In an age of unicorns, some dealmakers have a chance of standing out.
Hideyuki Ebihara has been with the Japan-based online games operator CyberAgent’s corporate venturing unit since 2005. He was responsible for looking for opportunities in the mobile market before being promoted to become the head of the Seoul office of CyberAgent Ventures (CAV) in 2014.
He was working for five years from 2012 on CyberAgent’s investment projects for Japanese startups and early-stage investments and its ‘Startups’ project. Then the ventures team opened an office in Seoul in 2012 to invest a reported $10m to $20m in deals such as medtech firm Genoplan, and 2014’s investment into advertising mediation service Mocoplex.
Ebihara, a Waseda University graduate, led this Korea office opening, which followed his team’s first, in social messaging application Kakao, in 2011. Kakao was CyberAgent’s first reported deal in the country and a so-called home-run deal returning multiples of the investment.
Having originally gained 22 million users of its chat product inside its first year of operations to 2011, Kakao’s growth has continued. After flotation and a merger, its market capitalisation was $5.9bn on November 26, which is more than twice CyberAgent’s market capitalisation of $2.7bn. It has, therefore, been the biggest VC-backed success story in the country and for CyberAgent.
Interestingly, Kakao worked with the Korean government’s Small & Medium Business Administration to launch a Young Entrepreneur Fund in 2013, which had an initial KRW30 ($27m) committed, a third by Kakao. It was described in the tech press as being “the first time that a successful tech firm has paired up with the government to create such an initiative”.
A year later and Kakao, which had merged with peer Daum, formed a broader corporate venturing unit, K Venture Group with KRW100bn and run by John Park. In early 2015, Kakao then acquired Jimmy Jihoon Rim’s VC operation, K Cube Ventures, to develop its early-stage investments.
Rim then joined Kakao as CEO in September – he knows the group well, having been a shareholder while an investor at Japan-based internet group SoftBank’s corporate venturing unit.
The formation of tight corporate venturing ties in different offices and portfolio companies across the region has helped CyberAgent and the regional ecosystems. More is expected. In his CyberAgent biography, On the firm’s website, Ebihara said: “Japan is ahead of the curve in the mobile business.
“Moreover, with one of the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world and a track record of creating cutting-edge internet services, South Korea is a market with the potential to bring the most cutting-edge business in the world in the era of smart devices.
“As the time has come, we are just a step away from the birth of mega-ventures in these two countries/. These can soon reach a global market. Using my past experience in investment in Japan, CAV’s Asia-focused global network and our expertise in the internet sector, I am fully committed to help the creation of leading mega-ventures in the smart device era and assist ambitious entrepreneurs.”