Masanori Kobayashi

Masanori Kobayashi General Information

Biography

Mr. Masanori Kobayashi served as Principal at Sozo Ventures. His responsibilities include understanding the portfolio companies' technology and then working with them and the current investors to best penetrate and grow in the Japanese market. Mr. Kobayashi comes with over 13 years of engineering experience in the technology industry, especially IP and VoIP network technologies. He has served in a variety of leadership positions in multiple technology service companies. Prior to joining Sozo Ventures, he served as a Hi-touch engineer at Sonus Networks, where he led the implementation and renewal of mission critical projects at VoIP network for major telecom companies. He played a crucial role within the team during many critical phases including bridging the teams between the US and Japan and providing each team with the know-how on how to conclude the project. Prior to Sonus Networks, Mr. Kobayashi served as a pre-sales network engineer at Softbank Telecom, a company that provides global data network to the enterprise and public office. In this position he had to interact with the sales team and the clients which helped him create an extensive network in the Japanese business community. Additionally, Mr. Kobayashi has also worked in a variety of network and product management roles for firms such as IT Frontier and NTT Communications. Mr. Kobayashi holds a B.S. in Biochemistry from Hunter College, City University of New York.