Lost-and-found startup find draws in Rice Capital and Boost Capital via secondary deal
What's the deal? Tokyo-based findDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, which runs the lost-and-found cloud service "落とし物クラウドfind," has added Rice CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and Boost CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → as new shareholders through a secondary share transfer. Rice Capital is led by Taro Fukuyama, founder of US startup FondDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, while Boost Capital is led by Takao Ozawa, a former growth executive at Rakuten and Mercari.
What does find do? It uses AI-driven technology to streamline lost-property handling and help operators return items to their owners. The service has rolled out across major transport operators, commercial facilities, and leisure venues in Japan and abroad.
What's the endgame? find plans to move beyond its business-to-business roots into individual-user services and overseas markets, starting with Taiwan and Singapore. It intends to deepen multilingual support and localisation, and to recruit core staff for product development and global expansion.
Why these investors? The company frames the round as accepting “money with people attached” — bringing in operators who have led business launches and growth in Japan and the US to strengthen its governance and management. “Findは、この文化を支えてきたアナログで属人的なプロセスをデジタル化し,” Fukuyama said, arguing that Japan’s culture of returning lost items could become a global standard.
Why now? This is a secondary deal for find, adding new backers on the heels of prior investment. Rice Capital, whose first fund launched in July 2024, has disclosed several bets on SaaS and B2B startups across Japan and the US; Boost Capital was established in 2023.
What could go wrong? Expanding into consumer services and foreign markets pulls find away from the enterprise focus that drove its traction so far. Localising for each country’s laws and operational norms — and hiring the global talent to do it — carries execution risk against limited comparable precedent.
The signal: Lost-property and public-infrastructure DX is a promising vertical SaaS niche in Japan, but one that has yet to produce large rounds or unicorns, and where competitors are few. Experienced growth investors backing find suggests operator money is gathering around practical, narrow DX plays — and that the company is entering a stage focused on scale and eventual exit.
Read more: PR Times
Image credit: Find
