12 Pitches from Start-up Weekend Tokyo at Mixi
You may remember last May when we covered Start-up Weekend Tokyo, and the many great ideas that sprung forth from the three-day event. This weekend saw 2011’s second Start-up Weekend in Tokyo, this time at Mixi HQ in Shibuya.
QLive, the winner of the previous SWT event, was put to good use as a way to gather and vote up the best questions in real-time to ask those pitching. And there were indeed some great ideas put together over these three days. I dropped by on the final day to catch the final pitches. Here are the groups that presented, as well as the select few that won awards
Start-up Intern
‘Let our start-up help your start-up.’ This was the call of the first group to pitch at SWT this past weekend. This group proposed that many young graduates in Japan when trying to enter the work force only know about large internet companies like Gree or Mixi. Many of them are not aware of the opportunities that exist in smaller start-up ventures.
Paul of Start-up Intern presenting
What Start-up intern proposed was a solution to connect interns with start-ups. In order to educate potential interns/employees about their start-ups, founders would create a video to explain what they are about. There would be user testimonials as well so that an element of peer-evaluation would come into play when deciding whether a start-up was a good place to work or not.
As for the revenue model, start-ups would be charged an annual fee to get listed on the website.
Cooking DJ
cooking dj
Cooking DJ is a service that attempts to make cooking fun again. The team calculated that many of us could spend as many as 22 days per year cooking. That’s almost a month, so we should do our best to make that time fun. How do you make cooking fun? The Cooking DJ team proposes that we do that with music.
The application will take a recipe for a certain dish and break it up into smaller mini-processes (e.g. boil the water, or sautee the onions). Cooking DJ provides songs that are the same length of time, so that when the song is finished, you know that you can move to the next step. The team mentioned the possibility of product advertising (food products specifically) as a part of the business model.
The team was the winner of the ‘One to watch’ prize as voted by other participants, as well as the overall prize as voted by a panel of judges.
RemembAR.me
The winner of the ‘Most Innovative’ prize this weekend, RemembAR.me (the AR = Augmented Reality) is an app that aims to help you in the unfortunate event that you’ve forgotten someone’s name. Say you’re in a crowded room, and you see a face you recognize, but you just can’t put your finger on where you know them from. By holding up your phone’s camera and viewing the room through the app, RemembAR.me will scan the faces and compare them against people in your network (Facebook, in particular). If all goes well, it will tell you who that mystery person is. You’ll ‘never be embarraseed again,’ it proclaims.
As for monetization, as I understand it, is the ‘freemium’ model that the group compared to that of Dropbox. Larger networks and more people to scan would cost more than for example, if you only had 100 people.
Website: RemembAR.me
MyLive
The MyLive team proposed an interesting concept for the concert industry, with its service measuring demand from fans about which bands they’d like to see. Targeting indie music fans, and people outside of major cities, MyLive would give music lovers a chance to vote for their favorite bands. When an artist emerges as ‘popular,’ then a live event is arranged and tickets are sold using a Groupon style system.
StartZaps
StartZaps is a website that catalogues start-ups, allows you to compare similar services. The group said that StartZaps would be a third-party objective review, and from the looks of the site design, each startup listing would show a number of similar services underneath (much like alternativeto.net). When a user finds a start-up they like, they can ‘zap’ it, thus adding it to their ‘My Zaps’ page.
The mock-up that we saw showed that start-ups could be tagged (e.g. music, business, Tokyo) and you could also view how many times they had been shared on Twitter, or how many times they had been ‘Zapped’ on StartZaps.
StartZapsは、類似するサービスを比較することができるスタートアップを一覧にしたウェブサイトである。グループは、StartZapsは第三者の客観的なレビューであり、サイトのデザインの形相から、それぞれのスタートアップのリストは、類似したサービスの底面の数々を示す(alternativeto.netのようなもの）。ユーザーが好きなスタートアップを見つけると、それを「ザップ」することができ、その後「My Zaps」ページに追加する。
私達が見た実物大の模型は、スタートアップがタグ付けされ（音楽、ビジネス、東京など）、彼らが何度Twitterで共有したか、何度StartZapsに「ザップ」しているか見ることができることを示した。
2kenme
Everyone has a favorite date restaurant. But finding a venue for a second date is more difficult. 2kenme (read Nikenme) helps you find one by sharing evaluations for restaurants, diners or bars with other people, it aspires to give you lots of great options to entertain your companion
Nikenme was the winner of the ‘biggest surprise award’ for SWT.
