Leave a Nest Capital

Leave a Nest Capital

Leave a Nest Capital launched in 2020 as the dedicated investment vehicle of Leave a Nest Co., Ltd., the deep-science incubator Yukihiro Maru founded in 2002. The parent company had spent nearly two decades building a network of researchers, universities, and corporate R&D partners across Japan and Southeast Asia before formalizing a venture capital function. Maru, a former researcher himself, structured the firm to solve a specific bottleneck in Japanese deep tech: the gap between government-funded laboratory research and private seed capital. The firm writes first checks into pre-seed and seed-stage deep tech companies, targeting founders emerging from university labs and corporate R&D departments. It concentrates on sectors where Japan holds structural research advantages — advanced robotics, materials science, agri-bio, and energy storage. Rather than running a conventional fund structure, Leave a Nest Capital operates on a deal-by-deal co-investment model, syndicating rounds with the corporate partners its parent has cultivated: confirmed co-investors have included Mitsubishi Chemical and Shimizu Corporation in portfolio companies developing carbon-capture membranes and construction robotics respectively. Geographic coverage extends from Tokyo and Osaka into Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Manila through the parent's regional research hubs. The firm targets a deployment pace of roughly 10–15 investments annually, with team size kept deliberately lean by leveraging Leave a Nest Co.'s 200-plus employee base for technical due diligence and portfolio support. Adjacent structures include the parent company's Real Tech Fund, a larger growth-stage vehicle that provides follow-on capacity, and the Hyper Interdisciplinary Conference series, which surfaces deal flow by convening researchers across unrelated fields. In March 2024, the firm co-led a seed round for a Kyoto University spinout commercializing algae-based bioplastics alongside a syndicate of regional corporate venture arms. Leave a Nest Capital operates a structural model uncommon in Japanese venture: rather than build a standalone GP, it embeds the investment team inside a revenue-generating deep-science services company, using consulting fees from corporate clients to subsidize origination and diligence costs. This hybrid structure allows it to invest at the earliest stages without the pressure to raise successive blind-pool funds — a genuine structural differentiator in a market where most seed funds are captive to financial-group balance sheets or government mandates.