Yahoo Japan and SoftBank Capital Are Investing $20M To Bring More US Startups To Japan

If there was any doubt that Japan is still a hot market for startups, this news should clear any doubts. Yahoo Japan and SoftBank Capital are joining forces to pump $20 million into helping early-stage mobile and social American companies expanding into Japan. This will certainly be good news for startups in the Valley who have been eyeing the Eight Islands.

Toshiaki Chiku, who is now heading the US operations via SoftBank’s office in New York, had this to say:

Yahoo Japan is making a big effort to expand our venture capital impact in the United States, and we are firmly committed to helping companies at all growth stages get into the Japanese market. Japan can be challenging for many U.S. companies, and given our scale and affiliation with SoftBank, we’re in a great position to help them grow and succeed.

SoftBank Capital is the venture branch of one of Japan’s largest telcos, SoftBank Corporation (TYO:9984), and thus has strong interests in promoting products and services that will be used on top of its wires. Yahoo Japan is set to report its Q4 earnings today and mobile advertising has long been its largest division, contributing to 20 percent of its earnings. Yahoo Japan is also Japan’s leading search engine and reaches over 80 percent of Japan’s Internet users through its many services. Yahoo Japan also went in with GREE Ventures to invest $2 million into social gaming just a few months ago.

SoftBank has been quite aggressive in expanding US startups in Japan. Not only did it invest early in Yahoo Japan in 1995 but also recently announced another $250 million to create the PrinceVille Fund aimed at getting US startups competing in Asia. SoftBank’s already got some considerable success with exiting companies. It sold Bluefin Labs to Twitter, BuddyMedia to Salesforce, HuffingtonPost to AOL, Hyperpublic to Groupon, and OMGPOP to Zynga. It’s looking to do the same in Japan.

Given the above interests, it makes sense for the two companies to double down on mobile and encourage innovation. Japan’s mobile consumers are also quite willing to pay for mobile services as evidenced by it being the top mobile ad market until late last year.

Full Press Release below:

SoftBank Capital and Yahoo! JAPAN Announce Partnership and $20M Fund Investment to Help Bring More U.S. Startups to the Japanese Market

Japan’s leading Internet company to fund early-stage companies via SoftBank Capital and help startups drive business in Japan

New York, NY & Tokyo, Japan – April 24, 2013 – Yahoo Japan Corp. (“Yahoo!JAPAN”), Japan’s largest web portal and one of the largest e-commerce platforms, and SoftBank Capital, a venture group affiliated with Japan’s SoftBank Corp. (“SoftBank”), today announced an investment and partnership designed to help U.S. startups of all sizes in everything from early-stage funding to later-stage expansion.

SoftBank Capital’s early-stage Technology Fund ’10 has been investing $100 million on behalf of SoftBank, which has anchored SoftBank Capital’s investing activities since 1995. Yahoo! JAPAN, a joint venture between U.S. Internet company Yahoo! Inc. and SoftBank, has invested $20 million into the early stage fund. This complements the $250 million PrinceVille Investments, L.P. fund (“PrinceVille Fund”) announced in February.

In addition to its investment, Yahoo! JAPAN is announcing Toshiaki Chiku as its head of U.S. operations, where he will oversee investments and partnerships while working out of Softbank Capital’s Manhattan office.