After a year of stealth, Primal Capital is Japan’s newest VC

Hiroshi Sasaki

For the past year, Hiroshi Sasaki has been very tightlipped about his investment activities. Though an associate at Incubate Fund, Sasaki was working on a stealth project of his own. Today, that project, Primal Capital, was unveiled.

A seed stage investor, the firm started its first fund last February and just opened its second fund for business. The total value of the two is JPY 360 million (US$3.04 million), with the lion’s share (US$2.6 million) coming from the new fund. Sasaki is the founder and sole employee of Primal Capital.

He is a familiar investor to many startups, owing to his role as the organizer of the past four Incubate Camps. The two-day event is a getaway for startups and investors to mingle, brainstorm, and demo their products. Though Sasaki is moving on to other challenges, he tells Tech in Asia that his ties to Incubate Fund remain strong. “They are a limited partner to my fund. I’m recruiting for someone to take over my role at the next Incubate Camp but my focus is going to be on Primal Capital,” he says.

So far, Primal Capital has invested in five startups using its first fund. They vary in industry from fashion, to natural language processing, to ad sales, to video production.

Going forward, Sasaki says that he wants to focus on IoT, media and communication apps for smart devices, and technology that can shake up established businesses like those in the food and drink industry. He aims to invest between JPY 5 million (US$42,000) and JPY 40 million (US$340,000) per company.

See: Japan’s Incubate Fund reloads, raises $92M for investment