Investor Profile: Geodesic Capital — Thesis, Cheque Size & How to Apply

Geodesic Capital is a Silicon Valley venture firm built for one specific job: helping US technology companies win in Asia, starting with Japan. It was founded in 2015 by John V. Roos — former US Ambassador to Japan and former CEO of law firm Wilson Sonsini — together with Ashvin Bachireddy, previously a growth-stage partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and Mitsubishi Corporation. The team sits in Tokyo, Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., and describes itself plainly as a bridge between Silicon Valley and Japan.

What Geodesic invests in

Geodesic invests in multi-stage technology companies and then does the unglamorous work of Japan entry: hiring country managers, making customer and partner introductions, and shaping go-to-market strategy. Its showcased portfolio makes the model concrete — Databricks (invested 2017), Figma (Series E, 2021), Netskope (2017), Vercel (Series B, 2020) and Tokyo-founded Sakana AI — across AI/ML, enterprise infrastructure, enterprise applications and cybersecurity. A decade in, it has also launched the Geodesic Alliance Fund, dedicated to early-stage deep tech, national security and space companies that strengthen the US–Japan relationship.

Cheque size and deal pace

The firm does not publish a standard cheque size, and no per-deal range appears on its website. It also publishes no annual deal count, so no defensible startups-per-year average can be stated. The verifiable basis is structural instead: founded in 2015, a multi-stage main fund strategy running for a decade, a second early-stage vehicle in the Alliance Fund, and an annual Geodesic Forum in Tokyo that in 2026 drew 17 Silicon Valley companies and over 1,000 Japanese attendees.

Notable exits

The clearest documented liquidity event is Netskope. Geodesic invested in the cloud-security company in 2017 and is listed among its pre-IPO shareholders; Netskope completed its IPO on 18 September 2025 on Nasdaq at $19 a share, raising about $908 million. Beyond that single well-documented case, Geodesic does not publish an exits page, and its other flagship holdings such as Databricks, Figma and Vercel remain the live story of the portfolio rather than realised exits in the sources reviewed.

How to apply for funding

Geodesic has no open application portal and no public founder programme; its Forum is invitation-only. The realistic route is a warm introduction to a partner — the firm publishes its partners' names and direct email addresses on its About page — framed around the question Geodesic exists to answer: why Japan, and why now, for your company. A US startup with no credible Japan or Asia expansion logic is a poor fit however strong the product.