One of Japan’s most prominent startups is going public. According to disclosure paperwork released today, on December 12 the crowdsourcing platform Crowdworks will make its debut on the Mothers market, a subset of the Tokyo Stock Exchange populated with young firms.
Crowdworks is just a hair over three years old. Established in November 2011, it has quickly become a key player in Tokyo’s startup scene and its gregarious CEO, Yoichiro Yoshida, a highly visible figure in the entrepreneur community.
The service is standard as far as crowdsourcing platforms are concerned. A variety of services, many related to small business needs, are readily available. It has grown steadily, reaching 180,000 registered freelancers and US$110 million worth of client projects.
Crowdworks does have a major rival – Lancers. Lancers began in 2007 and most recently recorded US$200 million worth of client work from a miniature army of 240,000 freelancers. While still behind those metrics, Crowdworks has clearly been gaining ground on the its predecessor and, in a few weeks, it will pass it to the IPO finish line. That is due in part to the firm’s secret weapon – Yoshida.
He became a serial entrepreneur while working in corporate Japan. After numerous ventures failed, he decided to go all-in with Crowdworks. He liquidated all his assets so he would not let fear of losing them hold him back.
Speaking with Tech in Asia last summer, Yoshida explained that the company was no more than a homepage for three months. The early team scoured Japan for the top freelancers and would post profile pictures to the homepage whenever they convinced one of them to register. For Yoshida, he wanted to put trust before money and get the early users to understand that his service would be reliable.
That reliability might now turn into a payday. The company is expected to sell 1,650,000 shares at JPY 629 (about US$5.45). The low price is typical of Mothers-listed stocks and would mean the company could earn about US$10 million from this IPO.
The windfall might be nice but Yoshida is an entrepreneur who values the journey as much as the destination. There is a rumor that he completed the company’s registration on November 11, 2011 at 11:11 just so he could line up all the ones. Considering the IPO is scheduled for December 12, you can probably guess where he will be at 12:12 in the afternoon.
See: Crowdworks nabs two big time advisors as Joi Ito and Jeff Howe join the team
This post Startup no more? Japan’s Crowdworks confirms its IPO appeared first on Tech in Asia.
Startup no more? Japan’s Crowdworks confirms its IPO
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