Emerging Leaders Q&A – Naoki Kamimaeda, Global Brain

Regarding Naoki Kamimaeda, Yasuhiko Yurimoto, president and CEO of Global Brain, a Japan-based venture capital firm that oversees various corporate venturing funds, said: “Naoki is an honest, trustable and diligent individual and has been a great support for Global Brain’s growth and ambition to become a top tier VC and CVC in the world.

“Naoki has been one of the most active and indispensable members in Global Brain and gained lots of trust from our team members and corporate partners especially KDDI, Mitsui Fudosan and Sony Financial Ventures which Naoki has been actively working together with.

“Naoki has sourced and invested in promising and interesting startups with world well-known VCs and led Global Brain’s expansions to Europe and Israel and, via these activities, hugely contributing to increasing awareness and reputation of the CVC funds Global Brain has managed as well as those of Global Brain and also contributing to the corporate strategies of our CVC partners. I strongly believe Naoki is a fantastic candidate for GCV Emerging Leaders awards, as Naoki’s personality and track record clearly show he is an emerging leader in the CVC industry.”

1. First, just give us a quick overview of who you work for, what you do, and how long you have been doing it.

I am a partner and Europe Office Representative at Global Brain, one of the largest and oldest VCs in Japan, which manages seven corporate venture capital funds as the GP alongside our pure VC fund and am heading Global Brain’s Europe activities and in charge of artificial intelligence (AI), cloudtech, cybersecurity and fintech investments globally. I have been working for Global Brain for five years and closely working with 31Ventures fund, KDDI Open Innovation Fund and Sony Financial Ventures Fund and invest in startups in Europe, Israel, Japan and the US through these CVC funds. So far, I invested in 12 startups (three exited) with 31Ventures fund, six startups (one exited) with KDDI Open Innovation Fund and four startups with Sony Financial Ventures fund.

2. What attracted you to CVC?

Prior to joining Global Brain, I worked for Sony as a software engineer specializing in AI/ML (machine learning) technologies especially in natural language processing, Personalisation and Recommendation technologies at Sony R&D (research and development) and led the actual implementation of these technologies into Sony’s product portfolio including PlayStation, VAIO and BRAVIA. Also, I was involved in several new business development projects in Sony. For the last two years in my Sony career, I worked in San Francisco as a software engineering manager of PlayStation Network and a member of the PlayStation 4 launch team. Given these experiences at Sony, I become more interested in new business activities and wanting to be a bridge between tech and business. Therefore, I am now focused on tech investments and helping startups to create and grow strong businesses based on strong techs. With CVCs, I can work with startups to achieve these goals. At the same time, I can leverage corporate networks to help startups to grow faster and further and create bigger businesses collaborating with corporates.

3. What have been your greatest successes at your unit?

I successfully led investments in 22 startups (four exited) across the three CVC funds I mentioned above. Also, through these investments, I have been contributing to the future strategies of their businesses. The biggest contribution so far is shaping Mitsui Fudosan’s smart city strategy more clearly through my investment with 31Ventures fund in smart city, cybersecurity and AI domains. Also, I could have several successful exits from my investments. The most notable exit so far is Loom Systems’ exit to Service Now in January 2020. As the unrealised values of the startups, I invested via the CVC funds are nicely building up, I would expect more exits will come soon.

4. What have been your biggest challenges?

Taking balances between what startups want and what corporates want and expect is the biggest challenge as well as the most exciting challenge. Through my investments, I have been trying to connect dots to create a bigger picture. I have been trying to build a new industry in smart city domains by investing startups in AI, cloudtech, cybersecurity and fintech and connecting these startups with each other and with large corporate activities. As this requires a big vision to achieve as well as helping each startup to succeed and convincing and guiding large corporates to buy in this vision, it has been very challenging and exciting.

5. What is your main professional ambition for the future?

As an ex- R&D engineer, I would like to create something big and keep contributing to society to be more efficient and human-friendly. This is my professional ambition for the future. At this moment, my goal is to create a new industry via my investment activities.

6. What do you think all CVCs could do better to make it a stronger industry?

CVCs need to take more balances between strategic returns and financial returns and also need to have more VC mindset to help startups to grow. Some CVCs are too much focused on the corporate side of thinking and strategic values. Once CVCs sit more on startups and founders’ side and support them to grow their businesses and try to connect them with large corporates alongside supporting startups to grow, I believe CVCs will be more attractive and can achieve something unique which pure VCs cannot do.

7. What are some of the corporates’ technology needs and corporate strategy amid the pandemic, as well as their CVC funds’ pain points?

There are lots of needs to monitor the office and living environment to keep people safe in working, shopping and living experience. Also, as we do more remote working, there are lots of demands for remote working and monitoring related technologies including cybersecurity and AI/ML technologies.

8. And, finally, for colour, what did you do prior to CVC or in your spare time?

As I mentioned above, I used to be a software engineer at R&D and researched and studied AI/ML technologies and also be involved in many new business development projects. From these experiences, I found many pain points engineers could have when they work on new business developments and learned how to overcome these challenges. Therefore, I really want to help tech startups, founders and entrepreneurs build fantastic tech-based businesses and walk with these people through their journey to become big and change society in a better way.

In my spare time, I like travelling and recently started practising golf.