{"id":10685,"date":"2010-10-15T16:49:42","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T07:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/?p=10685"},"modified":"2010-10-15T16:49:42","modified_gmt":"2010-10-15T07:49:42","slug":"social-apps-provider-istpika-gets-2-5-million-from-dena-backed-incubatefund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/social-apps-provider-istpika-gets-2-5-million-from-dena-backed-incubatefund\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Apps Provider Istpika Gets $2.5 Million From DeNA-Backed IncubateFund"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/img.asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/istpika_logo.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-10687\" title=\"istpika_logo\" src=\"http:\/\/img.asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/istpika_logo.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"226\" height=\"64\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/img.asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/incubatefund_logo.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-10688\" title=\"incubatefund_logo\" src=\"http:\/\/img.asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/incubatefund_logo-400x75.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"75\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nI wonder in what shape the Japanese venture capital industry (and entrepreneur scene) would be without social games. Yesterday, TechCrunch Japan <a href=\"http:\/\/jp.techcrunch.com\/archives\/jp-20101013-gumi-gets-funding-4-hundred-million-yen-from-gree\/\">reported<\/a> about Tokyo-based social apps provider <a href=\"http:\/\/gu3.co.jp\/index.html\">gumi<\/a> getting a &#8220;multi-million dollar&#8221; sum from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gree.jp\">GREE<\/a>, which counts 21 million members in its mobile gaming network.<br \/>\nAnd today, Japan- and Australia-based <a href=\"http:\/\/www.istpika.com\">Istpika<\/a> says it received $2.5 million from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.incubatefund.com\/\">IncubateFund<\/a>, an investment vehicle capitalized at $37 million. One of IncubateFund&#8217;s goals is to back social game providers, which is not too surprising, given that Japan&#8217;s other mobile gaming giant, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dena.jp\/en\/index.html\">DeNA<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/tag\/mobage-town\/\">Mobage-town<\/a>), has injected $31 million into the fund (IncubateFund is also involved in gumi).<br \/>\nIstpika&#8217;s CEO Michinori Fukushima says his company now counts 50 people in offices in Osaka, Tokyo, and Perth, Australia. Istpika has so far developed games for Mobage-town, GREE, the iPhone and Facebook. The fresh money will be used to develop social games for the iPhone and recruit more employees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wonder in what shape the Japanese venture capital industry (and entrepreneur scene) would be without social games. Yesterday, TechCrunch Japan reported about Tokyo-based social apps provider gumi getting a &#8220;multi-million dollar&#8221; sum from GREE, which counts 21 million members in its mobile gaming network. And today, Japan- and Australia-based Istpika says it received $2.5&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/social-apps-provider-istpika-gets-2-5-million-from-dena-backed-incubatefund\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Social Apps Provider Istpika Gets $2.5 Million From DeNA-Backed IncubateFund<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,24],"tags":[883,1460,1663,1761,3413],"class_list":["post-10685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","category-news","tag-dena","tag-gumi","tag-incubatefund","tag-istpika","tag-social-games","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}