SAMURAI INCUBATE AFRICA

We back down-to-earth doers.
We highly value teams who try to "do" and "execute".

What We Value

Honesty

We never lie. We never exaggerate. We do what we say we do. We do not do what we say we do not. If we say we make a decision to invest, the money will reach the bank account. We love founders who are honest as well. We would like to know things as they are even if the business, management, or fundraising is not going as smoothly as expected. We recognize investors should fully be ready to hear unexpected issues and think about how to tackle them together.
Respect

We know investors are just supporters and founders are the ones who devote their lives to building the business from scratch and growing it. We believe investors should be humble enough and fully respect the founder's will. We do not pester our founders with too-frequent update requests because we believe that our founders are doers and prefer to focus on executing. However, we try to do everything we could do when they need us. We love founders who expect more than money from investors and have ideas about what they would like investors to do for them. Money becomes a commodity eventually, but the founder-investor relationship should not be commoditized. Founders need to choose right investors, and vice versa.
No Cliché

We try to see out of the box. Stereotype kills innovation. As a Japanese VC, we admit that we cannot fully understand local context in every African country and industry. Founders definitely know more than we do and should have a deeper understanding of the market. We never pretend to know and understand everything. We learn from founders, investors, and all the parties contributing to African startup ecosystem. We are keen to work with people who understand this. We think we know nothing once we start thinking we know everything.