Born and raised in Japan, Naoki has strong passions in both technology and finance. Naoki invested in over 40 startups in the Bay Area in his first year as an angel investor, which led him to join NSV as a venture capitalist. After being a researcher at Stanford University, Naoki founded AppGrooves, a 500 Startups company that provided one of the largest App Store Optimization tools for mobile app developers with $6.5m raised. Naoki also started “Helping you to read financial statements”, a paid newsletter that grew to thousands of paid subscribers, then was published as a bestseller book in Japan and was eventually acquired.

Naoki started his career at Rakuten, where he directly worked with the CEO and initiated several new services, investments, joint ventures and M&As as the youngest Executive Officer. Naoki was also an Assistant Professor at The University of Tokyo.