51 - 150 in alphabetical order of CVC unit: Yusuke Amano and Tatsuo Tsutsumi, general partners, Strive
Yusuke Amano and Tatsuo Tsutsumi are joint heads of Strive, the corporate venturing fund which is an offshoot of Japanese technology and media company Gree.
Tsutsumi said: “We mostly invest in seed to early-stage companies as lead investor. While looking ahead to the future exits like IPO, succeeding in the next round’s financing is our mission, and our past performance shows that about 90% of our portfolio achieved to proceed to the next financing.”
Strive operates a fund that focuses on startups in Japan, Southeast Asia and India. Amano said: “As a medium- and long-term goal, we want to make the startup market bigger and thicker. To do so, the world needs to be a place where entrepreneurs can flourish, and in the end, our role is to stand by them. We are concerned that there will not be any room for investors who simply provide funding from now on.
“For precisely this reason, we need to evolve the business model of venture capitals by pursuing the concept of ‘scale your ambition’, which is our slogan as a hands-on VC.”
Among Strive’s recent investments are participation in the $20m series A round for live-video infrastructure startup 100ms in March 2022, as well as a lead role in the $4.6m seed round for Testsigma, a cloud-based continuous testing platform for agile and devops teams.
Before setting up Strive, Amano served as senior vice-president of business planning, business development, international operations and corporate venture capital at Gree. This followed investment banking roles at Deutsche Securities and Lehman Brothers.
Earlier in his career, Tsutsumi directed new business development and establishment of corporate venture capital arms at CyberAgent, Recruit, and Gree. He also worked at Sanwa Research Institute and Global Brain.
