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Hello everyone!
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Cookpad has a very clear mission: to make people smile by inspiring them to enjoy cooking. We want to create enjoyable cooking experiences for people all over the world in any way we can.
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Let me tell you a little about our company. Our main office is in Shirokanedai, Tokyo, Japan, close to the center of Tokyo, next to the lush greenery. On a sunny day, we can see Mount Fuji from our office.
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Cookpad was founded in 1997, and for 14 years, we have been dedicated to our mission of making people smile through cooking. This mission has never changed, and we continue to work every day to make cooking more enjoyable.
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We have about a hundred employees, with 40 of them being engineers responsible for our infrastructure. They play a crucial role in speeding up our development processes and ensuring stable deployments.
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For example, they upgrade the version of Rails we are using for better stability or conduct pair programming with other engineers. They take their responsibilities seriously to ensure smooth collaboration across teams.
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An interesting aspect is that one of our services consists of about 800 models, and around 40 engineers work collaboratively on various applications daily. It's essential for everyone to be invested in the code to foster quality contributions.
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Our team comprises talents from many parts of the world, including Japan, France, Hungary, Jamaica, China, and England. We value this diversity in our culture.
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Our main goal is to build a great company and a great product, continually delivering happiness to our users. Our engineers work closely with ideal users and conduct interviews to create minimum viable products for testing and feedback.
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This approach mirrors the lean startup methodology, and we encourage all our employees to be adventurous and exploratory. We focus on finding out what we should primarily concentrate on by using a three-circle framework.
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This framework helps identify the intersection between doing what you love, what you are good at, and what users will pay for. By centering our focus there, we can achieve greatness.
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Cookpad has a manifesto for our engineers, which guides their behavior. It consists of six key elements. The first part emphasizes the importance of being user-centric, as our passionate users are crucial for solving their problems.
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Our second principle revolves around technology; we strive not just to build cool features but to focus on solving our users' problems. It's common for engineers to want to implement amazing features, but these may not always be what users actually need.
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Our third principle focuses on skill; it's essential to know what you're best at and become a leader within that field. When you excel, your peers and users benefit from your expertise.
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Our fourth principle emphasizes action – we encourage continuous efforts to ensure that other engineers can efficiently provide value. Small actions, like taking the time to ensure your code is clear and well-organized, have significant impacts.
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We also encourage honesty and regular self-reflection. Being fearless of speaking up and making mistakes is vital for growth and improvement.
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Lastly, our communication should be based on concrete decisions supported by real metrics instead of assumptions. It's better to build a quick prototype for user feedback than to overanalyze in discussions.
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What we aim for is to keep a strong focus on our users and recognize that technology's purpose is to find and solve real-world problems.
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Cookpad.com is a recipe-sharing service that is accessible on all devices. This accessibility is crucial for our users who may want to access Cookpad on PCs, smartphones, or tablets while cooking at home or shopping.
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Cookpad offers three main features. First, the recipe authors can upload their recipes and share them with everyone in the world, making use of user-friendly editing tools and displaying their recipes beautifully.
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Second, users can search for recipes they want to cook from the public menu and can showcase their creations by uploading photos and comments.
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Cookpad collects feedback from users in the form of ratings, which enhances the recipe's visibility and success. Notably, our most popular recipe has garnered around 8,000 reviews, showcasing active user engagement.
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Users feel proud of their culinary creations and sharing their cooking experiences through feedback encourages a positive atmosphere. We strive to help talented individuals express their cooking skills through sharing recipes and engaging with the community.
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Currently, Cookpad has approximately 15 million unique monthly users, producing around 500 million page views across all devices. Interestingly, half of regular users are Japanese women in their 20s and 30s.
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I would like to share a significant event in our recent history. Last year, Japan experienced a devastating earthquake and tsunami that affected many lives.
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Many people lost their homes and faced hardship without access to basic resources like electricity or food. In response, our employees began brainstorming ways to assist those in dire situations.
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We initiated a new category featuring improvised recipes that required minimal ingredients and could be prepared without traditional cooking facilities. This initiative allowed our users to share ideas on how to make meals with the resources they had.
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For those who had electricity but no gas, we suggested ways to cook with microwaves instead. As our users began to contribute, it created an invaluable repository of recipes tailored for those in need.
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Our platform allowed users to post recipes that required no running water or special appliances. The immediacy and accessibility of our platform enabled many to nourish their families during a critical time.
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Cookpad showed how technology can play a vital role in supporting people through crises by connecting those who want to help with those who needed it most. The enthusiasm and support of our community were remarkable.
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We encourage our employees to enjoy cooking daily, providing an open kitchen in our office stocked with various ingredients for all to use. We even reimburse employees for some cooking expenses, making it easier for everyone to share meals together.
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Our company culture revolves around collaboration and sharing, and we believe this nurtures a sense of community among our employees.
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At Cookpad, we heavily rely on open-source software and choose technologies that enhance our capacity for rapid prototyping. The primary goal is to develop features quickly to discover what brings real value to our users.
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We use the Rails framework to develop Cookpad, upgrading from Rails 3.0 to 3.3, and Ruby versions as needed. This flexibility allows us to innovate and deploy new features effectively.
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Our infrastructure operates entirely on AWS in the Tokyo region. This cloud approach has significantly accelerated our ability to scale and build new servers without managing physical data centers.
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For search capabilities, we use Solr, which provides efficient methods to implement features like dynamic fields. Our flexible development framework allows us to quickly adapt and test new functionalities.
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We've also introduced feature testing through a simple extension framework that helps us try out new features with limited users without affecting the broader audience.
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Introducing new features was previously a challenge due to our large user base. However, we can now test hypotheses in a controlled environment before launching them widely.
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As we develop and deploy changes, we continuously improve our user experience, ensuring that features are valuable and do not overwhelm our users.
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Additionally, we've revamped our data management practices, utilizing tools like Git for our codebase and seamlessly integrating testing protocols to maintain code quality.
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We are committed to openly sharing our improvements and contributions to the coding community, enhancing our collaborative efforts with developers worldwide.
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As we continue this journey, we aim to provide even more happiness to people across Japan and the world, emphasizing how we can leverage technology for societal benefits.
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I would like to thank all of you for your support in this mission. Cookpad is honored to be a platform that brings joy and enhances culinary experiences in everyday life.
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If you have any questions or would like to learn more about our initiatives, please visit our booth or reach out to anyone within our team.
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Once more, thank you all for your attention and support. Together, we can keep improving and spreading happiness through cooking.
