Ryo Umezawa

Vice President, New Business Development & Global M&A

2024

Vector is a leading Japanese PR agency, founded 30 years ago and publicly listed on Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market (TYO: 6058). As Asia's No.1 Total Communication Group and Japan's top PR agency, it has been ranked as the 6th best PR agency worldwide in the PRovoke 2024 ranking. With a presence in 9 countries and 13 offices across Asia, Vector offers a wide range of services, including public relations, D2C (direct-to-consumer), HRTech, and investment businesses. The company has more than 50 subsidiaries and a portfolio of 250 companies.

Director

2008

J-Seed Ventures Inc. is an independent Tokyo-based investment company. We spent years building our track record working with early-stage IT, adtech, fintech and energy ventures. We are not the biggest or the best known. But we are candid and upfront with all the people we deal with and try not to waste anyone's time or money. Most importantly, we love working with entrepreneurs who are enthusiastic, passionate and want to make the world a better for everyone.

Partner

2008 - 2008

Business Planning

2007 - 2008

Intern

2005 - 2007

Venture Partner, Japan

2024

Antler is a global early-stage venture capital firm that invests in the defining technology companies of tomorrow. In the last 2 years we have invested in 1,000+ companies out of 27 locations. Antler selects the most passionate aspiring entrepreneurs, helps them find the right co-founder and connects them to a mentor network of fitting business and academic subject matter experts worldwide. Funding is also provided from day one to support founders building businesses they will own and run, and, that can positively impact local and global economies.

Partner, Japan

2022 - 2024

Adviser

2018

Kejora Capital invests in early to growth stage technology companies in the emerging markets. Recognized as top performing fund in Asia Pacific 2020-2021 by Preqin. Kejora managed eight funds, with approximately USD 500M under management, looking after portfolios in Southeast Asia and Korea.

Adviser

2024

Maven Asia Capital is a fund management company that drives innovation and transformation in emerging markets' most significant challenges. Backed by institutional and family offices LP from across APAC, including top 20 conglomerates, hospital groups, financial institutions, and more.

Board Member

2020

nommoc mission is to "Innovate Travel Culture”. nommoc is a private mobility service which creates added value to travel time and space by transforming travel in to entertainment experience. We believe transport is just a method, not the goal and paying a fare was the common sense of travel. However, nommoc has transformed this common sense and created mobility experience as free entertainment contents. nommoc has enabled O2O Ad Technology with people's behavioral data, allows private limousine travels to be provided for FREE for only specific customers that fit the sponsors audience targeting.

Adviser

2018 - 2020

nommoc is a provider of five-senses-experience-based private limousine by innovating travel culture. We provide free rides served/paid by advertisers. Launching in September, 2019!

Board Member

2023

Creator Ninja is a joint venture of East Ventures and FreakOut Holdings, inc. (6094:Tokyo). Founded in 2017, pivoted the business 4 times and currently providing various ranking including Virtual Youtuber, casting matching app and Tubers, no.1 data service provider for YouTube Analytics in Japan (B2B SAAS model).

President & CEO

2017 - 2023

Board Observer

2017 - 2017

Strategic Adviser

2022

The friendliest robot at your service

Advisory Council

2017

Advertising Week is North America, Europe, and Asia's premier gathering of cutting edge communications leaders. Advertising Week is a hybrid of inspirational thought leadership and special event programming, uniting clients, brands, creatives, media, the next generation and technology.

Angel Investor

2018

Attuned, Understand what really motivates your team. Make unseen values visible. Create Psychological Safety through Intrinsic Motivation. https://www.attuned.ai/ Wahl+Case, https://wahlandcase.com *Wahl+Case business acquired April 2023