'venture capital' Category
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Angry Birds Flock to FB Messenger
May 8, 2018It’s the VE Day holiday in much of Europe today, and today also marks the global launch of Angry Birds on Facebook Messenger. In a pan-European alliance, Finnish creator of the original Angry Birds game, Rovio, partnered with our Dutch portfolio company CoolGames to produce an HTML5 version of Angry Birds for release on the […]
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Japan Tech Leaders Spring 2018 Winners
April 25, 2018Congratulations to all the AI and blockchain entrepreneurs selected for Japan’s prestigious Tech Leaders Summit which took place earlier this month in Tokyo ! Arianee Dablock eToro Platform.sh Re:Infer Snippet Snips Wirex Below is the full infographic of all startup finalists chosen by corporate Japan for Japan Industry 5.0. It was interesting to see that […]
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VC-backed ICO in Europe
April 22, 2018Although I supported a number of ICOs in the past, both as an advisor and as a pre-sale investor, I deliberately chose not to write about them too publicly. Securities laws can be far-reaching, and I certainly did not want to violate any. More importantly, however, I did not want to inadvertently make an open […]
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Women Funding Women
April 15, 2018Regular readers of Rude.vc hear me lament about the paucity of women working in senior roles in venture capital funds. It’s bad in the U.S. and even worse in Europe and Japan. Last year the dam thankfully began bursting on misbehaving male peers in the sector, but this situation has bothered me long before that. […]
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New book out: Land of the Rising Blockchain
April 10, 2018I never planned to be a part-time author and still contend that I am not worthy of the title. However, after crafting Japan Bitcoin #1 last year, I realized that writing books makes me a better venture capitalist. My new book, Land of the Rising Blockchain, explores the wide-ranging impacts of blockchain technology on industry […]
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Beyond Blocks summit
April 7, 2018This past week’s Beyond Blocks summit in Tokyo was beyond wow! Japan is the world’s number one market for cryptocurrency, so the overflow at this Tokyo version did not come as a surprise. Perhaps it’s because the ICO hype window has taken a pause, but the vibe at the summit felt like genuine ambition to […]
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欧州スタートアップが日本市場に熱視線 その理由は？
March 31, 2018[Increasingly, and encouragingly, corporate Japan is demonstrating an interest in European innovation. Often I am asked why a European startup would even consider Japan. I believe that this interview I recently gave to Softbank’s ITmedia News accurately captures my rationale.] あなたの知らない欧州スタートアップの世界： 欧州スタートアップが日本市場に熱視線 その理由は？ 世界で注目を集める欧州のスタートアップが、新たな市場として日本に熱い視線を送っている。AIや仮想通貨といったDeep Techへ前向きに取り組む日本は、欧州スタートアップにとって「自分たちのビジネスが飛躍できる場所」と捉えられているからだ。 本連載の第1回では、日本企業が欧州スタートアップと相性がいい理由を探り、前回の記事では、欧州のスタートアップ隆盛の背景を説明した。今回は、欧州スタートアップがいかにして日本市場を注目するようになったかに迫っていく。 会社のさらなる成長を求めて国外へ目を向けた欧州のスタートアップは、近隣諸国、米国への参入を経て、日本という金脈を見つけることになる。 グローバル志向が芽生えて近隣諸国、そして米国へ 初期のベンチャー投資でお金を集めた、野心的なとある欧州のファンドマネジャーは気付き始めていた。本来、私たちは投資家から預かったお金を運用する立場。これまでの節税を全面に押し出したコミッション重視のファンドに慣れきった周囲は、投資家から成果を求められないのをいいことに何もしない。「投資先のスタートアップを成長させるには国内だけではマーケットが小さい。大きくするなら国外へ行こう」 早速、ファンドマネジャー指示のもと、投資先のスタートアップは手始めに電車で行ける距離の国への参入を試みる。同じ欧州だからという気軽さはどこへやら、ローカライズの手間や体制作りなど思った以上にパフォーマンスを出すことの難しさに直面する。それを逆手にとってか、同じくらい大変ならと、憧れの地・米国へ進路を突如変えていく。 スタートアップは米国に会社毎移転するようになったが、大きな壁に直面する。資本力だ。米国は利益よりもまず初めに莫大な資金を調達し、マーケットシェアをできるだけ確保する、“圧倒的に勝つ”戦略をとっている。対する欧州は、少しずつだが安定的かつ利益を意識し、持続可能なビジネスを作る方法をとっている。似たようなジャンルの会社たちが市場と共に成長していくのがよく見られるのも欧州の特徴といえる。
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Japan’s prestigious Tech Leaders Summit returns
March 20, 2018Japan’s prestigious Tech Leaders Summit returns on April 6 in Tokyo. The JTL Summit is an invite-only event for internationally-minded Japanese corporates looking for foreign startups. The Japanese corporates present have expressly declared an interest in meeting innovative global startups for partnership or acquisition potential. The themes tend to center on deep tech innovations — […]
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The sad cycle of Paris bike sharing
March 13, 2018Two trends caught my attention on a recent return trip to Paris: cafés offering avocado toast, and shareable bikes scattering the pavement. I’m a big fan of city bike sharing schemes for a variety of reasons: they sensitize drivers to cyclists; they reduce traffic congestion; they improve the urban atmosphere for cyclists and non-cyclists alike. […]
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Building blocks of a healthy blockchain ecosystem
March 1, 2018This graphic illustrates how I’ve been explaining the blockchain ecosystem to co-investors and regulators. No single country possesses all of the components to foster a healthy blockchain ecosystem. However, in my opinion, Japan leads the world in most of the building blocks. I am proud to be an investor in some of the startups in […]
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VC Internship in Tokyo S2 2018
February 22, 2018I’ve been fortunate to have benefited from an enviable collection of brilliant interns over the years, and the last two were no exception to that. I’d like to publicly commend my previous two interns who supported me in Tokyo over the past 8 months: Adelson Goncalves and Nai Tsu Chen. You are both heroes who […]
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Japanese AI investors coming to Europe
February 15, 2018Our VC friends behind Japan’s AI Tech Leaders Summit will return next week for another mini-European scouting tour. They’re looking for investment opportunities in advanced technology areas such as deep learning, machine learning, robotics, and RPA in particular. There remains some space open at the informal meetups as follows [updated]: London: fully booked Berlin: fully […]