'venture capital' Category
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Developer job in Tokyo
January 8, 2020A brief job announcement for a full stack developer role based in Tokyo… Role: Join as a part time full stack developer, to an exciting B2B investment data fintech startup company with some of the best professionals in the industry across the globe Work with CTO and development team together to develop web app component, […]
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Happy 2020, Year of the Rat
January 2, 2020I extend my sincere wishes to all readers of this blog for a wonderful new year and new decade. May 2020 be full of good health, joy, and auspicious harmony. One year ago today, I braced myself for a dicey 2019. The prior year had been exceptional, with a couple new investments and a couple […]
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“Not QE” Looks a Lot Like Y2K
December 31, 2019I must admit these analogous charts from Bianco Research caught my attention today:
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Calibrating investment strategy for unfamiliar markets
December 17, 2019A foreign VC fund that shall rename nameless solicited my help the other day on opening a European presence. Actually, the specific request was simply for an introduction to a few top European VC funds so that they could join an investment syndicate to co-invest with “big names.” The request struck me as a bit […]
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Shareholder activism in France
December 3, 2019Continuing on the theme of shareholder activism, there’s a good piece in this week’s Financial Times again the topic, this time in France. It’s worth a read, so take a look and then come back here. The FT article makes reference to a famous takeover attempt back in 2005. Pepsico made a hostile takeover attempt […]
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Shareholder activism in Japan
November 27, 2019This caught my attention in yesterday’s Financial Times. Anecdotally, it certainly feels like change is in the air, here on the ground in Tokyo.
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Sometimes permission is preferable
November 19, 2019It recently came to my attention that a team was presenting me along with my photo in their fundraising deck, unbeknownst to me. This wasn’t the first time something like this has happened, and it probably will not be the last. Since this is clearly not a one-off event, it struck me as relevant to […]
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Managing your angel investors
November 3, 2019A post in TechCrunch this weekend, Manage your angel investors, or they’ll manage you, touches on an important topic for startup founders which is often overlooked. Since the actual examples and concrete advice provided in the article are a bit limited, I’m taking the liberty to expand on some of them. I have invested occasionally […]
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The pyramid of competencies
October 24, 2019 -
SDGs in Japan: Gradually, then suddenly
October 17, 2019It’s impossible to walk around the neighborhoods of Otemachi and Marunouchi (Tokyo’s main financial district) these days without noticing be-suited businessmen wearing little round lapel pins like this one: These colorful pins represent the 17 sustainable development goals established by the United Nations in 2015 as a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable […]
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STOs in Japan
October 9, 2019Once again Japan finds itself in the (somewhat rare) position of world leadership on a topic of innovation. Last week, Japan’s major security firms announced the creation of a consortium focused on STOs (security token offerings). As far as I know this is the world’s only major economy in which such an industry-led initiative exists. […]
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RIP KIK
September 27, 2019Five years ago I penned this article about some intriguing user behavior I had witnessed in Bangkok. Specifically, consumers in Bangkok (the most Instagrammed location in the world) would scroll a merchant’s Instagram page to peruse photos of their wares. In her Instagram Bio, the merchant may mention a few commercial words about the product, but […]