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Mitsui VC Holds Business Plan Competition for Cellphone Apps

There was the award presentation ceremony of the business plan competition held last Tuesday in Akihabara by Mitsui & Co’s venture capital firm.

IT journalist Nobuyuki Hayashi, Satoshi Endo from Ascii Research Institute, and Takashi Betsui from CNET Japan were invited as judges for the competition’s awards, I attended the event because interesting persons came together to give their presentation on the stage.

Snapshot at the venue of i*deal competition

I wrote a story about the event, and contributed it to Asiajin.
Akiba mobile app biz plan competition held by Mitsui VC

(Proofread by Mr. Sean O’Hagan, and he corrected the story I’ve written in English.)


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Mobile Monday Tokyo: Two VC Firms

Mr. Ryo Umezawa kindly invited me to Mobile Monday Tokyo which he hosted, and I went to Restaurant Sam & Dave in Akasaka to attend.

Well, it’s getting harder for me to finish the work before 7pm, but I could that day fortunately, which allowed me to be in the event from start to end.

Two venture capital firms, NGI Group and Global Capital Partners, gave the presentation that day.

Because I’ve been involved in VC work before, and VC people sometimes request me to help their work, I know a little bit about what VC really are. But Japanese VC firms should have more diversities, as everyone mentions.  I can see few concrete diversities of what VCs do in Japan, it looks like – I cannot find which TV channel or TV program when I’m watching it.

VC firms, especially located arong Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, which is famous as VC firms concentrated area — they have greater diversities in their investment stances.

We had better start up the business in Silicon Valley, in terms of growing up in more efficient way, including raising the fund money, providing the service worldwide, and getting human resources.

However, when we start up the business in Japan, we need have a reason why we do so.

I remember the notes Mr. Seiji Kimura left on his blog, who is the president of Web-Shark Inc., a leading provider of drop-shipping service based in Osaka.

Quoted from His Post on March 10th, 2008

The reason why you’re paying the tax to the country is, to have the right to use the brand name of “Japan” for doing your business. In order to get your money’s worth, you have to make your business grown up onto the world market which may truly find out the value of “Made in Japan”.

by someone with whom Mr. Kimura has travelled.
http://blog.webshark.co.jp/informal/?p=142

If so, the goverment’s behaviour is losing the brand image of “Japan” in these days, although we’re actually paying no less tax to the government.