Fukuoka’s Nulab now offers collaborative diagrams for enterprises

Nulab’s Cacoo team.

Fukuoka-based team collaboration software startup Nulab today announced that its Cacoo platform, which allows users to share and edit online diagrams in real time, will begin offering business plans for corporate users. Cacoo for Business will allow companies to securely share and manage diagrams created by employees, while opening a new revenue stream for the bootstrapped startup as it expands abroad.

Cacoo currently boasts 1.5 million registered users, with 22,000 of them active on a weekly basis. While many of them use the service for business purposes, Cacoo for Business adds new features specifically for enterprise applications. Administrators can set what each group or individual member can and cannot do. For example, a project manager could have full control of the diagram while a designer would be limited to making aesthetic changes. Administrators can also customize each diagram’s security options to prevent sensitive data from leaking. Editing options, sharing on Google Drive, and accessing the diagram with external APIs can all be turned on and off. Security settings can be set for an entire organization or on a project-by-project basis.

When using Cacoo for business, every diagram created becomes the property of the organization, giving administrators access as the project owner. This means that if a group member is reassigned, fired, or leaves the company, there’s no need to worry about losing the diagram they were working on or seeing it appear in a rival’s portfolio.

An example of a Cacoo wireframe.

Nulab has become a global service, all without venture capital or a Tokyo headquarters. Co-founder and CEO Masanori Hashimoto tells Tech in Asia that Japan has its largest user base, but that the US is an increasingly close second. At present, Japan accounts for 13.7 percent of Cacoo users, while the US claims 12 percent. Columbia, Taiwan, and Brazil round out the top five, with 6.9, 6.4, and 5.5 percent of users, respectively. The service’s registered user base grew by 300,000 since we last met with Nulab in July 2014. Hashimoto says the company has “at least one user in just about every country in the world.” The startup also opened its first US office, in New York City, this past October.

Cacoo project manager Makoto Hirayama says that Nulab’s four US-based employees will lead the charge for acquiring new Cacoo for Business users. He hopes to attract 1,600 corporate users by the end of the year. While the US has the second-most users, Hirayama says that Taiwan is the service’s fastest-growing market. Cacoo is challenged by a pair of prominent US-based rivals: Gliffy and Microsoft Visio.

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