Ryota Matsuzaki is the Founder and Chief Momotaro (aka CEO) at Kibidango, a Japanese crowdfunding platform with a mission to empower businesses of all sizes to realize their great ideas by joining forces with people who are as passionate about supporting such ideas. Kibidango works with many brands to get into the Japanese consumer market to help with go-to-market strategies for those interested in the Japanese market, which is too big to ignore yet too challenging to tackle without a reliable local partner.
Before starting Kibidango, he was an early employee at Rakuten, where he spent 11 years as a senior executive leading its corporate development role. Through his tenure, he was able to identify innovative businesses and successfully roll them into the group through investments and acquisitions totaling $2 billion, expanding the group’s ecosystem on a global scale.
Before Rakuten, he worked as an investment banker at the Industrial Bank of Japan. He was also an early angel and served as a board of directors for CrowdWorks, a leading crowdsourcing platform in Japan, and currently sits on the board of Synchro Food (B2B platform for restaurant owners), UserLocal (Web Analytics/AI Chatbot), Libalent (managing comedians’ YouTube channels) and FISM (influencer marketing agency).
Ryota received his MBA from Cornell University and BA in economics from Keio University.
He currently lives in Tokyo with his wife Haruna and son Shota. He’s an avid music lover who used to play violin in an amateur orchestra, enjoys playing golf, and loves talking about gadgets he backed on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
Twitter @rmatsuzaki.
