Kasahara Kenji (笠原健治) discusses how he grew “Mitene,” an app for sharing children’s growth with family through photos and videos, to a global user base of 30 million. Drawing on his experience as an entrepreneur, he looks back on the app’s initial testing, grassroots outreach efforts and the reasons behind the introduction of new features.
Kasahara Kenji (笠原健治) is known as the founder of MIXI and says the company is now entering its third founding phase. Motivated by his experience raising children, he launched the app himself to make it easy for families to share photos. In its early stages, the team tested the app with 20 parents of infants aged 0, and continued development based on the results.
After the service launched, he personally handled customer support for about 1.5 years, refining its features while incorporating users’ candid feedback. He also undertook grassroots outreach, including handing out flyers alone in parks around Tokyo, and improved “Mitene’s” core features based on what users told him. In addition, under the principle of “User Surprise First,” the service has introduced experiences users would be happy to have, including a feature that automatically turns uploaded photos into one-second videos. Seeing parents delight in their grandchildren’s growth as they follow the development of their own children’s families has also motivated him to expand the service’s value.
Kasahara Kenji (笠原健治) intends to continue taking on new challenges, with the aim of evolving the service to meet the demands of an era of rapid change and expanding features that support more families.