Makoto Takano's path to venture capital is unusual: he began at Daiwa, worked with Nobel laureate Harry Markowitz on asset-management models, led PIMCO Japan for 13 years, then left finance in 2014 to help launch Forbes JAPAN as CEO and Editor-in-Chief before co-founding D4V with IDEO's Tom Kelly. That mix of quantitative finance, media building, and design-focused investing—plus a science and engineering background from Waseda and early venture capital investments in Indian startups—makes him a much more varied and cross-border figure than most Japanese venture investors.