The Objective of 5.2 billion JPY(abt. 49 million USD) bellFace Procured ※Video available

In February 2020, bellFace has successfully gained a fund of 5.2 billion JPY(abt. 49 million USD) in total as a result of third-party allocation of new shares which subscribed by Incubate Fund and 6 other existing investors joined by THE FUND: our new, and biggest investor and that combined with debt finance accepted by Mizuho Bank, Resona Bank, and Shoko Chukin Bank.

Founded in 2015 with 120 members back then, bellFace had been striving for the survival with minimum resources a startup could gather at its most. To us all, this phase changing amount of fund is like being given wings to fly higher.

We can finally, stand in the batter's box for the first time and most of bellFace members are excited, and some were seemed to be relieved to celebrate this remarkable day.

However, I have to say the procurement this time round was quite a hustle.

With a strong faith in the vast and enormous market potentials the  "Sales Tech" field which bellFace would be categorized under holds , we had invested a tremendous amount of resources and efforts into researches and studies for the field. We were also confident that we had established a strong reliable foundation capable of winning the market .
Not many investors, however, shared the future vision with us though.

"It doesn't look good. It’s not likely to grow. Let's just wait and see."
Those were the same reactions received both from Japanese, and overseas capitals. But what else could we do than to carry on with dozens more presentations months after months, of course, in the classic door-to-door way.

Even in such a situation, there were a few persons who considered our vision to be worthwhile supporting
Mr.Akaura of lncupid Fund was the first person to make a quick, and swift decision about the investment on bellFace despite the fact that it was a startup with an evaluation of series A round, and its value was high. Mr. Nakano of SMBC Venture Capital Co., Ltd is one another man that can’t be overlooked without an acknowledgement. A difficult case like ours would never had gained an approval if it wasn’t’ for his great contribution with such a passion, and determination.  In other time, we had a situation where the whole project was about to be withdrew but because of Mr. Okubo of YJ Capital Inc. that it is still in operation today. 

Mr. Kariyazano of GLOBIS CAPITAL PARTNERS & Co., and Mr. Hoshina of Canal Ventures, Ltd were always there to watch over our backs quietly, encouraging the challenges we pursued.
And we  now have  Mizuho Capital Co., Ltd. newly participated to the project. 

There is nothing else I could think of doing  but showing my applications to every one of them mentioned above.

It was more than fortunate for me to meet Mr. Murakami and Mr. Kobayashi, and Mr. Asakura of THE FUND; the only growth fund found in Japan, which has become a new and the biggest investor for bellFace.
These three Gentlemen each with an outstanding career: Mr. Murakami as a former Goldman Sachs, Mr. Asakura as the former President & CEO of mixi, Inc., and Mr. Kobayashi was, too, in such a position at DeNA Co., Ltd. all graduated University of Tokyo. How admiring they are to a junior high school graduate like me.

The wide range of negation skills for the fund procurements, the accuracies revealed when questioning in conversations, a broad knowledge, and understandings for technologies in addition are just a few of various abilities these three remarkable men possess. Witnessing them were quite astounding experiences. I am convinced that they will play an essential role in our project and will take the position as our brain to accelerate our further growth.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest gratitude having a faith in me and bellFace. We will keep striving to grow beyond what's expected.

Despite of his hard work and contributions for months, Mr. Doi: CFO of bellFace couldn't make it to the group photo shooting. So, let me, at least add his face photo to this picture. 

How Are the 5.2 billion JPY(abt. 49 million USD) bellFace Procured will Be Spent?

First of all, what a startup whose annual sales of just about 1 billion JPY(abt. 9.4 million USD) is now going to invest 5.2 billion JPY(abt. 49 million USD) into? The half of formerly Procured 500 million JPY(abt. 4.7 million USD) were used to run a video advertising so called “soleus muscle series” on mass medias. Since the unite-economics analysis (Cost-Effectiveness) outcome on this previous 250 million JPY(abt. 2.36 million USD) worth advertising was adequate, bellFace is  going to invest about 1.5 billion JPY(abt. 14.2 million USD)  or more of the newly obtained funds in marketing including web marketing, events and others in next term. Meanwhile I may consider making a several more new versions of the soleus muscle series video advertising for fun if possible.

But before anything, obtaining talents, and the necessary human resources are the main objective that comes to the top of our list this time. At least, the half of the fund 2.6 billion JPY(abt. 24.5 million USD)that is, will be invested in hiring the talents, and in other personnel needs. We will, then, finally be able to move up to the next phase of expansion after a considerably long four years, and ten months of endurances since the company founding.

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We have been using PDCA cycle to test our personnel systems so that, even in the time of company expansion, the 6 values of bellFace: action and value guidelines of the bellFace will be the powerful, and common criteria for staffs’ performances enabling them to gain  a proper evaluation as the result.

※Read more about a unique personnel evaluation system bellFace has developed in another article.

What makes bellFace's personnel evaluation unique is that the market assessments are reflected  to considerations when deciding the remuneration for each employee every year.

※Partly quoted

◆in order to have the talents work with us at bellFace in long terms, bellFace personnel system reflects the market value of the person to offer a highest level ranked standards of remuneration in the industry.

◆Without changing their jobs, the employees at bellFace are able to calculate, and confirm his/her current market value in the industry once a year creating career plans of one’s own based on the outcome of our evaluation system. By achieving missions reflecting the expected values in one’s performance, one an emp receive reword in highest standards or more in this industry.

In IT related business, equipment costs and that of purchasing are not so high, instead, the investments for the human resources are all that count. In fact, human resource is all we've got!. Being in IT business for 13 years since the founding of my first firm at age of 21, this has been one of the basic, and solid believes of mine. The talents are the ones who build everything: products, strategies, and money, from scratch. Therefore, I have no reason to hesitate investing money into whatever that takes to improve the company culture, working environment, the personnel systems in order to make bellFace attractive company for talents to work at.

With the objective in mind, we are now keenly recruiting staffs for the job positions explained bellow.

Recruitment :1 Sales

We would like to, first, enhance the recruitment for sales at this very moment of fund gaining. The position of sales managers especially is in desperate needs. Added to approximately 1200 of existing subscribers , we have 2000 to 3000 leads per month, and about 100  of new contracts at the most each month. Although the demands for more personalized approaches to carefully meet the needs of each lead, and users are high, the Inefficiency in staff numbers prevent us from doing so.

This job is carried out rather in an interesting way.

You sell bellFace with bellFace!
It is a speed - demanding, and exciting job that practiced with the latest method into which the technologies and inside-sale are combined, and comes with a sale system designed and built based on “THE MODEL” schemes in addition. Not to mention that there will be thousands of leads for you to meet, and on top of that, our rapidly progressing projects are yours to see with all the talented team members to share the experiences with.

Following is an interview movie of Mr. Iwata our Sale Manager of Sales Department who had formerly worked at Salesforce and a consulting firm. He seemed to believe that bellFace is worthwhile place for him to be at .

The sales team consists of 2 different groups : SMB team and Enterprise (EP) team.

◆SMB sales aprouch the small and middle-sized business, and venture companies  through marketing and inside-sales up to their full capacities.

◆EP sales in the other hand, are focused on major-sized companies and enterprises. Its mission is to expand businesses by building a trustworthy relationship with our clients.

I also want to point out that since bellFace is a sales-tech startup company, it is a perfect place to obtain worthwhile experiences and a solid career in the field of sales, and sales-techs for those seeking chances in sales positions. 

Some of those well-experienced “high-performers” in their 30s and 40s are now beginning to realize the potentials BellFace has and are starting to join us in the expectation of excitement and, rewarding careers. It may be your turn to join us now!

Recruitment 2: Customer Success

With this kind of a rapid increase in subscribers as mentioned previously, it obious that the the demanded task amounts of the customers success department: support services after subscribing  is now way beyond its' capabilities. They are too very short in staff members indeed.

From the beginning, bellFace has been taking the importance of customer success and related studies, developments seriously. Selling the products, for a SaaS business like us, isn’t the end of a provider-consumer relationship with its clients, but is where it really begins in long term. Therefore, the continuity rate for us is a critical lifeline. In addition, the more frequent the bellFace users use bellFace toward their customers, the more bellFace would automatically be introduced to whom we haven’t had a direct contact with yet. Thus, bellFace users will be increased virally. And because of this characteristics in nature, the customer success becomes a vital key to our business model. In fact, it is not exaggerating to say the whole operation depends on it.

As important as it is, we ended up  running such a community called “Japan Customer Success Community (CSC)”. It is a paid event, yet about 200 people participate to it, nevertheless.

This position for customer success is too full of discoveries and challenges.

Obviously, giving some functional instructions for bellFace products isn’t the only task required. Optimizing the use of bellFace system and inside-sale method, one will be assigned to do consultation with sales groups from vast ranges of business fields. This is called “High-Touch” in the industrial term. and You will be required to have a certain level of consulting skills sufficient enough to provide our clients effective supports when they need it. But while supporting, there is one fact must be kept in consideration. That is the majority of the users are still heavily costumed to the hundreds year-old believe of "sales means visiting at a door." In addition, their products, unit prices, the number of existing leads, and organizational status of clients, as well as the leaders’ capabilities to motivate the rest must be carefully taken into account when consulting with the customers.

For instance, an onboarding process following the signup stage is one of such a job for which requires a delicate touches and keen observations.

Alone with this high-tech team, there is also a “Tech-Touch” Team that designs and operates the customer health scores calculated based on our own unique standards as shown bellow.

■ The number of times an user actually logged-in to bellFace
■Observing the number of heavy users whose log-in frequency is over certain point of preset criteria per month.
■The frequency of opening the account management page.
■Number of times the documents, materials are uploaded.
■The open rate of online newsletters
■The participation rate for users’ events
etc...

And the third group in customers success is the “low-touch” team which organizes large-scaled events, seminars of various kinds.

These three, high-touch, tech-touch, and low-touch teams each sets up goals individually, but comprehensively all three together, contribute to customer success by providing a multi-dimensional form of supports to our clients. That is the kind of customer success qualities bellFace is striving to obtain.

The field of the customer success is relatively new to Japanese markets, and requires quite a different kind of skills, knowledges, and capabilities than that of sales position. The importance of the customer success keeps on growing in order to raise LTV, spread the positive reputation through mouth to mouth communications, and to new kinds of relationships with our customers. Because by doing so, our company revenue will eventually be stabilized in the market where almost all kinds of services are now taking the forms of monthly subscriptions.

It’s needless to say that the persons with customer success experiences are more than welcome as immediate empowerments for the teams, but those skilled salespersons who are now up to this new challenges of customers success are considered precious for bellFace.

Recruitment:3 Engineers

The reason why bellFace doesn’t seem to appeal to those more of science -type folks is perhaps, because of the “muscular impression” spread via bellFace’s previous video advertising that emphasized the strong image of human soleus muscles. But the truth is that bellFace is much of a science-based company indeed. An unbelievably larger amount of money is invested into the online product developments at bellFace when its compared with other same-sized companies in the industry. In fact, there are 4 of different divisions that ran directly under Nakajima's supervise. Moreover, focused not only on our main products, but in the search of new potentials, bellFace is even putting fortunes into the researches, and filed of studies of which the practicability or profitability are yet unknown.

So, we would like to open-handedly continue hiring talents: server engineers, project managers, designers and the specialists of all sorts. By the way, the work hour is fully friable, and remote working is supported.

You can choose your own way of working and be a full-time employee at same time at bellFace.

Although they may change or be reconsidered in every 3-month, following are the projects currently in progress at the point of February 2020.

◆ Fundamental development of bellFace’s USP（Unique Selling Proposition) aiming for the quality improvement in three aspects: first, online usabilities under any circumstances, secondly, a quick and swift online connection, and a stable user-friendly operation at last.                           

◆ Developments of new functions, and structures of the future products related to IP-phones, multi-points system, and phone apps etc...

◆ Corroborative project focused on improving compatibilities with Slack, Saleforce, and other platforms in order to raise the customer values.

Because bellFace is a real-time communication service used in various kinds of crucial business scenes in which a failure is not an option, the sense of pressure, and responsibilities motivate the development members to carefully listen to users’ voices, and maintain a strong bond as a team among each other in a professional state of minds even though most of them are working remotely.

Here is a comments from a new engineer who joined us a few months ago.

“How is a product has been used and evaluated by its users is an engineer who worked on the product want to know the most. However, there is little chance for him or her to know the actual responses of users. Working at bellFace in the other hand, I get to hear the real voices, and feedbacks of the users since bellFace staffs themselves use the product we develop. This kind of environment is very motivative for an engineer like me.”

The practice of bellFace’s 6 values, and rules, is required to all of our staffs. One out of the six is the value of “Customer First” meaning always think in customers’ minds. This applies also to engineers without an exception.

Recruitment:4 Data scientist / Data Engineer

We have been succeeding introducing bellFace to more than 1,200 companies so far enabling us to access and analyze row big data which is constantly produced at the actual sale activity scenes in a scale that nobody ever seen before.

In order to change the customs of guts, and instinct-based sales methods to more of data-driven practices, the data scientists, and engineers at bellFace are expected to work on PoC (Proof of Concept), and an algorithm development, improvement of machine-learnings as well as deep-learnings related to bellFace products.

Can you imagine how beneficial it would be for the client companies, and the society if our salesperson is able to suggest a data-driven constructions of organizations or new business potentials by analyzing the big raw data from their real sales scenes?

This may seem a little unexpected, but bellFace data scientists, and engineers are all highly talented members.

For instance, a KDD Cup finalist: one of the well-known international data analysis competitions, is working with us at bellFace as well as a person with a few of publications on data analysis, and AI programming. An engineer who gave a presentation at an academic conference in the field of deep learnings is also among us along with a well-experienced DWH/BI system developer and so on. Thus, members with outstanding backgrounds are gathered at bellFace.

Seeing is believing, why not drop by our place once, and take a look how all the data are actually being analyzed with your own eyes. Seeing the big row data in process, I'm sure that there is not one data scientist, or engineer who can pass the sight without getting a buzz out of it!

Summery

Japan is an island nation consists almost out of a single race, and that makes everything rather unique in comparison to other nations on earth. The markets are no exception. Its structural characteristics are not found elsewhere. For a company, fitting in to Japanese market automatically means becoming unfitted for the markets overseas. Burdened with disadvantages as such, there are not many Japanese companies found to be successful  growing global.
Sadly, the majority of Japanese including myself still don’t speak other languages beside their own, and not so good at managing either. Moreover, the fact that Japan is a single raced nation opposed to those racially  diversified countries in other regions prevents us from adjusting to other cultures. 

With all the environmental disadvantages, not a single positive reason for a Japanese startup like bellFace to achieve a worldwide success.

Taking all these odds into account, bellFace nevertheless is going to challenge the world market in the near future not as an online meeting tool in general but as an advanced version of structurally IP-phone based services. Our goal is to earn the position of “the best user-friendly tool for online inside-sale in particular even in a comparison to Skype and Zoom.'' By doing so, we believe that there are chances for us to win the global market. , Building an invincibly strong business foundation domestically is our first step toward the visions.

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We are hiring 300 new members at bellFace next term, and as much as I’d love to, I have not enough time meeting every one of the applicants in person. So instead, I have a short introduction movie made for those who are interested in bellFace to see in a hope of sharing our future visions and strategies.

With no career in acting, I did as whatever I was told to at a movie shooting studio. Just for the record,  I didn’t feel comfortable seeing myself appearing like a narcissist in a screen. But my complains never got through.  

“This is normal !!! Just go alone with it.''insisted by Ms. Komasa: our advertising rep, I went with flow while shooting, however, I did make a bunch of requests, and comments in the time of editing though. And here it is! it turned out be a satisfying piece of work that delivers one clear message from bellFace to the applicants.

Let’s realize something that only we are capable of doing as a startup!

If you find bellFace interesting reading this article, just click on those rinks attached bellow and give a try!

Recruitment1【Sales】
◆Account Executive: Exclusive: Team for Enterprises, and Large Companies
https://hrmos.co/pages/bellface/jobs/1000000 
◆Sales (Manager Candidates)
https://hrmos.co/pages/bellface/jobs/1210000   
◆Sales
https://hrmos.co/pages/bellface/jobs/1200000     
◆Inside Sales (Manager Candidates)
https://hrmos.co/pages/bellface/jobs/1310000   
◆Inside Sales
https://hrmos.co/pages/bellface/jobs/1300000                                                           Recruitment 2:【Customer Success】
◆Customer Success  
https://hrmos.co/pages/bellface/jobs/1100000   
◆Customer Success Marketer
https://hrmos.co/pages/bellface/jobs/1120000 
◆Technical Support Specialist
https://hrmos.co/pages/bellface/jobs/3400000 
Recruitment 3:【Engineers】  
◆Web Engineer
https://hrmos.co/pages/bellface/jobs/3100000   
◆Front-End Engineer
https://hrmos.co/pages/bellface/jobs/2050000   
◆Salesforce Engineer
https://hrmos.co/pages/bellface/jobs/31400000
Recruitment 4:【Data Scientist / Data Engineer】
◆Data Engineer  
https://hrmos.co/pages/bellface/jobs/3330000     
◆Machine Learning Engineer
https://hrmos.co/pages/bellface/jobs/3310000     
Click on the link bellow for Partner Sales, Creators, UI/UX Designers, and information on other job recruitments  
〈Job List〉 
https://hrmos.co/pages/bellFace/jobs