株式会社PoliPoli
7 known investors
Japanese GovTech startup operating policy co-creation platforms connecting citizens, politicians, ministries, municipalities and companies.
Also known as PoliPoli · PoliPoli Inc. · ポリポリ
Investors · 7
Also in the syndicate · 1
Company profile
researched Aug 2026株式会社PoliPoli (PoliPoli Inc.) is a Tokyo-based GovTech company that plans, develops and operates "policy platforms" intended to connect politicians, government bodies and citizens around policy making. Its stated mission is to contribute to people's well-being worldwide by continuously building new political and administrative mechanisms, and its vision, updated in January 2026, is to build a policy platform on a global scale. The company is led by representative director and CEO Kazuma Ito, was established in February 2018, and is headquartered at MIDORI.so NAGATACHO, 2-5-3 Hirakawacho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, with capital of 35,153,660 yen.
The company runs six main services: 'PoliPoli', a website (released December 2019) where users comment on themes posted by politicians and parties to support policies; 'PoliPoli Gov' (released October 2021), through which citizens submit opinions to ministries and municipalities on consultations and calls for comment; 'PoliPoli Enterprise' (released June 2022), a rule-making and "policy management" support service for companies and organizations; '政治ドットコム' (Seiji.com), a political information media outlet launched in earnest in August 2022; 'Policy Fund' (released September 2023), a donation fund supporting policy demonstration experiments by private-sector and municipal actors; and '自治体共創ファンド' (released September 2024), which uses social impact bonds to attract private investment for outcome-based public-private problem solving. The company also runs the "Reach Out Project", started in December 2022, supporting people in their teens to thirties working on global-scale issues such as global health, with roughly 100 participants to date.
PoliPoli publishes policy reports and impact reports, including a 2025 policy co-creation case collection and a joint interim study with PwC Consulting on the environment surrounding legislative and policy practice for Diet members. Headcount has grown from 44 (June 2025) to 48 (January 2026, including contractors of three months or more), with one recruiting listing citing 50 employees as of August 2026.
Founding story
CEO Kazuma Ito, born 1998 in Aichi Prefecture and educated at Keio University, developed the haiku SNS app '俳句てふてふ' after entering university and later sold that business to Mainichi Shimbun. Prompted by a sense that politics and administration were distant from citizens during Japan's 2017 general election, when he was 18, he founded 株式会社PoliPoli in February 2018. Co-founders included Ryusei Kurata (CTO, in charge of service development) and Jinta Yamada (CDO, design lead), both Keio students who had interned at startups; the three met through startup events and a Tech in Asia conference. Ahead of the Ichikawa City mayoral election they built an app, "'5分でわかる' 政治 PoliPoli", in about ten days for a Keio business contest, providing candidate policies, track records and campaign speeches plus a question feature. The company is classified as a student-founded venture.
Business model
PoliPoli operates a set of platform and service lines addressed to different stakeholder groups: a consumer-facing policy commenting site used by politicians and parties, a service for ministries and municipalities to gather and analyze public opinion, a B2B "policy management" support service (PoliPoli Enterprise) sold to companies and organizations with onboarding, account management and renewal/upsell motions described in its job postings, a media property, a donation-based fund, and a social impact bond fund that mobilizes private capital for outcome-based payments in local problem solving.
Sources describe contracts with enterprise customers for PoliPoli Enterprise, with roles responsible for new contract acquisition, contract continuation and expansion, and maximization of customer lifetime value through upsell and cross-sell; municipal/ministry adoption of PoliPoli Gov; and fund vehicles based on donations (Policy Fund) and outcome-based payments via social impact bonds (自治体共創ファンド).
Traction
Investors listed by the company include institutional backers Incubate Fund, F Ventures, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Global Brain, KDDI (KDDI Open Innovation Fund), Skyland Ventures, Z Venture Capital, NOW and United, plus individual investors including Shunsuke Oyu, Hiroyuki Tsuruta, Hosho Karasawa, Kiyoshi Nishikawa, Yuiga Kitano, Takayuki Fukatsu, Taihei Kobayashi, Yukihiro Mashimo, Asuka Tsuzuki and Masaki Yamamoto. In fiscal 2025 (April 2025–March 2026) the company recorded 26 policy co-creation cases across its services and roughly 50.9 million yen disbursed to NPOs and social enterprises through its businesses. The PoliPoli service has over 500 registered experts. Documented policy outcomes include government budget allocation on "period poverty" (March 2021), a partial non-disclosure of representative directors' addresses in commercial registration (October 2024), reflection of the "income wall" issue in a party manifesto (October 2024), and contributions via PoliPoli Gov to online pregnancy/birth procedures (Children and Families Agency), amendments to the Provider Liability Limitation Act (MIC), and municipal plans in Gunma, Nagoya and Shinagawa.
Latest developments
Recent activity reported in 2026 includes an interim report of joint research with PwC Consulting on modernizing legislative and policy practice (July 2026), publication of a 2025 policy co-creation case collection, an MOU with Indonesia's Parongpong RAW Lab (June 2026), a public-DX collaboration under discussion with Indonesian startup CitySage, selection as secretariat for the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's regional living-area formation leading project (April 2026), opinion-gathering campaigns with Hino City, Seto City and Iwaki City via PoliPoli Gov, grants from the "SoilxPolicy Fund" to Afterschool NPO and OPHIS, a video series with 中道改革連合 on 政治ドットコム, and a partnership with E-Guardian on healthy political communication (December 2025). The company adopted a new corporate vision, "building a policy platform on a global scale", in January 2026 and is hiring across sales, marketing, HR, corporate, government relations and global project roles.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
The company positions itself as a Japan-originated GovTech startup building a policy platform that acts as a hub where government, business, academia and citizens co-create policy; it states it has operated its policy platform for eight years. It frames the underlying problems as the distance between citizens and government — citing a Cabinet Office survey in which about 71% of respondents felt their voices are not reflected in national policy — and the inability of government alone to address increasingly complex domestic and global challenges. At founding, the team described political services as an under-served area in Japan relative to overseas examples.
The company combines citizen opinion collection with downstream steps that many civic-tech services do not cover: AI-assisted visualization and analysis of submitted opinions, policy formulation support, and financing and demonstration of resulting projects through donation-based (Policy Fund) and outcome-based social impact bond (自治体共創ファンド) vehicles, plus horizontal deployment of resulting business models. It also works simultaneously with politicians and parties, government bodies and enterprises, and operates its own political information media.
Technology
The platforms are web services for collecting, structuring and responding to public opinion on policy themes. The company describes using GovTech approaches to make policy processes more efficient and works with NEC to analyze collected opinions with AI so they can be organized for policy planning. Internally it has run training on the "forward deployed engineer" concept for the public sector, led by a former Palantir engineer, and holds development camps on "public FDE" work. In its earliest phase (2018) the product was built around a token economy: an original token, "Pollin", was granted for well-regarded posts and comments, blockchain technology was introduced in the beta version, the beta design and source code were made public, and the founders discussed an eventual move toward a decentralized application.
Go-to-market
For enterprise business the company runs marketing and inside sales to generate demand among executives and government-affairs staff, followed by field sales and account executives closing PoliPoli Enterprise contracts and customer success teams handling onboarding and adoption; seminars and events aimed at executives and public-affairs officers are used to build awareness of "policy management". Public-sector business is developed through direct engagement with ministries and municipalities and joint initiatives, while awareness is supported by owned media (政治ドットコム), a company note account, YouTube programs with political parties, published impact and policy reports, and speaking at events such as a study session for municipal staff at "かがわDX Lab".
Politicians and political parties (including Diet members across parties, the Liberal Democratic Party, the Democratic Party for the People and Nippon Ishin no Kai), ministries and municipalities, companies, industry bodies, NPOs and academia, and individual citizens.
Geography
Headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, with services used by national ministries and municipalities across Japan (examples include Seto City, Hino City, Iwaki City, Gunma Prefecture, Nagoya City and Shinagawa Ward). International activity includes an MOU with Indonesia's Parongpong RAW Lab on policy co-creation dialogue in the environmental field, reported collaboration discussions with Indonesian startup CitySage on public-sector DX, a global project role covering public-private cooperation and overseas communications, and the Reach Out Project addressing global health and other planetary-scale issues.
History
Founded in February 2018 by Kazuma Ito with Ryusei Kurata and Jinta Yamada, PoliPoli began as a token-economy-based political discussion platform, raising capital in May 2018 and releasing an iOS beta in July 2018; the haiku SNS app 俳句てふてふ was transferred to Mainichi Shimbun in June 2018 to focus resources on PoliPoli. Early partnerships in 2018 included LCNEM (NEM blockchain development), POTETO Media, VOTE FOR and Hakuhodo (token community planning and incentive design). The consumer site 'PoliPoli' launched in December 2019, 'PoliPoli Gov' in October 2021, 'PoliPoli Enterprise' in June 2022, 政治ドットコム in August 2022, 'Policy Fund' in September 2023 and the 自治体共創ファンド in September 2024. Headcount reached 44 in June 2025 and 48 in January 2026, and a new global vision was adopted in January 2026.
Risks & controversies
The company operates in the politically sensitive area of policy formation, working with multiple parties and government bodies simultaneously; its earliest product design relied on a blockchain token ("Pollin") and token-economy incentives, an approach not reflected in its current service lineup. Job postings describe an organization in rapid expansion still building its first dedicated corporate and HR functions, and a new B2B product remains in closed release.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 20
launches, deals, and filingsDated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- 株式会社PoliPolipolipoli.work · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does 株式会社PoliPoli do?
- Japanese GovTech startup operating policy co-creation platforms connecting citizens, politicians, ministries, municipalities and companies.
- Who are 株式会社PoliPoli's investors?
- 株式会社PoliPoli's investors include Global Brain, KDDI Open Innovation Fund, NOW Japan, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Skyland Ventures, Z Venture Capital.