese-American born on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido. He is the founder/CEO of btrax, and he has argued that Japanese start-ups need to appeal not only to the local community in Japan, but to global community as well.
Twelve start-ups were nominated, and six of them were chosen by juries as finalists to present in front of several hundreds of tech geeks in the capital of digital innovation next month.
Here are the twelve start-ups as well as some of comments from the juries and the audience. All the pitches were made in English, and the event was emceed by PO contributor Yukari Mitsuhashi.
1. Balloon by Nagisa, Inc.
This start-up aims to develop a new promotional media platform bridging advertisers and consumers. Balloon is a smartphone app that combines three functions: free group chat, free group calling, and photo sharing with effects.
They fundraised from Tokyo-based incubators NetAge and Samurai Incubate.
2. Bookpic by Bijutsu Shuppan Networks
The company is a subsidiary of a 100-year-old art book publisher. They introduced Bookpic, an e-publication viewer that allows users to share your comments on what you’re reading with others via Facebook and Twitter.
Brandon pointed out (as a jury member) that there are many competitors in this area and encouraged the presenter to check out Copia as an example, which is an e-book reader aimed at sharing book reading experiences and building a community online.
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