U.S.-based VC firm targets $100M to help startups link up with Asian customers and partners Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture firm TransLink Capital, which helps startups tap into Japan, Taiwan and Korea , has raised $50 million toward a $100 million first fund, Managing Director Toshi Otani tells PE Week .

The firm, launched in 2007, provides early stage financing and offers U.S.-based startups an entrée to potential customers and partners overseas.

TransLink’s limited partners include Japanese corporations Mitsubishi , NTT and Nikko Cordial Group ; Korean companies Korea Telecom and SK Telecom ; and Taiwanese semiconductor maker UMC .
Many of the marquee LPs in TransLink are in some way linked to one of TransLink’s managers. Otani, for example, worked for several years at Mitsubishi. Managing Director Jackie Yang was a corporate venture capitalist for UMC before co-founding TransLink. Venture Partner Kazunori Ozaki ran Nikko’s corporate venture arm. And Managing Director Jay Eum also ran a corporate VC arm, overseeing the U.S. operations of the Samsung Venture Investment Corp ., which Otani did not name as a limited partner.

“We each have a corporate investment track record and we’ve been here in Silicon Valley for over a decade,” Otani says.

The firm’s method of adding value to its investments and hopefully attracting better deal flow is reminiscent of Granite Global Ventures (now known as GGV Capital ). Since 2000, GGV has helped U.S.-based companies crack the Chinese market or develop ties to manufacturers there. And at least one of the partners of GGV Capital was instrumental in advising TransLink in the development of its investing model.

TransLink will not, however, look to open offices abroad or put feet on the ground in Asia to make local investments in its regions of expertise, though it has allocated up to 30% of its fund to invest in companies in Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

TransLink is looking to differentiate itself by providing portfolio companies with a full set of contacts overseas. “We’re not three guys that just speak three languages. We’ve done this in a professional setting for a long time,” says Otani, who describes TransLink as “taking away the good parts of corporate venture capital, putting it in a financial setting and taking some of the red tape away.”

For example, the firm recently put its strategy to work, leading an $11 million Series B investment in Mountain View, Calif.-based camera peripheral company Eye-Fi , which sells digital storage cards equipped with Wi-Fi chips designed to facilitate photo sharing. Other investors in the round included LMS Capital , Opus Capital and Shasta Ventures .

USA!! Otani, who joined the board of the company, says that early Eye-Fi investor Rob Coneybeer , managing director of Shasta Ventures , brought the deal to TransLink when he thought Eye-Fi needed help breaking into Asian markets. The TransLink team introduced Eye-Fi to several undisclosed corporations over three months before the firm invested.

“If you look at all of the top camera manufacturers, five out of the six are based in Japan,” Otani says. “It just makes a lot of sense to tap directly into that if you want to globalize.”

Taking Eye-Fi or any one of its nine portfolio companies on a tour also serves as a form of due-diligence for the TransLink team. The connections that the partners have to large corporations give them insight into complex markets and help them vet would-be investments.

“When we engage with a company we’re really excited about, we help them with business development and may even take them on a tour to our three countries and introduce them to our partners there,” Otani says. “To the company, we’ve hopefully proved our value-add. Plus we get unsolicited feedback about it in our native tongue, so nothing is lost in translation.”

Mountain View, Calif. — Eye-Fi, Inc.(www.eye.fi), makers of the world’s first wireless memory card for digital cameras, today announced it has secured $11 million in Series B funding. The round was led by TransLink Capital, with new funding from LMS Capital and participation from existing investors Opus Capital and Shasta Ventures. TransLink Capital’s co-founder and managing director, Toshi Otani, will join the Eye-Fi board.

Eye-Fi will use the investment to fund further development of its portfolio, expand distribution into new markets, and scale its organization and market development activities to support its fast-growing business.
“This investment gives Eye-Fi the long-term resources to establish this new category of products and services that help consumers manage and share their digital memories,” said Jef Holove, CEO of Eye-Fi. “The combination of our current and new investors gives the company far-reaching capabilities to extend our efforts in the United States and abroad, establishing new industry partnerships and accelerating our market development activities.”
Eye-Fi was founded in the summer of 2005 and launched its first product, the Eye-Fi Card, in October 2007. Since launch, the company has expanded its product portfolio and introduced new services; formed partnerships with Nikon, Lexar and more than 20 online photo destinations; and expanded its online and brick-and-mortar retail distribution to include national channels, such as Circuit City.
“Eye-Fi is changing the game for consumers and the photography services industry by making it simple for consumers to share and store their digital memories,” said Otani of TransLink. “We see a big growth opportunity for Eye-Fi to expand into new markets like Europe and Asia where digital photography is already an established practice.”
TransLink Capital is a U.S.-based venture capital firm focused on investments in early- to expansion-stage technology start-up companies. It specializes in investing on behalf of industry leaders in the early adopter markets of Asia. LMS Capital PLC is an independent investment company whose shares are traded on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange. Its investment portfolio is valued at more than $400 million and comprises investments in both the United States and United Kingdom, with a spread of early-stage investments, development capital and mature company buy-outs. Opus Capital, a leading venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, Calif., invests in early stage technology companies. Shasta Ventures, also based in Menlo Park, has developed an expertise working with companies that have invented internet-connected devices.
Eye-Fi has received numerous product awards, including being named one of PC World’s “100 Best Products of 2008,” and was recently honored in the AlwaysOn Global 250 Top Private Company List for companies that are demonstrating significant market traction and pursuing game-changing technology in a specific sector. For more information, please visit www.eye.fi.

ConSentry Networks, the leader in secure switching, announced today that Fayetteville State University (FSU), a constituent institution of the University of North Carolina system, has selected ConSentry’s LANShield Switch and LANShield Controller to provide secure switching for user segmentation and access control.

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Marking the two-year milestone of the first shipment of its LANShield™ product family, Secure Switching leader ConSentry Networks today announced its 150th global customer. ConSentry closed out its third-quarter financials, reporting consistent sales growth of 25 percent quarter-over-quarter, a rate that applied for the first two quarters and which the company expects to maintain next quarter as well. In addition, ConSentry announced $21 million in new financing from lead investor Teachers’ Private Capital and new investors Translink Capital and NCD Investors.

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MusicShake, a music-creation app — This is site is winning kudos because it looks addictive. According to the logo on the webpage, it’s a “Music making game which is no need of intelligence.”

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