Myojo Waraku: Startups Converge on Fukuoka for Japan’s Rendition of South By Southwest

a sample of the art projects that complemented Startup Showcase at Myojo Waraku

This weekend in Fukuoka, Japan’s answer to South by South West, Myojo Waraku, took place, spotlighting artists, music, and up-and-coming startups as well. As a part of the ‘startup showcase’ on day two of the event, ten startups from Japan and around Asia took to the stage to pitch their ideas. The judges for the event were Taizo Son (the supervisor of Myojo Waraku) and Kengo Ito from Movida Japan, Ryuta Shiiki from DLE Inc, Hisashi Katsuya from NICT, Tony Hughes from Tech City, and Toshi Yasuda from Amazon Web Services.

There was a good mix here of veteran startups and new faces, all with big aspirations in a variety of fields. Here’s a rundown:

Competing Startups

1. Conyac (Japan)
2. Trippiece (Japan)
3. Coworkify (Japan)
4. Pairy (Japan)
5. Kanshin (Japan)
6. Intraix (Singapore)
7. Demand Analytics (Hong Kong)
8. SXindeks (Indonesia)
9. ButterBoom (Hong Kong)
10. Codekake (Japan)

Conyac  ↩

While Japan’s crowd-translation service Conyac has been around for a while, CEO Naoki Yamada didn’t fail to impress the panel of judges this weekend. For those who are not yet familiar with Conyac, the service allows users to submit a piece of text for translation, and they can buy credit to pay for a translation in their desired language. The company offers an ‘in-between’ alternative to machine translation, which can be inaccurate; and a translation agency, which can be expensive and slow.

In contrast, Naoki says that their service is ten times cheaper than agencies, and they also give you the option to choose the best of two different translations. From a translators point of view, Conyac offers the opportunity to make money at home as a translator when jobs are posted that match your language. Naoki included some metrics in his pitch that showed the company is growing well of late in terms of sales and translation requests.

Many of the judges were pretty impressed with the pitch, including Tony Hughes who awarded Conyac with a round trip ticket to London thanks to Virgin Atlantic and UK Investment and Trade and Tech City Investment.

For more on Conyac, see our report from last year.

Trippiece  ↩

Coworkify  ↩

Pairy  ↩

Kanshin  ↩

Codekake  ↩

Intraix  ↩

Demand Analytics  ↩

SXindeks  ↩

ButterBoom  ↩