Success stories of startups and investors in them. Mercari and United Inc.

Mercari raised $1.2 billion in its IPO in June 2018, giving it a valuation of $3.7 billion. This made Mercari the first unicorn tech startup and paved the way for other startups

#VENTURE

#INVEST

#ВЕНЧУР

total yield

The total is invested:

$3 million from each

Share in the company after the IPO:

Yield:

$400 million

15 000%

Mercari founder Shintaro Yamada was a gaming industry veteran who had already sold his first company to Zynga, which we also wrote about. Yamada came up with the idea for Mercari after traveling around the world and realizing that even the poorest people had cell phones. The idea was to create an easy-to-use marketplace app for budget products with a unique delivery system that would allow items to be shipped anonymously from local stores. Local investors like United Inc. they understood that there was something special in this, which foreign investors did not understand.

They did not understand that the modest budgets of individual users are compensated by their huge number, and they did not understand the local specifics. Despite Japan's role as an economic powerhouse on the world stage, the country's startup ecosystem was still tiny, with most talent flocking to secure corporate jobs. This was before the success of Mercari. Japanese venture capitalists now divide the startup era into pre- and post-Mercari.

Mercari's success demonstrates the importance of studying the local culture surrounding a company, as well as its financial performance, when assessing the potential of nascent startups. Here local investors have an incomparable advantage over foreign ones.