Kii

Kii INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi. Today we are in San Mateo, in the Kii Office, with Masanari. Konnichiwa.Masanari: Konnichiwa.Martin: Who are you and what do you do, Masanari?Masanari: I’m the CEO of Kii Corporation.Martin: And what is it? What is Kii Corporation?Masanari: Kii Corporation is focusing on solution for the mobile. We are providing backend technology to mobile application developers. And also these days, one of the famous segments is IoT, Internet of Things, we are also providing backend for the IoT devices.Martin: What did you do before you started this company?Masanari: I was focusing in my entire career after the university on mobile. After I graduated in the university and got a master’s degree, I joined IBM. That was IBM-Japan. I was in ThinkPad group. When I joined IBM in 1984, and there was no notebook PC at that point. So IBM was working on a new notebook PC. ThinkPad was that PC, and I was the product manager for ThinkPad.Then, I spent 10 years in IBM. When I was doi ng product management for ThinkPad, I was travelling around Silicon Valley, meeting with a lot of innovative people and start-up companies. What I was looking for was the technology that would make ThinkPad more attractive. So we tried to partnership with many start-ups to acquire their technology into ThinkPad and to make ThinkPad more attractive for the people. Because I have spent so much time in Silicon Valley, I started to love Silicon Valley. So after 10 years in IBM, I decided, “Okay, maybe it’s time to quit at this big company.” I wanted to join a small, small start-up, so I joined the company called Intellisync. Intellisync was providing mobile software to synchronize mobile device to the backend system like Microsoft Outlook Exchange Notes, that kind of stuff. When I joined, the company had only five people. We really started from scratch at that point. From a 200,000 people company like IBM, I joined a five people company. I was one of the original members in Intell isync. Then, I spent more than 15 years in Intellisync. So whats happened, Intellisync was focusing on mobile solutions. I joined in 1995. Then, in Intellisync went to IPO in 1996. So that was a great experience because 1995 was the start of an internet bubble because that year Netscape went IPO. I had many experiences there. But in 2000 everything crashed. Then from that point, we started up again. In 2006, Nokia started talking to us because they wanted enterprise mobility solutions by using data synchronization technology. That was what Intellisync was focusing on and making Nokia devices for the enterprise grade device. Then Nokia started talking to us and finally decided to acquire us. So in 2006, Nokia acquired Intellisync. So that was what happened. At that time, I was the general manager Asia in Intellisync.At that point as Nokia was acquired, Nokia was not really doing well in two countriesâ€"Japan and Korea. They wanted to get a lot of knowledge about the Japanese market f rom me, and so I became country manager for Nokia Enterprise System. So I was working for Firewall, ECEs forms, and also in Intellisync Mobile Software Technology. So we were setting those things. Then in 2006-2007-2008 time frame, Nokia was fading out from Japanese Market. At that point, I proposed to MBO, originally Intellisync Japan business from Nokia. We got an agreement in 2008 and acquired a small portion or the original Intellisync software business back to us and that was the start of the company Kii. At that time, the company was named Synclore instead of Kii. So we got only 10 people and started all over again in 2008. What happened was, Intellisync originally started from Silicon Valley and became a worldwide company, but the portion we acquired back was just the Japanese portion. So I wanted to expand my business to the entire world again. Because I spent so much time in Silicon Valley, my nature became like a Silicon Valley guy. When I want to expand, usually Silicon V alley acquires companies. So we decided lets find a company to acquire. At that point, we looked for many companies but they were so expensive because that was another bubble in 2008. We spent one year in that phase, expanding in the Japanese business and tried to expand outside of Japan. However, in 2009, the Lehman show happened and everything was changed. EM became so high and all venture money in Silicon Valley stopped. As result, a lot of companies were in trouble and so we could acquire a company at that point. So we found a company who is providing mobile smart phone technology to Korea. We also provided the latest technology to Korea, so this was a very good synergy because that company has smart phone client technology and Intellisync spin-out had java side technology. So by combining cloud technology to moving the data around and smart phone client technology, that makes a new world. So we decided to merge the two companies together. The company name was called Servo. Actu ally, it was Christof, the German guy I think he came from Munich. So we merged together and then became Kii.Martin: Okay, great.Masanari: Sorry, long story.Martin: Okay. But how is it for a Japanese guy who is normally supposed to normally work in one company for 30, 40, 50 years to step out of a big company, join a small company, and justify that to his family?Masanari: What was happening inside of IBM was like it was having an internal battle and a lot of conflict inside. So ThinkPad was created like a PC company, but at that point, IBM was always pushing an IBM operating system for PCs. So they were fighting with Microsoft but from a PC viewpoint, we have to have to support both. However, they were always pushing too hard and so that makes the IBM PC business so hard and uncompetitive, because you have to support another operating system because of IBM. At that point, I was really, really frustrated about IBM strategy. As a part of a big company, I cannot make decisions quickly enough to move to the next step. At that point, Compaq, Gateway, so many PC companies were competing with each other. So three months is a really, really long time for the PC work. However, IBM wanted to spend one year to decide to do anything. At that point, I was so frustrated. Actually, I became sick. I had fever for two years because of the stress I got. So I just wanted to have freedom and make the decisions by myself quick and wanted to move ahead. So that came from the frustration of working in a large company.Martin: Masanari, how did you come up with the company name Kii?Masanari: We have two stories, which one do you want to hear?Martin: The true story.Masanari: Okay. So I mentioned the two companies merging together with almost the same size and kind of operation. If we would proceed with one name inside the company we would create a kind of perception that one company acquired the other company. I may start seeing peoples conflict. So, I didn’t want that to happen. So, this is a new company, we merge together, and we are creating a new company from now on so let’s work together. So that was the concept. I wanted to have a new company name to make that happen. Executive teams from both companies spent almost three months to decide the new company name. We had more than 200 candidates. Some people liked it, some people didn’t. We had a very long battle about the company name and we couldn’t decide. Then one guy went to godady.com, trading domain names, and we found that Kii.com is on sale and I thought this may be a great name for the company but I wanted to make sure that everybody was happy. At that point, we had employees in United States, Japan, China, Spain, and Germany. We asked everybody how Kii sounded. And everybody said “Wow, it sounds really good.” The US people said, “Kii is key”. We wanted to be key company. Japan said, “Wow, Kii is like a place, originally where the Japanese god came fromâ€"Kii Peninsula,” and the Ch inese people said, “Wow, that sounds really good, sending Kii, or Qi.” So everybody loved it, so we decided to have the company name Kii. So after a while, we talked about Kii came from the origin of the Japanese god, so this name was decided because we want to be the origin of that new business. But truth is that.Martin: First domain, then the story, and then the other way around.Masanari: Yes, yes. That’s right. Yes.BUSINESS MODEL OF KIIMartin: Masanari, how does the business model work right now?Masanari: So we are providing a platform to mobile application developers and also IoT device manufacturers. How this works. Basically, our company body proposition is when you want to develop a mobile application, you can develop everything by yourself. But typically, start-up people have frontend application, something they want to concentrate on, because they have idea around the application. But the backend side is really painful because you have to hire a server engineer, you h ave to operate the server, and you have to scale the server if you have a number of users. If you spend a lot of time on this, you cannot spend more time on this application side, that’s the most important thing. So our value is we take care of all the backend and you don’t have to do anything, so you just concentrate on the application side, so you come up with total scalable solutions. So we have a lot experience working with mobile carrier in the previous company, Intellisync, like Entity, Docomo, and SoftBank. We have about 50 million users in the Southeast and that kind of stuff. So we have a lot of experience and can provide a scalable backend. Basically, our business model is walking this application developer to kick-start their activity with providing free service at the beginning. Then, if those people start growing, we basically charge a fee based on the usage of the server for storage space, CPU power, and that kind of stuff.Also, we are working with device manufactu rers. When you come up with a webcam or a smart power, whatever, you usually want to have a companion mobile application and also want to understand how to manage the device. So we provide device management and device analytics so people can understand how to use the device and also mobile application development platform. So we provide those three key elements to make mobile IoT device successful and we basically charge them based on the number of device.Martin: So if I am a mobile developer, I can concentrate on my frontend, designing how the interaction with a customer will be, and then I will use your servers and get some analytics on how the user behaviour was without needing to develop all the kind of data sourcing and analytics stuff. And in addition, you will take care of all the hosting stuff?Masanari: Yes, yes.Martin: Okay.Masanari: The basic idea here is you don’t have to do any server side coding and you don’t have to do operate the server. Also, we provide a lot ele ments of functionality you need to develop mobile application. For example, I can user management, data management, push notification, analytics, and so on. So to prove our power, I asked our engineer to develop a copy of the Instagram and he finished it in one week. So that is the kind of power that we have.Martin: How do I connect the frontend with the backend provider by you then? Is this some kind of framework that you provide, or is it something else?Masanari: When you start developing applications then you can come to our developer portal, and that is developer.kii.com, then sign up, download the SDK, then just plug-in the SDK, then your application is just talking to the SDK, and then you can get all the functionality for the backend. For example, to do user management, such as issuing a user ID and the password, verify password, and manage the user ID and password, you can just add two or three lines of code into your mobile application, then that code will talk to SDK, and basically everything is done. If you do the coding for all those user management, you have to spend a lot of time, and you don’t have too.Martin: Okay, understood.CORPORATE STRATEGYMartin: So let’s talk about corporate strategy. What makes you unique in this market place? Are there any other players who are doing similar things?Masanari: Yes. Actually, we are not the first company doing this mobile backend, there are many companies that were established before. For example, a company called Parse was acquired by Facebook, StackMob was acquired by PayPal, and we have many competitors. But our uniqueness is maybe a couple of things. One is, we have started from Japan and have a big operation in China. So, we have a big strength in Asian market, not only focusing on U.S., but also on Japan, China, and all other Asian countries.Martin: Do you have some kind of cost-competitive advantage or not?Masanari: No, actually. The advantage is, for example, you are the developer, and you have to deal with English all the time, but because we have a big operations in Japan and China, we are providing Japanese and Chinese, including documentation support. Also, in Chinese market for example, if you want to publish your application into China market, there is no Google Play. In China, it’s really hard to access Google Play. As a result, you have to publish your application into China local app store, and most people don’t know how to do it. So we provide a program called Kii to China. By using Kii to China, you can publish applications very easily. Just give us the APK, and then we will publish the application on behalf of you to the Chinese local market. There are 200 different local markets. We select and partner with 20 China local app store and do the publishing. This is like a technology and language barrier because a lot of the people in China and Japan don’t want to deal with English documents, so we also support a Japanese and Chinese local community so that everybody understands the local situation in the technology program. Like I mentioned, we also help in distribution. Distributing mobile application to the Asian market is a mystery, right? You don’t know how to do it, so we are helping into appropriate distribution.Martin: On a success-base or is it included in your basic product?Masanari: Basically, we are always open. So if someone comes in and says, “Please help us to distribute,” we put them, for example, into the Kii to China program and everybody can use that service. And also, we start to see the growth and jump in to help those applications make better. For example, ASTRO File Manager, that’s one of the partner, that’s a famous file manager for Android. When we started working with them, they had only 15 million downloads, that’s pretty good, 15 million. After we helped, now they got around 75 million downloads and 25 million active users. That is huge, right? We helped them to make that happen. So sometimes we jump in and help the application developer.MARKET DEVELOPMENTMartin: In terms of market development, can you give us some kind of overview how you perceive the current development in the mobile market sphere worldwide, maybe some kind of subsequent trend?Masanari: You mean, like the mobile market in general?Martin: Yes.Masanari: Yes. Basically, what happened was, before smart phone, feature phone, everything was closed. When you wanted to create some innovative application for the feature phone, feature phone is so closed and cannot do so many things. Even the Symbian Operating System, that was a pretty open operating system, but for the developer, it’s not easy to use and easy develop something. However, when Apple opened, like the API, for any kind of hardware features, for example, a gyroscope or a touchscreen, everybody started thinking, “Maybe I can use this hardware feature to do something.” So everybody has thrown so many ideas. What happened was that so many interestin g applications people never thought about started evolving. For example, by using the iPhone now, you can check the golf scene.Martin: Yes, yes. You said that you were a golf fan.Masanari: Yes. How many people can imagine that service before opening access to the hardware features? That basically changed the whole thing. Now there are a lot of applications.First of all, there are so many smartphones now that are available in the market and everything is so open, so you can come up with many interesting applications. Basically, after the hardware opened, a lot of people could think about innovative things by using those hardware features.The second thing that happened was that Apple created a market, the app store. Before the app store happened, you always have think about how to distribute my application to the world. But now, by just publishing the application to the app store, you can now access all over the world in store-based. So, that’s a big change.Thats the smartphone, and then this entire application ecosystem has started to happen. My view is that it’s going to expand to the IoT devices also, like you have the iPhone, iOS and Android, now you have the webcam, the smart light bulb, and smartkey which you can open them from a mobile application whenever you want. So my view is that iOS, Android, and all those kinds of IoT devices are going to be open API to a third-party, and then many people will start thinking about very innovative applications. For example, like combining webcam, smartkey, iOS, and smart light bulb, you can come up with an interesting application, right? So, I think that kind of world is happening for the mobile these days. Then everybody can have the opportunity to monetize it.Martin: I mean, one cool application might be having Google Glasses, being on the golf court, and then seeing which angle and what kind of strength should I use to hit the ball.Masanari: If you play golf like me.Martin: And you don’t need that.Masanari: No, no, no. I think technology is still pretty much early. Golf is so sensitive and you really cannot control by just seeing the information on the grass. Yes, but in navigation devices, the application is pretty good for those golf courses, and you can just see how far you would like to hit and that kind of stuff.ADVICE TO ENTREPRENEURS FROM MASANARI ARAI In San Mateo (CA), we meet co-founder and CEO of Kii, Masanari Arai. He shares his story how he co-founded this startup and how the current business model works, as well as what the current plans for near future, and some advice for young entrepreneurs.The transcript of the interview is included below.INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi. Today we are in San Mateo, in the Kii Office, with Masanari. Konnichiwa.Masanari: Konnichiwa.Martin: Who are you and what do you do, Masanari?Masanari: I’m the CEO of Kii Corporation.Martin: And what is it? What is Kii Corporation?Masanari: Kii Corporation is focusing on solution for the mobile. We are providing backend technology to mobile application developers. And also these days, one of the famous segments is IoT, Internet of Things, we are also providing backend for the IoT devices.Martin: What did you do before you started this company?Masanari: I was focusing in my entire career after the university on mobile. After I graduated in the university and got a master’s degree, I joined IBM. That was IBM-Japan. I was in ThinkPad group. When I joined IBM in 1984, and there was no notebook PC at that point. So IBM was working on a new notebook PC. ThinkPad was that PC, and I was the product manager for ThinkPad.Then, I spent 10 years in IBM. When I was doing product management for ThinkPad, I was travelling around Silicon Valley, meeting with a lot of innovative people and start-up companies. What I was looking for was the technology that would make ThinkPad more attractive. So we tried to partnership with many start-ups to acquire their technology into ThinkPad and to make ThinkPad more attractive for the people. Because I have spent so much time in Silicon Valley, I started to love Silicon Valley. So after 10 years in IBM, I decided, “Okay, maybe it’s time to quit at this big company.” I wanted to join a small, small start-up, so I joined the company called Intellisync. Intellisync was providing mobile software to synchronize mo bile device to the backend system like Microsoft Outlook Exchange Notes, that kind of stuff. When I joined, the company had only five people. We really started from scratch at that point. From a 200,000 people company like IBM, I joined a five people company. I was one of the original members in Intellisync. Then, I spent more than 15 years in Intellisync. So whats happened, Intellisync was focusing on mobile solutions. I joined in 1995. Then, in Intellisync went to IPO in 1996. So that was a great experience because 1995 was the start of an internet bubble because that year Netscape went IPO. I had many experiences there. But in 2000 everything crashed. Then from that point, we started up again. In 2006, Nokia started talking to us because they wanted enterprise mobility solutions by using data synchronization technology. That was what Intellisync was focusing on and making Nokia devices for the enterprise grade device. Then Nokia started talking to us and finally decided to acquir e us. So in 2006, Nokia acquired Intellisync. So that was what happened. At that time, I was the general manager Asia in Intellisync.At that point as Nokia was acquired, Nokia was not really doing well in two countriesâ€"Japan and Korea. They wanted to get a lot of knowledge about the Japanese market from me, and so I became country manager for Nokia Enterprise System. So I was working for Firewall, ECEs forms, and also in Intellisync Mobile Software Technology. So we were setting those things. Then in 2006-2007-2008 time frame, Nokia was fading out from Japanese Market. At that point, I proposed to MBO, originally Intellisync Japan business from Nokia. We got an agreement in 2008 and acquired a small portion or the original Intellisync software business back to us and that was the start of the company Kii. At that time, the company was named Synclore instead of Kii. So we got only 10 people and started all over again in 2008. What happened was, Intellisync originally started from S ilicon Valley and became a worldwide company, but the portion we acquired back was just the Japanese portion. So I wanted to expand my business to the entire world again. Because I spent so much time in Silicon Valley, my nature became like a Silicon Valley guy. When I want to expand, usually Silicon Valley acquires companies. So we decided lets find a company to acquire. At that point, we looked for many companies but they were so expensive because that was another bubble in 2008. We spent one year in that phase, expanding in the Japanese business and tried to expand outside of Japan. However, in 2009, the Lehman show happened and everything was changed. EM became so high and all venture money in Silicon Valley stopped. As result, a lot of companies were in trouble and so we could acquire a company at that point. So we found a company who is providing mobile smart phone technology to Korea. We also provided the latest technology to Korea, so this was a very good synergy because tha t company has smart phone client technology and Intellisync spin-out had java side technology. So by combining cloud technology to moving the data around and smart phone client technology, that makes a new world. So we decided to merge the two companies together. The company name was called Servo. Actually, it was Christof, the German guy I think he came from Munich. So we merged together and then became Kii.Martin: Okay, great.Masanari: Sorry, long story.Martin: Okay. But how is it for a Japanese guy who is normally supposed to normally work in one company for 30, 40, 50 years to step out of a big company, join a small company, and justify that to his family?Masanari: What was happening inside of IBM was like it was having an internal battle and a lot of conflict inside. So ThinkPad was created like a PC company, but at that point, IBM was always pushing an IBM operating system for PCs. So they were fighting with Microsoft but from a PC viewpoint, we have to have to support both. H owever, they were always pushing too hard and so that makes the IBM PC business so hard and uncompetitive, because you have to support another operating system because of IBM. At that point, I was really, really frustrated about IBM strategy. As a part of a big company, I cannot make decisions quickly enough to move to the next step. At that point, Compaq, Gateway, so many PC companies were competing with each other. So three months is a really, really long time for the PC work. However, IBM wanted to spend one year to decide to do anything. At that point, I was so frustrated. Actually, I became sick. I had fever for two years because of the stress I got. So I just wanted to have freedom and make the decisions by myself quick and wanted to move ahead. So that came from the frustration of working in a large company.Martin: Masanari, how did you come up with the company name Kii?Masanari: We have two stories, which one do you want to hear?Martin: The true story.Masanari: Okay. So I me ntioned the two companies merging together with almost the same size and kind of operation. If we would proceed with one name inside the company we would create a kind of perception that one company acquired the other company. I may start seeing peoples conflict. So, I didn’t want that to happen. So, this is a new company, we merge together, and we are creating a new company from now on so let’s work together. So that was the concept. I wanted to have a new company name to make that happen. Executive teams from both companies spent almost three months to decide the new company name. We had more than 200 candidates. Some people liked it, some people didn’t. We had a very long battle about the company name and we couldn’t decide. Then one guy went to godady.com, trading domain names, and we found that Kii.com is on sale and I thought this may be a great name for the company but I wanted to make sure that everybody was happy. At that point, we had employees in United States, Ja pan, China, Spain, and Germany. We asked everybody how Kii sounded. And everybody said “Wow, it sounds really good.” The US people said, “Kii is key”. We wanted to be key company. Japan said, “Wow, Kii is like a place, originally where the Japanese god came fromâ€"Kii Peninsula,” and the Chinese people said, “Wow, that sounds really good, sending Kii, or Qi.” So everybody loved it, so we decided to have the company name Kii. So after a while, we talked about Kii came from the origin of the Japanese god, so this name was decided because we want to be the origin of that new business. But truth is that.Martin: First domain, then the story, and then the other way around.Masanari: Yes, yes. That’s right. Yes.BUSINESS MODEL OF KIIMartin: Masanari, how does the business model work right now?Masanari: So we are providing a platform to mobile application developers and also IoT device manufacturers. How this works. Basically, our company body proposition is when you want to develop a mobile application, you can develop everything by yourself. But typically, start-up people have frontend application, something they want to concentrate on, because they have idea around the application. But the backend side is really painful because you have to hire a server engineer, you have to operate the server, and you have to scale the server if you have a number of users. If you spend a lot of time on this, you cannot spend more time on this application side, that’s the most important thing. So our value is we take care of all the backend and you don’t have to do anything, so you just concentrate on the application side, so you come up with total scalable solutions. So we have a lot experience working with mobile carrier in the previous company, Intellisync, like Entity, Docomo, and SoftBank. We have about 50 million users in the Southeast and that kind of stuff. So we have a lot of experience and can provide a scalable backend. Basically, our business model i s walking this application developer to kick-start their activity with providing free service at the beginning. Then, if those people start growing, we basically charge a fee based on the usage of the server for storage space, CPU power, and that kind of stuff.Also, we are working with device manufacturers. When you come up with a webcam or a smart power, whatever, you usually want to have a companion mobile application and also want to understand how to manage the device. So we provide device management and device analytics so people can understand how to use the device and also mobile application development platform. So we provide those three key elements to make mobile IoT device successful and we basically charge them based on the number of device.Martin: So if I am a mobile developer, I can concentrate on my frontend, designing how the interaction with a customer will be, and then I will use your servers and get some analytics on how the user behaviour was without needing to d evelop all the kind of data sourcing and analytics stuff. And in addition, you will take care of all the hosting stuff?Masanari: Yes, yes.Martin: Okay.Masanari: The basic idea here is you don’t have to do any server side coding and you don’t have to do operate the server. Also, we provide a lot elements of functionality you need to develop mobile application. For example, I can user management, data management, push notification, analytics, and so on. So to prove our power, I asked our engineer to develop a copy of the Instagram and he finished it in one week. So that is the kind of power that we have.Martin: How do I connect the frontend with the backend provider by you then? Is this some kind of framework that you provide, or is it something else?Masanari: When you start developing applications then you can come to our developer portal, and that is developer.kii.com, then sign up, download the SDK, then just plug-in the SDK, then your application is just talking to the SDK, an d then you can get all the functionality for the backend. For example, to do user management, such as issuing a user ID and the password, verify password, and manage the user ID and password, you can just add two or three lines of code into your mobile application, then that code will talk to SDK, and basically everything is done. If you do the coding for all those user management, you have to spend a lot of time, and you don’t have too.Martin: Okay, understood.CORPORATE STRATEGYMartin: So let’s talk about corporate strategy. What makes you unique in this market place? Are there any other players who are doing similar things?Masanari: Yes. Actually, we are not the first company doing this mobile backend, there are many companies that were established before. For example, a company called Parse was acquired by Facebook, StackMob was acquired by PayPal, and we have many competitors. But our uniqueness is maybe a couple of things. One is, we have started from Japan and have a big o peration in China. So, we have a big strength in Asian market, not only focusing on U.S., but also on Japan, China, and all other Asian countries.Martin: Do you have some kind of cost-competitive advantage or not?Masanari: No, actually. The advantage is, for example, you are the developer, and you have to deal with English all the time, but because we have a big operations in Japan and China, we are providing Japanese and Chinese, including documentation support. Also, in Chinese market for example, if you want to publish your application into China market, there is no Google Play. In China, it’s really hard to access Google Play. As a result, you have to publish your application into China local app store, and most people don’t know how to do it. So we provide a program called Kii to China. By using Kii to China, you can publish applications very easily. Just give us the APK, and then we will publish the application on behalf of you to the Chinese local market. There are 200 di fferent local markets. We select and partner with 20 China local app store and do the publishing. This is like a technology and language barrier because a lot of the people in China and Japan don’t want to deal with English documents, so we also support a Japanese and Chinese local community so that everybody understands the local situation in the technology program. Like I mentioned, we also help in distribution. Distributing mobile application to the Asian market is a mystery, right? You don’t know how to do it, so we are helping into appropriate distribution.Martin: On a success-base or is it included in your basic product?Masanari: Basically, we are always open. So if someone comes in and says, “Please help us to distribute,” we put them, for example, into the Kii to China program and everybody can use that service. And also, we start to see the growth and jump in to help those applications make better. For example, ASTRO File Manager, that’s one of the partner, that†™s a famous file manager for Android. When we started working with them, they had only 15 million downloads, that’s pretty good, 15 million. After we helped, now they got around 75 million downloads and 25 million active users. That is huge, right? We helped them to make that happen. So sometimes we jump in and help the application developer.MARKET DEVELOPMENTMartin: In terms of market development, can you give us some kind of overview how you perceive the current development in the mobile market sphere worldwide, maybe some kind of subsequent trend?Masanari: You mean, like the mobile market in general?Martin: Yes.Masanari: Yes. Basically, what happened was, before smart phone, feature phone, everything was closed. When you wanted to create some innovative application for the feature phone, feature phone is so closed and cannot do so many things. Even the Symbian Operating System, that was a pretty open operating system, but for the developer, it’s not easy to use and easy devel op something. However, when Apple opened, like the API, for any kind of hardware features, for example, a gyroscope or a touchscreen, everybody started thinking, “Maybe I can use this hardware feature to do something.” So everybody has thrown so many ideas. What happened was that so many interesting applications people never thought about started evolving. For example, by using the iPhone now, you can check the golf scene.Martin: Yes, yes. You said that you were a golf fan.Masanari: Yes. How many people can imagine that service before opening access to the hardware features? That basically changed the whole thing. Now there are a lot of applications.First of all, there are so many smartphones now that are available in the market and everything is so open, so you can come up with many interesting applications. Basically, after the hardware opened, a lot of people could think about innovative things by using those hardware features.The second thing that happened was that Apple cre ated a market, the app store. Before the app store happened, you always have think about how to distribute my application to the world. But now, by just publishing the application to the app store, you can now access all over the world in store-based. So, that’s a big change.Thats the smartphone, and then this entire application ecosystem has started to happen. My view is that it’s going to expand to the IoT devices also, like you have the iPhone, iOS and Android, now you have the webcam, the smart light bulb, and smartkey which you can open them from a mobile application whenever you want. So my view is that iOS, Android, and all those kinds of IoT devices are going to be open API to a third-party, and then many people will start thinking about very innovative applications. For example, like combining webcam, smartkey, iOS, and smart light bulb, you can come up with an interesting application, right? So, I think that kind of world is happening for the mobile these days. Then ev erybody can have the opportunity to monetize it.Martin: I mean, one cool application might be having Google Glasses, being on the golf court, and then seeing which angle and what kind of strength should I use to hit the ball.Masanari: If you play golf like me.Martin: And you don’t need that.Masanari: No, no, no. I think technology is still pretty much early. Golf is so sensitive and you really cannot control by just seeing the information on the grass. Yes, but in navigation devices, the application is pretty good for those golf courses, and you can just see how far you would like to hit and that kind of stuff.ADVICE TO ENTREPRENEURS FROM MASANARI ARAIMartin: Masanari, imagine you daughter comes to you and says, “Daddy, what advice can you give me for starting my own company? What should I do and what shouldn’t I do?” And maybe you have some other mistakes that you can share with us.Masanari: First of all, I think, some people like start-up, some people don’t like start-up . Even if you do like start-up, some people are not start-up people and some people are. If you want to start-up, I’ll basically say “Yes, that is really a great thing.” However, I think you have to understand that when you are in a big company, you learn a lot of good things because a large company has nice processes and also a way to organize people. But in start-up, you don’t have any kind of that. So, you don’t have enough skill to start a company. To fix that, you have to, first of all, create a team. It doesn’t have to be big. You may get one person with an opposite characteristic to you who can help you. Hopefully they will have more experience. Then make a team and think about the business. I always say, for Silicon Valley people this is kind of common sense, but for people in Japan, China, and sometimes in Europe, they want to start a business by spending more money. But I say, “Don’t spend your money even if you have a lot of money, don’t spend your money ,” because if you don’t spend your money, you will have to get money from someone else. To get the money from someone, you have to convince that person. So this process is very important to kick-start a start-up. You start seriously talking to the people and try to convince them to give you the money to start a business. If in that process, you have talked to 20 people and have failed, it’s okay. Every time you talk to those people, you get new stuff that adds to your knowledge. Sometimes, your business plan is pretty much as if dreaming of something that has never happened. Those people always talking to you will tell say, “You’re wrong and you have to fix this,” and If competitor come in, how do you compete? So all those information people are giving to you for free is like a process. So, don’t spend your own money, start talking to the people, get the money, and then start your business. I think that is a very important thing. There are many tips, important concepts like for example lean start-up But I think, in the beginning, having a good team and talking to people who have experienced and gone through building a company type of process is very important.Martin: Great. Masanari, thank you very much for your time.Masanari: Yes. Thank you very much for coming.Martin: Sure! And if next time you start a company, maybe you should create a very great team, and then think about how you can get in touch with investors to check your hypothesis and validate your business model.Masanari: Right.Martin: Thank you very much. Good.Masanari: Domo arigato gozai mas. Thank you very much!Martin: Okay.Masanari: Arigato.Martin: Arigato.Masanari: Yes.Martin: Good. Thank you very much.Masanari: Okay. Thank you very much.

Kii

Kii INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi. Today we are in San Mateo, in the Kii Office, with Masanari. Konnichiwa.Masanari: Konnichiwa.Martin: Who are you and what do you do, Masanari?Masanari: I’m the CEO of Kii Corporation.Martin: And what is it? What is Kii Corporation?Masanari: Kii Corporation is focusing on solution for the mobile. We are providing backend technology to mobile application developers. And also these days, one of the famous segments is IoT, Internet of Things, we are also providing backend for the IoT devices.Martin: What did you do before you started this company?Masanari: I was focusing in my entire career after the university on mobile. After I graduated in the university and got a master’s degree, I joined IBM. That was IBM-Japan. I was in ThinkPad group. When I joined IBM in 1984, and there was no notebook PC at that point. So IBM was working on a new notebook PC. ThinkPad was that PC, and I was the product manager for ThinkPad.Then, I spent 10 years in IBM. When I was doi ng product management for ThinkPad, I was travelling around Silicon Valley, meeting with a lot of innovative people and start-up companies. What I was looking for was the technology that would make ThinkPad more attractive. So we tried to partnership with many start-ups to acquire their technology into ThinkPad and to make ThinkPad more attractive for the people. Because I have spent so much time in Silicon Valley, I started to love Silicon Valley. So after 10 years in IBM, I decided, “Okay, maybe it’s time to quit at this big company.” I wanted to join a small, small start-up, so I joined the company called Intellisync. Intellisync was providing mobile software to synchronize mobile device to the backend system like Microsoft Outlook Exchange Notes, that kind of stuff. When I joined, the company had only five people. We really started from scratch at that point. From a 200,000 people company like IBM, I joined a five people company. I was one of the original members in Intell isync. Then, I spent more than 15 years in Intellisync. So whats happened, Intellisync was focusing on mobile solutions. I joined in 1995. Then, in Intellisync went to IPO in 1996. So that was a great experience because 1995 was the start of an internet bubble because that year Netscape went IPO. I had many experiences there. But in 2000 everything crashed. Then from that point, we started up again. In 2006, Nokia started talking to us because they wanted enterprise mobility solutions by using data synchronization technology. That was what Intellisync was focusing on and making Nokia devices for the enterprise grade device. Then Nokia started talking to us and finally decided to acquire us. So in 2006, Nokia acquired Intellisync. So that was what happened. At that time, I was the general manager Asia in Intellisync.At that point as Nokia was acquired, Nokia was not really doing well in two countriesâ€"Japan and Korea. They wanted to get a lot of knowledge about the Japanese market f rom me, and so I became country manager for Nokia Enterprise System. So I was working for Firewall, ECEs forms, and also in Intellisync Mobile Software Technology. So we were setting those things. Then in 2006-2007-2008 time frame, Nokia was fading out from Japanese Market. At that point, I proposed to MBO, originally Intellisync Japan business from Nokia. We got an agreement in 2008 and acquired a small portion or the original Intellisync software business back to us and that was the start of the company Kii. At that time, the company was named Synclore instead of Kii. So we got only 10 people and started all over again in 2008. What happened was, Intellisync originally started from Silicon Valley and became a worldwide company, but the portion we acquired back was just the Japanese portion. So I wanted to expand my business to the entire world again. Because I spent so much time in Silicon Valley, my nature became like a Silicon Valley guy. When I want to expand, usually Silicon V alley acquires companies. So we decided lets find a company to acquire. At that point, we looked for many companies but they were so expensive because that was another bubble in 2008. We spent one year in that phase, expanding in the Japanese business and tried to expand outside of Japan. However, in 2009, the Lehman show happened and everything was changed. EM became so high and all venture money in Silicon Valley stopped. As result, a lot of companies were in trouble and so we could acquire a company at that point. So we found a company who is providing mobile smart phone technology to Korea. We also provided the latest technology to Korea, so this was a very good synergy because that company has smart phone client technology and Intellisync spin-out had java side technology. So by combining cloud technology to moving the data around and smart phone client technology, that makes a new world. So we decided to merge the two companies together. The company name was called Servo. Actu ally, it was Christof, the German guy I think he came from Munich. So we merged together and then became Kii.Martin: Okay, great.Masanari: Sorry, long story.Martin: Okay. But how is it for a Japanese guy who is normally supposed to normally work in one company for 30, 40, 50 years to step out of a big company, join a small company, and justify that to his family?Masanari: What was happening inside of IBM was like it was having an internal battle and a lot of conflict inside. So ThinkPad was created like a PC company, but at that point, IBM was always pushing an IBM operating system for PCs. So they were fighting with Microsoft but from a PC viewpoint, we have to have to support both. However, they were always pushing too hard and so that makes the IBM PC business so hard and uncompetitive, because you have to support another operating system because of IBM. At that point, I was really, really frustrated about IBM strategy. As a part of a big company, I cannot make decisions quickly enough to move to the next step. At that point, Compaq, Gateway, so many PC companies were competing with each other. So three months is a really, really long time for the PC work. However, IBM wanted to spend one year to decide to do anything. At that point, I was so frustrated. Actually, I became sick. I had fever for two years because of the stress I got. So I just wanted to have freedom and make the decisions by myself quick and wanted to move ahead. So that came from the frustration of working in a large company.Martin: Masanari, how did you come up with the company name Kii?Masanari: We have two stories, which one do you want to hear?Martin: The true story.Masanari: Okay. So I mentioned the two companies merging together with almost the same size and kind of operation. If we would proceed with one name inside the company we would create a kind of perception that one company acquired the other company. I may start seeing peoples conflict. So, I didn’t want that to happen. So, this is a new company, we merge together, and we are creating a new company from now on so let’s work together. So that was the concept. I wanted to have a new company name to make that happen. Executive teams from both companies spent almost three months to decide the new company name. We had more than 200 candidates. Some people liked it, some people didn’t. We had a very long battle about the company name and we couldn’t decide. Then one guy went to godady.com, trading domain names, and we found that Kii.com is on sale and I thought this may be a great name for the company but I wanted to make sure that everybody was happy. At that point, we had employees in United States, Japan, China, Spain, and Germany. We asked everybody how Kii sounded. And everybody said “Wow, it sounds really good.” The US people said, “Kii is key”. We wanted to be key company. Japan said, “Wow, Kii is like a place, originally where the Japanese god came fromâ€"Kii Peninsula,” and the Ch inese people said, “Wow, that sounds really good, sending Kii, or Qi.” So everybody loved it, so we decided to have the company name Kii. So after a while, we talked about Kii came from the origin of the Japanese god, so this name was decided because we want to be the origin of that new business. But truth is that.Martin: First domain, then the story, and then the other way around.Masanari: Yes, yes. That’s right. Yes.BUSINESS MODEL OF KIIMartin: Masanari, how does the business model work right now?Masanari: So we are providing a platform to mobile application developers and also IoT device manufacturers. How this works. Basically, our company body proposition is when you want to develop a mobile application, you can develop everything by yourself. But typically, start-up people have frontend application, something they want to concentrate on, because they have idea around the application. But the backend side is really painful because you have to hire a server engineer, you h ave to operate the server, and you have to scale the server if you have a number of users. If you spend a lot of time on this, you cannot spend more time on this application side, that’s the most important thing. So our value is we take care of all the backend and you don’t have to do anything, so you just concentrate on the application side, so you come up with total scalable solutions. So we have a lot experience working with mobile carrier in the previous company, Intellisync, like Entity, Docomo, and SoftBank. We have about 50 million users in the Southeast and that kind of stuff. So we have a lot of experience and can provide a scalable backend. Basically, our business model is walking this application developer to kick-start their activity with providing free service at the beginning. Then, if those people start growing, we basically charge a fee based on the usage of the server for storage space, CPU power, and that kind of stuff.Also, we are working with device manufactu rers. When you come up with a webcam or a smart power, whatever, you usually want to have a companion mobile application and also want to understand how to manage the device. So we provide device management and device analytics so people can understand how to use the device and also mobile application development platform. So we provide those three key elements to make mobile IoT device successful and we basically charge them based on the number of device.Martin: So if I am a mobile developer, I can concentrate on my frontend, designing how the interaction with a customer will be, and then I will use your servers and get some analytics on how the user behaviour was without needing to develop all the kind of data sourcing and analytics stuff. And in addition, you will take care of all the hosting stuff?Masanari: Yes, yes.Martin: Okay.Masanari: The basic idea here is you don’t have to do any server side coding and you don’t have to do operate the server. Also, we provide a lot ele ments of functionality you need to develop mobile application. For example, I can user management, data management, push notification, analytics, and so on. So to prove our power, I asked our engineer to develop a copy of the Instagram and he finished it in one week. So that is the kind of power that we have.Martin: How do I connect the frontend with the backend provider by you then? Is this some kind of framework that you provide, or is it something else?Masanari: When you start developing applications then you can come to our developer portal, and that is developer.kii.com, then sign up, download the SDK, then just plug-in the SDK, then your application is just talking to the SDK, and then you can get all the functionality for the backend. For example, to do user management, such as issuing a user ID and the password, verify password, and manage the user ID and password, you can just add two or three lines of code into your mobile application, then that code will talk to SDK, and basically everything is done. If you do the coding for all those user management, you have to spend a lot of time, and you don’t have too.Martin: Okay, understood.CORPORATE STRATEGYMartin: So let’s talk about corporate strategy. What makes you unique in this market place? Are there any other players who are doing similar things?Masanari: Yes. Actually, we are not the first company doing this mobile backend, there are many companies that were established before. For example, a company called Parse was acquired by Facebook, StackMob was acquired by PayPal, and we have many competitors. But our uniqueness is maybe a couple of things. One is, we have started from Japan and have a big operation in China. So, we have a big strength in Asian market, not only focusing on U.S., but also on Japan, China, and all other Asian countries.Martin: Do you have some kind of cost-competitive advantage or not?Masanari: No, actually. The advantage is, for example, you are the developer, and you have to deal with English all the time, but because we have a big operations in Japan and China, we are providing Japanese and Chinese, including documentation support. Also, in Chinese market for example, if you want to publish your application into China market, there is no Google Play. In China, it’s really hard to access Google Play. As a result, you have to publish your application into China local app store, and most people don’t know how to do it. So we provide a program called Kii to China. By using Kii to China, you can publish applications very easily. Just give us the APK, and then we will publish the application on behalf of you to the Chinese local market. There are 200 different local markets. We select and partner with 20 China local app store and do the publishing. This is like a technology and language barrier because a lot of the people in China and Japan don’t want to deal with English documents, so we also support a Japanese and Chinese local community so that everybody understands the local situation in the technology program. Like I mentioned, we also help in distribution. Distributing mobile application to the Asian market is a mystery, right? You don’t know how to do it, so we are helping into appropriate distribution.Martin: On a success-base or is it included in your basic product?Masanari: Basically, we are always open. So if someone comes in and says, “Please help us to distribute,” we put them, for example, into the Kii to China program and everybody can use that service. And also, we start to see the growth and jump in to help those applications make better. For example, ASTRO File Manager, that’s one of the partner, that’s a famous file manager for Android. When we started working with them, they had only 15 million downloads, that’s pretty good, 15 million. After we helped, now they got around 75 million downloads and 25 million active users. That is huge, right? We helped them to make that happen. So sometimes we jump in and help the application developer.MARKET DEVELOPMENTMartin: In terms of market development, can you give us some kind of overview how you perceive the current development in the mobile market sphere worldwide, maybe some kind of subsequent trend?Masanari: You mean, like the mobile market in general?Martin: Yes.Masanari: Yes. Basically, what happened was, before smart phone, feature phone, everything was closed. When you wanted to create some innovative application for the feature phone, feature phone is so closed and cannot do so many things. Even the Symbian Operating System, that was a pretty open operating system, but for the developer, it’s not easy to use and easy develop something. However, when Apple opened, like the API, for any kind of hardware features, for example, a gyroscope or a touchscreen, everybody started thinking, “Maybe I can use this hardware feature to do something.” So everybody has thrown so many ideas. What happened was that so many interestin g applications people never thought about started evolving. For example, by using the iPhone now, you can check the golf scene.Martin: Yes, yes. You said that you were a golf fan.Masanari: Yes. How many people can imagine that service before opening access to the hardware features? That basically changed the whole thing. Now there are a lot of applications.First of all, there are so many smartphones now that are available in the market and everything is so open, so you can come up with many interesting applications. Basically, after the hardware opened, a lot of people could think about innovative things by using those hardware features.The second thing that happened was that Apple created a market, the app store. Before the app store happened, you always have think about how to distribute my application to the world. But now, by just publishing the application to the app store, you can now access all over the world in store-based. So, that’s a big change.Thats the smartphone, and then this entire application ecosystem has started to happen. My view is that it’s going to expand to the IoT devices also, like you have the iPhone, iOS and Android, now you have the webcam, the smart light bulb, and smartkey which you can open them from a mobile application whenever you want. So my view is that iOS, Android, and all those kinds of IoT devices are going to be open API to a third-party, and then many people will start thinking about very innovative applications. For example, like combining webcam, smartkey, iOS, and smart light bulb, you can come up with an interesting application, right? So, I think that kind of world is happening for the mobile these days. Then everybody can have the opportunity to monetize it.Martin: I mean, one cool application might be having Google Glasses, being on the golf court, and then seeing which angle and what kind of strength should I use to hit the ball.Masanari: If you play golf like me.Martin: And you don’t need that.Masanari: No, no, no. I think technology is still pretty much early. Golf is so sensitive and you really cannot control by just seeing the information on the grass. Yes, but in navigation devices, the application is pretty good for those golf courses, and you can just see how far you would like to hit and that kind of stuff.ADVICE TO ENTREPRENEURS FROM MASANARI ARAI In San Mateo (CA), we meet co-founder and CEO of Kii, Masanari Arai. He shares his story how he co-founded this startup and how the current business model works, as well as what the current plans for near future, and some advice for young entrepreneurs.The transcript of the interview is included below.INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi. Today we are in San Mateo, in the Kii Office, with Masanari. Konnichiwa.Masanari: Konnichiwa.Martin: Who are you and what do you do, Masanari?Masanari: I’m the CEO of Kii Corporation.Martin: And what is it? What is Kii Corporation?Masanari: Kii Corporation is focusing on solution for the mobile. We are providing backend technology to mobile application developers. And also these days, one of the famous segments is IoT, Internet of Things, we are also providing backend for the IoT devices.Martin: What did you do before you started this company?Masanari: I was focusing in my entire career after the university on mobile. After I graduated in the university and got a master’s degree, I joined IBM. That was IBM-Japan. I was in ThinkPad group. When I joined IBM in 1984, and there was no notebook PC at that point. So IBM was working on a new notebook PC. ThinkPad was that PC, and I was the product manager for ThinkPad.Then, I spent 10 years in IBM. When I was doing product management for ThinkPad, I was travelling around Silicon Valley, meeting with a lot of innovative people and start-up companies. What I was looking for was the technology that would make ThinkPad more attractive. So we tried to partnership with many start-ups to acquire their technology into ThinkPad and to make ThinkPad more attractive for the people. Because I have spent so much time in Silicon Valley, I started to love Silicon Valley. So after 10 years in IBM, I decided, “Okay, maybe it’s time to quit at this big company.” I wanted to join a small, small start-up, so I joined the company called Intellisync. Intellisync was providing mobile software to synchronize mo bile device to the backend system like Microsoft Outlook Exchange Notes, that kind of stuff. When I joined, the company had only five people. We really started from scratch at that point. From a 200,000 people company like IBM, I joined a five people company. I was one of the original members in Intellisync. Then, I spent more than 15 years in Intellisync. So whats happened, Intellisync was focusing on mobile solutions. I joined in 1995. Then, in Intellisync went to IPO in 1996. So that was a great experience because 1995 was the start of an internet bubble because that year Netscape went IPO. I had many experiences there. But in 2000 everything crashed. Then from that point, we started up again. In 2006, Nokia started talking to us because they wanted enterprise mobility solutions by using data synchronization technology. That was what Intellisync was focusing on and making Nokia devices for the enterprise grade device. Then Nokia started talking to us and finally decided to acquir e us. So in 2006, Nokia acquired Intellisync. So that was what happened. At that time, I was the general manager Asia in Intellisync.At that point as Nokia was acquired, Nokia was not really doing well in two countriesâ€"Japan and Korea. They wanted to get a lot of knowledge about the Japanese market from me, and so I became country manager for Nokia Enterprise System. So I was working for Firewall, ECEs forms, and also in Intellisync Mobile Software Technology. So we were setting those things. Then in 2006-2007-2008 time frame, Nokia was fading out from Japanese Market. At that point, I proposed to MBO, originally Intellisync Japan business from Nokia. We got an agreement in 2008 and acquired a small portion or the original Intellisync software business back to us and that was the start of the company Kii. At that time, the company was named Synclore instead of Kii. So we got only 10 people and started all over again in 2008. What happened was, Intellisync originally started from S ilicon Valley and became a worldwide company, but the portion we acquired back was just the Japanese portion. So I wanted to expand my business to the entire world again. Because I spent so much time in Silicon Valley, my nature became like a Silicon Valley guy. When I want to expand, usually Silicon Valley acquires companies. So we decided lets find a company to acquire. At that point, we looked for many companies but they were so expensive because that was another bubble in 2008. We spent one year in that phase, expanding in the Japanese business and tried to expand outside of Japan. However, in 2009, the Lehman show happened and everything was changed. EM became so high and all venture money in Silicon Valley stopped. As result, a lot of companies were in trouble and so we could acquire a company at that point. So we found a company who is providing mobile smart phone technology to Korea. We also provided the latest technology to Korea, so this was a very good synergy because tha t company has smart phone client technology and Intellisync spin-out had java side technology. So by combining cloud technology to moving the data around and smart phone client technology, that makes a new world. So we decided to merge the two companies together. The company name was called Servo. Actually, it was Christof, the German guy I think he came from Munich. So we merged together and then became Kii.Martin: Okay, great.Masanari: Sorry, long story.Martin: Okay. But how is it for a Japanese guy who is normally supposed to normally work in one company for 30, 40, 50 years to step out of a big company, join a small company, and justify that to his family?Masanari: What was happening inside of IBM was like it was having an internal battle and a lot of conflict inside. So ThinkPad was created like a PC company, but at that point, IBM was always pushing an IBM operating system for PCs. So they were fighting with Microsoft but from a PC viewpoint, we have to have to support both. H owever, they were always pushing too hard and so that makes the IBM PC business so hard and uncompetitive, because you have to support another operating system because of IBM. At that point, I was really, really frustrated about IBM strategy. As a part of a big company, I cannot make decisions quickly enough to move to the next step. At that point, Compaq, Gateway, so many PC companies were competing with each other. So three months is a really, really long time for the PC work. However, IBM wanted to spend one year to decide to do anything. At that point, I was so frustrated. Actually, I became sick. I had fever for two years because of the stress I got. So I just wanted to have freedom and make the decisions by myself quick and wanted to move ahead. So that came from the frustration of working in a large company.Martin: Masanari, how did you come up with the company name Kii?Masanari: We have two stories, which one do you want to hear?Martin: The true story.Masanari: Okay. So I me ntioned the two companies merging together with almost the same size and kind of operation. If we would proceed with one name inside the company we would create a kind of perception that one company acquired the other company. I may start seeing peoples conflict. So, I didn’t want that to happen. So, this is a new company, we merge together, and we are creating a new company from now on so let’s work together. So that was the concept. I wanted to have a new company name to make that happen. Executive teams from both companies spent almost three months to decide the new company name. We had more than 200 candidates. Some people liked it, some people didn’t. We had a very long battle about the company name and we couldn’t decide. Then one guy went to godady.com, trading domain names, and we found that Kii.com is on sale and I thought this may be a great name for the company but I wanted to make sure that everybody was happy. At that point, we had employees in United States, Ja pan, China, Spain, and Germany. We asked everybody how Kii sounded. And everybody said “Wow, it sounds really good.” The US people said, “Kii is key”. We wanted to be key company. Japan said, “Wow, Kii is like a place, originally where the Japanese god came fromâ€"Kii Peninsula,” and the Chinese people said, “Wow, that sounds really good, sending Kii, or Qi.” So everybody loved it, so we decided to have the company name Kii. So after a while, we talked about Kii came from the origin of the Japanese god, so this name was decided because we want to be the origin of that new business. But truth is that.Martin: First domain, then the story, and then the other way around.Masanari: Yes, yes. That’s right. Yes.BUSINESS MODEL OF KIIMartin: Masanari, how does the business model work right now?Masanari: So we are providing a platform to mobile application developers and also IoT device manufacturers. How this works. Basically, our company body proposition is when you want to develop a mobile application, you can develop everything by yourself. But typically, start-up people have frontend application, something they want to concentrate on, because they have idea around the application. But the backend side is really painful because you have to hire a server engineer, you have to operate the server, and you have to scale the server if you have a number of users. If you spend a lot of time on this, you cannot spend more time on this application side, that’s the most important thing. So our value is we take care of all the backend and you don’t have to do anything, so you just concentrate on the application side, so you come up with total scalable solutions. So we have a lot experience working with mobile carrier in the previous company, Intellisync, like Entity, Docomo, and SoftBank. We have about 50 million users in the Southeast and that kind of stuff. So we have a lot of experience and can provide a scalable backend. Basically, our business model i s walking this application developer to kick-start their activity with providing free service at the beginning. Then, if those people start growing, we basically charge a fee based on the usage of the server for storage space, CPU power, and that kind of stuff.Also, we are working with device manufacturers. When you come up with a webcam or a smart power, whatever, you usually want to have a companion mobile application and also want to understand how to manage the device. So we provide device management and device analytics so people can understand how to use the device and also mobile application development platform. So we provide those three key elements to make mobile IoT device successful and we basically charge them based on the number of device.Martin: So if I am a mobile developer, I can concentrate on my frontend, designing how the interaction with a customer will be, and then I will use your servers and get some analytics on how the user behaviour was without needing to d evelop all the kind of data sourcing and analytics stuff. And in addition, you will take care of all the hosting stuff?Masanari: Yes, yes.Martin: Okay.Masanari: The basic idea here is you don’t have to do any server side coding and you don’t have to do operate the server. Also, we provide a lot elements of functionality you need to develop mobile application. For example, I can user management, data management, push notification, analytics, and so on. So to prove our power, I asked our engineer to develop a copy of the Instagram and he finished it in one week. So that is the kind of power that we have.Martin: How do I connect the frontend with the backend provider by you then? Is this some kind of framework that you provide, or is it something else?Masanari: When you start developing applications then you can come to our developer portal, and that is developer.kii.com, then sign up, download the SDK, then just plug-in the SDK, then your application is just talking to the SDK, an d then you can get all the functionality for the backend. For example, to do user management, such as issuing a user ID and the password, verify password, and manage the user ID and password, you can just add two or three lines of code into your mobile application, then that code will talk to SDK, and basically everything is done. If you do the coding for all those user management, you have to spend a lot of time, and you don’t have too.Martin: Okay, understood.CORPORATE STRATEGYMartin: So let’s talk about corporate strategy. What makes you unique in this market place? Are there any other players who are doing similar things?Masanari: Yes. Actually, we are not the first company doing this mobile backend, there are many companies that were established before. For example, a company called Parse was acquired by Facebook, StackMob was acquired by PayPal, and we have many competitors. But our uniqueness is maybe a couple of things. One is, we have started from Japan and have a big o peration in China. So, we have a big strength in Asian market, not only focusing on U.S., but also on Japan, China, and all other Asian countries.Martin: Do you have some kind of cost-competitive advantage or not?Masanari: No, actually. The advantage is, for example, you are the developer, and you have to deal with English all the time, but because we have a big operations in Japan and China, we are providing Japanese and Chinese, including documentation support. Also, in Chinese market for example, if you want to publish your application into China market, there is no Google Play. In China, it’s really hard to access Google Play. As a result, you have to publish your application into China local app store, and most people don’t know how to do it. So we provide a program called Kii to China. By using Kii to China, you can publish applications very easily. Just give us the APK, and then we will publish the application on behalf of you to the Chinese local market. There are 200 di fferent local markets. We select and partner with 20 China local app store and do the publishing. This is like a technology and language barrier because a lot of the people in China and Japan don’t want to deal with English documents, so we also support a Japanese and Chinese local community so that everybody understands the local situation in the technology program. Like I mentioned, we also help in distribution. Distributing mobile application to the Asian market is a mystery, right? You don’t know how to do it, so we are helping into appropriate distribution.Martin: On a success-base or is it included in your basic product?Masanari: Basically, we are always open. So if someone comes in and says, “Please help us to distribute,” we put them, for example, into the Kii to China program and everybody can use that service. And also, we start to see the growth and jump in to help those applications make better. For example, ASTRO File Manager, that’s one of the partner, that†™s a famous file manager for Android. When we started working with them, they had only 15 million downloads, that’s pretty good, 15 million. After we helped, now they got around 75 million downloads and 25 million active users. That is huge, right? We helped them to make that happen. So sometimes we jump in and help the application developer.MARKET DEVELOPMENTMartin: In terms of market development, can you give us some kind of overview how you perceive the current development in the mobile market sphere worldwide, maybe some kind of subsequent trend?Masanari: You mean, like the mobile market in general?Martin: Yes.Masanari: Yes. Basically, what happened was, before smart phone, feature phone, everything was closed. When you wanted to create some innovative application for the feature phone, feature phone is so closed and cannot do so many things. Even the Symbian Operating System, that was a pretty open operating system, but for the developer, it’s not easy to use and easy devel op something. However, when Apple opened, like the API, for any kind of hardware features, for example, a gyroscope or a touchscreen, everybody started thinking, “Maybe I can use this hardware feature to do something.” So everybody has thrown so many ideas. What happened was that so many interesting applications people never thought about started evolving. For example, by using the iPhone now, you can check the golf scene.Martin: Yes, yes. You said that you were a golf fan.Masanari: Yes. How many people can imagine that service before opening access to the hardware features? That basically changed the whole thing. Now there are a lot of applications.First of all, there are so many smartphones now that are available in the market and everything is so open, so you can come up with many interesting applications. Basically, after the hardware opened, a lot of people could think about innovative things by using those hardware features.The second thing that happened was that Apple cre ated a market, the app store. Before the app store happened, you always have think about how to distribute my application to the world. But now, by just publishing the application to the app store, you can now access all over the world in store-based. So, that’s a big change.Thats the smartphone, and then this entire application ecosystem has started to happen. My view is that it’s going to expand to the IoT devices also, like you have the iPhone, iOS and Android, now you have the webcam, the smart light bulb, and smartkey which you can open them from a mobile application whenever you want. So my view is that iOS, Android, and all those kinds of IoT devices are going to be open API to a third-party, and then many people will start thinking about very innovative applications. For example, like combining webcam, smartkey, iOS, and smart light bulb, you can come up with an interesting application, right? So, I think that kind of world is happening for the mobile these days. Then ev erybody can have the opportunity to monetize it.Martin: I mean, one cool application might be having Google Glasses, being on the golf court, and then seeing which angle and what kind of strength should I use to hit the ball.Masanari: If you play golf like me.Martin: And you don’t need that.Masanari: No, no, no. I think technology is still pretty much early. Golf is so sensitive and you really cannot control by just seeing the information on the grass. Yes, but in navigation devices, the application is pretty good for those golf courses, and you can just see how far you would like to hit and that kind of stuff.ADVICE TO ENTREPRENEURS FROM MASANARI ARAIMartin: Masanari, imagine you daughter comes to you and says, “Daddy, what advice can you give me for starting my own company? What should I do and what shouldn’t I do?” And maybe you have some other mistakes that you can share with us.Masanari: First of all, I think, some people like start-up, some people don’t like start-up . Even if you do like start-up, some people are not start-up people and some people are. If you want to start-up, I’ll basically say “Yes, that is really a great thing.” However, I think you have to understand that when you are in a big company, you learn a lot of good things because a large company has nice processes and also a way to organize people. But in start-up, you don’t have any kind of that. So, you don’t have enough skill to start a company. To fix that, you have to, first of all, create a team. It doesn’t have to be big. You may get one person with an opposite characteristic to you who can help you. Hopefully they will have more experience. Then make a team and think about the business. I always say, for Silicon Valley people this is kind of common sense, but for people in Japan, China, and sometimes in Europe, they want to start a business by spending more money. But I say, “Don’t spend your money even if you have a lot of money, don’t spend your money ,” because if you don’t spend your money, you will have to get money from someone else. To get the money from someone, you have to convince that person. So this process is very important to kick-start a start-up. You start seriously talking to the people and try to convince them to give you the money to start a business. If in that process, you have talked to 20 people and have failed, it’s okay. Every time you talk to those people, you get new stuff that adds to your knowledge. Sometimes, your business plan is pretty much as if dreaming of something that has never happened. Those people always talking to you will tell say, “You’re wrong and you have to fix this,” and If competitor come in, how do you compete? So all those information people are giving to you for free is like a process. So, don’t spend your own money, start talking to the people, get the money, and then start your business. I think that is a very important thing. There are many tips, important concepts like for example lean start-up But I think, in the beginning, having a good team and talking to people who have experienced and gone through building a company type of process is very important.Martin: Great. Masanari, thank you very much for your time.Masanari: Yes. Thank you very much for coming.Martin: Sure! And if next time you start a company, maybe you should create a very great team, and then think about how you can get in touch with investors to check your hypothesis and validate your business model.Masanari: Right.Martin: Thank you very much. Good.Masanari: Domo arigato gozai mas. Thank you very much!Martin: Okay.Masanari: Arigato.Martin: Arigato.Masanari: Yes.Martin: Good. Thank you very much.Masanari: Okay. Thank you very much.

Essay On Compassion Amidst War - 1089 Words

Compassion Amidst War This is the product of war: thousands suffer death and loss. The more it tears family and friends apart, the more it turns intimate relationships to hatred. Yet, even amidst the chaos and horrors of war, there are those who rise above deaths malevolent sting and the irrepressible sorrow. This untitled photo tells that exact tale. Taken during a time of great distress, this photograph captures the compassion of a man as he cares for a small baby, who in turn has found peace and trust within this unlikely friend. Taken during a time when war ravaged the nation of Vietnam, this photograph provides a minute glimpse into this trying time. This war claimed the lives of over fifty-eight thousand American soldier and†¦show more content†¦The presence of soldiers reveals that their setting is hostile and dangerous. In addition, all the men surrounding this child are not the same race and are therefore clearly not the family of this child. Because the child’s parents are not photographed it implies that the child is in the care of the U.S forces. It is likely that the child has either been abandoned or orphaned. Swierk and the child have certainly suffered death and loss throughout this war. Yet, despite the war between them and their countrymen, Swierk finds compassion for this stranger. Swierk sits cradling within his arms a child in whom he has found compassion, care, and even happiness. His posture is slouched with both legs spread out in a relaxed fashion. His right leg, raised higher than the other, acts as a seat for the baby sunken in close to his chest. His face and brow are neither tense nor furrowed; his face and brow are soft and relaxed. With a slight smile, his face appears content and peaceful. Because his attention is focused on the child, Swierk’s head and back tilt toward the baby. There is nothing else capturing Swierk’s attention, as if the child is his priority, as if he truly cares for him. Swierk sits with both arms wrapped around the baby. Rather than having his hands loosely to the side, which might suggest carelessness, Swierk has positioned his arm to be securely bracing the baby. His right arm is lifted to a height that would take effortShow MoreRelatedEssay On Compassion Amidst War917 Words   |  4 PagesCompassion Amidst W ar Taken during a time of raging conflict of the most severe kind, this unnamed photo is a display of the compassion one can show towards another and the faith one can have in an unlikely friend. A young man sits on a concrete floor, slightly leaning on a pole, as he holds in his arms a baby appearing to be somewhere between one and two years of age. An African man sits close behind them looking away from the camera, only the lower half of his face captured. Both men are wearingRead MoreThe Tempest Critical Analysis1029 Words   |  5 Pagesdiscovery of a new world, fostering renewed intellectual and emotional understandings in relation to the construct of power in a microcosmic manner. This is further demonstrated through George Orwell’s essay â€Å"Marrakech† (1939), which recounts the poverty in corrupt Colonialist Morocco amidst the Second World War and presents the intellectual discovery of the political destruction upon humanity. The second related text Freida Kahlo’s self-portrait, â€Å"On the Border Between Mexico and the United States† (1932)Read MoreEssay about Causes and Consequences of Conflict1136 Words   |  5 Pagessituation, un aware of the consequences we deliver. The question is however – where does the importance of conflict lie – in its causes? Or in its consequences? It seems evident that there are many people will use their spite and fear and perhaps even compassion to exacerbate conflict. People all too easily become to involved in their own importance, that it can begin a domino effect of devastating and/or insightful consequences. At the height of illegal immigrants entering Australian seas, attemptingRead MoreSoul Surfer1821 Words   |  8 Pagesfamily, her sheer determination, and her unwavering faith in Jesus Christ. This essay will cover some questions and their answers through explanatory paragraphs. Compassion: Changing People’s Point of View Why does compassion change the way we view things? Let us first define it: It is the pity for suffering, with the desire to help or to spare. The definition itself explains the answer of the question. Compassion can be the natural instinct of a merciful individual who tends to help mostly thoseRead MoreReligious Diversity And Its Impact On Society1792 Words   |  8 Pagesan increase of religious diversity is Australia. This essay will argue that ethical and humanist spirituality do form a viable alternative to religion because statistics show that in response to capitalism, and in the context of contemporary society there has been a move away from traditional forms of religion. It will also argue that ethical and humanist spirituality appeals to the contemporary push towards individualism. This essay also that in the context of modern society and its emphasisRead MoreByj.b Priestley s An Inspector Calls2350 Words   |  10 PagesAn Inspector Calls is a definitive play written by J.B Priestley. Published in 1946, however set in the early years before The First World War, this play explores the many aspects of society that were diminishing during Priestley’s life. It stages, the Birling Family – high class and respected within their society, however frankly their false faà §ade, was slowly stripped away revealing, their inner, hidden, corrupt morals. Whilst having a riveting and uncanny twist, the play does indeed, explore manyRead Morewisdom,humor and faith19596 Words   |  79 Pagesmeans of survival in a threatening world. It demands that we reckon with the realities of human nature and the world without falling into grimness and despair.† Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France—1885 to World War I, rev. ed. (1968), 248. â€Å"Humor is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer. . . . The saintliest men frequently have a humorous glint in their eyes. They retain the capacity to laugh at both themselves and at others.Read MoreSurviving The Wars : Binary Disintegrations Of Homosociality And Homosexuality3237 Words   |  13 PagesMaciej Piorkowski 250651104 ENG 4740F Alicia Robinet December 4, 2014 Surviving The Wars: Binary Disintegrations of Homosociality and Homosexuality An overarching social paradox is inherent in the way Canadian citizens internalize the notion of civic duty; while violent participation in the Great War is lauded as personal and national achievement, post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from significant trauma, physical or social, is also recognized as an integral part of the military consciousnessRead MoreEuthanasi Pressing The Issue Of Its Legalization3341 Words   |  14 Pagesactually getting from the people. Euthanasia, also known as mercy death or mercy killing, has been practiced since ancient times in ancient Sparta. Though originally practiced to eliminate children who are born weak and cannot be of use to the Spartan war life, it has evolved into something more humane in the contemporary times. It is now defined and practiced as a deliberate measure done by the physician as to eliminate or end suffering caused by terminal illnesses and other health conditions that areRead MoreCosi Madness5345 Words   |  22 PagesVietnam War is what Lewis believes in at first. But he will agree with anyone at the start, so long as it keeps the peace. Mozart may seem an insignificant detail to the play, but that’s the point. To Lewis, how you can show love for someone becomes more important than politics etc, i.e. it’s the little things that count etc (Hence Mozart’s music, just a simple beauty). When Lewis enters the asylum it is like an island (thrust into another world). The patients don’t even know there is a war going

Hypertext as a Medium for Writing Essay - 1926 Words

Hypertext as a Medium for Writing This paper will compare and analyze theoretical ideas found in Hamlet on the Holodeck by Janet H. Murry focusing on Chapter 10 â€Å"Hamlet on the Holodeck† as it relates to hypertext as a specific medium for writing, and Writing Space by Jay David Bolter focusing on Chapter 7 â€Å"Interactive Fiction† and chapter 8 â€Å"Critical Theory in a New Writing Space† and their emphasis on digital poetry and the increased role of the reader in the reading process. The information taken from these two works will then be compared to the interactive hypertext webpage entitled â€Å"Heading South† by Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) English graduate student, Cheryl Ball. In relation to hypertext, the role of the reader†¦show more content†¦Murray states, â€Å"We often assume that the stories told in one medium are intrinsically inferior to those told in another. But narrative beauty is independent of medium. The real literary hierarchy is not of medium but of meaning† (Murray 273 274). Murray concludes that no matter the medium of the story, it is a work of art and should not be thought of otherwise; that in either case, whether the medium be print or hypertext, the meaning of the story is still the same. Later in chapter 10 Murray states, The most ambitious promise of the new narrative medium is its potential for telling stories about whole systems. The format that most fully exploits the properties of digital environments is not the hypertext or the fighting game but the stimulation: the virtual world full of interrelated entities, a world we can enter, manipulate, and observe in process. But it [the computer] is first and foremost a representational medium, a means for modeling the world that adds its own potent properties to the traditional media it has assimilated so quickly. (280 284) In the fourth line when Murray states, â€Å"a world we can enter,† she is referring to â€Å"we† as the readers, which designates us not only as readers, but interactive readers. Any reader who aids in the outcome of a story, poem, or other form of writing is interactive; therefore, part of its outcome. Bolter’s analysis of digital poetry being an interactive medium encompasses previous assumptions thatShow MoreRelated The Changing Roles of the Reader and Writer in the Literature1437 Words   |  6 Pages The continuing emergence of innovative writing technologies allows people to express themselves and communicate in countless different ways from years past. With these new technologies comes a change in many of our learning and social traditions. The most important change is the metamorphosis taking place in the online literary world. The line between author and reader has become blurred as more and more technology-driven literature, like hypertext ficti on, has become interactive. The wholeRead MoreThe Internet and Digitalization Essay861 Words   |  4 Pagesmight include hypertext links to other relevant articles, a clickable map of the particular geographic region, a historical timeline, a photo gallery, a slideshow, audio, video, or downloadable files (Kawamoto, 2003). Research shows that on many news websites, links are provided to invite users to participate, but actual user participation options are often limited (Rebillard Touboul, 2010). Hyperlinks are a form of hypertext, introduced by Ted Nelson (1987), who defined hypertext as non-sequentialRead MoreTechnological Er The Internet s Effect On The Human Brains Neural Pathways1566 Words   |  7 Pagesour brain† (Carr). Onward, Carr notes how hypertext was believed to improve critical thinking through being able to fluidly switch from one viewpoint to another. Furthermore, hypertext was also believed to allow readers to be able to connect on a more intellectual le vel and improve their wits. He follows this hypertext theory with a study he came across that was done by two Canadian scholars in 2001. This study focused on comprehension between hypertext versus normal text to reveal which is easierRead MoreReading On The Electronic Age1873 Words   |  8 PagesReading in The Electronic Age Hypertext provides information via a story enabling the reader to gain insight of the given data via text. Consequently, the reader’s reaction in wanting to use or not the hypertext will play a major role in the information portrayed in the story. â€Å"The Museum† written by Adam Kenney (2004) gives the reader an exact understanding of hyper mediated literature that is filled with hypertext. In this hyper mediated literature, the reader is allowed to visit a virtual museumRead More Hypertext and Literary Study Essay4897 Words   |  20 PagesHypertext and Literary Study Hypertextual fiction (hyperfiction) and other hypertext applications are making their way into the literature courses where, Professor Larry Friedlander says, â€Å"learning has basically meant the study of texts,† in the form of the â€Å"printed word† (257). And these newer works, inseparable from their contemporary technologies, offer the possibility of a very different type of literary study than the one most English majors experience in traditional literature coursesRead MoreIs the Internet a New Medium? Essay1101 Words   |  5 PagesInternet as a medium has been a thoroughly discussed topic, especially in recent years with the rise of the World Wide Web. Analysis of relevant literature in the topic shows that the internet is not a new medium. This argument can be shown by looking more in depth into what defines a medium and what defines the internet. From that analysis by looking from a historical point of view the internet can be seen as an old medium which us es re-mediation to deliver content to users. The connection betweenRead More Online News and Print’s Future Essay1712 Words   |  7 Pagesthroughout. Researching, shopping, job searching, and more can all be done with a keyboard and a few clicks of a mouse. But this ease of use casts a shadow on the future of printed information. The Web’s instant knowledge has changed our reading and writing habits and has made print media seem old-fashioned. One of the first industries to lead the change was journalism. As the Web expanded in the mid 90’s, online editions of popular newspapers surfaced and opened a new field for seeing and telling theRead MoreThe Complex World of Search Engines Essay1142 Words   |  5 Pagescontinues through, engine keeps a list of everything and organizes and displays the results to one in an ordered list, the order of which varies based on the Webmaster’s choice. The largest and most popular of all search engines, per the date of this writing, is Google. Google boasts having an average of more than â€Å"620 million daily visitors, 87.8 billion monthly worldwide searches,† and processing â€Å"over 20 petabytes of data daily† (Give Up Internet). Sergey Brin and Larry Page, whom is currently CEORead MoreIdeal Website889 Words   |  4 Pages HOW TO MAKE THE WEBSITE – A BEGINNERS GUIDE Building your own website is the dream of a lot of students, for some of them see it as an opportunity to boast off while others see it as the medium to showcase their skill. However, most of the students have no idea how to begin this. This question always seems to haunt them. In this blog, I have described the steps to follow in order to build the website. These are exactly the same steps which I followed 1) KIND OF WEBSITE Before you proceedRead MoreWeb Technology 1961 Words   |  8 PagesTCP/IP as his chosen network protocol and hypertext. Later joined by CERN engineer Robert Cailliau (Appendix a), Berners began to revise his ideas and started writing the code for his project. From early on, he decided that all programs involved with his project should have acronyms starting with HT for hypertext. This resulted in what we now know as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) used to link hypertext document over the internet, and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) a language for formatting

The Effects of Advertising on Teens - 1781 Words

The effects of 2 People see advertisements all around the globe that attempt to lure consumers to buy products. Advertisements are placed in newspapers, magazines, schools, and on billboards everywhere. According to marketing consultants Stan Rapp and Tom Collins, on a typical day, an average American sees over 5,000 advertisements a day (Gay, 1992). Many questions arise about these advertisements, such as Is advertising deceptive? Does it create or perpetuate stereotypes? Does it create conformity? Does it create insecurity in order to sell goods? Does it cause people to buy things that they really dont need?(Alexander Hanson, 1993, p. 240). Advertisers use specific methods to target teen consumers, but these methods are not always†¦show more content†¦For example, beer commercials often show a man after a hard days work enjoying an ice-cold beer to relax him. They also argue that ads give people the impression that products can give them talent. Take athletics, for exampl e. Nike ads are accused of implying that their shoes will give a consumer athletic ability. Michael Jordan is shown in a television commercial dunking a basketball, wearing a new style of Nike shoes. Consequently, kids are going to want the same pair to be like Mike (Wolf, 1998, n.p.). On the other hand, advertising agencies say that they just give the consumers up-to-date information. They show change in their ads because they know that is what consumers want and to fulfill the needs of the general public, change. Thus, persuasive strategies are considered techniques used by advertisers to get consumers to buy. Teenagers have become top consumers in todays society, so advertisers have focused on getting their business. According to Simmons Market Research Bureau of New York City, teens bought 25% of all movie tickets and 27% of all videos, totaling $6.6 billion. In 1998, teens spent $1.5 billion on jeans, almost twice as much as in 1990, and $3 billion on sneakers, almost four time s more than the amount spent in 1997 (Tulley, 1994). Another reason teens are being targeted is the fact that there are many more teens in America today than the past Generation X. The current number is even expected to grow in the next decade,Show MoreRelatedThe Effects Of Advertising On Teens On The World Today1232 Words   |  5 PagesReibling (2006), Godbold Pfau (2000), Belstock, Connolly, Carpenter, Tucker (2008), Targeting teens. (1998) and What is the impact of advertising on teens? (n.d.). The research from these studies is extensive due to the long history of the influence of advertisements. Companies use advertisements to persuade and affect young persons worldviews and health behaviors. What is the impact of advertising on teens? (n.d.) explains the process that advertisers go through in order to make sure they grab aholdRead MoreAdvertising : Teens And Advertising1099 Words   |  5 Pagesword count: 102 TEENS AND ADVERTISING Abstract: companies have to sell their products. In order for them to, they have targeted a particular group of people which are teens. Advertisers know teens are very vulnerable, and want to be seen as â€Å"cool† and for these companies to sell their product, they (advertisers) paint this unrealistic image of a teenager, in their (teens) heads. They (advertisers) make teens believe that before they (teens) can be accepted into society, they (teens) have to be thisRead MoreThe Effect Of Explicit Sexualstimuli On The Brand Name Recall1412 Words   |  6 PagesWhile research found that explicit sexualstimuli does not adversely affect brand name recall among 18-to-26 year oldstudents, such stimuli was found to exert a negative effect on messagecomprehension among this population segment when there is a substantialvolume of information available for processing (Severn, Belch, and Belch,199 , pp. Do the advertisements that you have seen that includedmembers of the opposite sex ma ke you want to do anything in particular? Did the advertisements that includedRead MoreThe Negative Effects Of Advertisements On Children1278 Words   |  6 PagesLipsey English IV 19 February 2015 The Negative Effects of Advertisements Advertisers seek viewers who will buy products based on the consumers’ need and desire to become perfect. Advertisers know how to push the right button to make people feel insecure and imperfect. They use this insecurity to make a profit. But what happens when a person is pushed too hard? Both genders and all nationalities are affected by advertisements. The negative effects of advertisements include low self-esteem, eatingRead MoreThe Affect of too much Advertising725 Words   |  3 PagesIf you think excessive advertising is harmless and affects no one, sadly, you are absolutely wrong. Advertising has many problems and negative effects on people and you are right to be annoyed by the waves of ads you are attacked by everyday. The problem I chose to explain is advertising targeting teens tweens, this affects people by draining them of money, priorities, and even their social obligations. However, you can solve this problem by educating yourself and being aware of all of th e marketingRead MoreThe Media And Its Effects On Teen And Young Undeveloped Brains1237 Words   |  5 PagesThe advertising business views teenagers in society as a viable market section, due to their immature understanding of the media and its dazzling impact on teen and young undeveloped brains. The media is progressively specializing in children and adolescents to captivate with advertisements. according to market research corporations, teenagers are vital to marketers because they can pay a considerable open income, spend family cash easily, and they are easily able to influence their families to spendRead MoreLasting Effect Of Marketing On Children Essay1623 Words   |  7 PagesLasting Effect of Marketing to Children In the past few decades, fast food companies has invested heavily in advertising to children and young adults, in return they’ll become the future of consumers of the next generation prolong business profits. Children between the ages 8 to 12 years old are exposed highest to fast food media marketing and those years are critical stages of development as this forms their eating habits for adulthood. Fast food corporations are utilizing all sources of outletRead MoreTeenage Smokers and Advertisement Essays1085 Words   |  5 PagesMost smokers start in their teens and for that reason tobacco companies are determined to get them hooked. Many smokers drop the habit each year by either quitting or dying (How Tobacco Advertising Works, 2002). Tobacco companies rely on the constant inflow of new smokers to maintain profits and that is why advertisements especially target the younger generation. For every smoker that quits or dies they depend on new ones to take their place. Young people are perspective customers forRead MoreAdvertisements For Smoking Should Be Banned Essay974 Words   |  4 PagesFor Smoking Should Be Banned. Advertisements involving smoking should be prohibited. Kids and teens that are the most impressionable and easily influenced. Cigarette promotions make smoking appear harmless and cool and have led to many kids under the age of 18 to have smoked for years. The advertisements on quitting smoking and how bad they are for you may be effective for older viewers, however many teens and kids are drawn to cigarettes even more because adults are saying it is bad for you and itRead MoreThe Dark Side of Advertising1741 Words   |  7 PagesThe Dark Side of Advertising Woolworths, the Fresh Food People! Oh, what a feeling, Toyota! I’m lovin’ it! †¨These are the indestructible jingles that the world of advertising has managed to drum into our heads, over the course of time. Effective? Yes. Escapable? No. Teenagers in contemporary society are exposed to up to 3000 ads per day, meaning that we are constantly bombarded with advertisements from the minute we step outside our bedroom door. As promotional agencies increase their exposure

Leading and Managing People Motivation Guidance †Free Samples

Question: Discuss about the Leading and Managing People Guidance. Answer: Introduction Good management tries to lead and manage people. Leading and managing people are one of the most significant puzzle pieces in a company. The organization cannot succeed without the contribution of its employees. According to the email received by the senior manager in the organization, the concepts like motivation, social responsibility, ethics, team-working, organisational change and ethics contribute to staff improvement. Leaders have the capability to inspire employees to foster a stimulating working environment that makes people thrived, valued and motivated. Managers are those people, who find the right way to accomplish the goals and objectives established by the organization (Kontoghiorghes 2016). The topic chosen for this report is motivation. It can be defined as the hypothetical construct as it guides peoples actions, needs and desires. Leading and managing is important as it provides guidance for the subordinates. Motivation creates confidence among people so that their role can be explained. Motivation helps in building morale towards work and winning trust. The task of leading and managing people is important as it helps the organization grow. It is a way for the leaders to bring the organization to a higher standard. Good people management is necessary as employees can be emotionally unstable. The role of a manager and leader is to overcome the pitfalls and maintain team stability (Stack 2013). This report presents an elaborate discussion on motivation based on the previous studies and literature. The advantages and disadvantages of motivation to a business, especially to the manager is determined. The importance of motivation and the ways in which it can make an organization successful are elaborated. The argument made by the manager in the email regarding having no right or wrong answers when related to leadership is also challenged. Discussion of Motivation Motivation can be defined as the way in which managers promote productivity among their employees. The job of a manager is to motivate employees to do their job in a consistent manner. The psychological factors, which stimulate the performance of people, are the desire for recognition, money, team work, success, job satisfaction, and others. The role of a leader is to stimulate interest in the organizational success. Motivation can help create psychological contract in the workplace. The concept may become increasingly complex (Jex and Britt 2014). Motivation As stated earlier, motivation provides us with the energy to pursue outcomes. Motivation is derived from a Latin word Move. Motivation started attracting researchers in the post-industrialized world. Motivation is a trigger stimulus that is equipped with some patterns of behaviour (Pinder 2015). Theories Maslows theory if requirements give the structure to develop motivational strategy for the organizations. It deals with the differing needs of human while arranging them in a hierarchy where satisfaction at one level leads to another. Maslow theory helps the employees in attaining self-actualization. It manifests after the physiological and other basic needs of the employees. However, the theory is opposed by other behaviourists stating that Maslow providess a uni-dimensional explanation as well as may not be suitable for all the employees (Taormina and Gao 2013). Herzbergs Motivation Hygiene Theory Herzberg employs motivational factors that influence the employees internally and externally that the theorist calls motivators and hygiene. The theory states that together the hygiene and motivators have a vital role to shape the motivation feature of employees (Kultalahti and Liisa Viitala 2014). Merits and Demerits Leading and managing people are crucial and motivation has certain merits and demerits: Motivation is advantageous as it convinces the requirements of individuals and groups. The individual joins an organization for fulfilling certain requirements. Motivation helps the manager to meet such requirements and fulfil those needs. Motivation promotes job satisfaction. When the needs of employees are satisfied, he is more likely to generate greater output. The managers are satisfied with their jobs that boost creative thinking and are challenging in character. The contribution of the individuals to output is the ensuing of two variables-his ability for work as well as his willingness for the work. If P is the performance, A is an ability and M motivation, then P = A X M. The performance is unequal to the figure of an ability and motivation of individual but rather to the invention of these two variables. Therefore, the level of performance is constantly increasing the amount of motivation. Proper motivation increases productivity (Perryer et al. 2016). Further, motivation enhances the learning procedure. Learning may not happen without motivation. If the employee has unwillingness to learn, he will not learn even if he is in a perfect capacity. Motivation promotes self-discipline. The employees are expected to respect and orderly behaviour with their superiors due to the panic of punishment. Motivation may raise regulation to the positive level. Motivation consists of dynamism. If the workers are motivated properly, energy is created that impacts the productivity level and profitability positively (Pandey 2014). The content theories of motivation conclude what motivates employees and workers at work. The theorists identify the needs of people and the ways in which it energizes behaviour. The theorist is concerned with the goal that people struggle to attain for maximum satisfaction. Therefore, it is analysed that motivation leads to higher staff retention- leading to reduced recruitment costs. The productivity levels are high with greater creativity and innovation (Olafsen et al. 2015). Intrinsic motivation drives success based on the inner goals as well as ambition. However, extrinsic motivation can be obtained from external sources that push performance. The total labour costs can be reduced if the employees have high level of intrinsic motivation. The managers can benefit from intrinsic motivation as they have to spend less time to motivate the employees intrinsically. Therefore, the managers shall have time to focus on important tasks and more productive task. The intrinsic motivation allows a small business for operating with fewer managers of the hierarchy level thereby reducing labour costs and keeping the company lean. The intrinsically motivated employees shall try to resolve problems by themselves rather than asking the managers for the assistance even for the smaller issues. Also, the employees who are motivated intrinsically shall not be guided by the supervisors for taking new projects (Nie et al. 2015). Additionally, intrinsically motivated employees are more creative than the rest. Therefore, the managers can develop their career and make it more valuable through strategic initiatives. The employees may be priceless to the small businesses for example software improvment, where the innovation can change the power framework. These employees can be invaluable to small businesses in industries such as software development, where innovation can change the power structure in the industry overnight (Cerasoli, Nicklin, and Ford 2014). Extrinsic motivation in organization can permit a great degree of control over the operational procedures. The employees who are motivated extrinsically require close supervision to enhance performance. Therefore, the managers can keep a close watch as well as guide the employees at work. The supervision may be unbearable to various employees whereas the other employees may thrive in constant guidance and encouragement from their seniors (Benedetti et al. 2015). The extrinsic motivation is offered as the financial incentives to a certain extent encouragement. The incentives can increase all motivation of employees that makes them break personal performance records. The new levels of the efficiency can be reached as the personal performance records can be broken (Dysvik and Kuvaas 2013). However, intrinsic motivation may be disadvantageous. Intrinsic motivation can make the employees lose track of space and time. There is not enough time for the managers to perform or learn essential tasks while learning. Job satisfaction is a weakness for the employees as the employees may damage the presentation of the entire team in the association. Also, it is difficult for the managers to attain short-term goals such as intrinsic rewards get a longer phase of time. Further, the research states that extrinsic rewards are offered to a person to perform task that may decrease the level of intrinsic motivation. The personal wish of the employees shall decrease and cause low satisfaction. Additionally, it shall build up stress if the manager relies much on extrinsic rewards. Financial incentives are introduced to the agents for contributing to a socially attractive outcome that tends to reduce the number of contribution (Gerhart and Fang 2015). Workplace flexibility adds to motivation of employees. The millennial are more interested in the work life balance and working conditions. The balance of work life can be defined as the condition of equilibrium, which is achieved in between the working priorities as well as lifestyle. The workers should enjoy their individual time outside the business surroundings. Flexibility is important as the employees might take lower salary but good flexibility shall motivate them. Flexibility can be considered as a reward. Flexible working would not be a motivator for every person. Some people may have to work longer days to get a bit of spare time when they can relax. However, it is becoming a deliberation for many companies, especially as more workers argue about the non-flexible working might be a deal-breaker. According to the managers view, there are no right or wrong answers for leading the people. This notion can be challenged as motivation works the best when implemented appropriately in the workplace. Motivation and achievement are directly related with each other. Achievement in the workplace deals with sense of accomplishment and pride. The managers who notice a decrease in performance level need to take proactive steps for enhancing motivation and employee morale. One of the strategies for better motivation of employees is employee recognition. Managers need to thank their employees only to avoid the decline in motivation. Managers do not need to purchase extravagant gifts as a way to motivate employees. The managers may thank the employee with a e gesture as it can motivate the employees as well as make them feel valuable. Employee recognition may be considered the most successful tool when employees earn fair wage. Further, the employers that emphasize on the quality of life moti vate employees towards high level of productivity. The employees are concerned about balancing their work and personal life that can diminish their morale and performance. The employers may put into practice flexible schedules giving them the capacity to promote their quality of life. Conclusion and Recommendations Conclusively, psychological contract and flexibility leads to motivation. According to the email received by the senior manager in the organization, the concepts for excample motivation, team-working, ethics, social responsibility, organisational change and ethics contribute to staff development. Motivation creates confidence among people so that their role can be explained. The psychological factors that stimulate the behaviour of people are needs for money, recognition, success, team work, job satisfaction, and others. Motivation started attracting researchers in the post-industrialized world. It deals with the differing needs of human while arranging them in a hierarchy where satisfaction at one level leads to another. The theory states that both the hygiene and motivators play a vital role in shaping the motivation factor of employees. Leading and managing people are crucial and motivation has certain merits and demerits. It is recommended to enhance motivational factors. When the needs of employees are satisfied, he is more likely to generate greater output. Learning does not take place without motivation. If the workers are motivated properly, energy is created that impacts the productivity level and profitability positively. The theorists identify the needs of people and the ways in which it energizes behaviour. The intrinsic motivation allows a small business for operating with less managers in hierarchy level thereby reducing labour costs and keeping the company lean. Also, the employees who are motivated intrinsically shall not be guided by the supervisors for taking new projects. The managers can develop their career and make it more valuable through strategic initiatives. The employees who are motivated extrinsically require close supervision to enhance performance. The incentives can increase all motivation of the employees that makes them break individual performance records. Job satisfactio n is a weakness for the employees as the employees may damage the performance of the entire team in the organization. The personal desire of the employees shall decrease and cause low satisfaction. References Benedetti, A.A., Diefendorff, J.M., Gabriel, A.S. and Chandler, M.M., 2015. The effects of intrinsic and extrinsic sources of motivation on well-being depend on time of day: The moderating effects of workday accumulation.Journal of Vocational Behavior,88, pp.38-46. Cerasoli, C.P., Nicklin, J.M. and Ford, M.T., 2014. Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives jointly predict performance: A 40-year meta-analysis.Psychological bulletin,140(4), p.980. Dysvik, A. and Kuvaas, B., 2013. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as predictors of work effort: The moderating role of achievement goals.British Journal of Social Psychology,52(3), pp.412-430. Gerhart, B. and Fang, M., 2015. Pay, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, performance, and creativity in the workplace: Revisiting long-held beliefs.Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav.,2(1), pp.489-521. Kontoghiorghes, C., 2016. Linking high performance organizational culture and talent management: satisfaction/motivation and organizational commitment as mediators.The International Journal of Human Resource Management,27(16), pp.1833-1853. Kultalahti, S. and Liisa Viitala, R., 2014. Sufficient challenges and a weekend aheadGeneration Y describing motivation at work.Journal of Organizational Change Management,27(4), pp.569-582. Nie, Y., Chua, B.L., Yeung, A.S., Ryan, R.M. and Chan, W.Y., 2015. The importance of autonomy support and the mediating role of work motivation for well?being: Testing self?determination theory in a Chinese work organisation.International Journal of Psychology,50(4), pp.245-255. Olafsen, A.H., Halvari, H., Forest, J. and Deci, E.L., 2015. Show them the money? The role of pay, managerial need support, and justice in a self?determination theory model of intrinsic work motivation. Scandinavian journal of psychology, 56(4), pp.447-457. Pandey, P., 2014. Employee motivation and retention-key to organisational performance-in Indian perspective.International Journal of Marketing and Technology,4(4), p.144. Perryer, C., Celestine, N.A., Scott-Ladd, B. and Leighton, C., 2016. Enhancing workplace motivation through gamification: Transferrable lessons from pedagogy.The International Journal of Management Education,14(3), pp.327-335. Taormina, R.J. and Gao, J.H., 2013. Maslow and the motivation hierarchy: Measuring satisfaction of the needs.The American journal of psychology,126(2), pp.155-177.