Leading Mark secures $1.45M series A, brings video resumes to smartphones

The company’s home page, exhorting job seekers to realize their dreams.

Leading Mark, a rising human resources startup in Japan, announced today that it secured US$1.45 million in series A funding. Nippon Venture Capital, Mizuho Capital, Link and Motivation, SMBC Venture Capital, East Ventures, and several angel investors all participated in the round (**Disclosure:* East Ventures is also an investor in Tech in Asia. See our ethics page for more information)*.

The cash infusion coincides with the smartphone launch of the startup’s latest product, a video resume service called Recme. Leading Mark’s first line of business is student-focused career consulting and job fair event production.

The seven-year-old company has earned the trust of major corporations too. Large firms want access to Leading Mark’s 50,000 users (10,000 of whom joined last year) and trust its ability to find the best candidates within. It’s used by Mitsubishi Corporation, CyberAgent, and L’Oreal, to name a few.

Students for startups

The backing is good news for Leading Mark, but CEO Yuji Iida and his team had to fight for several years to reach this point.

Originally, the startup was just an idea cooked up by Iida when he was a student at Tokyo University dissatisfied with the job hunt. In Japan, competition to get into the best companies is fierce. According to Iida, it is not uncommon for the average college student to send out upwards of 80 applications. Entrepreneurship was not new to him at that point – already he had been working part-time at various startups around town. He took his life’s savings – about US$60,000 – and started bootstrapping his own venture.

The first three years, the company’s revenue inched up only incrementally. US$100,000 in year one, US$200,000 in year two, and then US$300,000 in year three. Progress was slow, and enthusiasm dimmed.

“We were talking about shutting down the company in January 2011. I thought about quitting and just entering the workforce,” Iida says, adding that at the time there were just three full-time workers and two interns.

Yuji Iida, CEO of Leading Mark

Every day, Iida and another sales rep called about 28 companies, trying to secure new clients. When they got a big deal, they dedicated every available resource to try and ensure repeat business. The grind was taking its toll, but Iida landed a star hire – and new director – in Takeshi Toda, which gave the team a new energy.

Toda had experience trying his own company as a student as well, before working for Yamaha overseas and Procter & Gamble in Japan. He was instrumental in helping the startup team reach a critical breakthrough – a contract from Mitsui Busan, a conglomerate with a market cap of over US$25 billion.

The resume will be televised