DNX

Interview

• Where Investment and Accounting Intersect — Supporting the People Who Support Others
• From Banker to CPA — A Career Spent Chasing Closer Involvement My career began in banking. Working in corporate sales at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, selling investment products to institutional clients, I found myself developing a strong interest in two things: investment and accounting. After some deliberation, I chose the accounting path, earned my CPA qualification, and joined PwC Japan. At the firm, I built experience across a wide range of work: financial statement audits, internal control audits, and advisory engagements for large domestic manufacturers, foreign-affiliated service companies. It was meaningful work, but precisely because I was always engaging as an outside expert, I gradually felt the pull to be more directly involved. To be a true stakeholder, not just a specialist standing at the edge. Looking back, I think I’d been searching for a long time for the place where investment and accounting genuinely converge.
• Venture Capital Finance — A Space That Needed Someone Like Me Venture capital turned out to be exactly that place. The idea of running alongside startups from the same vantage point, bearing responsibility for outcomes as a genuine participant, not just an advisor, resonated deeply with me. Not simply supporting from the outside, but sharing in the risk and the growth together. As the VC market expands and shifts, with new accounting standards, evolving regulatory expectations, the finance function inside a venture capital firm is entering a phase that demands higher and higher levels of specialization. And yet, very few CPAs choose this as a career path. I felt a kind of inevitability in that gap. The opportunity to become someone who supports the supporters. That’s what drew me to make the leap into venture capital finance.
• Using the Ability to Bring Structure — to Make DNX Stronger Among the many VC firms I considered, DNX stood out because of its people and its culture. The team comes from remarkably diverse backgrounds, but there’s a common thread running through everyone: a genuine alignment with DNX’s values. The environment — where individuals operate with real autonomy while remaining genuinely respectful of one another, connected through a flat and open dynamic — made me feel that this was somewhere I could work as myself. My immediate goal is to apply the structuring and systems-building instincts I developed through years of audit work to strengthen DNX’s finance organization, improving both efficiency and quality while raising the team’s cohesion and productivity. Further down the road, I’d like to extend that contribution to the founders we back, helping them work through the financial and operational challenges they face, and creating positive ripple effects across the startup ecosystem as a whole.