Gumi: From Social Networking to Social Gaming and Making Loads of Money
Over at Myojo Wakaru (sort of Japan’s answer to SXSW) in Fukuoka, I met up with Gumi’s founder and president, Hironao Kunimitsu.
It was an interesting place to chat with an entrepreneur because the music was loud and cool bunny girls were walking around serving us drinks. I can certainly think of worse ways to spend a weekend!
Hironao was practically shouting at me over the music as he shared his amazing entrepreneur story. He told me that Gumi was first founded as a social network and back then, he saw the growth of Facebook and thought there could be a similar concept in Japan. He was thinking mobile rather than web as he wanted to fuse social networking with the mobile inclination of Japanese people.
He said Gumi did get some traction as a social network. But he wanted to do much more than just the social part. Hironao wanted to build content for his users, partly because he has experience working as a TV producer. So naturally, distributing video content like movies was one of his interests. But regrettably he realized that there would be too many legal issues to be dealt with. So instead of videos, Hironao now focuses on building social games, which he said have also been distributed on GREE and Mixi.
Anyway, Gumi’s social games turned out to be more popular and profitable than its social network business. Hironao said that in Japan, people are affluent and are willing to pay for virtual items in mobile games, and that allows him to generate revenue quickly.
He revealed that Gumi is making a whopping US$6 million per month and growing. It is also one of the largest game developers on GREE.
When asked about his expansion plan, he said that Gumi is now looking to expand to the US and then to Europe. But he also confessed that it is tough for Japanese companies to expand to the states. He said:
彼はGumiが月に六百万アメリカドル稼ぎ出し、成長していると明かしました。それはまた、GREEの中で最も大きなゲーム開発者の一つです。
彼は事業拡大の計画について聞かれた時に、Gumiは現在、アメリカにマーケットを広げ、その後ヨーロッパにまで広げると言いました。しかし日本の会社にとってアメリカでの事業拡大は非常に難しいと告白しました。彼は言いました
彼は、Gumiは月にUS$600万稼ぎだし、更に成長を続けていると明かした。そしてまた、GREEの主力のゲームデベロッパーでもある。
彼の拡張プランについて尋ねた時、彼は、Gumiは今アメリカそして、その後ヨーロッパに拡大することを目論んでいると述べた。しかし彼はまた、日本の会社がアメリカに拡張することは難しいとも打ち明けた。彼は述べた:
彼はgumiが月あたり600万USドルという途方も無い額を売り上げており、成長していると明かした。gumiはまたグリーにおける最も大きなゲーム開発会社の1つである。
彼の今後の計画についてたずねると、彼はgumiが今、USそしてヨーロッパに広がっていくことを考えていると話した。しかし彼はまた日本の会社がUSで大きくなるのは難しいとも打ち明けている。彼はこう言った:
"Most developers would rather work for Google, Facebook, or Zynga than for Japanese companies."
That’s about all that we discussed as the fun and wacky Hironao introduced me to some of his Japanese friends and… uh… taught me some Japanese at the same time.
It was fun. Arigato.
Thanks for your great translation
@naokey Thank you too for the comment and points!