SFC Forum

The representative-director board — Jiro Kokuryo, Hitoshi Takano, Masatoshi Tanaka, and Ichiro Yamanaka — governs the foundation. The forum operates a dedicated fund business division whose investment-committee structure is not publicly detailed, but the board collectively oversees the foundation's activities, including its venture investing and government-contract work.

Proprietary deal flow flows from the Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) research pipeline and the SFC Innovation Village (SFC-IV) in Fujisawa. The forum also runs a recurring closed luncheon series — over 170 events — where faculty present research directly to corporate members, creating an informal origination channel that blends academic insight with executive relationships.

Neither. It is a Japanese general incorporated foundation that houses a venture-capital fund business. It has no single-family wealth origin — it was founded by Keio University faculty alongside corporate Japan in 1990 and reincorporated as a foundation in 2012. Its investment activity runs through an internal fund operations division, not a family balance sheet.

The forum does not publicly disclose its co-investment posture. Its disclosed model suggests it can operate both as a direct investor through its fund business and as a government contractor — for instance, it ran a JICA cybersecurity-training program for the Indo-Pacific region in 2023 — but the terms under which it invests alongside external VCs are not published.

Per Altss research, the forum targets seed and early-stage companies, with a general venture mandate. The firm's capture of the SHIN Minato Mirai venture-growth hub contract in April 2024 further confirms a focus on acceleration-stage and growth-stage venture support in Kanagawa Prefecture.

SFC Forum is a legally separate general incorporated foundation, not the university's endowment. It collaborates closely with Keio's Shonan Fujisawa Campus — its directors include a Keio professor emeritus, and its office sits on campus — but it raises its own corporate memberships and operates its fund and government-contract businesses independently.

Geographically, SFC Forum operates from Kanagawa Prefecture with a domestic Japanese venture focus, but it has also executed cross-border government work — notably a 2023 JICA contract for industrial cybersecurity training targeting the Indo-Pacific region, and a 2026 YouTube policy series covering US-China-Japan strategic affairs.