Ur AI wins the Best Growth Award at Incubate Camp 19th

On October 29 and 30, I spent two days at Incubate Camp 19th, the overnight camp that Incubate Fund runs for early-stage founders and venture capitalists, held this year at the Okura Academia Park Hotel in Kisarazu, Chiba. Sixteen founders took part. Each of us was paired with a guest VC, and each of us pitched twice: once on Day 1, and again on Day 2 after a night of working on the business together.

At the end of Day 2, Ur AI won the Best Growth Award. It goes to the startups whose ranking rose the most between the two pitches, and we shared first place with a fellow founder building automated bridge maintenance. I'm proud of the award, but I'm even more grateful for how we got there.

Two days to think about only one thing

Running a startup, I rarely get to focus purely on our strategy and our story. There is always a customer to call, code to review or a document to sign. The camp took all of that away for two days, and I didn't realize how much I needed it until I was there.

Day 1: a head full of vision

I opened my Day 1 pitch with a question for the room. To protect your home, would you choose a dog that you raise yourself, or a professional guard with a rifle?

Most people pick the guard. Then I asked: what if someone else can take the guard away without notice, decides when he fires, and charges you for every second he stands there? That guard is today's frontier AI. The dog is AI that an enterprise owns: models trained on its own data, running where it decides.

I still believe in that story. But looking back, on Day 1 my head was full of the bigger vision, and full of ideas about how to communicate it. I was trying to say everything at once.

Sixteen VCs, sixteen opinions

One part of the camp I didn't expect: every startup gets a 15-minute session with each of the 16 guest VCs. That's sixteen different reactions to the same pitch.

It was surprising to see how much their opinions varied. Hearing so many perspectives in one day helped a lot in thinking through our story. Of course, it's on me to decide which input to take, and when. Not every piece of advice is right for us, or right for us now.

One long night with a mentor

I was paired with Saka-san (Yutaro Saka) from JAFCO, and his help was immense. Through the evening and late into the night, we worked through which story matters to which audience: what an investor needs to hear, what an enterprise needs to hear, and in what order. The Incubate Fund team sat with us the whole time, taking notes and helping rebuild the slides for the next morning.

The story that came out of that night is simpler. Our long-term goal has not changed: sovereign AI built in Japan. But today, Ur AI is the layer between enterprise data and AI. Nebula turns the documents that Japan's industries run on, such as drawings, contracts, scans, faxes and handwritten forms, into data that AI can work with, on infrastructure our customers control. We start with concrete problems, like estimating in construction, and every problem we solve lays a brick for the longer-term vision.

Day 2: the same company, a clearer story

Nothing about the company changed overnight. What changed was the clarity, and the confidence that came with it. I went into the Day 2 pitch, and into the conversations with VCs and enterprises afterwards, feeling far more sure of what I was saying. The room felt it too, and that jump between the two days is exactly what the Best Growth Award measures.

What I'm taking away

• Lead with what we do today, and let the vision show where it goes. The vision earns attention. The clarity earns trust.
• Tell the story for the person in front of you. Investors, enterprises and partners each need a different first sentence.
• Listen to every opinion, then choose. Sixteen smart people will give you sixteen different answers, and deciding which one to act on, and when, is the founder's job.
• Make time to step back. Two days away from customers, code and operations did more for our strategy than weeks of fitting it in between other work.

Thank you

First, thank you to Incubate Fund for the opportunity. Selecting us, running such a thoughtful camp, and staying up through the night with every founder is no small thing.

To the other participating startups: thank you for the amazing fun and the inspiring conversations, at the tables, over dinner and late into the night. It was a privilege to spend two days with people building such ambitious companies, and congratulations to sa-mo on winning first place overall.

And to the VCs, and Saka-san above all: thank you for the kind mentoring, and for memories that I will carry with me forever.