NTTVC: The Power of Partnership

I’m excited to publicly announce the launch of NTTVC and our first $500M fund. Our vision is to harness the power of partnership to offer entrepreneurs a unique model for scaling their companies.

As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I deeply appreciate why today’s startups need to scale more rapidly than ever before. Many markets are winner takes all with the bar raising higher every day. The gap between first and second market leaders is growing exponentially as the pace of technology innovation and adoption quickens.

At the same time, opportunities for entrepreneurs are also growing exponentially. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that we are still in the early innings of a massive digital transformation impacting every industry. Startups are the catalysts to help us get from where we are to where we want to be, and entrepreneurs need a fast lane to relationships that can supercharge their growth for maximum impact. This is why we founded NTTVC.

Meet NTTVC – a new venture capital firm

Seven years ago, NTT acquired Virtela, a company where I was both a founder and investor. Since then, I have had an opportunity to collaborate closely with NTT’s leadership team and have witnessed firsthand NTT’s commitment to embracing the startup ecosystem, along with its ability to help cutting-edge technologies reach global scale. Together, we developed the idea of an independent, returns-driven venture capital fund that could harness the reach of NTT.

NTTVC offers entrepreneurs the best of both worlds: an independent and agile VC firm coupled with unique access to NTT’s massive ecosystem serving 75 million mobile subscribers, 3 million businesses, and 120,000+ enterprise customers, with a local presence in over 80 countries. When you combine our investment team’s network with the reach of NTT, the result is unfettered access to the voices that matter – industry experts, customers, entrepreneurs, business leaders, system integrators and service providers. This virtually unlimited data feed offers an incredible level of insight to help startups make better decisions, more quickly.

We believe partnerships build companies

Turning an idea into an enduring company is the hardest work of a lifetime, and going it alone rarely gets you there faster. Startups can vastly accelerate their impact by partnering and collaborating at strategic inflection points. These partnerships can take many different forms, offering critical input on everything from validating an idea and finding early adopters, to identifying the right go-to-market model and scaling the business.

If our portfolio companies decide it is right for them, they have unique opportunities to sell to, through and with NTT. No other global technology services company offers so many routes to market under a single entity, making this model extremely valuable to startups and offering a truly unique competitive advantage.

One of the most important elements of our strategy is choice: the decision of whether, when and how to leverage NTT is completely up to our companies. We will never push a certain agenda or approach because we know that every business is unique.

We have the capital and experience to guide startups from idea to IPO

At NTTVC, we are a team of builders. We have founded, advised, scaled and invested in over a hundred startups, developing deep industry relationships and learning many important lessons along the way. We’re building the kind of venture firm that we would want in our own corner as an entrepreneur, which means our approach is rooted in trust, integrity and hard work.

With our $500M fund, we can invest with conviction at any stage and continue to support growth with follow-on capital. Typically leading or co-leading rounds, we offer a high level of personal attention to every portfolio company. We invest broadly across all sectors with an emphasis on the future of enterprise, digital health and innovations powered by AI, machine learning and data.

We have been quietly investing in world-changing companies since the fund’s inception. Today we are also excited to announce our investment in Celona, which is empowering enterprises to build their own private 5G mobile networks. In addition, two of our portfolio companies, Eko and nference, have been making a significant impact in the fight against COVID. It has been awe-inspiring and humbling to see the power of all of these technologies in action, and we’re just getting started.

The future is bright

Our team has had the privilege of partnering with incredible people to build startups, co-invest in driven entrepreneurs, scale companies that change the world and now, build a new kind of venture capital firm from the ground up. We want to use the power of partnership to build a brighter future, together.

If you’re building a world-changing company of any stage or sector, we want to partner with you. If you’re a VC looking for co-investors with global access and influence, we want to partner with you. If you’re a CxO thinking about the digital transformation of your own company, we want to partner with you. Reach out and let’s discover what’s possible.