Coconala
👤 Akiyuki Minami (Ex-PE investor (Advantage Partners) with an Oxford MBA; post-2011-quake he bet ordinary Japanese skills had a market price.)🌐 site𝕏LinkedIn
In salaryman Japan, Coconala built a market where anyone sells a skill anonymously — even a phone fortune reading.
Will it work? · our read
Own the taboo. Coconala won by listing what polite platforms won't — fortune-telling and worry-chats — and owning the rails that let it rake 60%. Growth is now the open question.
01How the money moves
Anyone lists a skill: design, code, or a fortune reading
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Buyers pay in-app via chat, video, or an anonymous phone call
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Coconala rakes 22-60% of every completed deal
02The numbers
$62MFiledFY25 rev, +43% (TSE-listed)
FY2025-08
Fortune-telling is Coconala's largest single category by lifetime deals — a market Western gig platforms don't serve. Fortune category page
¥9.4B ($62M) in FY25, +43% YoY — TSE-listed (4176).
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You have the verdict. Members get the work behind it.
- The CENTS scorecard — where it's strong, where it's soft
- The founder's key move, and the counter-move
- How it could die — the evidence, and how sure we are
- The case against our own call
- A 🚀 launchpad prompt — the case, as a plan for your business
We rate our own confidence — and argue against ourselves. Nobody else in this category does.
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See a full teardown, free → ImportYetiSourcesSources last checked 12 July 2026
Coconala FY2025.8 full-year results (TSE filing)AIM Group: Coconala FY2025 sales +43%, margin narrowsCoconala fortune-telling category — 7M+ lifetime dealsCoconala help: 22% seller commission (up to about 60% phone)STARTUPS JOURNAL: how Minami built Coconala
Revenue ¥9.4B ($62M, +43%), 5.5M users, operating profit ¥256M (-16%), and segment splits are FILED from Coconala's FY2025.8 TSE filing (verified first-party). Take rates (22% standard, 27.5% video, about 60% phone) are from Coconala's own help pages. Fortune-telling scale (7M+ lifetime deals, "most in Japan") is from Coconala's category pages. Rival GMV weights and CrowdWorks/Lancers take rates are approximate secondary figures. The "dies" thesis (moat fading to a margin grind) is our read [inference], though the underlying FY25 numbers are documented. Note: founder Akiyuki Minami resigned as a director on 29 January 2025, after Coconala disclosed an internal violation of its officer code of conduct and compliance rules (Business Insider Japan); in April 2025 note Inc. bought his entire 9.30% stake for 737M yen (ITmedia). We never score you.