After the tea ceremony we walked out from what seemed like a small teahouse built next to a peaceful garden into a hotel hallway. A jarring transition.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_psgOGwOMc
We then take a stroll through the high-end Ginza shopping district, where a square meter of land retails for about $100,000. It’s one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the world.
We descend two floors to the exclusive Roppongi Hills Club to meet and have dinner with Toru Akaura, Japan’s most successful venture capitalist. He never meets with the media so this is a very special occasion.
Mr Akaura also serves as a director with Cybozu, one of Japan’s top IT companies with revenues of more than $1.2 billion in fiscal 2008. Cybozu was founded by Lunarr cofounder Toru Takasuka.
The exit strategy for VC investments in Japan is IPOs. The accounting system makes it difficult for Japanese companies to make acquisitions. But this also makes it difficult for foreign companies to acquire Japanese companies. It’s like a national poison pill.
However, there is not much VC money in Japan, and what there is, tends to be concentrated in later stage investments. Later in the trip, Japanese entrepreneurs would complain about this lack of early stage financing.
. . .
- Tokyo Diary: Arrival and Immersion…
- Tokyo Diary: Arrival and Immersion…
Background Info:
I’m on my first trip to Japan as a guest of Lunarr - a Portland based tech start-up founded by two Japanese entrepreneurs Toru Takasuka and Hideshi Hamaguchi. On the trip with me is Marshall Kirkpatrick from Read Write Web, Bob Walsh from 47Hats, and Kristen Nicole from Mashable.
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