SoftBank Capital, the investment arm of Japanese mega-carrier Softbank Corp., has just announced that they’ve raised $50 million that they plan to invest entirely into early-stage New York startups.
This new New York fund will be headed by SoftBank Capital General Partner Jordy Levy, with the funds coming from the State Of New York itself in hopes that it’ll boost the startup ecosystem there. The one main rule of this new fund is that any company that gets investment from this fund has to call New York home — in fact, it sounds like they’ll mostly be focusing right on the core, New York City. ...continue reading ...
TechCrunch 5/30/2013 [en]
memo
- It is quite unique that a Japanese carrier's venture fund invests in only New York-based startups. It is interesting that Softbank is not active in venture investment in its home, Japan compared to other two carriers, Docomo and KDDI, both of which have an incubation program and venture fund focusing on Japan. Softbank has had several successful cases for bringing US startups into Japan including Yahoo and Ustream. Some portfolio of the fund will probably replicate the strategy in the future.
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