LtM ep6 - Sota Nagano, Partner at Abies Ventures, on Japan's Deep Tech Scene

Sota Nagano is a Partner at Abies Ventures, a $40m early stage deep tech fund based in Tokyo backed by Taizo Son, a billionare active tech investor, and younger brother of Masa, creator of the famous Vision Fund.

• Abies Ventures invests in Japan and abroad in industrial tech,
• But also opportunistically in multiple sectors including advanced sensors, space tech and life sciences.

Prior to Abies, Sota studied in the US and Italy, worked on Wall Street. He then co-founded an automotive engineering startup named GLM, which Financial Times called Japan’s Tesla, and which he took public for $1.5B in 2017.

This podcast is hosted by Benjamin Joffe, Partner at SOSV, a global early stage fund focused on deep tech with over $700m under management.

• SOSV runs multiple accelerator programs, including HAX (intelligent hardware) and IndieBio (life sciences).
• SOSV is also investing in Japan, via our hardware accelerator program HAX. We opened an office in Tokyo in 2019 with the support of Sumitomo, one of our key Japanese LPs.

Episode Overview

In this episode, we discuss:

• Sota’s journey to deep tech investment,
• The competitive advantages of Abies thanks to their broad industry network.
• The most promising deep tech sectors in Japan and the opportunities for exits, notably with fast IPOs.
• Finally, Sota shares his thought about the cost of failure in Japan, and the parallels he sees between Japan’s tech sector and the situation described in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

References Mentioned

• Mistletoe: Taizo Son’s global investment vehicle for the startup ecosystem.
• Euglena (Japan): $600m public company using ‘euglena’ (single cell flagellate eukaryotes) for food supplements, beauty care, biofuel and more. The stock peaked around $2 bln in 2013.
• Cyberdyne (Japan): the ominous-sounding $500m public company makes futuristic exoskeletons. The stock peaked over $3 bln in 2016.
• JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency): Japan’s NASA.
• Ultrasense Systems (USA): small ultrasound 3D sensors for next-generation UI.
• Algal Bio (Japan): a biotech startup that uses thousands of strains of algae to produce functional nutrients, fatty acid, and carotenoids that have applications in food products, cosmetics, medicine, and fuel.
• Pixie Dust (Japan): ultrasound array technology for control and interfaces, founded by Dr. Yoichi Ochiai (@ochyai on Twitter, with over 400k followers, on YouTube and video program on Newspicks, in Japanese). Raised $55.1 million.
• Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
• Layer Cake, starring pre-007 Daniel Craig as a cool-headed drug lord.

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