Project Info

Partner

ZENKIGEN Co.Ltd

Service

HARUTAKA

Sun* Team

Business Designer

UX/UI Designer

Project Manager x2

Lead Engineer x3

Engineer x6

Solution

Business design

MVP development

Development scalability

Team building

Support capital mobilization

ZENKIGEN

Perform DX of the recruitment process with Startup/Studio

ZENKIGEN is a startup established in 2017 with a vision of “Contributing to creating a society where people and companies can fully manifest themselves through technology”. “Time”, “Place” and “Distance” are factors that lead to ineffective recruitment interviews. Therefore, to create timely meetings between the talent and the company. This issue has been resolved by a web interview service called “HARUTAKA”.

Partner’s problem

Startup’s concern about the lack of engineer

In spite of having an idea and enthusiasm to create those for new businesses or products in this era, the fact that they were established not long ago, many startup companies will have problems such as being unable to guarantee engineer supply internally, leading to the inability to embark on a startup and start product development. The shortage of engineers in Japan is very serious, and it is difficult for young startups to hire talented engineers.

“When starting a new business or product, speed and time are the most important. No matter how good the idea is, being executed first by another company deprives all its meaning, and when it loses the competitive advantages, it’s hard to call for investment. ZENKIGEN, the company developing job interviews via video, which was introduced this time, also encountered similar problems. In order to start a new business as soon as possible, we looked for a partner who would provide full support: from design to business development. Therefore, we discussed ideas with Sun*, a company with extensive experience in supporting startups and development.” – ZENKIGEN shared.

Proposals from Sun *

Provide a comprehensive business consulting, investment and development team.

Providing a comprehensive business consulting, investment and development team.

The business consultants of Sun* listened to the problems of customers and they understood that the problem is not only the recruitment of talented engineers, but also the lack of investment capital to run the business stable, which has become an inevitable factor to speed up to expand the business.

Therefore, Sun* proposed a Business incubation program called “Startup Studio”. Startup Studio is a solution that provides essential resources such as business design/development team/office to start a business, in which Sun* invested in the startup that lacks investment capital and engineers at the time of establishment as a shareholder. Sun* provides management resources such as people, goods, money and know-how, with the advantage of “co-creating” in new businesses besides the ordering relationships.

Project Topic

Focuses on speed in both service launch and fundraising.

Co-creation with ZENKIGEN is a new recruiting tool called “HARUTAKA” that allows companies and job seekers to interview on the web or in video regardless of time or location. Overall, this is a key business idea for approaching the market quickly. Thus, we set a goal of launching the service in just 5 months, including the definition of business requirements. System development was carried out by a total of 9 people, including 3 Japanese project managers and tech leaders, and 6 foreign engineers. The project was underway with a tight schedule to achieve the goal of launching the service in 5 month (beta version), and we were able to finish the development as intended without any major problems partly thanks to good compatibility between the speedy development project and agile development recommended by Sun*.

Immediately recommending to customers who want to resolve their recruiting problem after the launching of the service, we are off to a good start with recorded sales from the following month. After the six-month launching, the feat of raising 200 million yen was reached.

Client Voice

“Capital mobilization is obvious, but it is necessary to have a detailed business strategy and plan for investors and VC specializing in investment to totally comprehend. However, in the case of this product, due to the fact that this is a finished product with customers and consultants in a stable business situation. Therefore, from the investor’s point of view, it becomes a more attractive, less risky project and is able to mobilize capital in a short time. And it wouldn’t have been possible without Sun* start-up studio.”