What We Do
We believe startup founders can change the world.
We believe startup founders can change the world.
The hardest things for early stage startups are to find the first right customer and identifying the right partner to verify product market fit and accelerate their business growth. Differences of business culture and languages sometimes make it difficult for startups to enter the Japanese market and co-create new values with enterprises over there.
Since 1985, STech I USA (formerly Nissho USA) has been supporting various startups that try to make inroads into Japan. It’s our DNA creating a new value to acquire new customers and win the Japanese market in partnering great startups with cutting edge technology and the disruptive business model thorough hands-on collaboration as follows.
Investment
We invest in early stages startups including seed, and series A. Our philosophy is personalities matter. In other words, we value founders’ passion, and their ability to execute. No matter what a great idea, an excellent technologies, and a business plan with promising projection, nothing happens without execution. We invest in founders’ passion, persistence and power of GRIT. Once we find such founders, we will all the best support them with passion.
Investment Area
Fintech
Insurtech
Retailtech
Mobility
Smart City
Healthcare
Sportstech
AI
IoT
BlockChain
AR/VR
Marketing
Future of Work
Infrastructure
Cyber Security
Business Development Hands-on
We facilitate partnership between a startup company and a Japanese enterprise and acquire an initial customer for a startup. We will support collaboration between two companies, sometimes more companies, across the Pacific Ocean. Making use of Sojitz’s global customer network and a rich customer base of Sojitz Tech-Innovation (formerly Nissho Electronics) that provides many system integration projects, STech I USA will identify the right customer and its champion to drive the project.
In addition, our engineering team can support startup technical activities during a POC stage by providing various services including integration with exiting systems, localization and among others. In the growth stage, Sojitz Tech-Innovation provide various activities, such as sales & marketing, customer success engagement, system maintenance, and failure analyses which will contribute to further growth of startups.
Marketing & PR
The Japanese market is quite unique. It has a different business structure with different regulations. In order to enter this market, it is essential to understand a specific Japanese customer journey and have suitable market strategies. We can provide “Local Go to Market Strategy”. We also can execute and support startup promotion strategies by helping their participation in conferences and seminars for various industries as well as introducing them to Japanese customers in our owned media ‘Follow the Silicon Valley’ blogs.
STech I USA is first contact point for startups, if they want to enter the Japanese market or try to work with Japanese large enterprise to co-create a new world as open innovation.
