Investor Profile: Samurai Incubate — Thesis, Cheque Size & How to Apply

If you are raising capital and researching how to get funding from Samurai Incubate, this profile is your starting point. Samurai Incubate is a seed, Series A, early stage investor focused on information and communication technology, SaaS, software, business productivity software, fintech, entertainment software. Below: its thesis in its own terms, what it looks for, the companies it has backed, and the practical route founders use to get a pitch in front of the team.

Samurai Incubate funding: the investment thesis

A Tokyo-based venture capital firm investing in founding-stage to Series A startups and supporting their growth, under the mission of changing the world through entrepreneurship. It operates VC funds plus incubation support and has expanded activity to Africa and Israel alongside Japan.

For founders, the practical read is simple: Samurai Incubate is not a spray-and-pray shop. Its public positioning centres on information and communication technology, SaaS, software, business productivity software, fintech, entertainment software at the seed, Series A, early stage level, so a pitch lands only when your company sits squarely inside that mandate. Study the portfolio pattern below before you write the first email.

Cheque size and fund firepower

Samurai Incubate has not publicly disclosed its fund size. What is public is the mandate: information and communication technology, SaaS, software, business productivity software, fintech, entertainment software at the seed, Series A, early stage stage. Treat the stage focus, not a corpus number, as your guide to the right ask.

Sectors and stages

The firm invests across information and communication technology, SaaS, software, business productivity software, fintech, entertainment software, and its sweet spot is the seed, Series A, early stage. If your startup sits outside those sectors, this is not your investor — a focused mandate cuts both ways. If you are inside it, you are speaking to a team that sees dozens of comparable companies a year and will benchmark you against them.

Notable portfolio companies

Companies associated with Samurai Incubate in public sources include:

• WAKA
• Smolt
• Paytner
• JIZAIE
• MyDearest
• mign
• Sotas

The names matter less than the pattern: look for the stage, sector and business model the firm repeats. If your company rhymes with three or more of these, you have a credible reason to be in the inbox.

Partners, programs and perks

People named in public sources: Kentaro Sakakibara (CEO). Founder-to-partner fit matters — find the partner whose portfolio looks most like you.

Programs run by the firm: STARTUP RUNWAY (regional startup support program across 9 areas of Japan), Samurai Incubate Africa (subsidiary established 2018).

How to apply for funding

Samurai Incubate has no publicly documented pitch route in the sources read for this profile. The default playbook applies: a warm introduction through a portfolio founder or a co-investor beats a cold email, and the contact details on the firm's official site are the legitimate front door.