Sunbridge Invests In Japanese Start-ups Wondershake and Midokura
Sunbridge, a Tokyo- and Sunnyvale-based tech incubator/VC firm founded by Oracle Japan’s former president Allen Miner, unveiled on Friday that it has invested in two Japanese start-ups, Wondershake and Midokura. The firm has not disclosed exactly how much it has invested, but some news media including CNET Japan report it was several million yen for each.
Wondershake won the grand prix at TechCrunch Japan’s start-up pitch event in April, where Allen Miner severed as the chair of judges. The start-up raised funds from Cyber Agent Ventures on the same day. Now the Wondershake team has moved to San Francisco and are working on registration as a US company.
Sunbridege will invest in a form of convertible notes to avoid increasing the valuation with the investment, and make it easier for the start-up to get additional fundraising from potential US investors in the future. (Refer to our previous article for more on Wondershake)
Sunbridgeは投資の評価価格の上昇を避けるために兌換紙幣の形態で投資し、スタートアップにとって将来の製ん財的なアメリカの投資家からの追加の資金提供を得る事をより容易にさせるようにしている。(Wondershakeの詳細についての以前の記事を参照してください)
サンブリッジは、投資の査定額が上昇しないように、またこのスタートアップ企業が追加の出資を潜在的なアメリカの投資家から将来も受けやすいように、転換社債の形で出資するだろう。(私たちの前回のワンダーシクに関する報告を参照のこと)
Meanwhile, Midokura is a cloud enabling tech company and funraised 100 million yen in its seed round from some VC firms including NTT Investment Partners and datacenter company Bit Isle.
The company was co-founded by the former COO of Globis, a private MBA schooling company in Tokyo. Japanese legendary techpreneur Kiyoshi Nishikawa (the founder of NetAge) is also involved in the board of directors. During the past few months we’ve heard from some of the company’s team that they are developing the alpha version of some cloud-related apps, but no further details are available at this point. We’ll keep you posted if we hear anything.
Update: Wondershake just announced the total amount of this fundraising from several investors including Sunbridge was 360,000 US dollars. (Their announcement, in Japanese)
追記:ワンダーシェイクは、サンブリッジを含む複数の投資家から募った出資の総額は、36万USドルであったと、たった今発表した。(発表は日本語でおこなわれた)