ToTAL Program Reports
Lecture & Discussion of “Driving Innovation through Entrepreneurship”in a category of “Recognition of Social Issue/ Professionals and Value Creation” was held on 25/Jan.
- Course Group：Recognition of Social Issues
- Program：TAL.W.501 Professionals & Value Creation
- Theme： Driving Innovation through Entrepreneurship
- Guest Speaker：Draper Nexus Ventures, Managing Director Dr. Akira Kurabayashi
- Date & Time：25/Jan (Fri) 18:00-20:00
On the 25th of January the students from ToTAL met with Akira Kurabayashi, managing director of Draper Nexus, a global venture capital (VC) investor based in Silicon Valley and in Tokyo. In the meeting, Kurabayashi shared his view on the role of VC to drive innovation through entrepreneurship and how Draper Nexus is contributing to change the entrepreneurship scenario in Japan and the world. About 24 students including ToTAL students, AGL students and OPEN students joined this session.
Prior to the meeting, the students organized an information sharing session, discussing how VC works. The information sharing session was tailored to present the important information about VC to the students that wish to open their own start-up or to work on the VC business. We also discussed how the Japan VC industry compares to the USA. After meeting with Kurabayashi, we found out the VC capital scenario in Japan in going through a pivotal moment of maturity.
This was a great opportunity to learn more about VC, which usually is a steep learning curve for start-up founders. For those that wanted to learn more, Kurabayashi announced the Draper Nexus B2B summit in Tokyo, an annual meeting where Draper Nexus invites entrepreneurs to share their vision about the future. (more information here https://www.b2bsummit.biz/)
After the knowledge sharing session and the meeting with Kurabayashi, we are excited to see how the ToTAL students will put that knowledge and new perspective into practice.
（Reported by; Marcos Kunihiro Masukawa, M2, Artificial Intelligence, 2018 ToTAL student )
