Nobuhiro Seki
Seed Investor in Deep Tech in Manufacturing in NYC. Carnegie Mellon MBA. Editor for Nikkei Computer in 90s
New York City Metropolitan Area
Overview
Work Experience
Founding Partner and Chief Investment Officer
2017 - Current
Advisor
2018
Served as Advisor for NYDesigns, an incubator of CUNY, Nob helps entrepreneurs get connected to critical assets such as mentorship, funding and manufacturing resources. Nob is Founder of FabFoundry, who offers a platform for hardware startups that brings bulletproof oversight of manufacturing processes. He also serves as Managing Director for MBC Shisaku Fund, a Kyoto-based VC fund specialized in seed-stage hardware startups. Prior to these hardware-related companies, Nob was an executive at Six Apart, a blogging pioneer in the San Francisco Bay Area. He graduated from Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University and earned a BS in Metallurgy from The University of Tokyo.
NYDesigns Hardware Accelerator invites venture and angel investors interested in hardware products across multiple industries.
Advisor
2015
President & CEO
2011 - 2015
Nob spins out Six Apart from Say Media to assume Movable Type business and sells itself to Infocom in 2011, and Nob remains Six Apart's Chief officer, and moves its headquarters to New York City to accelerate its business in the media industry.
Executive Vice President and General Manager of Asia Pacific
2003 - 2011
(Acquired by SAY Media in November 2010) After being a biggest donator to the company's software product, Nob joined Six Apart as Employee #3 and led the company's initial business development activities, which ended up with a $4M sales to the seed-stage startup. Nob then started the Japanese subsidiary as Executive VP and General Manager. He spearheaded the global team of company's flagship product Movable Type. Movable Type was a big success especially in Japan with 50+ employees and 250+ sales partners in a few years. Positioning Movable Type as a corporate web publishing system, Nob evangelized the blog use for business, which made him spend 60% of his time in Tokyo and 40% in San Francisco until the company was acquired by Say Media in 2010.
Board Observer
2017
ADVANCED MOVEMENT TRAINING TO MAXIMIZE SPORT PERFORMANCE
Proteus Motion develops a physical rehabilitation technology to optimize movement using 3D resistance training and analytics.
Raised $20,837,411.00 from Harrison Co., Matthew Dellavedova, HBSE Ventures, John Lester, Blake Griffin Enterprises, Monozukuri Ventures, 412 Venture Fund and Acies Investments.
Board Observer
2022
Board Observer
2020
Everykey keeps your passwords in encrypted form so your account info is secure from our end to your end
Everykey is a offers a Bluetooth device designed to replace keys and passwords.
Raised $150,000.00 from Monozukuri Ventures, Sparkland Capital, Alchemist Accelerator, IncWell, Cathexis Ventures, Hard Yaka, Alchemist Accelerator, IncWell, Innovation Fund Northeast Ohio and North Coast Opportunities Technology Fund.
Advisor
2020
AI-Driven Recruitment Platform for Early Career Professionals
Advisor
2019
Machine Learning; AI; Facial Recognition.
Finiite is a SaaS, API, and retail software designed for internet sales.
Raised $50,000.00 from MARL 5G Accelerator and Right Side Capital Management.
Founding Investor
2010
Founded in December 2010, ConnectFree is a leading company that provides the IoT (Internet of Things) solutions, including secure P2P communication chips manufactured in their fabless laboratory in Taiwan. ConnectFree originally started with a solution that enables Wi-Fi hotspots to offer location-based information to the users of the hotspot. Such information can be managed centrally as well as locally by Wi-Fi hotspot tenants.
Founder & CEO
2001
SyncWorld was founded originally to build a multiplayer mobile role-playing location-based game platform in 2001. Its business plan was selected to represent Carnegie Mellon's business school in 2001 to business plan competitions, fully supported by Professor Emerson and Professor Hajduk. The company did not get significant investment until mid 2003 and the founder Mr. Seki joined a San Francisco-based startup Six Apart. The company gradually transformed its business from the platform builder to a production company for Mr. Seki's editorial work and consultancy, in addition to his angel investment vehicle. As of today, SyncWorld provides editorial services including interviews, consulting work, speeches and workshops on the technology and the business in Japan and in the U.S.