Le Wagon ApéroTalk: From prototype to first funding, with Matthew Romaine

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Le Wagon Tokyo

6 min readSep 19, 2017

As the very first speaker of ApéroTalk season 3, we had the great pleasure to welcome Matthew Romaine, co-founder and CEO of Gengo. And the least we can say is, he did not disappoint. In front of a 80-people strong audience of entrepreneurs, developers, and some of our students, Matt went through the story of how he came to launch MyGengo (that later became Gengo), and most importantly his advices on what he would — and would not — do again.

The story of Gengo

Matt started his career in Japan 15 years ago as an audio engineer for a company you probably heard about, Sony. “I had to go through the traditional Sales training for new employees, which was back then selling video cameras in Akihabara” he starts, “So I was basically spending my days there advising customers, and I obviously had to be brand agnostic, though I was working for Sony”. Later on, though he was hired as an engineer, he had to do a lot of translation work for the company “That was a time when the number of internet users was 4 or 5 times less than today… But it’s probably when the translation seed got planted and when I had the very first idea of Gengo”.

A few years later, and with a bit more experience under his belt, Matt went on to accomplish his vision, and launch with two co-founders MyGengo in 2009. Though it started as a B2C company, it now focuses more on catering to businesses, supported by a best-in-class workbench, through which translators can directly work on their browser. How Gengo takes care of their crew of translators is one thing Matt sounds proud about: “We are very strict with how we select our translators, and only 4% of potential translators who apply actually end up on our platform. But looking at how much we pay out every year, I am happy to say we are creating opportunities for them”.

After taking us through the very first steps of the journey and a few figures, Matt went on and delivered the core of his message: If he had to go through all of it again, what would he do the same, and obviously… what would he do differently?

What we did well

Get early PR & Media coverage

“Tech writers don’t always look for outstanding products — they also want a genuine story, so that’s what you should focus on at first:What’s your story?” and Gengo surely had a couple of specificities to show for in the beginning “We were on of the very firsts foreign-launched startups in Tokyo, which helped for the media attention. And that matters to investors, you being in TechCrunch. It builds validation.” Getting attention can also go through attending tech conferences, in Japan and abroad, and Matt had a good advice about it: “So how do you do when you’re a small company and can’t pay for the booth? My advice is to become buddy with event organizers, and play your cards: Hey, I am a startup from Japan, you want me in your event? Event organizers always look for that rare bird which will make their event unique.” Matt acknowledges it was a bit of hustle at first, but definitely worth it.

Answer life questions

Now Google “Life questions” and see what comes out. Probably not what you think about when you consider launching your first business, but Matt had an interesting point to make about it: “Those are the questions you need to have an answer to, not only for yourself, but also for the people you work with” he explains, “And when we got to those questions between cofounders, we realized that only two of us committed to go long term. I strongly recommend to have at some point a open and sincere talk around beers.”

Find external evangelists

That last piece of advice is probably what each founder is desperately looking for in the early days, and Matt confirmed again that it played a big role for Gengo “You need to surround yourself with users who are as passionate as you are about the product. It’s going to be really helpful: for product validation, for evangelization, even to find team members. It helped us a lot. In short, it gives you that outside perspective that founders usually lack”.

What we could have done better

Meet more customers

This one echoes the previous comment about evangelists, and confirms the idea you need to be as close as possible to your customers “Translation is a type of service where customers cannot really evaluate what they buy. When you buy a car, or a phone, you know exactly what you get. That’s not true for translation” Matt explains, “And I think it took us too much time to go and actually understand what our customers were doing with the translation we were providing. They had KPIs, they were measuring ROI… We could have developed plenty of tools to ease their life on those aspects”.

Eat your own dog food

“Similarly” Matt continues, “You need to use your product. I had an inspiration to make translation easy, but I should have spent more time understanding how translators and customers were using our product. What were their pains, and how to make their lives easier”. And he had a very to-the-point example to illustrate this idea “At Square (the payment device company), they have a whole retail shop environment set up, and during the first week, each new employee needs to actually try out the solution, on both sides of the counter. That’s how much you should be committed in order to understand your customers”.

Be more frugal

The last piece of advice may not apply to everyone, but is great for those who just got funded “Spend money on what matters. Getting a fancy office may sound cool, but you’ll eventually regret it. If I were to go through it again, I’d probably spend more money on team building, and taking care of our employees”. Does it mean you should not celebrate? “Don’t get me wrong, celebrating is important. Just do it… frugally”.

Don’t raise funds just because it sounds cool

It was time for Matt to deliver his last piece of advice: “Don’t raise funds just because it sounds cool. Do it for a reason. And when you do it, understand one thing: signing a termsheet is like a wedding. It’s the beginning of a long and very close relationship. So make sure you date your VC first.”

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Q&A

After this sharp and open moment of experience sharing (that got a well deserved round of applause), we pass the microphone to the audience for a Q&A round. As you can imagine there were a lot of great questions, so we had to select only a few for this article.

Q: How do you manage to encourage a smooth mix between local employees and foreigners?

I don’t have a secret sauce for that, but we tried a few things that worked: Basically, our motto is to make sure that information comes across, no matter the language you use. We also had a few corporate events, specifically events that a “traditional” Japanese company would organize. And the funny thing is, it was an experience not only for the foreigners working there, but also for our Japanese staff (laughs).

Q: I contacted a lot of VCs, and got no answer. How do I actually get them to talk to me?

You need to understand that there are different types of VCs: seed, serie A, etc… So if no one answered, it might mean you contacted the wrong kind. So make sure you know who you contact, what kind of business they’re into. Remember it’s a relationship, so you get a say in it too. After that, early stage VCs will introduce other contacts for later rounds.