Courses & Events
Intelligent Software Expands across Japan and the U.S.: What Roles Can Venture Capital Play?
Thursday, Oct 29, 2015
04:15 pm - 05:30 pm
Intelligent Software Expands across Japan and the U.S.: What Roles Can Venture Capital Play?
In this panel discussion, venture capitalist Mr. Harumi Kato, Partner with the Innovative Venture Investment LP Fund; Mr. John Fallows, President and CTO of Kaazing; and Mr. Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO of Alpaca, introduce their activities and discuss expansion across Japanese and U.S. markets by intelligent systems software firms. What do entrepreneurs in rapidly emerging new technology areas need to know about international expansion? How can venture capital investors help in this process? Kaazing, a Silicon Valley startup founded in 2007, enables the new generation of real time, interactive, collaborative Web applications, e.g. for Internet of Things gateways, by means of its groundbreaking HTML5 WebSocket standard and platform software innovations. Alpaca, an artificial intelligence software firm founded in 2013 with roots both in Japan and the U.S., is bringing deep learning solutions to the personal investing sector through its algorithm building platform, Capitalico. The Innovative Venture Investment Limited Partnership is jointly managed by NEC Capital Solutions and SMBC Venture Capital Co., Ltd.
Mr. Harumi Kato started his business career when he joined NEC Corporation. Initially, he was a software engineer mostly in the area of management decision support systems. Soon after, he got a chance to come to MIT Sloan School to study business administration. After returning to NEC, he assumed a key role in supporting top management in corporate strategy and business development area. In 1994, he was transferred to NECUSA, NEC’s US subsidiary, where he assumed the role of head of CSBD. He was instrumental in implementing NEC’s venture capital program in1997 in the Silicon Valley. Eventually, he became a venture capitalist in the Silicon Valley and worked more than 10 years. He returned to Japan in 2013 and now works as a partner of Innovative Venture Fund which has been focusing on early stage deals in high tech sector. At the same time he works in the University of Tokyo where he is responsible for managing an entrepreneur education program. He has been engaged in various projects related to new business development in various capacities. Mr. Kato holds a Master of Engineering degree from the University of Tokyo.
Mr. John Fallows started working in the technology industry as a teenage software engineering entrepreneur while still attending high school in Northern Ireland. After graduating in 1996 with a Masters degree in Computer Science from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, Mr. Fallows performed research and development on next generation communication and collaboration services for British Telecommunications, helping to evolve new standards such as CORBA and integrate them for optimized multimedia network services.
In 1998, Mr. Fallows moved to USA to join Oracle Corporation in Redwood Shores, California, where he became a Consulting Member of Technical Staff for the Server Technologies Division. As an architect in the Oracle Applications Web foundation team, Mr. Fallows made significant contributions to the design and implementation of the Java Server Faces standard which became part of Java Enterprise Edition (JavaEE). Mr. Fallows was also responsible for evolving Oracle ADF Faces to fully integrate Ajax technologies, and in 2006 coauthored a popular technology book called “Pro JSF and Ajax”.
In 2007, Mr. Fallows cofounded Kaazing with a vision to empower a new breed of Web applications with realtime communication technology, and in 2008 contributed an early design for what has now been standardized as both the HTML5 WebSocket JavaScript API and the RFC6455 WebSocket protocol. Today, Mr. Fallows serves as President and CTO of Kaazing and often travels to meet with Kaazing’s international customers and partners worldwide.
Mr. Yoshi Yokokawa is the CEO of Alpaca, a company enabling AI technology to automate professional human tasks, discusses the importance of international partnerships in market/business development.
Yoshi started his career in the investment banking industry at Lehman Brothers Fixed Income Division in 2004, and earned a wide array of front-office financial experience, especially in structured finance, securitized products and alternative funds. During his 6 years of investment banking, Yoshi worked and took leadership on multiple international projects involving Asia, NY, and London. After leaving the industry in 2010, he spent three years day-trading forex himself. Then, he became involved with IT businesses, started out by co-founding a small software development shop with friends in both US and Japan, and is now at Alpaca, a venture backed startup that builds deep neural network based solution and application for financial industry, that has offices in San Mateo and Japan.
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This session is presented by the US-Asia Technology Management Center with support from the Miner Foundation and the Stanford Silicon Valley – New Japan Project.
Stanford University | Skilling Auditorium 494 Lomita Mall • Stanford, CA Thursday, October 29, 2015 • 4:30-5:50PM