3. Typical Worst Practices of Big Corporates in Silicon Valley

Reference Link (Japanese only): https://svs100.com/kushida2/

1. Carelessly open the office and send staffs without specific mission

2. End up setting the vague mission such as “gathering information”, “Searching for partners”, etc.

3. Do not fully understand that you are the one who need to “pitch” yourself in Silicon Valley, not vice versa.

4. Not being able to have a specific talk with start-ups because of the absence of decision-making authority and/or resources.

5. Spend much time taking care of the issued related to head office

6. Gathering and sending the laps-behind information to the head office because the latest cutting-edge information cannot be understood by upper level management.

7. Transfer those who proceeded to open the Silicon Valley office

8. Send too young or demoted staff

9. Not being able to do long-term business because of personnel rotation

10. Come when in bubble and leave right after busted

Networking, Information Gathering

1. General Tips

• Get the information by local source of information, through Churchhill Club, Meetup.com and so on.

• Utilize twitter, follow people who are influential. Once you do start to follow, it will recommend who to follow, and you will easily be able to expand your follow basis.

• Be ready to pitch about yourself in 1 minute: Since nobody will be interested just because you are big company or which nationality you are from, “Elevator Pitch” is necessar.

• Nice to have is a 1 pager to explain about your company and the goal that you have

• Showing yourself properly: Linkedin is a must have for people working here in the Valley. You must show the best parts about yourself

2. Recommended newsletters

• Crunch Daily https://techcrunch.com/tag/daily-crunch/ This is a good maling list that you would receive on a daily basis, which includes both the trend and also the equity related topics

• CBInsights https://www.cbinsights.com/newsletter Gives you good headlines on what is going on in the IT market

• Pitch Book News https://pitchbook.com/subscribe A lot in the VC, PE, and M&A topic

• Techmeme https://techmeme.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=94ccd3ae223561415b05892ab&id=976a1cbc1f A lot tech news of the moment

• Churchill Club https://www.churchillclub.org/subscribe/ This gives you the events hosted by Churchill Club, which can be a good way to penetrate in the Valley

• William Blair https://www.williamblair.com/en/News-and-Events.aspx You can subscribe industry verticles updates and reports by William Blair Mainly about perfromance and IR reports from public companies

3. Recommended organization

• Saastr https://www.saastr.com/ World’s largest SaaS group

Reference Company Examples

Nestle - Henri@Nestlé

• Nestle launched Henri@Nestlé in 2016, a digital platform that will allow startups and entrepreneurs to pitch projects to the company in response to "innovation challenges" that Nestlé is looking to solve.

• The initiative has received over 400 start-up applications so far and launched 12 Projects to enable Nestlé to improve the environmental impact of its work by partnering with start-ups with ‘tech-for-good solutions’

Yamaha Motor Ventures & Laboratory Silicon Valley, Inc.

• They are the venture capital and strategic business development arm of Yamaha Motor Company Ltd. The firm seeks to invest in the autonomous and connected vehicle, robotics and industrial automation, internet of things, precision agriculture and personal mobility sectors.

• They focus on unique business field such as MOTOBOT using the cutting-edge technology of Silicon Valley, and their speed of business as well as localization is reputed to be same level as start-ups in Silicon Valley.

• It is said to be because they established the new organization that can make their own decision based on different rules from those of the head office by thoroughly involving upper-level management team.

Panasonic Ventures

• Since 1998, Panasonic Venture Group (PVG) has invested in more than thirty companies. Investments are typically in the range of $1 to 3 million, funding proven technology at post-A rounds.

• Panasonic established a new company, Panasonic Ventures, LLC, in April 2017. The new venture capital firm will invest in start-up companies mainly in the United States, with initial investments of around $100 million.

• They develop a separate decision-making rule for PVG that allows them to make investment without any approval process by head office in Japan, which makes it possible for them to close a deal within just one to three weeks.