Asiajin

This month’s Tokyo2point0 event drew a huge crowd on Monday this week. Two main factors attracted over 100 people to come to the new venue in Azabu (an event space called SuperDeluxe): a very interesting speaker who came from the USA and the event’s 1st anniversary!

Cloud Computing the Amazon way

Jinesh Varia, evangelist for Amazon Web Services, delivered the presentation of the evening.

Jinesh, who is based out of Seattle, began by dubbing Amazon’s Web Services division (AWS) “the technology arm of Amazon”. He said Amazon began to understand the concept of scaling in 1999 and explained a single product page on amazon.com actually retrieves information from up to 300 different sources on the web.

AWS basically provides three different services:

• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
• Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
• Amazon SimpleDB for data bases

The main point Jinesh made was that cloud computing enables operators of web sites to structure the development process more efficiently. He acknowledged SaaS shortened development time enormously but went on saying that it provides no differentiated value to businesses. According to Jinesh, SaaS solutions suck up 70% of energy, time and money in the scaling process and only 30% are left for developers to create differentiated value.

Supposedly, Amazon’s way of cloud computing is able to flip this ratio. With the Internet becoming more and more ubiquitous and bandwith constantly getting cheaper, Jinesh said the cloud computing concept will become easier to use, more personalized and cheaper in the future.

The main principles of cloud computing according to the speaker are:

• elastic, umlimited capacity
• pay when you grow
• simple, reliable, fast

Jinesh said cloud computing enables every individual with a laptop and Internet connection to challenge even the biggest web companies. He closed his presentation with a few case studies, demonstrating which web services used AWS (most remarkably www.animoto.com).

You can watch his presentation here (video courtesy of event organizer Andrew Shuttleworth):

See also:
Another report on the event by Fumi-san [JP]

Tags: Event Report, Japan by Serkan Toto
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This month’s Tokyo2point0 event drew a huge crowd this week on Tuesday. Again, two presentations were held between and before networking sessions.

Venture Capital for Tech Startups

My friend Aki Ohashi from ngi capital, the investment arm of ngi group (an investor in and operator of -mostly Asian- Tech companies) spoke about the current state of affairs in Japan’s venture capital industry.

Aki and his 8 colleagues are investing in a whopping 60 companies at the moment. NGI capital is predominantly active in early phase and seed financing. The flagship investment is mixi, Japan’s uber social network which is valued at approximately two billion USD.

According to the presenter, early stage investments are shrinking in size and quantity at the moment as far as the Japanese VC industry as a whole is concerned. Aki evaluated this general trend as the market getting more conservative in an unstable economic environment.

I found it interesting that ngi capital as a genuine Japanese VC firm basically values the same factors when it comes to assessing a candidate company for investment as Western ones: human resources (background of the team), technology (differentiation and IP) and market potential. Also, Aki said personal introductions or connections within ngi capital’s network are most efficient when it comes to opening doors for startups. Again, the same is true for Western VCs. In sharp contrast to the USA however, Aki commented that in Japan NDA are used frequently during the following screening process.

As to why startups should cooperate with VCs, he listed the following main factors:
- outside validation
- assistance with business plan
- assistance with recruitment
- introductions to partners, other VCs, potential new clients etc.

In ngi capital’s philosophy, a good pitch from a startup should be centered on a good “overall story”. Aki said this point almost outshadows other elements such as the solution the candidate company provides, its competitive advantage or proprietary technologies.

As a person with a business background, I found this presentation particularly insightful and interesting!

LIMS: the Multi-level Blogging and Ecommerce Platform

Robert Cawte, Kiwi and fellow IT-blogger, delivered a presentation on a multi-level blogging and Ecommerce platform. Robert became CTO of the producer of the platform, Kojimachi-based web startup eSynapse, just one week ago and had to prepare his appearance at the event on short notice.

The service explained -which is called LIMS (Live Information Management System)- is eSynapse’s flagship product. In essence, LIMS is a commercial blog platform with integrated ecommerce functions and a mobile phone interface.

Click here for an actual site which was built using eSynapse’s technology.

As Robert decided to go for a “live” and hands-on presentation, it is recommended you watch the corresponding video (part 1 (starting at the 12:00 mark), part 2, part 3 - made by mover and shaker Andrew Shuttleworth, the event’s main organizer).

More info about the event and network can be found on the official Tokyo2point0 site, the Facebook group or on Mixi.

Tags: Community, Japan by Serkan Toto
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This Tuesday, the 9th Tokyo2point0 event in Harajuku/Tokyo was held. As always, the venue was totally crowded. More info can be found on the Tokyo2point0 site, the Facebook group or on Mixi.

This month the event featured two presentations which left more time for networking. I had the feeling that the event was more fun and fruitful because of that. Also, both presentations were given in English and Japanese this time.

Recruit API

My friend Toshimasa Ishibashi delivered an excellent presentation about the latest developments in Recruit’s Internet business. The Tokyo-based company is a real powerhouse and employs 7,660 people. Recruit is active in a number of industries such as the Web, printing, publishing, education etc. etc.

The company operates over 50 web sites in which 13 categories of API are currently used. Toshi’s presentation was focused on that particular aspect. He aims at opening Recruit by using more API in the company’s web services, thus generating more traffic and profiting from the long tail of the web.

(all pictures in this posting courtesy of my friend Professor Ichinohe)

Toshi said he follows a user-centered concept by evangelizing the idea of API in his company. For example, people should be able to incorporate content from Recruit web sites into their blogs without hassle. The API approach makes it possible for users to customize the adopted content. For example, an API makes it very easy for bloggers to display their personal favorite restaurants from a Recruit restaurant information site in a flashy way.

Marketing in virtual worlds

Lance Shields was responsible for a very unique presentation which was heavily focused on digital art in virtual worlds, namely in Second Life. Lance -who is an artist also in the offline world but now works for a company- is active in Second Life via an alter ego called “Juria Yoshikawa”. Yes, he chose a female avatar due to problems he had when he first chose to be a male one.

Juria Yoshikawa is one of the most famous artists in Second Life and Lance spoke how he managed to get to that stage.

He identified 10 success factors:
- Be active in groups
- Take care of friends and associates
- Organize events
- Offer new content regularly
- Be active in communities
- Be honest
- Collaborate with people
- Spread the word everywhere
- Bring forward outstanding concepts and ideas
- Don’t harass people with too much activity

You can watch both presentations on video here (courtesy of the organizer, Andrew Shuttleworth).

Tags: Community, Japan, Technology by Serkan Toto
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