Koichiro Nakamura

Koichiro Nakamura is a Founder and General Partner of Sozo Ventures. Prior to founding Sozo, Mr. Nakamura spent over 20 years founding and building technology companies. At Mitsubishi Corporation, he created relationships with large Japanese conglomerates, providing the credibility needed for portfolio start-ups to find alpha and beta customers. Mr. Nakamura launched the Innovation Kitchen, a Mitsubishi Corporation subsidiary, which incubated seed-stage ventures in Japan. At Innovation Kitchen, he invested in university technology and served on the boards including Scigineer (Japan’s leading discovery engine company went to public (TSE) 2014).

Before Innovation Kitchen, Mr. Nakamura worked in the telecommunications division and led multiple startup companies at Mitsubishi Corporation. He created Japan’s first Application Service Provider (ASP), Datastations (acquired by ValueCommerce). Before Mitsubishi, Mr. Nakamura worked on many start-ups including being a founding member of Yahoo! Japan.

Mr. Nakamura received an MBA from the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business and also graduated from Waseda University, holding a Bachelor of Law. He is a member of Kauffman Fellows Class 12 and the recipient of the Jeff Timmons Memorial Award, given to only one Fellow per year, which recognizes his outstanding contributions to the program.