One of Year’s Best Startups Isn’t in Silicon Valley, or China www.bloomberg.com

One of the year’s most spectacular startup payoffs isn’t in Silicon Valley or China, it’s in Japan.

Mercari Inc.’s $3.7 billion coming-out party will deliver a 149-times return to early investor United Inc., which engineered a 300 million yen ($2.7 million) round in the flea-market app in 2013. That stake will be worth at least 45 billion yen when Mercari goes public June 19, a mega-windfall that may galvanize the No. 3 economy’s stunted startup scene.