MPower Partners follows Nomura and MUIP with investment in Teamshares

MPower Partners Fund, Japan’s first ESG-focused global venture capital fund, has invested in Teamshares, an employee ownership platform for small businesses.

With investments by MUFG Innovation Partners (MUIP) in February, and Nomura in March, Teamshares recently expanded its employee ownership succession model to Japan and anticipates having its first employee-owned business in Japan this year.

Small business succession is becoming a major socio-economic problem in many developed countries, putting jobs and local economies at risk. In particular, Japan and the U.S. share similar issues where family-based small business succession has become very rare, and selling a small business remains challenging. The result is an overall supply-demand imbalance between sellers and buyers, leading business owners to work late into retirement age and in some cases, shut down operations entirely.

Founded in 2019, Teamshares is on a mission to make employee ownership the future of small business by creating a network of 10,000 employee-owned companies and $10 billion in stock wealth for employees. Teamshares buys successful small businesses from retiring owners and transitions them to 80% employee ownership within 20 years. The result is a network of financially durable, permanently employee-owned companies that will never be sold again — to the benefit of retiring owners, employee shareholders, companies, and local communities alike.

Teamshares has acquired over 90 U.S. small businesses to date, representing 31 states, 42 industries, and more than 2,600 new employee owners, and it expects to establish its first employee-owned business in Japan this year.

MPower Partners has made a growth equity investment in Teamshares. It aligns perfectly with the fund’s vision of integrating ESG principles into the core strategies of market-leading startups. Teamshares is a business that is good for small business owners, their employees, local economies, and Teamshares shareholders, and very much a ‘Sanpo Yoshi’ business model.

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