Shin Iwata

Shin Iwata is the Founding Partner at MIRAISE, a seed-stage venture capital fund launched in Tokyo in 2018 to invest exclusively in startups led by technical founders. After earning a physics degree from Keio University in 1996, he worked as a software engineer at Lotus and Microsoft before founding Ariel Network in 2001 to develop P2P applications. He published a book on P2P technology in 2005 and subsequently established Skype Japan, serving as its Chief Executive Officer until 2012. Following his tenure at Skype, he spent nine years as a Partner at the global venture capital firm Atomico and completed the Kauffman Fellows Program in 2017. Today, Iwata leverages his deep technical background and international operational experience to back early-stage entrepreneurs across Japan and global markets, while serving at the Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology.