DNX

Interview

• Steadily, Sincerely — Taking Venture Capital to the Next Level
• Supporting the Passion of Japan’s Entrepreneurs — Building Trust, One Honest Step at a Time At Nomura Securities’ investment banking division, I worked across a wide range of M&A transactions: large-scale industry restructurings, cross-border deals, and business succession projects for regional companies, among others. The professionalism I developed in that demanding environment, grinding through financial models day after day, became the foundation I stand on today. My introduction to DNX came almost by chance — an internship information session I happened to attend before heading abroad for my MBA. I was lucky enough to be invited to intern with DNX, and what I witnessed then, the passion of the entrepreneurs and the relationships VCs build to support them, left a strong impression on me. It was that experience that made me want to contribute to Japan’s startup ecosystem, and eventually brought me back to DNX’s door. That said, when I joined, I was genuinely a newcomer with no real knowledge of the startup world. At portfolio companies I inherited from my predecessor, I was often brushed off entirely, and I used to walk into meetings carrying a certain fear, a palpable sense of not quite belonging. Not having founded a company or worked inside a startup is something I still carry with me as a kind of quiet guilt when I’m with the founders I support. What I hold onto, in the face of that, is a commitment to doing what I can, steadily and without shortcuts. Diving in to help build decks and business plans. Engaging directly with organizational challenges. Drawing on my banking background to act as a financial advisor on major corporate actions. Thinking about each portfolio company more deeply and consistently than anyone else on the outside. For someone with my background, I believe there is simply no other way to earn a founder’s trust than through this kind of patient, unglamorous accumulation.
• A Deep Respect for Founders Who Choose the Hard Road — Deliberately At the root of everything is a deep respect for the people who choose to build companies. During my MBA, I went through a startup project where we actually incorporated a company and pitched to American VCs. It did not go well, and it gave me a firsthand sense of just how unforgiving that path is. Setting a mission, rallying a team, raising capital from investors, building a product, growing an organization. I have genuine admiration for anyone who chooses to walk that road. When I’m working with founders, I find that the client-service mindset I developed in my previous career continues to serve me. I think constantly about what value I can actually provide, asking myself as I would with any client, “what can I do for the person in front of me right now?” And sometimes, out of that same respect, that means saying things that aren’t easy to hear. Being honest even when it’s uncomfortable — that, I believe, is what leads to real trust.
• Establishing VC as an Asset Class in Japan — And Delivering Reproducible Value to the Companies We Back Delivering consistent returns to our LPs and helping to establish Japanese venture capital as a legitimate asset class. Building genuine trust with the companies we back. Connecting these two things — that is what I’m here to do. Investment returns are inseparable from risk. Even in today’s rapidly shifting environment, DNX has remained consistent in the stage we enter, the companies we target, and the way we invest. Internally, we sometimes use the word “classical” to describe this. It captures something real: a commitment to traditional investment principles and consistency, undistracted by whatever happens to be in vogue. Another way to put it is that we continue to take on the same type of risk, over and over. Generating consistent returns against that fixed, homogeneous risk. That’s what reproducibility means to us, and that’s where our alpha comes from. We have invested consistently in early-stage B2B software. Through doing so, we have encountered the common challenges of this space — the same risks, again and again — and we’ve accumulated a body of knowledge from both the successes and the failures. I believe that creates real reproducibility, and that giving back to portfolio companies from that accumulated knowledge is one of our core responsibilities as a firm. On top of that, I want to bring my own particular background into what DNX does; contributing through public market analysis, KPI benchmarking for portfolio companies, M&A support, and hands-on organizational work. That’s how I want to add my own signature to what we’ve built together.