Nobu Kumagai

Nobu is the Founding Managing Partner of Wildcard Incubator with numerous track records serving corporations and startups in the enterprise IT, food/bio, material science, consumer and b2b tech - all primarily on execution level. Nobu also either founded or co-ran several food/bio-material start-ups to date. Nobu also serves as Partner at addlight, Inc. where he is responsible for running their food-tech and ag/bio-tech programs serving major Japanese corporate clients engage with promising startups from abroad (U.S., EU, APAC). He has written articles through several media publishers including Forbes Japan etc.

Nobu began his career at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities in Tokyo. He then spent a decade in investment banking at Lehman Brothers and HSBC throughout Tokyo, New York and Hong Kong offices. He then joined one of the largest Japanese VC fund JAIC ( their U.S. team spun off to become DNX Ventures) where he was responsible for managing the mobile tech fund with NTT Docomo. He served as board director for several start-ups including a Silicon Valley-based software developer where he worked closely with the management team in both the U.S. and in Japan. Earlier in his career, Nobu was also part of the co-founding team for a Tokyo-based food & catering start-up in 2003-2004 where he oversaw its daily operations and strategic planning.

Nobu earned his B.A. in Economics at Keio University, and MBA at Cornell University. Nobu grew up in San Francisco, CA. He is also an ordained Buddhist monk from a traditional Buddhist temple in southernmost Japan.