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Japan’s virtual YouTuber management agency Cover files for IPO valued at $320M

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Cover, the startup offering management production services of VTubers (short for “virtual YouTubers”), announced on Friday that its IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Growth Market on March 27 with plans to offer 1.5 million shares for public subscription and to sell 1,864,100 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 10,927,400 shares. The underwriting will be co-led by Mizuho Securities and Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities while Cover’s ticker code will be 5253. Based on the estimated issue price of 710 yen (about $5.3) and total number of issued shares (61,124,200), the company will be valued at 43 billion yen (about $320 million). Its share price range will be released on March 7 with bookbuilding scheduled to start on March 8 and pricing on March 14. According to the consolidated statement as of March 2022, they posted revenue of 13.6 billion yen (about $101 million) with an ordinary profit of 1.85 billion yen (about $13.7 million). Founded back in June of 2016, Cover started with producing virtual reality content followed by releasing the Ping Pong League game back in…

Image credit: Cover

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Cover, the startup offering management production services of VTubers (short for “virtual YouTubers”), announced on Friday that its IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Growth Market on March 27 with plans to offer 1.5 million shares for public subscription and to sell 1,864,100 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 10,927,400 shares. The underwriting will be co-led by Mizuho Securities and Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities while Cover’s ticker code will be 5253.

Based on the estimated issue price of 710 yen (about $5.3) and total number of issued shares (61,124,200), the company will be valued at 43 billion yen (about $320 million). Its share price range will be released on March 7 with bookbuilding scheduled to start on March 8 and pricing on March 14. According to the consolidated statement as of March 2022, they posted revenue of 13.6 billion yen (about $101 million) with an ordinary profit of 1.85 billion yen (about $13.7 million).

Founded back in June of 2016, Cover started with producing virtual reality content followed by releasing the Ping Pong League game back in 2017. The company launched Vtuber Tokino Sora in September of 2017, which became later a smash hit.

Subsequenly, Cover launched the Hololive female VTuber group which later led to their Vtuber agency business called Hololive Production. The company now has 71 Vtubers (48 for Japan, 9 for Indonesia, and 14 for English-speaking countries), and 31 out of them have earned over 1 million followers in their YouTube channel. The total number of YouTube Channel followers of all VTubers in the company has exceeded 10 million.

Cover’s monetization hevily depends on Vtuber and its related businesses such as producing livestreaming content, live performance events, merchandising, and licensing and tie-ups. Led by CEO Motoaki Tanigo (38.2%), their major sharholders include Strive (17.3%), Valley (5.5%), CTO Kazuyuki Fukuda (5%), and Mizuho Capital (3.6%).

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Japan Lead VC Radar – A glance of the most active lead VCs in 2022 (Infographic)

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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. As is customary, we are publishing once again our annual VC Radar for Japan. The VC Radar reflects Japan’s most active Lead VCs. For the 2022 edition, this infographic depicts the number of new investments led by Japan’s independent venture capital funds into domestic startups last year. Only investments in which the VC served as Lead investor for a startup that was not already in their portfolio are counted here. We believe this is an important tool for Japan’s growing startup ecosystem. You can read more about our rationale here (special thanks to Kanako for compiling this data !). [One additional note: we strive for full accuracy on this infographic and apologize for any mistakes. Feel free to direct any…

mark-bivens_portrait

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.


As is customary, we are publishing once again our annual VC Radar for Japan. The VC Radar reflects Japan’s most active Lead VCs.

For the 2022 edition, this infographic depicts the number of new investments led by Japan’s independent venture capital funds into domestic startups last year. Only investments in which the VC served as Lead investor for a startup that was not already in their portfolio are counted here.

We believe this is an important tool for Japan’s growing startup ecosystem. You can read more about our rationale here (special thanks to Kanako for compiling this data !).

[One additional note: we strive for full accuracy on this infographic and apologize for any mistakes. Feel free to direct any requested corrections to [email protected]].

Click to enlarge.

On the importance of a Lead VC

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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…

mark-bivens_portrait

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?

In conversation with vice governor Manabu Miyasaka on City-Tech. Tokyo conference

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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…

Tokyo’s vice governor Manabu Miyasaka
Photo by Shun Sasaki / Bridge

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.

Forecasts for 2023 from five visionary VCs

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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. In many ways, 2022 has been a turbulent year. Accordingly, the timing couldn’t be better to solicit guidance from some insightful venture investors on the year ahead. As usual, I am happy to elevate the voices of VCs beyond the usual Silicon Valley household names. Once again, I am pleased to publish the wisdom of an all-female cast of VCs for this season’s set of predictions, May 2023 bring us further enlightenment. Happy new year ! Miwa Seki – MPower Partners, Japan 2022 saw an increased scrutiny and skepticism around ESG investment. We see a shift of focus from E to S, especially in the areas of human capital engagement. DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) is an essential element of…

mark-bivens_portrait

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.


In many ways, 2022 has been a turbulent year. Accordingly, the timing couldn’t be better to solicit guidance from some insightful venture investors on the year ahead.

As usual, I am happy to elevate the voices of VCs beyond the usual Silicon Valley household names. Once again, I am pleased to publish the wisdom of an all-female cast of VCs for this season’s set of predictions,
May 2023 bring us further enlightenment. Happy new year !

Miwa Seki – MPower Partners, Japan

2022 saw an increased scrutiny and skepticism around ESG investment. We see a shift of focus from E to S, especially in the areas of human capital engagement. DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) is an essential element of that and will become a main focus by the ESG focused investment.

We have conducted research on the IPO return gap between male-lead startups and female/minority-lead startups in Japan. The result shows higher return per the money raised at the time of the IPO by female/minority-lead startups.

Our own start-up survey also revealed higher employee engagement in startups which integrated ESG to their management practices. With such evidence, 2023 will see more focus on DEI among the startup and VC community.

Asumi Ota – D4V, Japan

I have high expectations for businesses that aim to globally promote content, technology, and products originating from Japan (such as manga and high-quality “Made in Japan” products). Due to the diversification of human resources working in Japanese venture companies and the growing interest in Japan from global investors, I sense an increase in the number of entrepreneurs who are trying to promote Japan’s high quality goods overseas in various fields.

What we have continued to focus on as of last year are the industries and sectors that had not been able to embark on major digitalization reforms in the past, despite having the needs for such transformations. For example, the healthcare industry has been considered a difficult industry for digitalization due to personal information protection and other regulations. However, it is on the verge of a remarkable evolution, triggered by moves to promote medical device certification of therapeutic apps and the spread of telemedicine.

The pandemic has created a situation where companies and industries that have followed legacy methods have been forced to change, creating room for venture companies that can quickly prototype novel ideas. In these business areas, collaboration with stakeholders such as large companies, governments, and local governments is important. With the support of policies and public policy that promote digitization, openness, and venture investment, the foundations are now in place for startups to make significant progress.

Finally, as the severe economic state continues, each company will continue to be polarized with respect to startup funding procurement. Due to these conditions, we expect that profitable management and ESG initiatives will become even more important in the future. Consumers are placing more emphasis on a company’s mission and story, and large companies are increasing their ESG-related investments. Therefore, funds will be concentrated on companies that not only have ESG initiatives but also have the storytelling skills to communicate these initiatives.

Janneke Niessen – CapitalT, Netherlands

Climate change is hot—no pun intended. Our portfolio companies in climate are doing really well, with much business growth and interest from the VC community.

I expect this trend to strengthen in 2023, which will hopefully help accelerate the reversal of climate change on a global scale.

In addition, hardware companies in this space, for whom it has always been really tough to raise capital, have more fundraising options in the new year due to the accelerated interest in climate tech.

Ayako Miyahara – Genesia Ventures, Japan

New Startup Fundraising: Global market conditions will lead startup investors to be more selective. On the other hand, it is believed that DPI (Distributions to Paid-In Capital) will begin to sprout in the Japanese domestic vintage funds that are gradually maturing, and attention will be paid to the new flow of funds leveraged by such track records.

Impact investing: The startup ecosystem is being restructured in line with the “New Capitalism” of the Kishida administration. In addition to economic return, as the importance of social impact grows, discussions on environmental improvements, including evaluation methods in capital markets, are expected to get underway.

Linkages with Asia: Southeast Asia and India remain promising markets due to their strong economic growth, the expanding future potential of the digital domain, and the abundance of opportunities for Japanese companies to exit. India, in particular, is expected to overtake China as the world’s most populous country by 2023, attracting attention from investors who are avoiding the US-China conflict and the Russia-Ukraine war. Japanese companies are increasingly moving into India, especially in the manufacturing sector, so more focus is expected on the infratech that is developing in this sector.

Haruka Takamori – Strive, Japan

AI Democratization Will Take a Leap

In 2023, we can expect to see even more progress in digital product development overall due to technological advances in AI.
With the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, AI can be easily applied to product development and creation without high-level specialized machine learning knowledge. In other words, it is now possible to create low-code, no-code, generative products that meet any objectives through AI API integration with unprecedented precision and efficiency.

If we categorize output by AI into linguistic and non-linguistic categories, the universalization of programming knowledge in the linguistic analysis domain, and the automation of the elucidation of psycho-cognitive relationships in product design in the non-linguistic analysis domain, is expected to progress further, and therefore increase the demand for personalized products as well.

Last but not least, demand for services that not only streamline and optimize the product creation process but also perform verification of AI-generated products such as QA and UI/UX testing tools is also expected to increase.

Four common mistakes when pitching startups onstage

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This is a guest post by Sushi Suzuki. Sushi is an associate professor at the Kyoto Institute of Technology, where he teaches design thinking, product innovation, and entrepreneurship. He is also the founder of Kyoto Startup Summer School, Japan’s most intense entrepreneurship program conducted fully in English. Sushi is an active startup-pitching coach who has helped over one hundred startups around the world improve their presentation, on-stage presence, and delivery. Sushi was born in Kyoto, Japan but spent over fifteen years in the US and over five in Europe and has traveled to over sixty countries. He holds a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and B.A. in Studio Arts from Rice University. Over the years, I have had the fortune of listening to a lot of startup pitches as well as coaching at some of the biggest events in the world including Slush Tokyo and Techsauce. While the importance of pitches is universally acknowledged, few entrepreneurs seem to take the time to design a compelling presentation. Through my coaching experiences, I realized that there are common mistakes that entrepreneurs often make. Here are four of them. Mistake 1: Too much information in…

sushi-suzuki
Sushi Suzuki

This is a guest post by Sushi Suzuki.

Sushi is an associate professor at the Kyoto Institute of Technology, where he teaches design thinking, product innovation, and entrepreneurship. He is also the founder of Kyoto Startup Summer School, Japan’s most intense entrepreneurship program conducted fully in English.

Sushi is an active startup-pitching coach who has helped over one hundred startups around the world improve their presentation, on-stage presence, and delivery.

Sushi was born in Kyoto, Japan but spent over fifteen years in the US and over five in Europe and has traveled to over sixty countries. He holds a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and B.A. in Studio Arts from Rice University.


Photo by Flickr user Roger H. Goun, used under a Creative Commons license

Over the years, I have had the fortune of listening to a lot of startup pitches as well as coaching at some of the biggest events in the world including Slush Tokyo and Techsauce. While the importance of pitches is universally acknowledged, few entrepreneurs seem to take the time to design a compelling presentation. Through my coaching experiences, I realized that there are common mistakes that entrepreneurs often make. Here are four of them.

Mistake 1: Too much information in the slides

The pitch deck has become a ubiquitous tool in the startup world for entrepreneurs to explain their startup via a compact set of slides. Google “startup pitch” and there are countless articles and templates for budding entrepreneurs. However, a pitch deck is drastically different from presentation deck.

Comparison between a pitch deck and a presentation deck (click to enlarge)

First and foremost, the pitch deck is a standalone document. It is almost always sent via e-mail, and the entrepreneur is not there to narrate through the slides. Therefore, all the necessary information needs to be contained within the slides so that the content makes sense to first time readers. A lot of advice online for creating a pitch pertain to the standalone pitch deck. Following these advice, however, will lead to a terrible presentation deck with too much text.

Even if the entrepreneur is not using their pitch deck as a presentation deck, more often than not, the slides will contain too much information for the audience. PowerPoint and other presentation softwares, with their standard templates, lead presenters to create outlines with titles and bullet points. I always tell presenters that they should be the primary focus of the presentation, and the slides are supplemental material. If the slides contain too much information, the audience will shift their attention from listening to the presenter to reading and understanding the slides. The best presenters, such as Steve Jobs, have minimal content on the slides which are there to reinforce the key point being made.

Mistake 2: Not having a strong hook

We live in a world where people have increasingly short attention spans. Everyday, we are bombarded with so much information that we have become very good at tuning out. If an entrepreneur is not able to grab the attention of the audience in the first ten to twenty seconds, they will tune out for the rest of the presentation. Therefore, it is important to have a very strong hook at the beginning to draw the audience in for the rest of the pitch.

There are many ways of designing the hook and it should be different for every startup. Often, the best way is to surprise the audience. This could be done through an unexpected fact about your industry or field or a user story that emotionally draws in the audience. Another way could be to engage the audience by asking them a question or having them relate back to a time. This makes the presentation more personal for the audience. The hook should be unique to every startup, but every startup pitch needs a hook.

The worst way to start a presentation is to spend ten to twenty seconds just introducing yourself and the startup and not starting the presentation. This is especially common in Japanese pitch events where entrepreneurs politely and modestly introduce themselves and thank the audience for being there. This is unnecessary and a waste of time.

Mistake 3: Forgetting the call to action

Small pitch competitions bring together dozens of people. The finals for a large pitch competition can have over a thousand people in the audience including countless VCs and journalists. This exposure is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs, but many forget to be direct.

Call to action is an instruction for the audience that almost always comes at the end of a pitch. This could include statements such as “download our demo today and try Pinchako” or “we are looking to raise $500,000 to enter the European market.” Startups are always looking for something and time on stage is the perfect moment to ask, but many forget to do so.

Mistake 4: Being forgettable

There are many, many startups in the world, and most will fail. This is a fact of life. While there may be exceptions, very rarely do startups succeed by blending in. The goal of a startup is to be exceptional, and this is no different on stage at a pitch competition.

Yet I see so many entrepreneurs trying to follow a template or copy pitches they’ve seen. While there are best practices in designing pitches, following a formula often leads to bland and forgettable pitches. An entrepreneur will give one pitch at a competition, but judges sit through a dozen of more, and most will be forgotten by the end of the day.

There is no magic formula for uniqueness. I’ve seen founders rapping, dressing up in ninja costumes , and taking the audience through an emotional journey through a life of a young Indian mother. Every startup is different, and like the hook, there should be a unique angle for every startup to be memorable.

Presenting is one of those things that seem easy but is difficult to do well. Startup pitches are extremely challenging because of short duration and high intensity. There is very little room for mistakes and very little time to recover. I have seen founders with great ideas flounder on stage and fail to get their point across. I have also seen pitches executed perfectly even if the underlying idea seemed pedestrian.

Creating a great pitch is no different from creating a company or a product. It takes thought, planning, practice, and lots of failures. If you are preparing to pitch, in addition to avoiding the four common mistakes above, my advice is to think through what you want to communicate with your pitch and design your presentation accordingly. Don’t start by stitching together information you have in a haphazard way. Also, I highly suggest prototyping and testing. Gather friends and family, ideally people who do not know much about your startup, and try your pitch. See how much they understood about your idea, and if your point is coming through. They say, “practice makes perfect,” and this is very true about startup pitching.


If you are interested in this subject matter, I recently published the book “Riveting: Startup Pitches that Persuade from Storytelling to Design.” In the book I cover the various aspects of an onstage startup pitch including structure, delivery, and modes of presentation. The book contains pointers to many examples and borrows inspiration from fields such as graphic design and advertising. It is now available on paperback and ebook from all Amazon marketplaces ( Japan / US ).

Shortening feedback loops

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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. One of the mindsets which we regularly encourage our portfolio companies to espouse is the pursuit of shortening feedback loops. Shortening feedback loops, or “increasing clock speed,” is fundamental to a startup’s ability to navigate a dynamic market. Accelerating the opportunity for feedback underpins the minimum viable product concept in the Lean Startup philosophy. The opposite strategy to pursuing short feedback loops is to research a topic profoundly before acting, theorize on every aspect of a project in painstaking detail, and prepare contingency plans for every imaginable outcome. This approach might be effective for long-duration projects, and is generally considered compulsory when mistakes have life-threatening consequences. (Even then however, one could argue that hundreds of thousands of lives could have…

mark-bivens_portrait

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.


One of the mindsets which we regularly encourage our portfolio companies to espouse is the pursuit of shortening feedback loops.

Shortening feedback loops, or “increasing clock speed,” is fundamental to a startup’s ability to navigate a dynamic market. Accelerating the opportunity for feedback underpins the minimum viable product concept in the Lean Startup philosophy.

The opposite strategy to pursuing short feedback loops is to research a topic profoundly before acting, theorize on every aspect of a project in painstaking detail, and prepare contingency plans for every imaginable outcome. This approach might be effective for long-duration projects, and is generally considered compulsory when mistakes have life-threatening consequences. (Even then however, one could argue that hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved in the Covid-19 pandemic had governments allowed for shorter feedback loops on vaccine safety testing among consenting and fully-informed volunteers). Regardless, such an approach is nearly always a handicap in startups

The ability to iterate: design, build an MVP, deploy, collect market feedback, repeat — is crucial for a startup to find product market fit. Testing iterations of its product with real customers is the fastest way to obtain indispensable market insights which will guide the product road map. This is widely considered obvious in most innovation ecosystems today, but I am still surprised to discover corners of the world where this belief is not yet universal.

Beyond the obvious though, a mindset of short feedback loops extends beyond a startup’s initial product-market fit. It should permeate throughout all company operations: sales, human resources, investor relations, vendor management, etc. Operating with short feedback loops fosters agility in a startup and can be a source of competitive advantage by accelerating learning. (Conversely, in crowded or fast-changing markets, failing to do so will be a competitive disadvantage).

Good salespeople, for instance, naturally crave immediate feedback. Moreover, it is human nature to thrive on short feedback loops, starting from our first steps as toddler. Here’s one example of academic research in this area.

Providing fast and frequent feedback to employees is also critical. When employees in a startup are not clear on whether their work meets expectations, or even whether they are working on the right priorities, the collective focus of the organization drifts. This can also undermine motivation. Similarly, it is a startup CEO’s responsibility to create an environment in which subordinates are comfortable and encouraged to provide feedback upward.

Shortening feedback cycles to investors also brings numerous benefits. Frequent business updates will keep a startup at the top of mind among its investors, which makes it easier for the investor to be helpful, be it with client introductions, capital raising, even hiring, for example. It also serves as a preventative mechanism, by keeping investors on alert before a startup’s financial situation becomes dire.

For many entrepreneurs, this behavior comes naturally. We applaud this and encourage all of our founders to embrace it as a core habit.

Web3 for the gig economy

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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. I’ve been ruminating on how Web3 could potentially transform gig economy businesses — e.g. Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Upwork, Taskrabbit, Fiverr, etc. — and whether applying token economics to these activities would even make sense. Two encounters over the past week have persuaded me that a decentralized model could address some of the failings of these established platforms. The first encounter was with the founder of one of the world’s newest Web3 ride-hailing projects. The second was with a research paper entitled, “Expanding the Locus of Resistance: Understanding the Co-constitution of Control and Resistance in the Gig Economy,” published by Hatim Rahman, Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, and Wharton management professor Lindsey Cameron. Rahman…

mark-bivens_portrait

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.


Image credit: RudeVC

I’ve been ruminating on how Web3 could potentially transform gig economy businesses — e.g. Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Upwork, Taskrabbit, Fiverr, etc. — and whether applying token economics to these activities would even make sense.

Two encounters over the past week have persuaded me that a decentralized model could address some of the failings of these established platforms.

The first encounter was with the founder of one of the world’s newest Web3 ride-hailing projects. The second was with a research paper entitled, “Expanding the Locus of Resistance: Understanding the Co-constitution of Control and Resistance in the Gig Economy,” published by Hatim Rahman, Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, and Wharton management professor Lindsey Cameron.

Rahman and Cameron suggest that the 5-star customer ratings system of these gig economy platforms is broken. They argue that the disproportionate importance of the customer review system subordinates gig workers to essentially a ‘digital boss’, toward whom the workers have little recourse once the rating is finalized and published. The customers, in contrast, do not bear the consequences of negative reviews as acutely as the workers do.

As a result, gig workers devise ways to resist such authority. Tactics can include: carefully vetting a customer’s behavior and prior reviews before accepting the gig, offering discounts once the job is underway in order to elicit a high rating, or even canceling the job before completion in order to avoid a negative review.

As currently structured, the Web2 ratings system abdicates power to people who do not possess a vested interest in the gig worker’s business.

Improving alignment of interests between gig worker and customer strikes me as a way that decentralization can transform these platforms.

Let’s focus on on-demand ride hailing. It’s hard to argue that this concept is not innovative, yet businesses like Uber and Lyft have never reached sustained profitability. Partly this is due to regulatory capture, i.e. when the status of drivers was deemed to be that of employees rather than independent contractors, hence requiring the platform to provide substantial benefits, the economics of the model broke down. Yet despite the regulatory impositions, drivers still struggle to make ends meet, keeping all apps active in order to maximize their driving throughput and undermining any particular loyalty to a single platform.

The thesis of these decentralized ride-hailing projects is essentially that token economics will repair the broken model. Although there still appears to be some experimentation around the specific tokenomics among these new contenders, from what I can understand both drivers and riders will earn platform-specific tokens as they use the service. Token grants could be structured to reward both frequency of usage and longevity, thus fostering loyalty from both the drivers and the riders. If the right to drive for the platform is embedded in an NFT, say, then this right could be transferable and appreciate in value just as the taxi medallions used to do.

Of course, the devil is in the details in the implementation of these models. However, decentralization brings a new dimension to the economic model of the business, which could render it viable again.

We’re at a moment where Web3 has somewhat fallen out of favor as the trendy new thing (albeit not yet in Japan where we’re still catching up). In my experience, when the spotlight on a particular innovation shifts away, this is often the best time for research and reflection on the transformative potential of it.

Japan’s digital logistic platform Giho secures $4.7M for Taiwan expansion

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See the original story in Japanese. Yokohama-based Willbox, the Japanese startup behind the Giho digital logistics platform, announced on Monday that it has secured about 700 million yen (about $4.7 million) in a series A round. This round is led by SMBC Venture Capital with participation from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Marubeni Ventures, Anobaka, Salesforce Ventures, Golden Asia Fund III, and Mizuhoo Capital. Golden Asia Fund is a joint venture between Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and Industrial Technology Investment Corporation (ITIC), the investment arm of Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). For the logistics startup, this follows their pre-series A round announced in May, which was led by SMBC Venture Capital with participation from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and Marubeni Ventures. Anobaka participated in their seed and pre-series A rounds as well. The company will use the funds to accelerate the development of its services to expand its customer base, as well as to enhance its operations in Japan and Taiwan. Willbox was founded in 2019 by Motonari Kami. His family has been running a Kawasaki-based company called Koei, which handles large-size packaging and logistics for heavy and precision machinery, for half a century. International logistics of large cargoes for heavy and…

Image credit: Willbox

See the original story in Japanese.

Yokohama-based Willbox, the Japanese startup behind the Giho digital logistics platform, announced on Monday that it has secured about 700 million yen (about $4.7 million) in a series A round. This round is led by SMBC Venture Capital with participation from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Marubeni Ventures, Anobaka, Salesforce Ventures, Golden Asia Fund III, and Mizuhoo Capital. Golden Asia Fund is a joint venture between Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and Industrial Technology Investment Corporation (ITIC), the investment arm of Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).

For the logistics startup, this follows their pre-series A round announced in May, which was led by SMBC Venture Capital with participation from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and Marubeni Ventures. Anobaka participated in their seed and pre-series A rounds as well. The company will use the funds to accelerate the development of its services to expand its customer base, as well as to enhance its operations in Japan and Taiwan.

Willbox was founded in 2019 by Motonari Kami. His family has been running a Kawasaki-based company called Koei, which handles large-size packaging and logistics for heavy and precision machinery, for half a century. International logistics of large cargoes for heavy and precision machinery require packing in wooden crates before placing them in containers, and these crates are made by specialized craftsmen each time, according to the shape and size of the cargo. For this reason, unlike small cargo, it is not possible to immediately estimate shipping costs or decide on a carrier for the international logistics.

Willbox targets the area of FCL (Full Container Load), mainly for exports. 120 logistics companies are registered with Giho, of which about 20% are packing companies like Koei, and the rest are forwarders, shipping operators, and land transportation companies to ports. Logistics companies spend more than half of their time preparing quotations, but 80% of those quotations will be a waste because of lost orders. Willbox says that based on the information collected from logistics companies, the platform allows shippers to get quotes in about 10 seconds after the data input.

via PR Times

TakeMe raises $2M to help restaurants get ready for tourist surge as Japan reopening borders

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based TakeMe, the startup offering marketing and payments solutions for diners and restaurants in Japan, announced today that it has secured 260 million yen (about $2 million) from Taiwan-based New Economy Ventures and unnamed angel investors in the latest round back in March. As far as we can learn from publicly available information, this follows their $9.2 million funding in July of 2018, which appears to be a series A round. New Economy Ventures has so far invested in Taiwanese crypto infrastructure platform Cybavo (acquired by US Fintech unicorn Circle in 2022), Internet of Energy service provider NextDrive as well as Taiwanese startup XREX offering SaaS (software as a service) and PaaS (platform as a service) for crypto businesses. The firm is focused on supporting regional expansion of startups in East Asia. Previously known as Japan Foodie, TakeMe was founded in December of 2015 by Dong Lu, a Chinese serial entrepreneur from Beijing. After attending a university in Tokyo, he worked at Goldman Sachs and then earned an MBA degree from Stanford University. Subsequently, following working at a consulting firm and a VC, he founded two startups and then sold them out. TakeMe has…

Image credit: TakeMe

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based TakeMe, the startup offering marketing and payments solutions for diners and restaurants in Japan, announced today that it has secured 260 million yen (about $2 million) from Taiwan-based New Economy Ventures and unnamed angel investors in the latest round back in March. As far as we can learn from publicly available information, this follows their $9.2 million funding in July of 2018, which appears to be a series A round.

New Economy Ventures has so far invested in Taiwanese crypto infrastructure platform Cybavo (acquired by US Fintech unicorn Circle in 2022), Internet of Energy service provider NextDrive as well as Taiwanese startup XREX offering SaaS (software as a service) and PaaS (platform as a service) for crypto businesses. The firm is focused on supporting regional expansion of startups in East Asia.

Previously known as Japan Foodie, TakeMe was founded in December of 2015 by Dong Lu, a Chinese serial entrepreneur from Beijing. After attending a university in Tokyo, he worked at Goldman Sachs and then earned an MBA degree from Stanford University. Subsequently, following working at a consulting firm and a VC, he founded two startups and then sold them out. TakeMe has been so far backed by multiple renowned angel investors: Ikuo Nishioka, Xiao-Hang Yuan, Koutaro Chiba, Naoki Shimada, Yusuke Tanaka, and Legend Partners (Tomohito Ebine’s fund).

TakeMe was also hit hard by the pandemic. For more than three and a half years, TakeMe has been focused on offering digital transformation (DX) solutions for F&B businesses. The initiative includes offering Shopify-like solutions so that restaurants can easily build a take-out and delivery ordering site as well as developing API integrations with online travel agencies (OTAs) and restaurant booking services.

The TakeMe order plaform is adopted by over 50 restaurant chain brands in Japan.
Image credit: TakeMe

In addition to providing restaurants with most of the payment methods used by Japanese consumers and inbound travelers, TakeMe also acts as an intermediary between OTAs and restaurant reservation services, guiding customers to the most suitable restaurants they desire. The platform has been integrated with OTAs like Alibaba’s Fliggy, Hong Kong-based Klook as well as the TableCheck restaurant customer management system.

In July, TakeMe was integrated with the Camel order aggregation platform, which enables restaurants to manage orders from various food delivery services such as UberEats, menu, Wolt, and Demae-can. The integration means that the TakeMe platfom alone allows restaurants to manage bookings from sending local consumers and inbound visitors to accepting orders from food delivery services. Some restaurants are now using the platform for managing even in-store orders.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced last week that his country would lift up the COVID-19-related travel ban on October 19th, exempting foreign visitors to Japan from visa requirements. With the recent weaker Yen trend, the tourism and restaurant industries have high expectations for the revival of inbound visitors’ demand. TakeMe plans to use the funds to enhance its TakeMe Order management system and to accelerate developing functions for inbound visitors.