Former Ambassador to Japan Roos on Launching VC Fund (Audio)

help American entrepreneurs girl their businesses in Japan? PM, We're gonna find out. Yes, we're gonna be speaking with John Rousey is the founding partner of the venture capital firm Geodesic Capital, and as you mentioned, a former US ambassador to Japan. Right now, let's go to Charlie Pellam in the Bloomberg news room for a Bloomberg Business flatman. I thank you, pim Fox, Thank you, Kathleen Hayes. The Dow Yes, I'm be Nazdak. All declining with stocks have paired a

decline banks and energy producers trimming losses. SMP five hundred index, slipping from a ten month high amid speculation equities may have run too far, too fast given the lackluster prospects for global growth. On top of that, there is the Brexit vote, the US political conventions, and the looming of Federal Reserve meeting. Josh Shapiro is chief US economist at Maria Fiorini Ramarans. I think that it's a it's a dangerous thing that's been going on with central banks have

been doing there. They're they're they're causing distortions and financial markets distortions and behavior. They've done everything they pretty much can do at this stage with the size of the deficits that we have in the amount of debt that's out, their fiscal policies kind of handstrung and and and I think we're limping along. And when you're in that with that type of backdrop, you're downside risks far out where

you're upside risks. Bill Gross, Bill Gross, manager of the one point four billion dollar Janus Global Unconstrain Bond Fund, warning central bank policies that pushed trillions of dollars into bonds with negative interest rates will eventually backfire violently grows.

Compares it to a super nova, which is a star at the end of its life, and a person familiar with the matter, says billionaire investor George Soros has become more involved in trading at his family office, concerned about the outlook for the global economy and the risk that large market ships maybe at hand SMP five hundred index down five, a drop of three tenths of one percent, Gold up ten to twelve seventy two, eight tenths of one percent ten, You're up seven thirty seconds. Zeal there

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heard today. I just want to add mine. I want to congratulate Hillary Clinton on making history as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States. The President offered his endorsement in an online video after meeting at the White House earlier today with Clinton's Democratic primary rival,

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Israel is deploying additional battalions to the West Bank and restricting travel for Palestinians during Ramadon in the wake of yesterday's shooting in Tel Aviv, two Palestinians gunned down four Israeli's and wounded at least five others. Here's Prime Minister Benjamin net Yahoo murder. The shooters cousins from the West Bank are in custody. A coalition of twenty one states is suing Delaware over policies involving unclaimed

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That's a Bloomberg Business flash. You're listening to Taking Stock with Kathleen Hayes and Pimp Box on Bloomberg Radio. If there's a country you're worried about when it comes to the economy, at least if you're looking at the direction of bondfield, you'd have to say Japan is on that list. After all, the j GB, the benchmark tenure Japanese government bond is now trade at a minus zero point one

four percent. That's not stopping John Ruth He's a founding partner at Geodesic Capital, former US Ambassador Japan from two thousand nine to two two thousand thirteen. He has launched a fund more than three hundred million dollars to help American growth stage companies entrepreneurs expand into Japan and other countries in the region. He's here to tell us all about it. John, Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me delied to be here. So first tell us about

the fund. What are you doing, what kind of companies you're funding? Well, geodes A Capital, as you said, we've raised over three hundred million dollars. Were investing in later stage, growth stage companies here in the Silicon Valley and helping them go to Japan. Now, what we have found is that companies here are going private, staying private for a longer period of time, and in the later stages of of their growth, they begin to think about going global.

And obviously the Asia market is incredibly important, and we believe um and here and from the companies here that Japan is a very important gateway into the Asia economy. Ambassador, I was wondering if you could just give people a little bit of your background, because I know that you in many of your legal capacities before your ambassadorship that you helped to represent companies at the time may have been unknown to many Americans, such as Google and Pixar.

With your work with Wilson san Cini good Rich in Rosani prior to go into Japan twenty five years here in the Silicon Valley where I'm back um and as you said, we represented at Wilson Sancini, which is a leading tech UH law firm in the country. We represented companies all the way from their infancy like Apple and Google until many of them obviously became multi billion dollar corporations.

And then when I went to Japan from two thousand nine to two thousand thirteen and the honor of being the US ambassador there, I heard an incredible amount of interest in UH in Silicon Valley by the Japanese and so Prime Minister Abe, for example, came here a year ago when he talked about building a bridge between the valley and Japan, and Geodesic Capital is helping to build that bridge between between Silicon Valley and Japan. Certainly helps

to have a heavyweight partner in this inaugural fund. You're backed by anchor investor and co founder Mitsubishi. Gensic Capitals already made successful investments. Of course, one everybody would recognize.

I think it's Snapchat that was a good one to have gotten in on are there particular kinds of technology that you're going to be looking for these late stage companies is and how do the Japanese field don't they have their own startups or do they feel this is gonna seed activity and their own sort of homegrown startups by having Silicon Valley come to them. We're looking at

both enterprise companies and consumer companies. So for example, you mentioned Snapchat in a social media area, but we're looking at areas like security. Taneum as a company that we've invested in that the Japanese have a significant interest in cybersecurity as an example, are investors there. I've already talked about some of the benefits of going into the third

biggest economy in the world. But for our investors, they see the opportunity to have this window into the Valley, into the disruptive businesses that are going on here, and they also obviously are looking for returns, but also kind of a window into the Silicon Valley ecosystem, and the benefit to them is not only returns, but potential investment opportunities, potential mergers and acquisitions, uh potential partner ships. A good example that which is just recently announced is the Toyota

Uber deal. On the Silicon Valley side, you have this cutting edge shared economy technology, and on the Japanese side, Toyota you have the biggest car manufacturer in the world. So you have these traditional enterprises partnering up with new cutting edge technologies and both sides of the equation will benefit.

And we see more and more of that happening. Ambassador US, If an executive or an investor in a startup growth company is listening to you and wants to learn more about expanding into the Japanese market, what do they do? They should give me a call. That's a capital We have a team that's on the ground. We have as our senior advisor, the person who built Twitter in Japan, as are japan lead. We have a person who built an enterprise company in Japan as well as was a

senior executive that Apple. Obviously, I've had tremendous experience with the senior leadership on both the public and private side, and the important lesson to be learned is it's not one size fits all. Many of these incredibly disruptive, successful companies here in the Valley have been in the US market, but when they begin to go global. They have to understand that different cultures at different business practices, and that's where companies such as ours can really be a benefit.

Thank you very much for spending time with this. Ambassador John Roucy is the former US Ambassador to Japan. He is now the founding partner of Geodesic Capital. They are based in San Francisco. You're listening to taking Stock. I'm pim Fox, My Coast, Kathleen Hayes, and this is Bloomberg Radio. Bloombertaking Stock is brought to you by Commonwealth Financial Network.

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