Pre-seed Funding for September 2019
Quick Take
- FRAME00 (Dev team) was funded in September 2019 in a pre-seed round from MIRAISE, SIOS technology, and Japan’s premier developers as angel investors.
- The amount raised was undisclosed and was done through equity funding.
- Hire blockchain developers to increase the speed of Dev Protocol development and Invite advisors.
- Our current goals are the following to move the MVP scheme into full-fledged social implementation and expand globally.
The investors who participated in the last round of funding were, MIRAISE, SIOS Technology, and the following angel investors, who have a reputation as many of Japan’s premier developers.
- Sotaro Karasawa / Former Mercari CTO
- Toshiyuki Yasuno / Former Knowledge Merchants Works CTO
- Kazuya Kawaguchi / OSS Developer, Core team of Vue.js
- Hajime Kurosaka / SIOS Technology, President of Technology Center Div.
- Sadaaki Hirai / Former GoodPatch CTO
- Masaaki Sugiura / NewsPicks CTO
- Kimikazu Kato / Softbank, Author of “ The essence of machine learning”
- Aya Tokura / OSS Developer, Author of “DevRel”
Each one is a strong supporter of the Dev ecosystem and its dedication to monetizing OSS.
In addition we’ve invited two experts to serve as advisors to the Dev protocol.
HashHub is a blockchain studio based in Tokyo, Japan. They aim to be a hub for blockchain projects with a goal of connecting startups to traditional companies. Their goal is to connect with Japan and the rest of the world’s diverse communities. They have officially partnership with ConsenSys.
Junya Hirano, CEO, HashHub, commented:
We sympathize with the vision of DEV, which has the potential to create a mechanism for rewards to flow to places where they have been providing value to society, but have never received economic reward opportunities. As HashHub, we have been working with DEV to explore the possibilities of their token system and the possibilities that are only possible with blockchain.
Tamio Nishizawa / Director at Open Innovation Network
Tamio worked as a venture capitalist for five years in the United States and 18 years in Japan. He is currently working as a program officer on venture investment for the Japan Science and Technology Agency and supports many startups.
Tamio Nishizawa, Director at Open Innovation Network, commented:
I convinced that Dev could be a mechanism that would allow funds to flow fairly to a group that, like many traditional craftsmen, had been working from morning to night with sweat on their foreheads and never received or had difficulty receiving their fair rewards.
I support FRAME00 for coming up with this innovation.
VC in this round
About MIRAISE
MIRAISE is a seed VC focused on programmer entrepreneurs. It was founded in 2018 by Shinichi Iwata, former head of Skype Japan. He is uniquely positioned to support engineer-founders in Japan with his deep technical experience as a former developer as well as his operational experience as CEO of Skype Japan K.K. and as a Partner at Atomico for several years.
MIRAISE has invested in more than 20 startups founded by engineers in 18 months so far. At Atomico, Shin was in charge of SmartNews, Rovio, Gengo and Supercell and other portfolio for their investment and market expansion into Japan. Shin started his career as an engineer at Lotus and Microsoft. Later, Shin joined the establishment of Japanese tech startup Ariel Network (acquired by Works Applications), where, as a P2P (peer-to-peer) technology expert, he delivered numerous speeches & articles and published a book about P2P technology during the time. Shin received his Bachelor’s degree from the Keio University in physics. Kauffman Fellow since 2017, from Class 20.
Shin Iwata, Founding Partner at MIRAISE, commented:
“Blockchain” continues to evolve and evaluate itself to realize its potential value after a brief period of heated speculation for arbitrage subsided. Dev is a true blockchain solution that bridges the gap between the value created by open activities and the rewards that come with them. Dev is designed to be adaptable to all kinds of activities, so we expect it to play a role in supporting a healthy reward system and sustainability for individual activities and decentralized projects in a wide range of fields, starting with OSS.
Message from Founders
aggre, CTO, Founder of Dev Protocol, commented:
Software has developed rapidly because of OSS, but once the sustainability issues are resolved, changes will happen faster than we can imagine. To do this, Dev is the first scheme to monetize activities that have never made money before with the highly decentralized power of the blockchain and the programmable money execution environment. If all open activities become sustainable, what happened in OSS can be realized in all fields. We’re excited to be on the front lines of such a new horizon.
Mayumi Hara, CEO, Founder of Dev Protocol, commented:
With the birth of social networks, people are connected online and a lot of things are open. However, there is still no evaluation system for those things, and even valuable things are flowing away, threatening the sustainability. “How the world would be changed if creators could pursue what they really want to create? ” We started Dev as a family with a common goal in mind. Through Dev, we hope to create an ecosystem where people all over the world can support each other in a way that is as easy to use as supporting the people around you.
About FRAME00, Inc.
FRAME00 is the company that develops the Dev Protocol, founded in 2015 by Mayumi Hara. She is a serial entrepreneur and previously co-founded a social media marketing company in 2011. Helping more than 100 companies in various industries with their branding and marketing socialization, in 2014 she met traditional Japanese artisans and discovered the gap between their work and the economic rewards. No legitimate money flows to the work of artisans who create national treasures that will remain in place for 100 years or more, and 10 times more money flows to casual gaming companies. In this way, FRAME00 was founded to create an ecosystem where creators are fairly valued for their efforts to create value.
Here’s the full story below.
