DNX

Interview

• Forward-Looking Finance — Building Bridges Between Stakeholders
• Thriving in the Irregular — The Resilience Built at an Audit Firm From an early age I had an interest in management and business, which led me to sit for the CPA exam, a qualification that builds broad knowledge across accounting, corporate law, and business strategy. I passed in my second year of university, and from there threw myself into a range of experiences: joining circles of student entrepreneurs, interning at a pre-IPO venture, and eventually choosing an audit firm as my first step into the professional world. I was placed in the IPO audit division, working across both listed companies and startups. From my very first year, I was assigned to clients that were considered difficult — projects that were in full-blown crisis. I worked through a number of genuinely tough situations early on. It was through those experiences that I began to understand something about myself: I come alive in irregular situations, where the only path through is thinking hard and finding a way. Looking back, that period was the foundation of everything that came after. When a reorganization reshaped my division, I started exploring my next move. What drew me to DNX was the combination of its Japan-U.S. presence, the nature of the finance team role, and the people, and I joined the team in 2021.
• Translator Between Investment and Accounting — Finding Ground Between Opposing Worldviews What I find most interesting about finance work at DNX is something I’d describe as translation. On one side, I work alongside an investment team that moves with genuine forward-looking conviction about what startups can become. On the other, I have to engage with the framework of accounting standards — objective, conservative, and grounded in what can be verified. Standing between those two orientations and finding a workable middle ground is a core part of what the finance team does. What I consistently try to do is move in a way that makes stakeholders want to cooperate, not feel burdened or pushed back on. There are times when I have to ask for things that are genuinely inconvenient, from portfolio companies or from the investment team. But I try to frame those requests as necessary for maintaining trust, and to communicate with enough care and collaborative intent that people can receive them that way.
• One Step Further — From Back Office Into the Startup’s World Since stepping into the role of Director, I have increasingly found myself leading the work that involves meeting directly with external stakeholders—experts such as auditors and lawyers, as well as our LPs (Limited Partners, the investors in our funds). Having become responsible for the accuracy of information, for the care that accountability demands, and for quality control, I feel a heightened sense of resolve. In areas such as fund management, in particular, where no mistakes are permitted, the tension never quite lets up. I have also taken on responsibility for DNX’s own operations as a company, and I find that the more I am involved as someone running it from within, the more comes into view. It is not only the major decisions an organization makes, but also the quiet, small acts of work; reconciling numbers in even finer detail than an audit requires, and navigating the interplay of people’s emotions. Experiencing firsthand the utterly self-evident fact that a company is the sum total of each one of these has given me a kind of understanding of “management” that cannot be learned on paper. In 2025, we also expanded the finance team, and we have grown from a setup that depended on individuals into a team that can carry out its work in an organized way. Members from different backgrounds bring their respective strengths to bear, and I approach my work while thinking, day by day, about the form of teamwork that will steadily raise both the quality and the speed of what we do. Through this kind of greater efficiency and deepening expertise, I believe that going forward we can engage with startups in ways that are not confined to fund operations. Until now, I have been involved strictly from the outside, but through my experience at DNX, I feel I have come to imagine—just a little, and with a real sense of it—the struggles they face day to day. At present, my main point of contact is helping portfolio companies build out their compliance frameworks, but I believe there is room to extend that further into efforts that contribute to startups in more proactive ways. While handling the fund’s back office, and making the most of a position that, precisely because we are a VC, allows us to engage deeply with the companies we invest in, I want to establish a role from which I can face startups with a greater sense of ownership.