Money Forward CEO killed his first product in months, then pivoted to ME (interview)

In a first-person account for Nikkei Business, Money Forward CEO Yosuke Tsuji recounts the startup's founding failure. Money Book, its first product, released in spring 2012, was a 'Facebook for money': individuals would share what financial products they owned with a network of acquaintances, modelled on the US social-trading startup KaChing (now Wealthfront), with an added aim of teaching financial literacy. The team joked that Japan's public-bath culture proved people would be fine sharing asset information.

The result, in his words, was a crushing defeat: fewer than 50 users, most of them founding members' friends. What early users revealed was not fixable friction but fear — reactions like being scared to use it, or wanting to quit immediately and have their data deleted. An employee's family would not touch the service. Tsuji writes that founder-era enthusiasm tilted every interpretation optimistic, and that the product satisfied a small slice of financially literate early adopters while solving nobody's actual problem.

Two to three months after release, the team decided to kill it. The pivot came from re-asking the need: few people want others to see their money information, but many want to see it clearly themselves. The company concentrated on a household bookkeeping and asset-management app; six months after the kill, it shipped the beta of 'Money Forward' (now Money Forward ME) in December 2012.

Tsuji credits the failure with forcing the user-focus that came to define the company — his own textbook case of 'Fail fast'.

A working pivot in six months: the Money Forward ME beta shipped in December 2012, per Tsuji; the failed first product never passed 50 users (self-reported).

Tsuji says the product expressed the founders' ideal — 'users will surely be delighted' — and stopped seeing users; reactions were fear, not fixable friction.

The kill was fast: two to three months from release, before sunk costs could argue for a rescue.

The reframe drove the pivot: people hide money from others but want to grasp it themselves — the basis of Money Forward ME.

He credits the flop with making Money Forward relentlessly user-focused — his own textbook case of Fail fast.

Attachment to a mission-driven product blinds founders to user fear; a fast, unashamed kill beats a slow rescue when the data says nobody cares.

Per Tsuji's account, the beta of Money Forward (now ME) shipped in December 2012, six months after the kill decision. Nine years on from founding, he wrote, the company had repeated many failures and near-death moments, but Money Book remained the lesson that anchored its user-first approach.