Venture capitalist Katsuyuki (Kevin) Hasegawa bridges the peripatetic work patterns of many in the venture industry.
He has been a general partner at Dentsu Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of the Japan-based advertising agency, since April 2015. He is also a founder and general partner at Field Management Capital (FMC) since September 2014.
The two roles developed out of his experience while at venture firm Global Brain, where he managed the corporate venture funds of Japanese corporations, such as KDDI, and other investors, such as the government-backed Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, from February 2011 to September 2014.
Although Hasegawa was unavailable for an interview, his profile described FMC as being “born out of a simple vision: ‘Create a new kind of venture capital firm that focuses on supporting the entrepreneurs and their teams by providing a bridge between entrepreneurs and enterprises.’ ”
Kotaro Sasamoto, the managing partner of Dentsu Ventures, is happy with how things have worked out by using FMC: “I would give Hasegawa full credit in terms of his ability for sourcing deals, getting deals done, creating synergy between portfolio companies and Dentsu.”
Over the past year, these deals included Sensai, Nextbit Systems, Jibo and Agolo.
Even though Hasegawa is based in Tokyo, Japan, all of those deals were in the US. As well as hunting out some of the hottest US startups and accelerators, he is also an investor in Techstars and the New York-based Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator.
He returned to US for his MBA between 2009 and 2011 at the University of Southern California after going to school there as an undergraduate at the end of the 1990s.
His first career at the conglomerate Itochu, followed a stint at Global Brain before his current tenure with FMC and Dentsu was also characterised by his involvement in American deals.
Deals he helped devise while at Global Brain from February 2011 to September 2014 involved Edmodo, a network platform enabling teachers and students to connect, collaborate and share content and educational applications; Issuu, a digital publishing and discovery platform; VentureBeat, a technology news site focused on disruptive technology; Pogoseat, a mobile technology solution for teams, artists and venues that gives their fans the ability to upgrade seats and buy unique VIP experiences; Plumzi, which offers a story-driven entertainment technology platform for tablets and smartphones; Moxtra, which focuses on designing mobile solutions to personalise and share content across social media, email or SMS; Kloudless, a cloud storage API that allows developers to build with a single REST API instead of having to code with many disparate APIs; MixRank, a spy tool for monitoring competitors’ digital traffic sources enabling the use of that data to devise rival business campaigns; and Retailigence, a hyperlocal marketing platform providing customer application usage data to retailers and brands.