Growth Enjin Partners Research
Investment Thesis
Growth Enjin Partners (operating the Incubate Fund US vehicle, and historically known by that name) is an early-stage venture capital firm headquartered in Los Altos, California, with regional presence in Tokyo and Silicon Valley. The firm's stated thesis is "where unity scales into growth" - it backs early-stage B2B technology founders and then leverages a global corporate and LP network, particularly across Japan and the broader APAC region, to help portfolio companies commercialize and expand internationally. Growth Enjin Partners is part of the larger Incubate Fund family, which the firm describes as the largest early-stage-focused venture capital firm in Japan, with additional networks across the US, India, Southeast Asia, and Brazil.
Stage Focus
The firm concentrates on early-stage B2B technology companies, investing at pre-seed, seed, and Series A. Public materials do not break out a more granular stage-by-stage allocation, but the current portfolio skews heavily toward first-institutional-check and early Series A rounds in enterprise, security, and AI-native startups.
Check Size
Growth Enjin Partners does not publish a specific check-size range on its website or in available secondary sources. Given its early-stage B2B focus and $800M AUM across a 200+ company portfolio, checks are presumptively in the seed-stage range, but this could not be confirmed with source-backed specificity and is therefore omitted from structured fields rather than guessed.
Lead Tendency
Not clearly established from available sources. The firm is credited as an early institutional backer across many of its portfolio companies, but public materials do not consistently disclose lead vs. participant status per round, so lead tendency is recorded as unknown.
Recent Activity
Secondary data sources (PitchBook, Crunchbase) reference an investment in Umiaile (Electronic Equipment and Instruments) dated October 2025 as the firm's most recent noted activity, and the firm has made 36 tracked investments historically. No primary-source press release or article could be located to verify this specific round with a citable URL, so it is not included as a structured activity event per this workflow's sourcing requirements.
Portfolio Highlights
The portfolio spans 200+ companies with 33 M&A exits and 22 IPOs to date, and the fund was recognized as the #1 performing fund in Q4 2018 by Preqin. Notable current/recent portfolio companies span AI infrastructure and agents (Phaidra, Auxia, Ratio, Brox.ai, Vieu, Innowate.ai), security (Cerby, Brightsec, Volt.ai, Discern Security, Rigor AI, OwnID), robotics and frontline productivity (Cartken, Retrocausal), developer/enterprise tooling (Lightup, CloudNatix, DagKnows, Nominal, OpNova), commerce (Airbuy, Goooods, RefiBuy, FEZ Inc.), media/streaming (Wave.one, Arena.im, Promise Studios), and manufacturing intelligence (LevelPlane, DeepWeave). Notable acquisitions from the portfolio include Percept.ai and Limitless.ai.
Team
- Kazuki Notsu, Co-Founder & General Partner - Previously led growth marketing at Google's Mountain View HQ and managed SMB marketing at Google Japan, where he also built a marketing innovation division to support startups. Earlier career includes senior consulting roles at Dentsu and Boston Consulting Group, leading global marketing strategy across 30+ countries in healthcare, CPG, and media. Holds a bachelor's in international management (physics minor) from Kyoto University and an Executive MBA from Wharton. Co-leads Xoogler.co, a 10K+ member community of founders and investors, and sits on the Advisory Board of Vela Partners.
- Yigit Ihlamur, Advisor - Previously worked in Google Cloud's Mountain View and Dublin offices across product management, strategy, operations, growth, and partnerships. Holds a master's in computer science (AI/ML) from the University of Oxford and an industrial engineering degree from Koç University. Currently General Partner and co-founder at Vela Partners.
Decision Process
With a small, partnership-style leadership team (a General Partner plus an advisor drawn from an affiliated fund, Vela Partners), decisions appear to run through a compact partnership structure rather than a large investment committee, though this is inferred rather than explicitly documented.
Founder Preferences
The firm's marketing emphasizes founders building B2B technology - particularly AI-native, security, and enterprise infrastructure products - who can benefit from cross-border go-to-market support between the US and Japan/APAC markets.
Geographic Focus
US-based portfolio companies are the primary target, with the firm's differentiated value proposition centered on supporting expansion into Japan and the broader APAC region through its affiliated Incubate Fund network in Tokyo.