Shiseido has reached a basic agreement to invest in the Dreamer Fund, a venture capital fund that primarily invests in early-stage startups with growth expectations in the US market.

WHO: Dreamer Fund is a venture capital fund co-founded in 2018 by the company of Keisuke Honda, a professional soccer player, and the investment company of actor Will Smith. The fund’s objective is to invest in start-ups in the United States, and its managers have invested in a number of leading American start-ups. The fund has its own information network on the West Coast, enabling it to speedily discover and invest in early-stage startups.

DETAILS:

• The investment will be made through Shiseido Venture Partners, its corporate venture capital, as a limited partner.
• The investment is part of Shiseido’s New Three-Year Plan (2018-2020) which is the second phase of its medium- to long-term strategy “VISION 2020.”
• The investment in the fund will allow Shiseido to gather information about the US consumer market, state-of-the-art technology, and business trends. It also enables Shiseido to discover promising start-ups with which they will actively cooperate to create new values.
• For Shiseido this investment aims to create innovation by combining its internally developed expertise with new values that Shiseido actively takes in from outside through partnerships and M&As.