Katsuhiko Saito- General Partner

Mr. Saito joined JAFCO Co., Ltd. as the Deputy General Manager for the Evaluation Department in 1986.  He was appointed General Manager of a newly created Overseas Investment Evaluation Department in 1990.  In 1994, he was appointed the first President of JAFCO America in San Francisco, California and managed a U.S. $70 million information technology fund.  JAFCO was established in 1973 under the name Japan Associated Finance Company by Nomura Securities and became the first publicly traded venture capital firm in Japan in 1987.  As of December 1999, JAFCO had invested in 1,700 companies in Japan and 192 companies overseas.   Through affiliates, JAFCO has offices throughout Japan, as well as Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. 

Mr. Saito's past investments include: CIENA, NeoMagic Corporation, PSINet, Com21, Nvidia, CommQuest Technologies, Advanced Fibre Communications, MMC Networks, Network Integrity, Tivoli Systems, C-Cube Microsystems, Spectrian, Synernetics, and Metatools. Mr. Saito departed JAFCO in December 1999 to establish CrossBridge.

Prior to JAFCO, Mr. Saito worked for Nomura Research Institute as a systems analyst and consultant in new business feasibility and planning.  Mr. Saito was also an adjunct systems analyst of RAND Corporation.  Mr. Saito received his MS in Operations Research from the University of California at Berkeley and MS and BS in Management Science from Keio University.