This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology.
Clip Nihonbashi, managed by 31 Ventures which is backed by Mitsui Fudosan, has opened up a new structure housing itself as well as the satellite venture Axelspace (the latter on upper floors of the premises). The collaboration/meeting place was formerly located at CM Building in Nihonbashi nearby, albeit on the sixth floor in addition to being in a building shuttered after 6pm.
The modern glass-covered facilities including a reception, conference rooms and locker space, along with a small cafe-esque operation run by a “socially-aware” startup, is conveniently placed adjacent to a major thoroughfare road. Some 90 seats are available for member use, and about a hundred people can be held in case a large event needs to be held.
Mitsui Fudosan is supporting other similar establishment in the Tokyo area, including central Kamiyacho and Kasumigaseki areas within the city proper, not to the KOIL facilities in Kashiwanoha on the Tsukuba Express (TX) train line running from Tokyo’s Akihabara to Tsukuba, the science city sited to the northeast. Actually, Axelspace was first headquartered along TX.
There is also a “Life Science Hub” building not far from Clip Nihonbashi since the locality is replete with major pharmaceutical concerns, like Astellas and Daiichi Sankyo plus popular medicament providers such as Kowa and Zeria. In fact, Takeda is now constructing its new Tokyo building right down the street to Clip Nihonbashi.
In terms of Clip Nihonbashi access, it is situated right above the Japan Railway Shin-Nihonbashi Station, a single stop away from the Tokyo terminal, in addition to being near Mitsukoshimae Station on the Ginza and Hanzomon Metro subway lines. It is also in hiking distance to other railway stations like JR Kanda and subway Nihonbashi stations.
See the original story in Japanese. IBM Japan held the Demo Day event for their BlueHub open innovation program last week. The latest batch features startups focused on inbound travel businesses. A number of companies offering inbound travel services participated, with four big corporates: NTT Docomo, Zenrin, Zenrin DataCom, and Softbank, and eight startups: Andeco, Crea Japan, Fesbase, Pretia, Mybase, Metro Engines, Rich Table, and Realista. Presented services and companies were: Fesbase: chatbot platform focused on serving Chinese visitors to Japan (by Crea Japan) Quippy for Restaurants: Marketing and product development support tool for restaurants (by Rich Table) Sakevel: Sake brewery tourism and personal sake sommelier service (by Mybase) SnapGo: AR(augmented reality)-based navigation service (by Pretia) Miccossy: Mobile app curating Japanese local festivals (by Andeco) Travel experience sharing platform (by NTT Docomo) 1Minute Japan: Video-based service for helping foreign visitors to Japan solve problems (by Realista) Metro Engines: AI (artificial intelligence) tool that helps hotels determine competitive pricing In late February, teams composed of a mix of the companies carried out kick-off meetings and held six workshops throughout the three month planning phase. Following the Demo Day they will begin to work on firm plans for commercialization. In the spirit…
IBM Japan held the Demo Day event for their BlueHub open innovation program last week. The latest batch features startups focused on inbound travel businesses.
A number of companies offering inbound travel services participated, with four big corporates: NTT Docomo, Zenrin, Zenrin DataCom, and Softbank, and eight startups: Andeco, Crea Japan, Fesbase, Pretia, Mybase, Metro Engines, Rich Table, and Realista.
Presented services and companies were:
Fesbase: chatbot platform focused on serving Chinese visitors to Japan (by Crea Japan)
Quippy for Restaurants: Marketing and product development support tool for restaurants (by Rich Table)
Sakevel: Sake brewery tourism and personal sake sommelier service (by Mybase)
SnapGo: AR(augmented reality)-based navigation service (by Pretia)
Miccossy: Mobile app curating Japanese local festivals (by Andeco)
1Minute Japan: Video-based service for helping foreign visitors to Japan solve problems (by Realista)
Metro Engines: AI (artificial intelligence) tool that helps hotels determine competitive pricing
In late February, teams composed of a mix of the companies carried out kick-off meetings and held six workshops throughout the three month planning phase. Following the Demo Day they will begin to work on firm plans for commercialization. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was asked to participate in this event as a judge. The following are introductions of the seven services that gave presentations.
Fesbase: chatbot platform focused on serving Chinese visitors to Japan (by Crea Japan)
When planning vacations overseas you may often rely on TripAdvisor and Yelp, but it is hard to tell the atmosphere of a place and whether it is suitable for kids or not. It is easy to imagine the same situation occurring during the expected boom in inbound tourism to Japan. Many tourists from China come to Japan for the cuisine. They may be left wondering how to make a reservation in such situations. That’s where the Yoyaku app uses chatbot and AI to come to the rescue.
Users select the category of restaurant they want to reserve and input details like the area they hope to go to. The app supports voice input so it is easy for travelers to use, and recommended information is delivered leveraging IBM Watson.
Since Fesbase already has an existing project that offers a human concierge, there is a large amount of training data, so it is possible to provide accurate recommendations. If, due to the contents of the question, the bot cannot answer, it is possible for AI to sort and select a human concierge who can. They are currently in negotiations with the Chinese media and also looking into acquiring users before their arrival in Japan.
In terms of business, they are thinking to charge a fee to restaurants based on driving user traffic to them, and in the future, once the number of users increases, they are planning to offer a platform for restaurant searching services to businesses.
Quippy for Restaurants: Marketing and product development support tool for restaurants (by Rich Table)
The Quippy app
Quippy provides a restaraunt searching tool on Instagram. It offers users with the chance to discover (even the unexpected) restaurants via searching. When the user launches the app, information linked to the location information of the restaurant and the picture pulled from Instagram is displayed. Since the app will learn what content the user has browsed, it will recommend additional restaurants later on.
For the service geared at restaurants, the tool will show them posts in English on social network sites and restaurant review sites as negative or positive. If a specific dish receives a negative review, it can recommend Instragram examples from another shop to the restaurant to improve. The searching service is free, while the service for restaurants will be offered based on a monthly subscription model.
Sakevel: Sake brewery tourism and personal sake sommelier service (by Mybase)
Takashi Kageyama, CEO of Mybase
88 of the 100 foreigners questioned at Narita International Airport said they want to drink Japanese sake. On the flipside, they don’t really have any information about sake breweries. Moreover, more than 99% of such breweries are mid-sized or family run so they may not be able to fully support foreigners who show up unannounced, but even before that 60% of consumption by foreigners visiting Japan is in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The idea behind Sakevel is to utilize tourism resources to awaken the small sake breweries that sleep in unknown areas, thus promoting regional development.
The Sakevel app
As for the sake itself, the Sakevel app recognizes the images on labels and provides that information in multiple languages. It also introduces personalized sake recommendations for tourists based on information gathered from past posts on social media sites. Since breweries cannot attract customers alone, Mybase plans to offer sake brewery tours along the same lines as a winery tour. Services are set to begin in October this year.
SnapGo will take you where you want to go without GPS by specifying your location with a mobile picture. This solves the problem of the numbers of foreign tourists who get lost due to lack of multilingual signage in Japan.
The company receives a photo of the place from its premise owner, creates an algorithm from it, and makes it possible to identify places from photographs taken by users through machine learning. As a result, users without GPS on their devices or who experience language difficulties can get to their destination by simply taking pictures.
In order to develop the algorithm it appears they need about forty 360-degree images. Additionally, it is assumed that the destination is input using images or text.
Miccossy: Mobile app curating Japanese local festivals (by Andeco)
Simply put, it is a festival information service for foreign tourists in Japan. It is difficult for users to acquire real-time festival information even if they refer to guide books, etc. People outside of Japan search for “matsuri (literally festivals in Japanese)” on YouTube as much as “Mt. Fuji” so there is a demand. Moreover, the company expects that there are 310,000 festivals all over Japan.
The Micossy app displays festival information in the surrounding area and provides related information like how to participate, and so on, in multiple languages. Their business model is the sale of “happi” or traditional clothing to be worn at the festival. Initially they plan to start by offering information on 100 festivals.
1Minute Japan: Video-based service for helping foreign visitors to Japan solve problems (by Realista)
1Minute Japan is designed for travelers to Japan who come on their own, not as a tour. It provides help to travelers before departure on topics like SIM cards and Wifi in Japan, and once they begin their journey, the company offers transportation and ticket information, as well as a restaurant reservation service. Using Watson to analyze the information learned from these tasks, it can analyze sentiments and classify what kind of problems people in various countries experience. Then they release video content to solve these problems.
The service can be used in this way: the example that, “an American traveler in their 20’s doesn’t know how to eat at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant”, guides them to create video content to help this person. They started test marketing in April and have acquired around 5,000 followers on their Facebook page.
Metro Engines: AI tool that helps hotels determine competitive pricing
Metro Engine
Metro Engines can optimize revenue for hotels and inns. The tool targets the 35,000 facilities throughout Japan, with 1.2 million rooms. Many of the rooms were priced using an individual’s expertise. Some chains use tools, but set their prices based on past performance and competing room prices. However, it can be said that this method will become ineffective as the supply-demand balance collapses due to access to private residences, etc.
That is where Metro Engines comes in. It predicts the reservation behavior of guests, and then set room prices through data analysis peppered with budget information, reviews, and furthermore, information on renting private homes and rooms, as well as guest room photos. In addition, It has also visualized human behavior based on mobile behavior data from NTT Docomo, Zenrin, and Softbank and included it.
Based on the big data obtained through these measures, they can tangibly present how a room should be priced. The service was announced on the 25th of last month and is currently under evaluation at 50 facilities. When they link up with the individual systems of hotels and inns, they can verify that the price setting was appropriate.
Watson’s unique open innovation program and future issues
Yuta Hagiwara, CEO of Prevent. His team won the previous program batch last year.
Followed by the previous batch focused on automotive and healthcare verticals, this was the second edition of the IBM BlueHub open innovation program. Prevent, one of the grads from the previous program batch last year, is a startup spun off from Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine. The team presented a solution preventing lifestyle diseases, which was collaboratively developed with a health insurance company.
Based on his research experience having succeeded in lowering the recurrence rate of high blood pressure, diabetes, cerebrovascular disease and other symptoms to less than 30%, he has developed an online consultation service. He claims that they will aim to gain the consultation efficiency by implementing the Watson technology into a chat-based consultation service.
In the latest batch focused on the inbound travel topic, participating companies were trying to create new values by combining with the unique strength of the services, technologies and resources that they have had.
Metro Engines was highly evaluated because of not only telling hotels optimized room pricing leveraging big data analysis but also predicting details and suggesting ideas about how to improve. The team is outstanding with having already 50 companies as potential clients.
Regarding aforementioned Predict and Metro Engines, they could unveil clear results through the program, however, the ideas of other teams were still “small” in the potential about their technologies and services or their ideas are still rough and unclear in the potential merit to come out of a collaboration work.
Moreover, we saw some projects which had probably managed to adjust their ideas into Watson in the program, meaning that they have turned a means into a purpose there.
It might sound good if we say a collaboration between resourceful corporates and game-changing startups with technologies. However, if the collaboration become a purpose, I assume that it will not bring a good result because of the gap in expectations and cultures on both sides, or the program host’s egotism.
Where is the problem to solve? Does it require any technology? What kind of businesses should be get together to speed it up? Open Innovation is now trending in Japan, that’s especially why I think these well-considered preparation may be more important.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
Tokyo-based startup TownWiFi has been developing and offering a mobile app for Android and iOS under the same name. The app allows mobile users to gain public WiFi access at more than 2 million locations worldwide without any time-consuming sign-in process. The company announced on Thursday that it has started supporting public WiFi spots in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. This follows their global service expansion into Korea and the US (including Hawaii and Guam). TownWiFi, previously known as WiFi Share, was founded back in 2015 by former Rakuten employee Takehiro Ogita. In 2016, he and his team unveiled the TownWiFi concept at Incubate Camp, the startup incubation bootcamp initiative run by Japanese VC firm Incubate Fund, and subsequently won the special award at TechCrunch Tokyo, an annual startup showcase event by the tech blog’s local entity in Japan. For local users, the app allows them to off-load their data traffic using 3G/4G connection to public WiFi services when available without user intervention like choosing an SSID (service set identifier) or making a sign-in process so that they are likely to enjoy mobile web surfing without worrying about the possibility of hitting a monthly data usage limit. For international visitors,…
Image credit: TownWiFi
Tokyo-based startup TownWiFi has been developing and offering a mobile app for Android and iOS under the same name. The app allows mobile users to gain public WiFi access at more than 2 million locations worldwide without any time-consuming sign-in process. The company announced on Thursday that it has started supporting public WiFi spots in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. This follows their global service expansion into Korea and the US (including Hawaii and Guam).
TownWiFi, previously known as WiFi Share, was founded back in 2015 by former Rakuten employee Takehiro Ogita. In 2016, he and his team unveiled the TownWiFi concept at Incubate Camp, the startup incubation bootcamp initiative run by Japanese VC firm Incubate Fund, and subsequently won the special award at TechCrunch Tokyo, an annual startup showcase event by the tech blog’s local entity in Japan.
The TownWiFi app Image credit: TownWiFi
For local users, the app allows them to off-load their data traffic using 3G/4G connection to public WiFi services when available without user intervention like choosing an SSID (service set identifier) or making a sign-in process so that they are likely to enjoy mobile web surfing without worrying about the possibility of hitting a monthly data usage limit. For international visitors, it helps them use public WiFi spots easily so that they need less to subscribe to roaming services, rent a mobile router or purchase a SIM card supporting a local cellular network.
When a user fails to establish a WiFi connection using the app, it will report the failure to the WiFi spot owner so that they are encouraged to improve the connectivity environment for future users.
Since its launch back in April last year, the TownWiFi app has surpassed 2 million downloads. In addition to Japan, Korea and the US, the expansion at this time announces that the app now supports 34 different public WiFi services in Taiwan (200,000 hotspots), 56 different services in Hong Kong (100,000 hotspots), and 20 different services in Macau (10,000 hotspots).
Tokyo-based Fringe81, the Japanese startup offering several adtech solutions, announced today that its IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Mothers Market on 27 June with plans to offer 108,800 shares for public subscription and to sell 39,000 shares in over-allotment options, for a total of 151,300 shares. Nomura Securities will lead the underwriting. Its share price range will be released on 6 June with bookbuilding scheduled to start on 8 June and pricing on 15 June. According to the consolidated statement as of March 2017, they posted revenue of 4.5 billion yen (about $40.5 million) and an ordinary loss of 54 million yen ($486,000). Public offering price per share is expected to be around 2,070 yen ($18.6). Led by the company’s CEO, Yuzuru Tanaka, (holding a 49.8% stake), its major shareholders include Itochu Technology Ventures (16.84%), Cyber Communications (5.54%) and CyberAgent (5.48%). Fringe81 was launched in 2005 under the former name of RSS Kokokusha (literally meaning RSS ad agency) where they had been focused on advertising in RSS feeds. Rebranded to Fringe81 in 2010, the company has added several new ad tech solutions including Digitalice, a cloud-based…
Yuzuru Tanaka, founder and CEO of Fringe81 Image credit: Masaru Ikeda
Tokyo-based Fringe81, the Japanese startup offering several adtech solutions, announced today that its IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Mothers Market on 27 June with plans to offer 108,800 shares for public subscription and to sell 39,000 shares in over-allotment options, for a total of 151,300 shares. Nomura Securities will lead the underwriting.
Its share price range will be released on 6 June with bookbuilding scheduled to start on 8 June and pricing on 15 June. According to the consolidated statement as of March 2017, they posted revenue of 4.5 billion yen (about $40.5 million) and an ordinary loss of 54 million yen ($486,000). Public offering price per share is expected to be around 2,070 yen ($18.6).
Fringe81 was launched in 2005 under the former name of RSS Kokokusha (literally meaning RSS ad agency) where they had been focused on advertising in RSS feeds. Rebranded to Fringe81 in 2010, the company has added several new ad tech solutions including Digitalice, a cloud-based ad server platform that allows advertisers and media companies to analyze ad performance as well as user behavior and how their users crawl the websites after viewing ads.
iStyle Capital is the investment arm of iStyle, the company behind Japan’s leading cosmetics review portal @Cosme. TBS Innovation Partners is the investment arm of Tokyo-based private broadcaster Tokyo Broadcasting System, or TBS for short. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. It has been around one year since we last reported (in Japanese) on Zeals. The company, which stems from producing interaction software for robots such as Palmi and Sota, raised an undisclosed amount of funds in January of 2015 from Will Group (TSE:6089), a major human resource (HR) service company in Japan. Zeals announced on Thursday that they have raised over 80 million yen (about $720K US) from Japanese adtech leader FreakOut Holdings (TSE:6094). In conjunction with this, they pivoted from producing the API for creating chatbots called Bot Tree and re-launched it as the chatbot management tool Fanp. The company will collaborate with FreakOut on strengthening their sales, development, in addition to international expansion. While Bot Tree made a dazzling debut in May of 2016, according to Zeals CEO Masahiro Shimizu, there was a continuous struggle in providing the service. Thanks to the offer of a free trial, hundreds of media sites signed up, but on the other hand, the amount of sites leaving was also great. Shimizu, who felt there was a problem in the service, determined to improve it by working together with media companies. The company joined forces with Iid…
L to R: Yusuke Sato (COO, FreakOut Holdings), Nobuyuki Akashi (Executive Officer, FreakOut Holdings), Masahiro Shimizu (CEO, Zeals), Yuzuru Honda (CEO, FreakOut Holdings)
It has been around one year since we last reported (in Japanese) on Zeals. The company, which stems from producing interaction software for robots such as Palmi and Sota, raised an undisclosed amount of funds in January of 2015 from Will Group (TSE:6089), a major human resource (HR) service company in Japan.
Zeals announced on Thursday that they have raised over 80 million yen (about $720K US) from Japanese adtech leader FreakOut Holdings (TSE:6094). In conjunction with this, they pivoted from producing the API for creating chatbots called Bot Tree and re-launched it as the chatbot management tool Fanp. The company will collaborate with FreakOut on strengthening their sales, development, in addition to international expansion.
Fanp Image credit: Zeals
While Bot Tree made a dazzling debut in May of 2016, according to Zeals CEO Masahiro Shimizu, there was a continuous struggle in providing the service. Thanks to the offer of a free trial, hundreds of media sites signed up, but on the other hand, the amount of sites leaving was also great.
Shimizu, who felt there was a problem in the service, determined to improve it by working together with media companies. The company joined forces with Iid (TSE:6038), developing and offering multiple online media projects, to jointly develop services. After getting wind of this, major companies such as En-Japan (HR service company, TSE:4849), the Mainichi Shimbun (newspaper publisher), and Career Design Center (HR media company, TSE:2410) introduced Bot Tree on their media sites. Reflecting the opinions of such companies, Zeals set about making changes to the interface to birth the new and improved Fanp.
Just as The Bridge also distributes newsletters, general media sites often send out email newsletters in order to raise reader retention (actually, engagement more important than retention). In the beginning, the rate of recipients who open these email newsletters is never high. Zeals uses chatbots to guide messenger (Facebook Messenger) users and it is said that the average opening rate is 72%, with an average withdrawal rate of 7.2%. It is 15 times higher than the opening rate of average email newsletters.
When we look at the fee structure of Fanp we might be reminded of Line@, the messenging giant’s ad service plan for business users, but for now Fanp is only available with Facebook Messenger. Fanp generates a database based on profiles and attributes acquired from Facebook when the user begins to use their bot, and it also has a CRM (customer relationship management) function that allows the media owner to reach the user by specifying conditions.
Shimizu recently had an opportunity to listen to Hiroto Kobayashi, CEO of Japanese leading online media publisher Infobahn, and he became aware that the media of the future is an era of increasing the engagement of the audience rather than creating a vast and shallow audience.
Shimizu said:
All the media site owners want to do e-mail newsletters, but the newsletters can’t tell who the readers are or their preferences yet. SNS covers this to a degree, but even if you get a lot of ‘likes’ you might not be able to reach a large audience. There just isn’t any really good channel.
So, next time you’re going to try to make an app, the CPA to get people to download the app becomes high. Ultimately, it is the push notification feature that is useful with apps. If it’s just a push notification, can’t we do that with messenger? Then let’s try chat media on messenger. That’s our proposal.
In addition to launching Fanp, the chatbot management tool designed for online media sites, they also released Fanp Biz for enterprises. While Fanp strives for an alternative channel for attracting users with email newsletters, Fanp Biz is the one specifically for enterprises aiming to replace their product landing pages.
Shimizu explained:
Now that it’s possible to lead users to messenger with Facebook ads, we can also bring in the bots.
By letting the bot accept documents and make appointments, I think we can obtain an overwhelmingly better user response than landing pages do.
The chatbot introduced on Iid’s automobile-focused online media site Response
Previously Zeals was a strong advocate of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in the development of conversational AI engines, but by switching to ”tap talk” (the user does not input text but instead selects the appropriate choice from multiple options presented in button form by the chatbot) between users and chatbots, they can minimize the resources needed for NLP development.
Shimizu added:
If we were still obsessed with natural language analysis like before, it would mean we’d have to develop in each language in order to go international, and obviously this makes it difficult to catch up with overseas competitors. ‘Tap talk’ is our way of overcoming this and moving towards international expansion.
At FreakOut there are many clients in Japan and abroad that use DSP (demand-side platform) / DMP (data management platform) and so on, and because they have headquarters overseas we have great expectations for international development, so that is what led to financing and collaborating with them.
When asked about their future development, Shimizu dropped the phrase “Communication Ad Platform”. This is when the media can use bots to round up readers, and perhaps next up on Shimizu’s plate is to monetize the next bot channel. There is a possibility that the media will be able to charge advertisers by having their bots relay advertising messages or by having them direct users to other sites (at the present time, there is no word from Facebook about regulating this).
Zeals wants to deliver an experience of a hub of bots that can connects them each other to better serve users of Fanp and Fanp Biz.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.” He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him @markbivens. The Japanese translation of this article is available here. There seem to be an abundance of blog posts lately advising on how to get a job in venture capital. Or perhaps more have just come across my desk. One of the recent themes centers on the concept of drafting sample investment memos of potential startups to gain the attention of a VC fund by showcasing your deal screening chops. This is not bad advice. Drafting a hypothetical investment memo could demonstrate not only your ability to think critically about an opportunity, but also your ability to reason thoughtfully on an investment thesis about a market. However, I hold a slightly different view on the most effective way to beginning a career in VC, at least from a European perspective. A common misconception of VCs in Europe is that they spend the bulk of their…
This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.” He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him @markbivens. The Japanese translation of this article is available here.
There seem to be an abundance of blog posts lately advising on how to get a job in venture capital. Or perhaps more have just come across my desk.
One of the recent themes centers on the concept of drafting sample investment memos of potential startups to gain the attention of a VC fund by showcasing your deal screening chops. This is not bad advice. Drafting a hypothetical investment memo could demonstrate not only your ability to think critically about an opportunity, but also your ability to reason thoughtfully on an investment thesis about a market.
However, I hold a slightly different view on the most effective way to beginning a career in VC, at least from a European perspective.
A common misconception of VCs in Europe is that they spend the bulk of their time reviewing new investments. Some prolific investment funds (Kima Ventures in France comes to mind) bear this out, and to their credit have honed their investment process into an efficient machine. The vast majority of European VC funds, however, invest in a relatively limited number of new companies each year on a per partner basis.
Funnel math of course means that for each new deal, probably hundreds of pitch decks were skimmed and dozens of meeting sessions were held. Still, I would posit that the investing partners of the major VC funds spend more time helping their portfolio companies than on any other activity.
I personally spend 1/2 to even up to one full day, per week, on each of my portfolio companies. People tell me that’s on the high side, but we lead deals and always take active board positions in our investments. With that comes a certain level of commitment and responsibility.
So if the principal activity of the job is supporting the venture portfolio, then as an aspiring candidate for a job in VC, your appreciation of this aspect is what interests me most.
Being an effective venture capitalist usually requires drawing upon a diverse set of talents to help your investments overcome obstacles. I like to think of it as a combination of experience, moxie, and humility.
Experience
Have you started companies before? Do you have experience operating and scaling small ventures into large ones? Is there particular industry expertise in your background relevant to our investment sectors? Beyond the obvious domain knowledge, do you have experience in fostering diverse points of view? Do you have experience making decisions under conditions of extreme uncertainty? Are you comfortable being uncomfortable?
Moxie
How will you convey your message and if necessary be persuasive to a management team over whom you hold little official authority? Have legitimacy when holding those difficult conversations with a portfolio CEO? Be your portfolio company’s best unpaid salesperson? Can you be an iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove?
Humility
The VC is not the hero, but rather enables heroes. Are you willing to play this role, or do you prefer to own the glory? Are you willing to be a fixer, clean up messes, soften up arch rivals, handle nasty litigations, and in general play the Michael Clayton on behalf of the portfolio company? Are you intellectually curious and willing to recognize that often, you are not the expert? Are you argumentative, or rather, inquisitive? Are you attached to academic theories, or rather, pragmatic and willing to simply get things done?
The VC industry is changing, no doubt about it (although it’s evolving much more slowly in Europe, I would argue). New models are emerging. There is no universal truth, such as “Only experienced entrepreneurs can become VCs,” or “Journalists and lawyers will never make it unless they come from money.”
On the contrary, practically anyone can become a VC. It’s easier today than ever before (unless of course you’re a woman or minority, but that’s a topic for another rant). There even seems to be a proliferation of self-annointed VCs these days. However, I submit that becoming a VC should not be your goal. Your goal should be to fulfill the role well, to selflessly support and add value to your portfolio companies, and to be a good steward of your own investors’ capital.
The Bridge
Clip Nihonbashi, managed by 31 Ventures which is backed by Mitsui Fudosan, has opened up a new structure housing itself as well as the satellite venture Axelspace (the latter on upper floors of the premises). The collaboration/meeting place was formerly located at CM Building in Nihonbashi nearby, albeit on the sixth floor in addition to being in a building shuttered after 6pm.
Takeshi Hirano
Masaru Ikeda
This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.” He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). You can read more on his blog at 
