It was 2014, and SmartNews, the upstart news discovery app that Hamamoto had co-founded two years earlier, was bumping up against the boundaries of it

Behind SmartNews, the $2 billion unicorn trying to fix the news algorithm

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2021-10-19 13:30:10

It was 2014, and SmartNews, the upstart news discovery app that Hamamoto had co-founded two years earlier, was bumping up against the boundaries of its home market. Japan was bristling with competition from century-old print newspaper giants. The U.S. market, on the other hand, had far more potential for advertising and readership.

There was a catch: they needed to develop an international version. Hamamoto spoke some English, but knew America only as a tourist. Armed with a prototype, he ventured out to Tokyo’s eikaiwa cafes, coffee shops where English teachers are hired — usually by aspirational businessmen and housewives — to hold casual conversation lessons.

Hamamoto showed his speaking partners the app, quizzing them on everything he could think of. What kind of news were Americans reading? What did they think of the name SmartNews? The design?

Hamamoto recalls the move with pride, even now. “It was much cheaper than conducting user research,” the SmartNews COO and chief engineer told Rest of World over Zoom.