Reinventing online maps to focus on community

We have always loved maps. Maps combine artistry and utility in a way that very few disciplines allow.

But of course, it's always been a trade-off. The beautiful, ornate maps from centuries past told you where the major landmasses were, but provided little detail. And today's GPS-based maps provide an unprecedented level of accuracy but uninspiring in their presentation.

Machi Takahashi, founder and CEO of Stroly, has a best-of-both world's solution.

We also talk in-depth about the unique challenges facing women founders in Japan, and what can be done to make things better for everyone.

It's a great discussion, and I think you will really enjoy it.

Show Notes

Strolling with stories: How Stroly works How to make Google Maps community-oriented How Stroly pivoted to prosperity during Covid-19 How industry will be using VR after Covid-19 ends Why corporate spinouts are so hard in Japan Why Japan has problems commercializing fundamental research The challenges female founders face in Japan How Japanese women are taught they should not really be CEOs Why Japanese startups need to think globally

Links from the Founder

Everything you ever wanted to know about Stroly Connect with Machi on LinkedIn Women's Startup Labs

Ari Hori on Disrupting Japan

Leave a comment Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. One of the most common themes on Disrupting Japan is the intersection of tradition and high technology. Stories about what things that we’ve known and loved for generations can teach us about how we should use technology today. Now, I’m not sure how much of this is due to the fact that I personally find such startups fascinating and important, and how much of it is due to the fact that there’s something about Japanese startups and Japanese culture that encourages and appreciates these kinds of innovations. Well, today, we sit down with Machi Takahashi of Stroly and we discussed that while mobile GPS mapping is awesome, there’s something important that we’ve lost in our rapid adoption of that technology and it’s something that Stroly is bringing back. We also look into how COVID is not only changing things but changing some things for the better and how this is really a time for innovative startups to shine. And we also talk in some detail about the challenges women founders face in Japan and some simple ways to improve the situation. But you know, Machi tells that story much better than I can, so let’s get right to the interview.

Interview Tim: I’m sitting here with Machi Takahashi, the CEO of Stroly, so thanks for sitting down with me. Machi: Thank you, Tim, for having me. Tim: Stroly makes custom maps that are overlaid onto Google Maps, but I think you can explain it a lot better than I can, so why don’t you explain briefly what Stroly is, how it works? Machi: Okay, sure. So, Stroly is our company name and also the name of our service and it means to stroll with story, so we came up with this idea to combine illustrated maps with GPS positioning while we were developing a new guide system for a theme park, and instead of choosing Google Maps, we chose to use this beautiful hand-drawn illustrated map of this theme park and we came up with this technology to combine these latitudes and longitudes on top of these illustrated maps. Tim: Okay, so when people are visiting the theme park, instead of looking at Google Maps or Apple Maps as they are wandering around the park, they would look at those kind of cute hand-drawn illustrated maps and they’d navigate on top of that? Machi: Right, exactly. So, we have this technology where we can adapt these GPS positioning on top of any kind of a map in any form so people can actually exaggerate some of the spots in the map, and then actually draw some of the spots in the map. Tim: Are most of your customers in tourism and entertainment? Machi: Yes, most of them are in tourism and also, some of them are in transportation and also in area development. Well, our platform is open, so you can start free and people can upload their maps themselves, so a lot of people who upload their maps themselves are not necessarily business customers, so they could be just some community leaders who want to show great things about their cities. But for the business users, it's mostly in the travel area. Tim: So you mentioned people can upload their own maps. How difficult is the system to use? Does it require… Machi: It's very easy. Even some people who work for, I don't know, like a library – I shouldn't say that, but I don't know – Tim: Non-programmers, non-programmers, yeah, that's right. Machi: Non-programmers, right, exactly, so it's very easy. People who draw their maps, they can upload the image of the map and they would have this correlation of positions on top of these maps, so they put some thoughts on the map and Stroly will show all the other places with GPS positioning. Tim: Oh, I see, so they would kind of like pin a few key points and then Stroly will sort of interpolate the others and so people can see their position on the cute illustrated map? Machi: Exactly. Tim: So far, you mentioned a few cases of the people creating their own maps. I mean, what kind of maps are they uploading? Machi: During this COVID-19, people actually suddenly started realizing how important their local business is. Some designers have started drawing their own city or their own neighborhood with the restaurants or the food stands where you can take your food out. So, some maps were made to empower these local communities or local businesses. Tim: Wow. Machi: That's something we didn't see before this COVID-19, so that was quite interesting. Tim: So from the consumer side, the user side, it’s just a chance to feel, I don't know, more connected or less standard, more special. Is that the – Machi: I think so because if you imagine like, moving into a new town and you have this map that shows how this small business is doing around your neighborhood or like these attractive places, small places where if you go into just one alley down, then you would find them, then it just makes your life so much richer and more interesting. Tim: You know, it is interesting because kind of the tourism apps, those illustrated maps, in a sense, they serve a really different purpose. Machi: Yeah, it does. Tim: Like, Google Maps has replaced a lot of kind of the street maps that used to be for sale at every gas station in the world, but in tourism, they never would use a street map, they always would use these kind of illustrated and fun, engaging maps, so there's definitely something there. Machi: Yeah, I think so. These maps have their own points of views. It kind of sets up the context of the city. With this kind of viewpoint, you would start to see different things in the city. Tim: So, how do you get users onto the app? How do you get users using Stroly? How do they find out about it? Machi: Our service is not an app, it's a web-based service, so these maps actually work on the websites. We encourage these paper map creators to put a little QR code on their paper map so that people can actually read it and they can start immediately with their browser on their phones. Tim: So, this is like, really cool technology. It's fun, but what's your business model on it? How do you make money? Machi: We have this B2B service. If you are using Stroly for business, you obviously want to put your brand on top of these maps, and we help them put their logos on their maps and we also unlock the foot travel data, how these maps are used. Tim: Okay, so you've got a kind of data collection, data analytics component to this as well? Machi: Yes. The users, they have their GPS positioning on while they are using our map and we have analytical data of how people tend to use these maps. Tim: From your customers’ point of view, do they view the main value of Stroly as being the presentation, the ability to show these lovely kind of illustrated maps or do they see the main value coming from those data analytics? Machi: I think the first value comes from presentation of it, yeah, because you cannot control how Google Maps would look. Tim: Well, yeah, everything looks the same on Google Maps or Apple Maps, right? Just, everyone in the world has the same presentation and that's useful too, but it's not good for branding. Machi: Right, right, exactly. First, it's the presentation and nowadays, because of COVID-19, users cannot come to their park or cannot come to the areas. Tim: Yeah, that is something I wanted to ask you about, and since your business is so focused on tourism, COVID-19 must have had a huge impact on your business and your startup. Machi: Yeah, it did. Well, kind of hit directly to our clients and we were actually planning to have a lot of things coming up for the Olympics and Paralympics, of course. All these got canceled and we had to develop our service so that we can help our clients stay connected with their users. Tim: How do you do that? Because I mean, Maps is such a – you know, it's such a… Machi: I know. Location-based [crosstalk]. Tim: I can't think of anything that is more directly like being there, right? Machi: But the thing is, we said Stroly maps are more about branding or just communicating how great the place can be to the users. So, what we did is that we've created this virtual map service where people can actually come into the map with an avatar and there is a tour guide who is standing in the map showing around how the park looks like. Actually, we have this one experiment with the theme park already, the same theme park, and they've filmed the movie in the themepark so that this guide person of this virtual map can show around where this film was taking,