April 1st, 2019 marked my first-day joining the Venture Capital world at Genesia Ventures Japan. I understand that working in this industry is so hard with a big mission and responsibility to support startups grow, but it gives me great chances to learn about innovation and entrepreneurship, to contribute to bringing more great impacts in society. I would like to share my experience and insights gained when working as a venture capitalist to readers, who might be anyone who cares about startups and open innovation in the developed economies like Japan and the emerging markets like Vietnam and other South East Asia countries, via this website zunzunstartups.com.
As marking for the very first beginning of my adventure journey, I would like to start with a post named “Reasons to Begin” to always remind myself to commit and persist with the journey, no matter how hard and difficult it will be.
The following are 3 reasons to start my career as a Venture Capitalist at Genesia Ventures.
First, I strongly support reverse innovation from emerging economies to be an open innovation for developed economies. Majoring in Economics when I was a university student always made me think about the importance of taking advantage of all resources in a resource-limited environment. And working experience in the IT industry brings me a strong perspective of solving issues in society by using technology. In the emerging economies like Vietnam, Indonesia, and other South East Asia countries, there are so many issues and obstacles that these countries are facing within the developing progress, that brings the strong motivation for people to create the solution to get over those challenges. One of the well-known examples is Fintech. Cashless payment seems more actively developed in emerging countries than in developed countries where the banking infrastructure has already been well developed for the last several decades. In the emerging countries, the low percentage of holding bank accounts but a high percentage of smartphone penetration have been making payment via smartphone be one of the essential and popular Fintech solutions. Ideas and Innovation are born from difficulties and challenges. In the last few decades, companies in developed countries have invested money in building many factories and hiring many local people in developing countries mainly to save manufacturing costs. But, I believe it is time to change this situation. Developing countries have offered more merits than just saving costs to developed countries. Innovation is not just only born in developed countries. Reverse innovation is a new trend in which innovation born in developing countries is reversely spread over to developed countries. But to make that innovation happen and live well in developing countries, it is needed to have more support, not only financial support from both inside and outside of one specific country. I believe developed countries like Japan can effectively support those things, because they have surplus capital gained throughout their development process, and more than that, they can be trusted partners for spreading innovation penetrated in developed countries where users are more ready to pay.
Second, Genesia Ventures also actively supports reverse innovation and open innovation. Genesia Ventures is a Japan-based Venture Capital firm, founded in 2016 by Soichi Tajima whose prior career was President of CyberAgent Ventures, who has a deep understanding and tremendous experience in investing and supporting startups. Here at Genesia Ventures, we hold a strong mission of “ To build the platform for the next huge and sustainable industries in Asia”, which means we are not only investors who just invest money in startups, but also are trusted value-added partners devoting all our resources to help startups grow. Genesia Ventures has invested in more than 50 startups at their Seed and Pre-Series A-stages, and about 30% of those startups are based in South East Asia (SEA). We strongly support innovative startups which are actively solving problems and bringing a better life to people in SEA. Moreover, Genesia Ventures also believes that these innovations born in difficulties from emerging countries would be helpful to developed countries like Japan as well. Therefore, we are actively devoting to open innovation between Japanese big companies and SEA startups to push further their own limits towards impactful growth.
Last but not least, I personally have a strong passion for innovation, startups, creating something from zero, and building it to be meaningfully greater. At Genesia Ventures, my passion can be truly fulfilled. I love the atmosphere with founders who are bustling in and out to our office to pitch and discuss with us about their startups. And, I also love the meaningful discussion time with our investment team members evaluating our investment opportunities, sharing our perspectives, and diving into details on how we can support startups to grow. I love the moments that every time I go across to the next co-working office that Genesia Ventures offers to our startup portfolios, I can feel their passion and their commitment to creating something really cool to change their world. I love the feeling of being the last person staying at the office late at night, but when looking into the co-working office, I still can find someone still working, which makes me great motivation to even work harder to support them better. And, I also personally have a strong mission to contribute directly to my home country - Vietnam, through startups, which are the key driving forces for economic growth. Soon, I will come back to Vietnam, officially open our representative office, so that I can be closer to Vietnam startups, to be able to archive my above-mentioned mission.
The quote: “When you feel like quitting, remember why you started” motivated me to share these reasons, which are very important for me to start and persist with my adventure journey as Venture Capitalist at Genesia Ventures. Hope you enjoy this post and understand more about me and Genesia Ventures.
Thank you for reading!
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