Winter is Coming ?

I would say

The winter is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed.

Funding for very early stage startups has become more and more difficult compared with what it was back in 2012 in Tokyo. I see many independent VCs closing down or quietly ceasing their activities.

However, I think the total amount of fund hasn’t changed much in Japan, it just become more selective. Seed stage startups have less chance, but once you are pass death valley and on a promising growth track, you rather get funding done easier than ever. I have seen large deals involving up to nearly one hundred million USD in 2016, such as Mercari and Bizreach, and that is totally new trend in Japan.

Few decades ago, it was common for Japanese startups to go public with a size of several million USD cap, but now more and more companies choose to stay private and aim for billion dollar IPOs since there are more private funding available, or we are just haunted by the shadow of unicorn.

So what do you say? The winter is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed.