![dead rising 3 crash on startup dead rising 3 crash on startup](https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/map_home.jpg)
![dead rising 3 crash on startup dead rising 3 crash on startup](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qWc0FgQYiQQ/maxresdefault.jpg)
The company, which makes money from ads, declined to comment on whether it’s profitable.Ĭompetition remains stiff in the media industry and making profits is a challenge, according to Tomoichiro Kubota, a senior market analyst at Matsui Securities Co in Tokyo. It currently has about 400 staff in Japan and 100 in the US. SmartNews plans to double its employees globally to about 1,000 “as soon as possible”, according to Suzuki. But the two decided to keep going despite their vow to quit.
![dead rising 3 crash on startup dead rising 3 crash on startup](https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/265550/header.jpg)
And it didn’t, partly due to poor WiFi at the venue, according to Suzuki. On the flight to the conference, they agreed they would give up if the gambit didn’t succeed. At the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas in 2012, Suzuki and Hamamoto spent 600,000 yen (RM21,892), the last of their money, to showcase a beta version. The app’s recent popularity is a dramatic turnaround from the firm’s early days. The app contributed to raising the vaccination rate in Japan, Suzuki said. More than seven million users signed up for the service, according to the company. Since April, it has been providing up-to-date information on where people can get coronavirus vaccinations in Japan. SmartNews has also ventured into other areas where it seeks to break down barriers. On it, he realised there was no such thing as a “typical American”, and used his interactions with people from varying backgrounds to modify the app. Suzuki says a three-week road trip around the US in 2016 was one of the reasons the app gained traction in America. If you don’t familiarise yourself with news that differs from your usual viewpoint, “you’ll have a narrow perspective,” he said. Political news “plays a role in supporting democracy”, Suzuki, SmartNews’s chief executive officer, said. They can also move a sliding bar at the bottom of the screen to adjust the perspectives. The app’s “News From All Sides” feature allows users to read political news from both the left and right of the spectrum. The technology helps prevent readers from being exposed only to information that reinforces their own beliefs, according to the company. It deploys an algorithm so users can see news from various perspectives. The site’s “Top News” page shows stories from different media organisations on topics ranging from the coronavirus to business and politics. Suzuki and Kaisei Hamamoto, who were introduced to each other by a mutual friend in 2009, founded SmartNews in Tokyo in 2012. He also wrote a book on how science could help bring about a world without walls. He studied physics at Japan’s Keio University before earning a doctorate in complex systems and artificial life from the University of Tokyo in 2009. Suzuki, who was born in Japan, attended school in Dusseldorf, part of the then-West Germany, for about a year because of his father’s work. 10 Family Office, the investment firm that manages the wealth of the family behind gaming giant Nintendo Co. The SmartNews app had been downloaded 50 million times globally as of the summer of 2019, while monthly active users had reached 20 million, it said. It’s also a rare example of a Japanese technology venture making inroads into the US market, where users doubled last year, according to the company. SmartNews, which uses an algorithm to provide what it says is an unbiased, non-partisan mix of information, raised US$230mil (RM953.23mil) last month at a valuation of US$2bil (RM8.28bil), making it one of Japan’s most valuable startups. He created a company that aims to give people objective news. More than two decades later, he tried to do something about barriers and unfairness. “It made me think about why such absurd walls have to exist.” “It was such a huge shock,” Suzuki said in an interview, speaking of his trip. If they’d waited a few months, he thought, they wouldn’t be dead. Along the way, he saw a memorial for a family who’d been shot trying to get to the west. Suzuki, who was 14 and on a school trip at the time, was allowed to cross into East Germany because he had a Japanese passport. It all started, Ken Suzuki says, back in 1989 when he visited the Berlin Wall.