A Visit to CyberAgent Ventures’ Startup Base Camp

This week I had a chance to visit Startup Base Camp, the Tokyo-based incubation office of CyberAgent Ventures. The area is a cleverly designed workspace which currently houses a number of local startups, but in the future it will also welcome international startups looking to come to Japan as well.

It’s a beautiful place to work, as the area is wonderfully designed with an open space in the center. While I was there most of the startups seemed to be hard at work, although I confess if I worked there it would be linger a bit in the comfortable relaxation area. You can check out a few more pictures below of the central collaborative space below.

In addition to this, there is an expansive working area, teleconference rooms, a ‘concentration’ or quiet room, and more.

The company’s vice president Terry Hayashiguchi provided a great overview of the many startups that are currently working in the facility. I didn’t have a chance to speak with them all, but here are just a few of the ones I met with:

• Co-Meeting – For those of you who have a hole in your soul left by the death of Google Wave, you’ll be pleased to see this collaborative discussion tool and document editor [1]. It’s a brand new service that officially launched on April 10, and was funded by Sunbridge Startups [2] earlier in the year. Do check them out.
• Qrunch – This service is in the process of pivoting from a sort of online ‘profile book’ to become a trusted dating site based on Facebook.
• Japan Venture Research – JVR is behind the wonderful Entrepedia project, which aims to be a sort of database of startups, investors, and individuals for the startup scene in Japan. Obviously, we like this a lot.
• CrowdWorks – Established back in November, CyberAgent Ventures announced its investment [3] in CrowdWorks back just a month later. The service aims to be a crowdsourcing platform for web developers, engineers, and designers.

Hopefully in the future we’ll have a chance to tell you more about many of these startups, as well as new startups that join them at Startup Base Camp in the future. In the meantime, check out the fun promo video (in Japanese, with subtitles) below from CyberAgent Ventures: