Hello! I'm Kotaki, a new public relations officer at Meetsmore.
This time, we will deliver a dialogue between Meetsmore engineer Eugene, who is also a startup founder selected by Y Combinator, which invests in Dropbox and Airbnb, and has experience as an Uber engineer, and CTO Karasawa.

なお、本インタビューの日本語バージョンはコチラをご覧ください。

Eugene has contributed to Meetsmore's technology since its inception at the end of 2017. Meetsmore's CTO Karasawa interviewed Eugene, who has a gorgeous career, with the founder of the startup who was also selected as Y Combinator and an engineer of Uber!

Meetsmore co-founder and CTO Fumiya Karasawa (on the left in the photo) interviewed Eugene (on the right)

Eugene has contributed to Meetsmore's technology since its inception at the end of 2017. Meetsmore's CTO Karasawa interviewed Eugene, who has a gorgeous career, with the founder of the startup who was also selected as Y Combinator and an engineer of Uber!

Part 1: Experience at Y Combinator

IoT venture entrepreneurial era. Selected as a Y Combinator badge. Co-founder (on the left in the photo) and Eugene (on the right)

Karasawa(K): Eugene, When did you come to Japan?
Eugene(E): I came to Japan for the first time in 2017, moved over around July 2018.

K: Before you came to Japan, you created your own company and chosen the batch of Y Combinator. After that, you joined Uber. First, I wanna ask about your startup.
E: My cofounder and I started an IoT (internet of things) company. I grew up in the Bay Area, so I’ve always been interested in startups since my late teens. Seeing companies like Google and Facebook started around me made me realize how technology can dramatically accelerate the progress of humanity.

K: How was your experience like at Y Combinator?
E: Being a founder is very tough and can be very lonely, so it helped to see other people facing the same problems as you and being able to share advice on how to solve them.

Part 2: Working at Uber

Uber era. Shot with the first team member

K: Then you worked at Uber, when did you join Uber?
E: In October of 2014. When I joined, there were about 200 engineers, and 1500 people at the company. When I left, there were 2000 engineers and about 25000 employees. I joined Uber because I strongly believed in the company’s mission, and personally experienced the problems that Uber solved.

K: I see. So, you experienced the growth phase of Uber. How did you feel about Uber’s extraordinary growth?
E: I built most of Uber’s fare system - the system responsible for all the money coming into Uber. It was a bit overwhelming to see the number of trips being taken by people all over the world, and the amount of money being earned (and spent!) by the system I built. It taught me many things about how to engineer systems where you’re always trading off engineering best practices and time to market.

Part 3: Why MeetsMore?

At the refresh area of ​​Meetsmore's office in Hibiya, Tokyo. Sometimes an intern asks him how to work in Silicon Valley.

K: When we spoke three years ago, I asked you why you joined MeetsMore. You told me that the main reason for you was because you believed that “[MeetsMore could] completely change how people use local services, like how Google changed what it means to search for information.” How do you think we’ve done so far?
E:Honestly, I think we really struggled for the first year and a half. We tried tons of different things and none of them really worked. Then, some time in the fall of 2019, I remember talking to Ayako-san, our CEO. She told me that you, her, and Yoshimura-san decided to try a radically new product idea. It was a big risk and we didn’t know if it would work. However, after we released it, I felt like things dramatically changed. This big product pivot turned into a huge success. I remember how everyone working on it had such intense focus and energy, and the iteration speed in both the business team and product team was magical to see. Looking back now, that moment really felt like a turning point at MeetsMore.

When I see what we’re doing today, I am very surprised that we were able to build such a complex product with such a small team and do it better than any other company in the world. I often look at local service marketplace companies in the US, China, India and Southeast Asia. I've yet to come across anyone who has delivered a better product experience. This makes me strongly believe that our product and engineering teams are not just one of the best in Japan, but one of the best in the world.

K: What’s your favorite part about working at MeetsMore?
E: The team, no question. When I tell people how many people we have on our engineering team, they’re always shocked that we were able to build all this stuff with such a small team. I think our secret here is that we didn’t hire engineers - we hired brilliant problem solvers who happened to know how to code. This is the same trick Google used during their early days as well (Eric Schmidt calls these people “smart creatives”).

K: When it comes to joining a start-up, many people often worry about “missing the boat” and really want to join a start-up when it’s small and doesn’t feel like “working at a big company”. Do you think people already missed the boat on MeetsMore?
E: I actually think that there’s never been a better time to join MeetsMore as an engineer. Even though our product and user base has vastly grown, our team is still tiny and we actually have more difficult engineering challenges today than we did a year or two ago. The people joining us today are going to be the ones who will get the first shot at building these crazy systems that everyone else at the company will use for many years. When I joined Uber, I felt like I had already “missed the boat” since the company had 300 engineers. However, the fare system that I talked about above - Firehouse, it was called, is, to this day, still powering most of Uber’s fare and pricing systems and moves $200 million dollars per day. The people joining us today will be the ones who have a chance to build MeetsMore’s “Firehouse”.

K: Any advice for engineers who are interested in joining MeetsMore today?
E: We actually have a secret way of applying to MeetsMore that only engineers would be able to discover. People who apply using this method will be given priority over anyone applying using the normal method. They will really get ahead. I won’t say anything else because I don’t want to spoil the puzzle. Also, if you are able to figure it out, congratulations! Please don’t share it with others so that those who took the time to solve it are fairly rewarded. Good luck!

※In December 2019, Meetsmore began changing from the traditional "manual application" to "automatic application".