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An interview with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.metajob.jp/">MetaJob</a> founder Naohiro Hoshino about his inspiration and experiments creating a more human-centered future of work.<img src="https://moon-website-prod-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/2023_03_24_22_14_48_075cdbab8f.jpg" alt="スクリーンショット 2023-03-24 22.14.48.jpg">Hi there! Can you start by telling us about MetaJob?Naohiro Hoshino (N.H.):&nbsp;Of course! MetaJob is a job-matching platform that aims to create an even-level playing field for all people in a work environment. Various groups – particularly people from less privileged socio-economic backgrounds, stay-at-home mothers, and&nbsp;hikkikomori (people who rarely leave their homes) – struggle to compete in the traditional job marketplace. At the same time, there is a labor shortage in Japan that is only getting worse as the population continues to age. Our vision has always been the same: to level out the playing field and help people find meaningful, rewarding work, while also helping businesses find the quality employees they need to thrive.&nbsp;What inspired you to start building this venture?N.H.&nbsp;I grew up on the east side of Tokyo, where the ratio of self-employed people is very high. As a kid, I couldn’t even imagine going to university. Most people I knew worked in scrappy, family-owned businesses. In a country like Japan which traditionally values formal education, this can be a significant disadvantage. But the truth is, these people have the same capability as others, but less opportunity to show it. These days, technology is changing things, and rapidly. YouTubers have disrupted and democratized popular entertainment and people are increasingly making a living by directly buying and selling to others online. I see it as a dramatic and positive shift in the nature of work itself, and something I want to be a part of!&nbsp;Can you tell us more about how MetaJob works?N.H.&nbsp;MetaJob is a multi-sided platform that matches virtual workers with businesses that have online customer-facing operations. We need to consider all three key stakeholders and their needs: the workers who wish to work virtually, the businesses who need workers they can trust, and the end-users who want&nbsp; quality service. We balance these needs and provide a frictionless, human-centered platform to facilitate the exchange of value between all users.&nbsp;How has MetaJob evolved over time?N.H.&nbsp;Although my vision has stayed the same, our approach has evolved. At first, we worked on solving for the first group: people who want to work, but struggle to do so in the so-called “real world.” We aimed to help them by providing a virtual working environment and identity through the use of 3D avatars. This was very effective and we saw positive results from the worker side, but we also discovered that businesses and end-users do not always trust avatar-only workers.In our second phase of development, we shifted focus to the business side and found that the core issue is a lack of social credit. In short, how can we ensure the quality of virtual workers and create a trusted network? With this in mind, we began developing a system to evaluate virtual worker quality, which led to a huge increase in both trust and engagement.&nbsp;A system as such must be designed with great care; it should be autonomous, transparent, decentralized, and not controlled by an authority like a company or government.&nbsp;Currently, MetaJob has thousands of worker accounts and we make hundreds of job matches per month. Our active users are primarily stay-at-home mothers, minorities, and people with unstable jobs (Hiseiki Shain).&nbsp;What is next for MetaJob?N.H. Our greatest challenge right now is to raise the volume of job opportunities that we are providing and focus on the satisfaction of end-users. This is a common problem for growing ventures. How do we move from linear to exponential growth? But we have a plan!We want to pioneer a new kind of C2C+B market, what we are calling “life-sharing,” or an “experience-and-earn” model. During MetaJob’s growth, we came across the fascinating insight that everyone's an expert on something. For example, I lived in France for some years, and I like driving. As a result, I became an expert on scenic driving routes not only around Paris, but also Western Europe. So if you ever want any advice or recommendations about driving in France and Western Europe, let me know!We want to help our MetaJob users by giving them a platform to provide insight to others in a shared network, sharing life experiences and expert knowledge about whatever the subject may be, and earn money doing so. One of our MetaJob workers, for example, has visited every single&nbsp;onsen hot spring on the Izu Peninsula of Japan. By sharing their life experiences and knowledge, others on the platform interested in traveling to that area can benefit. By building out this functionality, we will dramatically expand the value that MetaJob provides by sharing value amongst the end-users themselves. And we hope that one day, end-users can earn a living this way.Our vision is to continue to expand the platform and provide more opportunities for virtual workers to find meaningful, rewarding work, while also helping businesses find the quality employees they need to thrive. We also want to focus on the satisfaction of end-users and create a platform that provides real value to them.In the short term, we are working on building out the C2C+B model and we believe this will be a major growth area for the platform. We also want to continue to refine our scoring system and make it as objective and reliable as possible.&nbsp;How do you imagine the future of work?N.H.:&nbsp;We believe that the future of work will be more decentralized, human-centered, hybrid, and flexible than it has ever been in the past. Technology is making it easier to work remotely and more people are seeking a better balance between work and personal life. More and more people, especially here in Japan, are seeking options to be self-employed, at least partially. It has never been easier to start your own business providing value to others in a direct, peer-to-peer relationship than now. MetaJob is helping to make this shift possible.In the long term, we see MetaJob as part of a larger movement towards a more dynamic and equitable work environment. We want to help people find work that fits their lives rather than the other way around, and create a world where anyone can earn a decent living by sharing their valuable life experiences with others, regardless of their background or situation. We believe that this is the future of work and we are excited to be a part of it!

As an industry, we’ve been talking about “the future of work” for some time now, but never quite like this. MetaJob, a Moon Creative Lab venture, is a job-matching service for gig workers that goes beyond simply enabling new ways of working without the boundaries of time or physical space.&nbsp;MetaJob is taking the “work from anywhere” concept and adding a twist of crowdsourcing: The company provides job seekers&nbsp;with unique virtual opportunities where they can offer their expertise on a topic or product they know a lot about. Think of it like an interactive version of Yelp! or Amazon’s customer reviews – where the gig worker can offer their knowledge of and experience with a particular topic or product to provide services such as virtual staff that guide people at metaverse event venues, or orchestrating party games in karaoke rooms where gig worker hosts are represented by avatars.<figure class="image"><img src="https://moon-website-prod-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/d60069_105_74d78e997273482aa3b1_13_0fed9a846b.jpg" alt="d60069-105-74d78e997273482aa3b1-13.jpg"><figcaption>“Murder Mystery” game in the JOYSOUND karaoke room. The avatar on the screen is playing the role of the game master. “Murder Mystery” is a party game where participants pretend to be characters in a fictional murder story and try to achieve goals set for each stage.</figcaption></figure>MetaJob aims to develop a casual, online gig workplace where people can make extra income in their spare time simply by using their knowledge and experience for a new type of work MetaJob calls “Word of- Mouth 2.0.”<h3>What does “Word of Mouth 2.0” look like?</h3><figure class="image"><img src="https://moon-website-prod-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/IMG_0808_2_2767f1c483.jpg" alt="IMG_0808 2.jpg"><figcaption>A pop-up store with no in-person staff at Gotemba Premium Outlets.</figcaption></figure>MetaJob recently collaborated with Mitsubishi Estate and Simon Co., Ltd. to introduce a new men's skincare brand, “BULK HOMME,” via a pop-up store at Gotemba Premium Outlets near Mount Fuji.This pop-up store is unique: It required no in-person staff and displayed only sample products. After sampling products of interest, customers could purchase them online using the QR code associated with the product sample. But most significantly, customers could also talk to "fan staff" who use and love the products to consult and ask questions live via the staff’s avatars.<figure class="image"><img src="https://moon-website-prod-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/IMG_0803_2_ae6df78452.jpg" alt="IMG_0803 2.jpg"><figcaption>Purchases are made using a QR code inside the store.</figcaption></figure>Being able to shop while listening to actual user experiences and points of view – vs. classic “sales talk” – is a major advantage for new customers, especially when a company enters a relatively new market where “sales talk” can feel empty without validation from people who have used the product.&nbsp;This “fan staff” idea is a novel concept of customer service that can help new businesses grow while providing opportunities for gig workers.Another recent MetaJob example is an online consultation service for HIROBIRO, a website operated by Hiroshima Prefecture that provides information for people looking to move to Hiroshima. MetaJob provided HIROBIRO&nbsp; with live, avatar-based counselors who have lived in the prefecture and can provide authentic, individual advice based on their own experiences as Hiroshima residents.People who have actually lived in Hiroshima offer more credibility to potential residents than the staff at local government consultation desks, while the avatar-based counselors can work from home and earn extra income.<h3>What’s next for “Word of Mouth 2.0”?</h3>These two use cases are only part of what MetaJob is doing to reimagine the new future of work.For example, in addition to live, avatar-based reviews or guidance from experienced users, MetaJob plans to implement functions and buttons – such as “Ask a knowledgeable person” or “Hear from users about their experiences” – on various websites, including metaverse content and services. When customers click on one of these buttons, MetaJob will then match them with the most suitable, experienced users according to the product or content the customer is interested in (over time, AI may do this matching work).&nbsp;If both parties agree, the conversation will begin by using avatars so that customers can ask questions and be able to hear about real user’s experiences.<img src="https://moon-website-prod-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/2023_03_23_15_01_44_321ea59870.jpg" alt="スクリーンショット 2023-03-23 15.01.44.jpg">The future of MetaJob is bright. Do you remember YouTube Japan’s commercial campaign with the catchphrase, “Sukina koto de ikiteku (Live by doing what you like)”? When the campaign began back in 2014, YouTube was not nearly as popular as it is today – but over time, it has become a widely used platform for people to create their dream jobs.Although we can’t predict the future, MetaJob is hoping to build a similar platform that can increase opportunities for a new generation of gig workers to create their dream jobs, too.Check out MetaJob’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.metajob.jp/">official website</a> for more information, or read this interview with MetaJob founder Naohiro Hoshino on our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mooncreativelab.com/stories/interview-hoshino">Moon Stories Blog.</a>

<img src="https://moon-website-prod-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/image1_162e3ddbd3.jpg" alt="image1.jpg">Established in September 2023, aequol Inc. is a company that spun off of Moon Creative Lab venture Metajob!, a digital work matching service. It is developing a job matching platform for spot work and other services in an effort to provide equal work opportunities to all people. How did the idea come about?<figure class="image"><img style="aspect-ratio:1600/900;" src="https://moon-website-prod-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/image2_9adb52cc44.jpg" alt="image2.jpg" width="1600" height="900"><figcaption>Naohiro Hoshino, CEO of aequol Inc. In 2021, he launched Metajob! as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) at Moon Creative Lab and then incorporated it as a company in September 2023.</figcaption></figure>Table of Contents<ol><li>Helping launch Moon Creative Lab</li><li>Is labor shortage real?</li><li>Digital work level the playing field</li><li>Experiences become the true value</li></ol>&nbsp;<h3>1.Helping launch Moon Creative Lab</h3>How did you become an in-house entrepreneur at Moon?&nbsp;Naohiro Hoshino: Around 2016, I participated in the project that originally created Moon Creative Lab itself. Mitsui had been creating a long-term, 10-year vision and Moon was the centerpiece of that vision. In the next phase, we decided to start creating something from scratch, and we set up the motto "From 'tsunagu' (connect) to 'tsukuru' (create)."Later in 2018, Moon was launched and during an open call for ideas, I proposed my idea of&nbsp; a job-matching platform specialized for digital work, which was "Metajob!”At first, I was thinking of developing a platform that would bundle such things as remote-controlled delivery robots and remote-controlled construction work that can be done without having to go to the construction site, for example, or even telemedicine as another example.However, many remote-controlled robot technologies have not yet been put to practical use, so I decided to start with remote customer service, which we could start working on immediately.&nbsp;<h3>2.Is labor shortage real?</h3>Why did “digital” become the starting point?&nbsp;Naohiro: When I explain Japan's demographic projections and effective job openings to people overseas, they get very surprised. Certainly, the shortage of workers is one of the biggest issues facing Japan. However, from a micro-perspective, we also realize that it is not a simple matter, like the ratio of job offers to applicants = 1 or more, therefore there is a labor shortage.Even if the total amount of work exceeds the total number of workers, various barriers such as age, places to live, illness, nursing care, educational background, work experience, etc. prevent people from taking the first step. To begin with, there are few people who are willing to take any kind of Job. In other words, I feel that a lack of manpower appears to be there, partly because of those barriers.aequal's vision is to "help corporate business through individual life experiences.” We are trying to create a new market for non-manual spot-work, where people support corporate activities based on their unique experiences.If everyone stands on the same footing and runs the same 100 meters based on their own character, I think the result would be an interesting world based on different values than what we have seen so far.<h3>&nbsp;</h3><h3>3.Digital work level the playing field</h3>What made you feel challenged by work barriers?&nbsp;Naohiro: I was born and raised in “shitamachi” Tokyo [smaller, more familiar and traditional neighborhoods outside of the modern, cosmopolitan city, typically made of laborers, artisans, and merchants]. My parents were sole proprietors. Many of the families around me were like that. Because I grew up in such an environment, I thought it was natural that after graduating from high school, I would either find a job or go to college while earning tuition fees. At that time, I realized that there is a huge difference in the starting points for running those metaphorical 100 meters.I then began to wonder if it would be possible to create an environment in which all people could compete from the same starting point. The point is that I am not trying to develop "shoes that make you run faster.* My goal was to create a level playing field, and digital work was one of the approaches to achieve this.<h3>4.Experiences become the true value</h3>Isn't work dependent on past skills and background?&nbsp;Naohiro: When we tried to link digital workers with companies, we saw early on that securing social trust was an issue. However, there are actually ways of matching where the value is not in the skills or career, but in the individual’s experience itself.One example of this is the&nbsp;<a href="https://ijyu-chat.metajob.jp/?utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=CTA&amp;utm_id=Ijuuchat_LP">Ijuu Chat</a> immigration consultation service, released in October 2023 in collaboration with Japan Organization for Internal Migration (JOIN). In February 2024,&nbsp;<a href="https://numazu-ijyu-chat.metajob.jp/?utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=CTA&amp;utm_id=Ijuuchat_N_LP">Ijuuchat for Numazu</a> was launched through Numazu Livelihood, a portal site operated by Numazu City for immigrants and permanent residents. And in June 2024,&nbsp;<a href="https://ibaraki-ijyu-chat.metajob.jp/">Ijuuchat for Ibaraki</a> was launched for Ibaraki prefecture. We hope to make this available nationwide.&nbsp;Until now, local government officials in each area have tried to explain the convenience of living in that area, which is something that prospective immigrants want to know about. In Ijuu Chat, ChatGPT gives a rough answer, and then digital workers who have lived in the area answer the details beyond that. For example, if you ask, "What is the best area for a single mother to live?” a person with experience will answer that question.This is what makes it valuable – not the skill, but the experience. The fact that you have lived there becomes a value in itself. This system can be used not only for immigration but also for travel, and if a large log of exchanges can be accumulated, data utilization is also possible.The knowledge we have gained through our various practices is being applied in a wider range of areas as technology advances. The first remote customer service project we undertook was with a company that operates a karaoke box. By taking detailed sensory data from workers, we were able to get a variety of opinions, such as the difficulty of free talk and the demand for fortune-telling. We were able to start quizzes, including murder mysteries and quick-press quizzes, and collect a variety of data as a result.Now we are able to use that knowledge to conduct increasingly in-depth interviews, such as talking to people who have been using a cosmetics brand's products for more than 10 years, or one company talking to loyal users of a rival company.Although the public has high expectations for automation through AI and robots, the actual cost of 100% automation is significant, and the division of roles between AI and people is expected to continue to be an important point in the future. I believe that digital work will play a major role there.<hr>Naohiro Hoshino established&nbsp;<a href="https://aequol.com/?utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=CTA&amp;utm_id=aequol_LP">aequol Inc.</a> on September 14, 2023. In October 2023, he released&nbsp;<a href="https://ijyu-chat.metajob.jp/?utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=CTA&amp;utm_id=Ijuuchat_LP">Ijuu Chat</a>, a migration consultation service operated by both AI and people, in collaboration with the Organization for Promotion of Migration and Interchange. In January 2024, he collaborated with Chukyo Television Broadcasting Corporation and launched&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ctv.co.jp/studyjam/?utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=CTA&amp;utm_id=StudyJam_LP">Study Jam</a>, a non-advertising method to reach Generation Z and create fandoms. Naohiro has also launched Metajob Research, an online interview service that enables users to obtain candid opinions from consumers, and&nbsp;<a href="https://aequol.com/posts/SNOKlBuY?utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=CTA&amp;utm_id=vtuberscoring">Super-Subjective Vtuber Scoring</a>, a karaoke scoring tool that uses Vtuber digital workers, which Moon Creative Lab is currently helping Naohiro implement.Moon Creative Lab also supports various other ventures. Please check our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mooncreativelab.com?utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=CTA&amp;utm_id=aequol_idea_interview_en">official website</a> to learn more.&nbsp;

Metajob.png

<h3>Challenge</h3>While the labor shortage is becoming a major issue, there are still people who cannot obtain job opportunities because of their age, appearance, or place of residence.<h3>Solution</h3>Metajob provides a new opportunity where people can work anywhere, anytime, and through “augmented telework” that uses avatars, metaverse, robots tech, etc.

metajob-svg-cropped.svg

A job-matching service that enables new ways of working that are not limited by time, place, or physical factors through “augmented telework” that uses avatars, metaverse, robots, etc.

メタバースのアバターを利用したデジタルワーク（拡張テレワーク）により、時間、場所、身体的要因にとらわれない新しい働き方を可能にするジョブマッチングサービス

Naohiro Hoshino, EIR of MetaJob, was interviewed in <a href="https://www.works-i.com/works/">Works</a>, the journal of the Recruit Works Institute. Under the theme “The optimal solution between remote and office: who chooses where to work”, the interview focuses on Metajob's new way of working, which frees people from time, place and bias. The article is on <a href="https://www.works-i.com/works/item/w_174.pdf">page 32 of the linked PDF</a>.

A job-matching service that enables new ways of working that are not limited by time, place, or physical factors through “augmented telework” that uses avatars, metaverse, robots, etc.

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