Money Forward President Yosuke Tsuji Interview: Part 2 Seeing a startup's TV commercial gives you goosebumps!? Startup marketing strategies

After Sony, he joined Monex Securities. He then went to the U.S. for an MBA, and later founded Money Forward after going independent. His first service was a complete failure, but Money Forward, a personal asset management service, is growing steadily. It also continues to form partnerships with major corporations.

How will he grow the service going forward? Fumiaki Nakajima, Business Development Director at Dentsu Inc., delves into the question.

 

Nakajima: What's next for Money Forward?

Tsuji: Since Money Forward helps users understand their current financial status, we want to take it a step further. We aim to provide asset management advice both in person and online, creating a service deeply rooted in daily life. We want users to save money as intended just by using it, eliminating the need to worry about finances. Even now, a huge number of users log in daily, showing how closely integrated it is with their lives. We want to keep evolving the service.

For our SMB services, we want to use technology to automate the cumbersome tasks that previously required significant manpower and cost, creating an environment where they can spend more time on creative endeavors. We believe technology changes the world, and Money Forward is an engineer-driven company—even with around 50 employees, engineers and designers make up about 70% of our workforce.

Nakajima: You're also continuing to grow through partnerships with major companies like Credit Saison and Yahoo! Japan. Will you actively pursue more business alliances like these going forward?

Tsuji: Yes, we will. Open innovation is a buzzword these days, but what startups excel at is creating services and products with speed and, in a sense, a samurai-like momentum. On the other hand, while large organizations might be slower, they can accomplish many things only possible at scale. In that sense, partnering with large corporations allows us to deliver new value to users. Recently, KDDI has been acquiring several high-profile startups, and I believe this trend will accelerate in Japan.

Three Essential Points for Startups When Hiring

Nakajima: How did you assemble the founding team?

Tsuji: At the beginning, we had nothing. So, we had to sell them on our dream, vision, and confidence. Looking back, I'm amazed they joined us... We mainly reached out to people we knew and wanted to work with.

Nakajima: As CEO, your job involves gathering people and hiring, so you're always interviewing, right? You mentioned valuing talent diversity. Did you consciously aim to assemble a diverse team?

Tsuji: When launching a startup, you have no track record, often can't pay competitive salaries initially, and face the reality that top talent isn't easily attracted. So, relying on connections for recruitment is sometimes unavoidable. Also, you can't win without creating diversity that allows various people to thrive. Recently, we've reached out to women who left their jobs for childcare and successfully hired highly capable individuals on reduced-hour schedules.

We rarely look at resumes during hiring, but there are three points we always check. First is ability, second is whether they can be a team player, and third is whether they love the service and resonate with the vision. We only hire people who meet all three criteria; we won't hire anyone who meets two or fewer. People who truly want to realize the service don't waver after joining.

 

The role of a manager evolves with each stage

 

Nakajima: Mr. Tsuji, how do you allocate your time across daily tasks? What's the balance between HR, strategy, product development, fundraising, and so on?

Tsuji: Efficient time management is a constant challenge... But the allocation changes depending on the product stage. If I divide the first two years since founding into four phases: the first half of last year was focused on product development and hiring. The second half, once the product was sufficiently developed and the service stabilized, was about fundraising and hiring. Then, as we started building our B2B cloud accounting solution, it shifted back to fundraising and hiring. This year, since we've built a solid cloud accounting service and invoicing service, we're allocating significant resources to sales and PR.

Nakajima: So the emphasis shifts as the product grows. How do you allocate personnel?

Tsuji: We've delegated it entirely. The heads of business development, product, and accounting each manage their respective areas. We review KPIs daily during morning meetings and hold weekly meetings with each head to check progress. Additionally, we have biweekly Saturday management meetings to discuss business challenges.

Why Startups Are Running TV Ads

Nakajima: More startups are doing TV ads lately. What strategies are you considering to scale your service?

Tsuji: Seeing startups aggressively run TV ads makes my heart flutter a bit (laughs). Makes me wonder if we should do it too... In cloud accounting, established players like OBC's Kanjo Bugyo have been doing TV ads for ages. I think TV and apps are a good match, so I'd like to try it at some point.

Nakajima: TV ads seem likely to become a standard part of startup marketing strategies going forward, right?

Tsuji: That's right. I see two reasons. First, startups now have access to significant funding. Second, there are more founders with large corporate experience and serial entrepreneurs, meaning more highly skilled business leaders. Companies like Mercari and Rakusuru have started TV ads too. They're seasoned pros. Talking with them is incredibly educational; they know a lot about advertising, marketing, and various other areas.

Nakajima: Tsuji-san, you have a mentor like Monex's Matsumoto-san, a true master, plus a network of fellow entrepreneurs—it must be a highly stimulating environment.

Tsuji: When I feel myself getting complacent or lacking a sense of urgency, I go meet with senior entrepreneurs or my peers and get a good scolding and encouragement (laughs).

Services are evaluated by numbers. User actions nurture the product.

Nakajima: Do you develop Money Forward's products, branding, and value propositions internally?

Tsuji: We fundamentally decide based on user behavior data. That's because creating new services or features based on our own assumptions often has no value. When building a service, we formulate hypotheses: who is the target user, what percentage of the target will actually use it, and how much they'll use it daily. We then compare these against the actual numbers. Most of the time, our hypotheses are overestimated. Then, unexpected users adopt it or use it in unforeseen ways. We refine the concept by observing user behavior. We also take a drastic approach, like removing one feature for every new one we add.

In communication, I feel UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) now dominate. While Money Forward's competitive advantage lies in technology, from the user's perspective, design is everything. UI and UX are paramount for making people feel it's good in those hard-to-articulate ways—like "cool" or "easy to use."

Nothing is wasted. Past experiences connect to the future.

Nakajima: As the nature of advertising changes, what do you expect from Dentsu Inc.?

Tsuji: Money Forward isn't just placing ads; we're building our own media platforms. Aiming to be the #1 financial web media, we're creating a hub gathering information on asset management, household budgeting, and accounting. Within this space, we want to deliver personalized One-to-One advertising tailored to users, and further analyze mass data like purchase histories to connect it to O2O (Online-to-Offline) experiences. So, we'd love to collaborate with Dentsu Inc. on the ad tech and marketing aspects.

Dentsu Inc. has been actively participating in startup events and forming partnerships lately. I'm excited about the potential synergy between Dentsu Inc.'s network and resources and those of ventures. This fusion of advertising and technology could lead to even more interesting business developments.

Nakajima: Finally, is there anything you'd like to convey to the readers of this interview?

Tsuji: As Steve Jobs once said, looking back, you realize the dots connect. Like how I ended up in the accounting department unexpectedly and now find myself building cloud accounting solutions. When you work hard every day as a businessperson, those individual experiences can eventually form a single line. My current feeling is that you never know what will prove useful.

Nakajima: Thank you very much. We look forward to your continued success.