Visions - Winter/Spring 2017 - 10

GROUP COMPANY

Presidio Ventures:
Expertise in Investing in the Future

n the highly competitive and exclusive industry that is the US venture capitalist (VC) community, Presidio
Ventures has been able to not only gain entry, but succeed as the longest continuously operating Japanese
corporate VC in the country. Serving as the VC arm for Sumitomo Corporation and SCOA, Presidio has the
opportunity to identify and invest in the newest technologies influencing the many diverse industries that our
companies' businesses are a part of - potentially improving upon the way we conduct our business in the future.
Founded in 1998, Presidio established its headquarters in Silicon Valley to target early-stage ventures of
strategic interest. Leveraging the relationships and
networks already built by Sumitronics and other
SCOA satellite offices, they were uniquely positioned to establish themselves as a credible player
in the US VC community. Presidio mainly targets
companies that are at the product prototype stage
through the international expansion stage; namely
series A, B and C funding. Their current focus areas
are Enterprise IT, IoT, Media, AI, Fintech and Auto.
Presidio's unique approach to investing has proven
to be a successful differentiator in the marketplace.
They have been historically eager to nurture collaboration between VC companies and SC Group for
the Asian (specifically Japanese) market. For these
young companies, Presidio is able to help penetrate
the Japanese market and identify local intelligence,
customer demographics, reseller information,
joint-venture partners and further financial backing.

Above: The staff of Presidio Ventures.
Front row from left: Kristina Martinez, Eric Sytwu, Seth Nishida, Simon Takagi.
Back row from left: Aki Morinaga, Zak Suezaki, Shaun Tanabe, Ted Tatsumi (CEO), Ellen Pierce,
Lisa Kanehiro, Masood Pirzada, Terry Kojima.
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visions

Winter | Spring

2017

From a corporate-strategy standpoint, Presidio is
consistently asking: 1) How can we provide value to
our portfolio companies with each investment; and
2) How can we contribute to SC Group to create
and develop potential business opportunities? With
these guiding principles, Presidio is providing a
direct link between every one of SC Group's
businesses, and the technology of tomorrow.
With innovation evolving as quickly as it does today,
it's easy to get excited, albeit overwhelmed with the
number of opportunities and potential investments
available for consideration. This is precisely why Presidio has employed a meticulous process to dwindle
the surplus of potential opportunities. Under each
of their six verticals, they create targeted sub-themes,
for instance, "IOT application development platform" under IOT. They then list between 2,000
- 3,000 target companies under those themes, 500
of which they meet with annually, based on their
filtering process. From these meetings, they narrow
the opportunities down to about 15-20 companies
for a more thorough review, finally landing on 4-6
new investments that make the final cut each year.
One of the companies that made the final cut most
recently is Workspot, for which Presidio led $6.2
Million in series B funding in October of last year.
Workspot is a cloud-based VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) software system for Enterprise. Presidio
had been watching the company for 18 months
before they became the lead investor, impressed by
the fact that Workspot was developing visionary
end-user computing as part of the Enterprise IT space.
The team at Presidio took interest in the company's
change in strategy to address the void Enterprise
IT had in the VDI (Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure) market, which is worth $4 Billion with over
a 15% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Visions - Winter/Spring 2017