Paul: Cameron Long is a software engineer and co-founder of the legal tech startup Jora AI.
Cameron and I spoke about his pivot from mechanical to software engineering, his early break in Japan through an internship at Rakuten, building tech in Tokyo and New York, founding Jora, his future plans, and much more.
Hi Cameron. Please introduce yourself.
Cameron: I studied Software Engineering in Canada and first came to Japan in 2016 through an internship program. After graduation, I’ve worked in both Tokyo and New York across finance and tech, and I’m now co-founding a legal tech startup called Jora.
In my free time, I try to swim and play basketball, and especially when in Japan, I take nice road trips when I get the chance.
In total, I’ve spent about 5 years living in Japan.
You studied software engineering at the University of Victoria. What was your interest in computers, and what kind of career were you aiming for?
In truth, I had started my career in the Mechanical Engineering track, only to switch into Computer Science and then Software Engineering later on. But the underlying aim was that I always wanted my career to be somewhat international, and I switched careers on the thesis that software engineering was more transferable to professions abroad.
I wish I had some interesting story to tell about loving computers and programming from a young age, but in truth, the first time I ever did any programming was in a Java class in my last year of high school, making games in Scratch. It was fun and mostly enjoyable, but the decision to make it a career was mostly a practical one, as opposed to one of passion.
It’s worth mentioning also that at the time, I thought my career would begin and end in the United States, as every engineering student (especially in software) in Canada desperately wants to move to Silicon Valley. I never could have imagined that it would take me to Bangkok, New York, and Tokyo.
You worked while studying, including a spell at Rakuten in Tokyo. Tell us about that time.
Canadian universities require you to complete 16 months (4 school semesters) of practical work experience in order to graduate with a full engineering degree that’s accredited, and where you receive your iron ring. So as part of that, I joined the Canada Japan Co-op Program and incidentally was part of Rakuten’s first year participating in the program. Rakuten offered me a year-long internship.
The internship itself was basically being a full-time Rakuten employee, and Rakuten took care of my rent on top of my salary while I was living in Japan during that year. By the end of it, I was treated no differently from any of the other staff.
The real benefits are on a much more personal and social level, as it provided an opportunity to break into Japan, so to speak. You build such a great network of people who went on to have wonderful careers in Japan that you can tap into, even ten years later. It also provided me, I think, with a relatively risk-free chance to try Japan and make a decision about whether I wanted to come back full-time (semi) permanently.
How did your career progress after graduation? You spent some time in Tokyo and New York.
Things initially progressed ‘by accident’—in the sense that I didn’t actually intend to come back to Japan after the Rakuten internship, as I felt there were other opportunities in other countries I could try first. But Rakuten invited me to the Boston Career Forum, and I politely accepted the invitation, only to be poached by Goldman Sachs with an offer to return to the Tokyo office as a new grad.
In a lot of ways, the Rakuten experience, apart from the technical aspects of what I learned, completely broke the barrier of getting hired in Japan. Many of the questions asked by Japanese employers were centered around ‘why do you want to move to Japan’ and also ‘do you think you can handle living in Japan?’ Once you can get past that, breaking into a career in Japan becomes much easier.
I spent three years at Goldman Tokyo, making my first promotion to Associate before transferring to a sister team in New York City. I spent six months at Goldman before taking a new position with Bilt Rewards.
Bilt Rewards itself is what I draw the most inspiration from now, as it was a hyper-growth startup I was in on the ‘second floor’ of, and I built some really cool systems and features for users that helped expand the platform. For me, it taught me how to (and that I was capable of) deliver and build things from scratch, and that’s what I truly loved to do. It’s a major departure from the Goldman philosophy, which is a much slower company to work for with little agency.
It gave me the confidence and willingness to try to strike out on my own, and I was given the opportunity when my co-founder approached me to help him build Jora AI in 2023. Since then, I’ve been recruiting help through my network and doing my best to build a company.
With Jora, what problems are you solving, for whom, and how?
Jora seeks to help automate the process of conveyancing – i.e., the legal transfer of title and land when buying and selling houses or commercial property. It’s kind of a classic ‘old, antiquated, and boring’ problem to solve, in the sense that current software is 20 years old, doesn’t really help lawyers do their job, and has been slowly monopolized by a law software company no one particularly likes.
So, we’re building new software for real estate lawyers in Canada that aims to:
- Take an opinionated approach to how real estate transactions should go
- Creating workspaces so work doesn’t get missed
- Custom workflows for deal types
- Automate as much of that process as possible
- Production of documentation
- Correspondence with other parties
- Input of information into the system
- Boring manual stuff that they usually have to go through a government website for
Real estate lawyers in Canada are among the few who are paid per transaction, so speed gains are directly relevant to revenues in the firm, as opposed to hours worked. So, the faster lawyers can complete deals with fewer errors, the more money they make. And we hope Jora will enable them to do that.
Do you see Jora expanding services to cover the Japanese real estate market? My own house purchase a few years ago was an endless stream of forms that needed to be filled out by hand and stamped with a hanko. It wasn’t fun. Surely the process here could be improved.
Yes! Building on the last question, we have a unique opportunity to make that decision after we’re through with the ‘easy’ stuff—a market we more fully understand and have a stronger connection to in Canada—to try and bring a similar system to Japan.
Fundamentally, the ‘problem’ is the same: many parties involved are trying to share information through ineffective means and a slow process that’s highly repetitive. But I think it would be a unique challenge to port this to Japan. Primarily, the basis of law between the two countries is completely different, so we’d probably need to build something completely new. But I think the team would be up for the challenge.
What does your typical day look like?
I somehow expected the day-to-day of building a program/startup to be a lot more ‘interesting,’ as it’s romanticized as being completely fast-paced and electric. But in truth, what I got was a lot more programming and feature planning than I initially expected. I wish I had some cool TikTok-esque bumper of ‘Day in the life of’—but in truth, I suppose it’s burst rushes of fundraising, building features for client demos, or developing new features clients ask for.
We try to keep meetings and general administration within the company to an absolute minimum (going back to working with high-trust, high-capability people), so the dev team only catches up three times a week globally. So I’m not particularly locked in meetings all day.
What are some of your goals for the future? Short-term, long-term, personally and/or professionally
Really, these days I only have mindshare for the immediate goal of making this company as successful as possible. What’s been an interesting evolution is how the goalpost keeps moving as time goes on.
When I first started, the goal was ‘I just want to build something from scratch that at least one person pays for.’ I felt that I would get what I wanted out of the startup experience and be able to hang my hat on that. Around January of this year, we hit that milestone, and since then my perspective has shifted to shaping how I want my company to work and what sort of experience I want to provide for the people who came along the journey with me.
So for now, it’s something like ‘Grow the revenue enough and responsibly enough that we all are paid nicely and have time for family and our passions,’ and I think I could hang my hat on that, but I suspect the goalpost will move if we hit that point.
But, success or failure, I’ve joked with myself that my future plans after the Jora experience are retirement, as I think I’d need a break after all of this is over, and then we can figure out what comes next.
Quickfire questions
– If you could go back in time to your arrival in Japan, what advice would you give yourself?
Embrace the fact you’re here and try not to always be thinking too hard about the “what comes next after Japan”. I spent too much time worrying about whether or not Japan was a good place for me to be versus making it one.
– What advice would you give to someone building a startup in Japan?
Cheeky: If it’s something to do with akiya, someone is probably already doing it.
Serious: I’ve been surprised at the amount of support/grants/ecosystem that exists in Japan these days, and I think it’s changed so much in the ten years I’ve been kicking around the country. I would look hard at the various incubators (Plug and Play, Google, etc.) and talent that exists in the city and do my best to create that network. Entrepreneurship doesn’t have the same cachet as it does abroad, but it’s changing quite quickly.
But I strongly believe you have to have built a professional career here first before it makes sense to try to create a company or business here.
– How do you learn new skills? What are you currently learning?
Cheeky: I’m trying to relearn how to sleep properly and on a schedule.
The new skills I’m learning these days are just by gathering the courage to do stuff I think will create opportunities for us to be successful. I think Sushi Tech is a great example, as I have never created an information pamphlet or animation or company materials before. But in some way, I was forced to design and work with my teammates in order for us to get anything out of the experience.
This also goes for things like public speaking and pitching, and generally being able to sell and market Jora. These days, we’re starting to do live demos and sell heavily to lawyers outside of our network. And it’s interesting how I’ve had to learn how to sell something I’ve been working on for two years. It’s two parts: things that I think are totally minuscule problems that no lawyer would have suddenly become the most interesting features about the app. And things that took me ages to solve as an engineer are industry standard and just allow the app to check a box that says ‘yes, we have that.’ So the salesmanship skills have taken some time.
– Tell me a few of your favourite or most recently read books, movies, podcasts, and games.
Baldur’s Gate 3 absolutely consumed my soul all of last year, highly recommended.
I wish I had a better answer, but most of the media I consume these days is about GraphQL and MongoDB optimization.
– What’s your favourite place to visit in Japan?
These days, I’ve been doing a lot of weekend trips to Hakone, just to clear my mind in an onsen, but Sapporo and the surrounding area hold a very special place in my heart. It feels closest to my hometown in Canada, and it’s absolutely beautiful to drive through.
– What’s the best thing you’ve spent 10,000 JPY on in Japan?
Tickets to Anri and Shibuya Line CUBE (I was the youngest man there by at least 40 years).
I imagine there are not too many young Canadians at City Pop concerts. How did you get interested in Anri?
It actually started when my sister and I both lived in Japan at the same time — and our “party trick” together became singing Japanese oldies (think Sayuri Ishikawa et al), so it really just spawned out of that.
And finally, do you have any asks for our readers?
For anyone building something in Japan or thinking about it—don’t hesitate to reach out if you want to chat about the ecosystem here, navigating the startup or engineering world as a foreigner, or just want to connect with other entrepreneurs. The network effect is real, and I’ve benefited so much from people who were generous with their time and advice.
Perfect. It was great speaking with you today, Cameron. Best of continued success to you and the Jora team.
Looking for a new IT job in Japan? Check out my job board. Hiring? Get in touch and let’s see how I can help.
Join 1,000+ readers to receive my free newsletter.
1 monthly email with Japan IT job news, articles on tech & life in Japan, my insider insights, and more.
100% non-corporate and non-boring!
- No spam, ever. Email addresses are never shared. You can unsubscribe at any time.