A combo of Reddit, Quora, and Tumblr, Japan’s Hatena is storming to an anticipated IPO

Hatena CEO Yoshiomi Kurisu

Hatena CEO Yoshiomi Kurisu was stumped. An affable and talented engineer, Kurisu is no dummy. He studied nuclear energy in college, and after working for a few years, entered Hatena as a developer. He quickly became a project leader and head of engineering. On the way to becoming CEO, Kurisu was even borrowed by Nintendo to help shepherd the Wii U’s ambitious Miiverse through development and shipping. But when Tech in Asia asked him what international company is most like his own, Kurisu needed a moment. With numerous different businesses (see the full list here) led by bookmarking and blogging services, there are a lot of options to choose from.

At its core, Hatena is a place where online communities are created. Bloggers share their thoughts and gain followers as they enter into online communities focused on any number of topics. Users access the bookmarks page to see what the Hatena community considers to be the most important news of the day. Pre-established community spaces based on various topics are available, as is a question-and-answer space. Due to the popularity of these services, Kurisu can see parallels to Reddit, Quora, and Tumblr.

When Hatena first appeared in 2001, it was dubbed the “Google of Japan” for its engineer-friendly work culture and the way developers dominated the community spaces. While Google’s world domination makes the analogy a bit of a stretch now, Kurisu is proof positive that Hatena is still a home for engineers.

The top page of Hatena Bookmark. This shows news pieces that are trending for the day. Social media like Twitter posts can also make it to the big board.

Preparing for the public

Junya Kondo founded Hatena in Kyoto. He stayed on as CEO until this August when he decided to return to his roots and focus on Hatena’s new service development. He passed the reigns to Kurisu – who was serving as the head of engineering for the company – because Kurisu knows how to keep the company a place where developers want to work.

Kurisu has received an additional – and weighty – task as CEO. He now has to steer the company through an IPO. Under the watchful eye of his press advisor, he strenuously avoided saying anything that could be construed the wrong way.

While hints about the firm’s future market cap were in short supply, there is plenty of evidence to suggest the number will be quite pleasing to investors. The site currently has 40 million unique visitors a month, with a core four million registered users. All that results in 200 million page views a month. That is a far cry from Reddit or Tumblr numbers, but the website is almost exclusively used by Japanese. That means almost 40 percent of the entire 100 million Japanese internet population uses Hatena.

Individuals looking to connect with engineers in Japan would be wise to sign up for an account. 40 percent of users work in tech and 33 percent are engineers. Advertisers are also familiar with Hatena since a solid third of its users are earning more than US$70,000 a year.

The strength of that user base is partly why telecom company KDDI included Hatena in its plan to surpass Google and Yahoo as most visited mobile site in Japan. Inclusion in so-called “Syn Alliance” is further evidence of Hatena’s visible status in Japan’s online world.

See: KDDI knows “Syn” is good. Telco makes play to swipe Google and Yahoo’s mobile users.

Future wars