Tokyo-based BionicM, the Japanese startup developing the Bio Leg robotic leg prosthesis, announced on Tuesday that it has 370 million yen (about $2.8 million) in a extended series A round. Participating investosr are NVenture Capital (a wholly owned subsidiary of NEC Capital Solutions), Shinsei Corporate Investment, University of Tokyo Innovation (UTokyo IPC), Kiraboshi Capital, Chibagin Capital, Yoshitsune Ido (former CEO, Anker Japan), AIS Partners, and Hao Yan (Representative Director, EPS Holdings).
This brought the startup’s funding sum in its entire series A round up to 920 million yen (over $7 million). Among the investors, UTokyo IPC follows their investment in the first close of the series A round back in September of 2020. They will use the funds to expand sales of the product, research and develop the next model, and elemental technologies such as motion sensing and motion assist technologies as well as hiring talents. In addition to their current markets of Japan and China, the company is looking to expand into the US.
Founded by Xiaojun Sun who himself had to have his right leg amputated at the age of 9 due to osteosarcoma, BionicM began research and development in 2015 at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Information Science and Technology. Of the 10 million potential users of prosthetic legs worldwide, only about 40% actually have access to them because they are expensive or have limited functionality. The company established a corporate entity in 2018 to commercialize the product in order to bring a high-performance prosthetic leg to all those who need it at an affordable price.
Product showcased in in Beijing in October of 2021. Image credit: BionicM
According to BionicM, more than 99% of the global prosthetic leg market deals with passive type, and has not benefited from the technological advancements that have taken place in recent years with the proliferation of robotic technology. Passive leg prostheses not only place a heavy physical burden on the user, but also place a mental burden on the user, as they are unable to walk naturally or take turns walking up and down stairs in both legs, making them uncomfortable to watch. Robotic prostheses have the potential to solve this problem.
Since the launch of the Bio Leg commercial version in Japan and China last year, the company has been offering the product via a B2B2C model where robotic leg modules are offered to artificial limb factories to be built into sockets for lower-limb amputees. We were told that a typical powered prosthetic leg costs over 10 million yen ($77,000) in contrast with a passive type for about 1 million yen ($7,700). Bio Leg is available for less than one-third the price of a powered one while adopting robotic technology.
Acquisition of gait data with sensors mounted on Bio Leg. Image credit: BionicM
Given the price tag, government subsidies are likely to be essential for the robotic leg to become widely available. The company is currently testing the product with the aim to apply for such a program next year. Although there are many prosthetic leg users in China, the market for high-end ones is apparently small due to a lack of public support. Therefore, the company is considering expanding into the US market with FDA approval in mind where there is a possibility of obtaining medical insurance coverage.
BionicM intends to explore new possibilities by taking advantage of the product’s ability to acquire gait data as well as its function as a robotic prosthesis. Although prosthetists and physical therapists who assist in the fitting and use of prosthetic limbs are professionals with specialized training, they often rely on their own expertise and knowledge. If the rehabilitation process can be visualized using data, communication with users will become easier and rehabilitation can be expected to become more efficient.
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). He is the Managing Partner of Shizen Capital (formerly known as Tachi.ai Ventures) in Japan. You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him @markbivens. The Japanese translation of this article is available here. For startup founders raising venture funding, securing a commitment from a Lead VC is a critical milestone, arguably the most important, in the fundraising process itself. The Lead VC makes a commitment, they go out on a limb. This reassures other investors to co-invest and thus enables a timely closing. This proves particularly necessary at the earliest stages of a startup, when uncertainty is highest, and when the founder’s vision for their venture appears at its craziest. In my experience with early-stage venture investing over a variety of geographies (first the U.S., then Europe, now Japan), Japan undoubtedly strikes me as the most demonstrative example of the relevance of this principle. The pool of VC funds in Japan willing to…
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). He is the Managing Partner of Shizen Capital (formerly known as Tachi.ai Ventures) in Japan. You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him @markbivens. The Japanese translation of this article is available here.
For startup founders raising venture funding, securing a commitment from a Lead VC is a critical milestone, arguably the most important, in the fundraising process itself. The Lead VC makes a commitment, they go out on a limb. This reassures other investors to co-invest and thus enables a timely closing. This proves particularly necessary at the earliest stages of a startup, when uncertainty is highest, and when the founder’s vision for their venture appears at its craziest.
In my experience with early-stage venture investing over a variety of geographies (first the U.S., then Europe, now Japan), Japan undoubtedly strikes me as the most demonstrative example of the relevance of this principle. The pool of VC funds in Japan willing to invest at the Pre-seed, Seed, and even Series A stages of a startup is far too inadequate relative to the supply of talented entrepreneurs with ambitious projects in this large market.
Moreover, for the limited group of VC funds who are willing to invest at the early stages, scarcely any will volunteer to lead the deal. “Come back once you’ve found a Lead VC,” is an all-too-common refrain, if it’s not the old standby of, “Come back when you’re ready for the Series A…”
What is a Lead VC ?
In nascent startup ecosystems, sometimes the interpretation of the very definition of a Lead VC can be unclear. Here’s how I define it.
The Lead VC in a fundraising round is the VC fund who makes the first firm commitment to invest in the startup. They express their commitment in writing, and they specify the terms and valuation of their proposed investment.
Once agreement with the founders is reached, the Lead VC structures the fundraising round and establishes the schedule for signing and closing. They also generally perform the bulk of the due diligence effort for the investment transaction. The Lead VC does not necessarily represent the largest check in an investment round, but they inevitably serve to catalyze the fundraising process with the commitment and structure they bring.
Why the trepidation?
It is very tempting for prospective investors in a startup to take a wait-and-see approach. Investors love to collect data to comfort their internal decision-making process. VC operators have a fiduciary duty to their own fund’s investors, so it is their obligation to perform sufficient due diligence on any prospective investment.
Making decisions with incomplete information is inherently uncomfortable. This is especially true in a broader historical environment which was unforgiving of mistakes and stigmatized failures. Becoming comfortable to embrace uncertainty, especially when it involves investing other people’s money, takes time. It is perfectly understandable that new VCs — and CVCs for that matter — often defer investment decisions into early-stage companies until substantial validation comes in.
This produces a pair of diverging goals. The founder aspires to close their fundraising round as quickly as possible so that they can return to their core mission of building the business. The investor, on the other hand, prefers to wait for further validation. Phrases like, “Come back for a future round,” or “Come back once you’ve found a Lead VC,” are classic symptoms of an investor waiting for further validation.
However, our belief is that venture investing is impossible to perform successfully without a conviction to pull the trigger on a deal in the context of incomplete information. Innovation involves uncertainty. Early-stage companies do not have all the answers.
Having said this, there is nothing inherently wrong with VC funds whose strategy is to follow, not lead. Some funds, such as CVCs who invest for corporate synergies, prefer to let independent financial VC funds set the terms and valuation. Other funds simply feel more comfortable acting in a follower role, and have established such an expectation with their fund LPs. Finally, for reasons of limited bandwidth at a given time, some VC funds will lead some deals while serving as a follower in others. Serving as the Lead VC in a transaction requires far more effort than merely joining a syndicate as a follower.
Transparency is the key
Because the Lead / Follower disposition of a VC investor is amorphous, not to mention that it is often further obfuscated with misleading marketing statements, I would submit that one of the best questions a founder can ask an investor in their initial discussions is something like the following:
Does your fund generally serve as Lead VC on new investments, or rather as follower?
or
Should our conversations about a prospective investment from your fund progress favorably, would you hypothetically serve in the role of Lead VC or prefer to follow?
Singapore-registered Bunzz, the startup behind a development platform focused on Dapps (decentralized applications leveraging blockchain technologies) under the same name, announced on Tuesday that it has secured about 600 million yen (about $4.5 million US) in a seed round. Since its official launch back in January of 2022, the platform has attracted over 8,000 Dapp developers worldwide. Participating investors in this round are: Arriba Studio Coincheck Labs DG Daiwa Ventures gmjp GMO Web3 GREE Ventures Hyperithm Kotaro Tamura Kazutaka Mori mint Spiral Ventures 01Booster Capital Ceres Corporation (TSE: 3696) Bunzz was incorporated in Singapore in May of 2022 by Japanese serial entrepreneur Kenta Akutsu as a spin-off of his Tokyo-based web3 startup LasTrust. Prior to Bunzz, he and his team developed a blockchain certificate issuing service for enterprises, which was later sold to CyberLinks (TSE:3683). Bunzz initially started as a project at LasTrust in 2021. The platform offers an infrastructure for developing smart contracts, which is essential for Dapp development. By making smart contract development processes more secure and easier, it lowers the barrier for developers who do not yet have extensive knowledge or experience in Dapp development. The company claims that more than 2,800 Dapp projects have been deployed…
Image credit: Bunzz
Singapore-registered Bunzz, the startup behind a development platform focused on Dapps (decentralized applications leveraging blockchain technologies) under the same name, announced on Tuesday that it has secured about 600 million yen (about $4.5 million US) in a seed round. Since its official launch back in January of 2022, the platform has attracted over 8,000 Dapp developers worldwide. Participating investors in this round are:
Arriba Studio
Coincheck Labs
DG Daiwa Ventures
gmjp
GMO Web3
GREE Ventures
Hyperithm
Kotaro Tamura
Kazutaka Mori
mint
Spiral Ventures
01Booster Capital
Ceres Corporation (TSE: 3696)
Bunzz was incorporated in Singapore in May of 2022 by Japanese serial entrepreneur Kenta Akutsu as a spin-off of his Tokyo-based web3 startup LasTrust. Prior to Bunzz, he and his team developed a blockchain certificate issuing service for enterprises, which was later sold to CyberLinks (TSE:3683). Bunzz initially started as a project at LasTrust in 2021.
The platform offers an infrastructure for developing smart contracts, which is essential for Dapp development. By making smart contract development processes more secure and easier, it lowers the barrier for developers who do not yet have extensive knowledge or experience in Dapp development.
The company claims that more than 2,800 Dapp projects have been deployed onto the blockchain via the platform, which helps them gain recognition of developers as the “Web3 version of GitHub”. In the future, they plan to introduce token incentives to encourage users to reuse useful smart contract codes developed by other Dapp developers via the platform.
Headquartered in Hokkaido, Japanese space startup Intersteller Technologies announced on Monday that it has closed a series D round with 3.8 billion yen (about $30 million US) in funding. The round brought the company’s funding sum up to date to over 5.4 billion yen (over $42 million US) as far as we know. Investors participating in the round, including those previously announced, are: SBI Investment Nisso Kosan (TSE: 6569) Satudra Holdings (TSE: 3544) Reiichi Sasaki (President, Ichigo Ventures) De Aardappeleters Norimasa Yamamoto (President, Heiwa Shuzo) Kazunori Asada (Chairman, Howdy) Hiroshi Yamamoto (Representative Director, Smaregi) Suncor Industries CyberAgent (TSE: 4751) Teruyasu Nishino (President, Yuko Kai) INCLUSIVE Makoto Fujita (CEO, Inclusive Seven Stars Capital Onsen Dojo Masaki Yamamoto (CEO, Chatwork) RDS Mizuki Nakajima (CEO, Coly) Anna Nakajima (Co-founder, Coly) IMV (TSE: 7760) Tomoya Nakano (President/CEO, i-plug) Kadokawa (TSE: 9468) Hagiwara Construction Industries Interstellar Technologies’ MOMO No. 7 and MOMO No. 6 rockets reached space in July of 2021, which let the company mark three successes in terms of reaching space with the MOMO No. 3 rocket launched back in May of 2019. The company is currently in full-scale development of the ZERO rocket which is aimed to be launched in FY2023. The…
The Interstellar Technologies team Image credit: Interstellar Technologies
Headquartered in Hokkaido, Japanese space startup Intersteller Technologies announced on Monday that it has closed a series D round with 3.8 billion yen (about $30 million US) in funding. The round brought the company’s funding sum up to date to over 5.4 billion yen (over $42 million US) as far as we know. Investors participating in the round, including those previously announced, are:
Interstellar Technologies’ MOMO No. 7 and MOMO No. 6 rockets reached space in July of 2021, which let the company mark three successes in terms of reaching space with the MOMO No. 3 rocket launched back in May of 2019. The company is currently in full-scale development of the ZERO rocket which is aimed to be launched in FY2023. The funds will be used for research and development, capital investment, hiring talents, and material costs to further accelerate the development of the ZERO rocket.
Interstellar Technologies aims to realize a future in which space is within reach for everyone by providing low-cost, convenient space transportation services. Establishing its satellite development-focused subsidiary Our Stars in early 2021, the company is working on offering rockets and satellites in an one-stop solution. In recent years, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Japan and Western countries have been unable to use Russian rockets, which used to account for about 20% of the world’s space transportation, and Interstellar Technologies sees this situation as a tailwind for its business.
Japanese sake brewing startup Wakaze announced on Wednesday that it has secured about 1 billion yen (about $7.5 million) in a series B round. The round was led by Jafco Group (TSE:8595) with participation from Takara Holdings (TSE:2531), DBJ Capital, Egg Forward, SMBC Venture Capital in addition to an unnamed angel investor. This brought their funding sum to date up to about 1.5 billion yen ($11.3 million) as far as disclosed. Jafco Group followed their series A round investment. Wakaze will use the funds to expand its business in Europe, the U.S., and the Asian region centered on China through strenthening advertising, establishing an office and hiring personnel in the U.S. in addition to expanding its production facilities in France. The company has partnered with Takara Holdings, one of the investors in this round, to produce Wakaze’s sake products at the manufacturing facility of Takara’s US subsidiary, and will also consider similar expansion efforts in China. Wakaze aims to bring the wave of craft sake and D2C to the world of sake. Prior to founding the company back in 2016, CEO Takuma Inagawa studied at the École Centrale Paris as a French government scholarship student and then worked as a…
Image credit: Wakaze
Japanese sake brewing startup Wakaze announced on Wednesday that it has secured about 1 billion yen (about $7.5 million) in a series B round. The round was led by Jafco Group (TSE:8595) with participation from Takara Holdings (TSE:2531), DBJ Capital, Egg Forward, SMBC Venture Capital in addition to an unnamed angel investor. This brought their funding sum to date up to about 1.5 billion yen ($11.3 million) as far as disclosed. Jafco Group followed their series A round investment.
Wakaze
will use the funds to expand its business in Europe, the U.S., and the
Asian region centered on China through strenthening advertising,
establishing an office and hiring personnel in the U.S. in addition to
expanding its production facilities in France. The company has partnered
with Takara Holdings, one of the investors in this round, to produce
Wakaze’s sake products at the manufacturing facility of Takara’s US
subsidiary, and will also consider similar expansion efforts in China.
Wakaze aims to bring the wave of craft sake and D2C to the world of sake. Prior to founding the company back in 2016, CEO Takuma Inagawa studied at the École Centrale Paris as a French government scholarship student and then worked as a business strategy consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. In addition to developing new sake brewing recipes in Japan’s eastern prefecture of Yamagata, the company established a sake brewery called Kura Grand Paris in Suburban Paris back in November of 2019 to offer locally brewed Japanese sake for the French market.
It has become my New Year’s practice to organize the schedule of startup conferences around the world to take place in the first half of the new year. I have suspended the practice since 2020 because of the cancellation of many conferences due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But I resumed it this holiday season, which made me recognize a few things. First, many conferences have been disappeared since the start of the pandemic (some of them are temporarily suspended but others were bankrupt or completely shut down) while new ones have been created. As livestreaming has become the norm, it’s no longer necessary to make a long-haul flight to take part in a conference if you are to only to hear keynotes. Conference organizers are now required to provide a new value proposition. Another thing is that it no longer makes less sense for each country to compete for the title of the world’s top startup hub each other. It has been a long time since so-called almighty Silicon Valley playbook was debunked while one of the reasons is that hubs for each industry vertical have come to stand out: London for finance, Los Angeles for entertainment, Chicago for Food…
It has become my New Year’s practice to organize the schedule of startup conferences around the world to take place in the first half of the new year. I have suspended the practice since 2020 because of the cancellation of many conferences due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But I resumed it this holiday season, which made me recognize a few things.
First, many conferences have been disappeared since the start of the pandemic (some of them are temporarily suspended but others were bankrupt or completely shut down) while new ones have been created. As livestreaming has become the norm, it’s no longer necessary to make a long-haul flight to take part in a conference if you are to only to hear keynotes. Conference organizers are now required to provide a new value proposition.
Another thing is that it no longer makes less sense for each country to compete for the title of the world’s top startup hub each other. It has been a long time since so-called almighty Silicon Valley playbook was debunked while one of the reasons is that hubs for each industry vertical have come to stand out: London for finance, Los Angeles for entertainment, Chicago for Food Tech, Boston for life sciences, Zug for web3, Tel Aviv for cybersecurity, and so on.
Entrepreneurs and investors alike are now thinking more critically about the benefits they can expect from attending conferences. After the cancellation of both WebSummit Tokyo and Barkation conferences, Tokyo has now no major international startup conferences. What kind of startup hub can the Japanese capital aspire to be?
It was around last fall when we began to hear the word “SusHiTech Tokyo” from the mouth of Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike. The acronym stands for “Sustatinable High City-Tech. Tokyo,” a generic term for a variety of ideas and technologies for overcoming urban challenges. The abbreviation was chosen to stand for sushi, which is needless to say associated with Japan, to make it easier for foreigners to remember the brand.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government will hold a startup conference called City-Tech.Tokyo at the International Forum on February 27-28 under the SusHi Tech concept. Since this is the first edition and they are so much focused on attracting foreign startups, the details of the conference have not yet well known to us. So, we could have a a chance to speak with Manabu Miyasaka, Vice Governor of Tokyo. He leads in organizing the conference.
Cities, the next battlefield for tech players
Miyasaka speaks at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, November 2022. Image credit: Bureau of Digital Services, Tokyo Metropolitan Government
Unlike industry-specific terms such as FinTech or HealthTech, City-Tech is broadly defined as a concept that encourages technology solutions to unique urban issues. The term was perhaps not well received overseas at first for the vagueness, but subsequently it became very well received after Koike began saying SusHiTech and then Miyasaka introduced it at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona.
More than 10,000 people from Japan and abroad are expected to attend City-Tech Tokyo. Keynote speakers will include Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and Kengo Kuma, one of the world’s renowned architects and a special professor at Tokyo University. In addition, 100 cities from 30 countries will participate while two-thirds of the 300 booths will be exhibited by startups coming from overseas.
Miyasaka says,
Various cities are working on climate crisis, energy issues, new transportation systems, and so on. These are issues for each city but also ones common to all humanity in the world. We also need to do more open innovation activities among local governments. The solutions that work in Tokyo may work in other cities, and vice versa.
I believe that cities will be the next battlefield for tech players. Seventy percent of the world’s population lives in cities, so I think the world will start competing in exploring how technologies can change cities. Therefore, not only startups and companies, but also governments will participate there. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has been leading our open innovation activities, but there is no need to limit it to only Japanese startups as long as they can provide stable services.
In parallel with City.Tech Tokyo, the metropolitan government will hold the G-NETS (Global City Network for Sustainability) conference near their office building, which will bring together the heads of local governments from Japan and abroad. Each city may still have a different motivation and intention for their participation because this year’s City-Tech.Tokyo is the first edition but is expected to annually take place from now on.
What the conference aims at?
City-Tech.Tokyo website Image credit: Tokyo Metropolitan Government
So, what is the goal of City-Tech Tokyo? In a typical startup conference, one of the ultimate goals is for entrepreneurs to find and attract investors, and for investors to find promising startups to invest in. In Web3 conferences, attendees may expect to increase connections with other startups. So what about City-Tech.Tokyo?
Miyasaka says,
On the risk side, the topic includes the climate crisis as mentioned before, but on the upside, I think it is the issue of new employment. There are many jobs that exist today but did not exist 30 years ago. For example, your media business could not have existed 30 years ago. The jobs that exist today were created by startups 30 or 50 years ago.
That’s true for the future too. It is startups that create the jobs for the future. If startups did not create the jobs of the future, we would be forced to just stay on the jobs we have now, which would result in lower wages. If startups can make their business successful, it can lead to creating affluent lifestyles from it and create more jobs. I think that is very important.
Startup Genome annually publishes a ranking of startup-friendly cities, and some of our readers may recall that Tokyo joined the top 10 ranking in 2021 while it dropped to the 12th place last year after being overtaken by Seoul. It is an index published by a private organization, but many officials in local governments are paying attention to the rank. Miyasaka is one such person.
He added,
Of course, we (Tokyo) would like to be ranked higher . But I don’t think there are any cities where only startups are active. Such a city should be vibrant in art, entertainment, and all kinds of things. I don’t think you can start up a business in a city that is culturally stagnant.
Tokyo vice governor MIyasaka speaking with Bridge’s Masaru Ikeda. Photo by Shun Sasaki / Bridge
Paradoxically, in a society with mature infrastructure like Japan, it may be difficult to bring out a unicorn with a simple service like what we usually see in developing countries. However, since developing countries basically aim to advance themselves into developed economies over time, there could be opportunities for startups from developed countries can leverage the “Time Machine” business model even in emerging markets except for leapfrog phenomenon.
He said,
Ecosystems in developed countries tend to be found in rather affluent cities. I think Tokyo is on that side of them. What such a city needs is a challenger. You can challenge yourself in music, film industry, and whatever. But If you do it in business, it means a startup. Attracting challengers in all genres is an important part of a city.
Last year, the Kishida administration announced the strengthening of the startup policy, while the Tokyo Metropolitan Government also announced a strategy called Global Innovation with Startups. Since the launch of Bridge, we’ve seen neither the Japanese Government nor the Metropolitan Government have put startup support a top priority in their agenda in such a massive way. Miyasaka expressed his aspiration that the conference will give an opportunity to the world to witness such a historical turning point.
Masaru Ikeda
The Bridge
