Inside Money Forward’s journey from a 6-person team to a $680m firm

“In my opinion, money is just a tool,” says Yosuke Tsuji, co-founder of Japanese fintech software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Money Forward. “Our goal [is] for everyone to enjoy their lives. [We hope] that people don’t have to think about money,” he adds.

This is what motivated Tsuji to set up the company, where he serves as CEO, president, and representative director.

Launched in 2012, Money Forward has built personal financial management (PFM) apps that allow people to track their money, plan their financial future, and optimize their spending, savings, and investments.

Meanwhile, its cloud services for enterprises let companies streamline their back-office and accounting services, as well as their business-to-business-to-customer (B2B2C) cloud offerings.

Yosuke Tsuji / Photo credit: Money Forward

Money Forward is the first fintech and SaaS firm in Japan to go public, having listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2017. It recently had a US$680 million valuation.

It is expanding its business to include areas such as artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency services. It has also opened new development centers in Kyoto and Ho Chi Minh City earlier this year.

Humble start

Money Forward’s headquarters is in a new building next to Tamachi Station, a train stop to the southwest of the Japanese capital. The space has glass walls and pastel-colored seats as well as an airy atmosphere with commanding views of Tokyo Bay.

That’s a far cry from its early days, when the company’s six-person team was cramped into a tiny office near Tokyo’s Takadanobaba Station, an area renowned for its grunginess and student-centric boisterousness.

“In 2012, nobody knew the word ‘fintech,’ so we didn’t think of our services as fintech. But the name of the building where we worked was ‘Finetech Building,’” Tsuji shares.

It was a fortuitous meeting between Tsuji and fellow founder Toshio Taki in the US that laid the foundations for Money Forward’s creation.

Lucky strike

Back in 2011, Tsuji was on sabbatical from his job at Monex, one of the biggest online securities companies in Japan. He was taking up his master’s in business at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, while Taki was part of the MBA program at Stanford University.

After they were introduced by a common friend, they met each other for the first time via Skype. Financial matters were at the heart of their wide-ranging discussion, which included questions like: “What are the major societal problems in Japan?” “What kind of services do we need to solve them?”

Tsuji also wondered why people always had money-related issues. Part of the answer, he believes, is that people often don’t have the opportunity to learn about personal finance while they’re in school. “I think that’s a big problem,” he says.

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