Financing Local Innovation: Actor Composition across Funding-Size Bands in Japan’s Startup Ecosystem
This study examines financing-actor composition across funding-size bands among Japanese startups with recorded business angel participation.
It descriptively analyses 4,125 funding events from STARTUP DB, classifying disclosed amounts into seven bands and providers into seven actor types.
Business angels accounted for 42.0% of actor involvement in the smallest band, while venture capital, corporate investors and financial institutions had larger shares in higher bands. Actor diversity did not increase monotonically with funding size. Regional profiles appeared broadly similar.
The study reframes funding gaps as variation in actor composition across financing sizes.
The sample excludes firms without recorded angel investment, and repeated actors within funding events preclude causal or population-wide inference.
Policies supporting local innovation should align financing actors with different funding requirements rather than focus solely on aggregate capital.