James is the CEO Founding Partner of Coral Capital, where he seeks to invest in founders building the most important companies in Japan across all sectors and stages from SaaS all the way to fusion. The firm has invested in some of Japan’s most promising startups, including Kakehashi, Kyoto Fusioneering, Hacomono, Kaminashi, and SmartHR, where James served on the Board.
Prior to Coral, James launched the first fund for 500 Startups in Japan, and before that he covered early stage investments for DeNA’s venture arm, focusing on Silicon Valley and Asia.
Before investing, he was the founding CEO of ResuPress (now Coincheck, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan), and the creator of STORYS.JP, the “Medium.com of Japan.” In another life, he worked at J.P. Morgan in New York and Tokyo. He grew up in Japan and speaks fluent Japanese.
In his free time, he is an avid snowboarder, diver, and yakitori connoisseur.

Tatsuo is Chairman and Co-founder of Unison Capital which was founded in 1998. At Unison, he has been responsible for investment portfolios across a wide range of businesses, including automobile, electronics, financial services, consumer goods and services, and business services. Since May 2025, he has been serving as Vice President in charge of Finance at Keio University.
Tatsuo actively serves for various companies and institutions as a board member, advisor or in a similar capacity, including Tier IV, Nutrix AG, Way Equity Partners, Environment Technologies Fund, GLIN Capital Partners, Asia Society in Japan, The International House of Japan and The Association of Corporate Executives (“Doyukai”).
Prior to Unison, Tatsuo’s professional experience includes NextCard (a US based fin-tech venture), McKinsey and Goldman Sachs. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Keio University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Kenta Akiyama joined Lazard in 2005 and was appointed Head of Investment Banking Japan in 2021. Throughout his career, he has focused on M&A advisory across all industries mainly in cross-border context. From 2006 to 2007, he was on secondment to Lazard NY office, and was involved in various cross-Atlantic/Pacific M&A transactions.
Prior to joining Lazard, he worked in the M&A department of Daiwa Securities SMBC.
Waseda University, B.A. in Economics

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