Matcher
1 known investors
Matcher is an OB/OG visit (alumni networking) platform where students receive job-hunting advice from working professionals in exchange for fulfilling small requests. It serves Japanese university students and recruiters, functioning as a matching service for career consultations.
Also known as Matcher Inc. · Matcher株式会社 · マッチャー
Investors · 1
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Matcher is a Japanese OB/OG visit (alumni networking) marketplace operated by Matcher Inc. (Matcher株式会社). The service connects university students seeking job-hunting advice with working professionals who are willing to talk to them, using the format "I'll give you job-hunting advice, so can you do ◯◯ for me?" — professionals publish "plans" containing a small request, and students apply with one click. Unlike traditional OB/OG visits arranged through a university career centre, matches are not restricted to alumni of the student's own university, faculty or year, and the service is free for students.
Students fill in a profile (name, place of residence, university, self-introduction, career interests), search professionals by industry, company, job function, consultation topic, meeting location (by prefecture, or online) or free text, apply to a plan, and — if approved — arrange the meeting in an in-app chat. Consultation categories offered include self-analysis, industry and company research, aptitude/written tests, interview preparation, application-document (ES) review, regional job hunting, science-track, graduate-student, international-student and foreign-firm job hunting, work-life balance, post-offer activity, and entrepreneurship. Professionals may also register plans tied to their employer's own hiring or internship recruitment, and students may receive scout messages from companies. Safety measures described by the company include a green verification mark for professionals whose ID and employment have been confirmed, an option to visit with a friend, prohibitions on drinking and on meetings after 21:00, a reporting flow with a yellow/red card system that can permanently remove users, real-name registration, and 24/7 monitoring.
Alongside the matching service, the company runs Matcher Dictionary (matcher.jp/dictionary), an owned media site publishing job-hunting content on self-analysis, industry and company research, OB/OG visits, internships, application documents, self-PR, motivation statements, interviews, group discussions, web tests, job-hunting etiquette and post-offer topics.
Business model
Matcher operates a two-sided marketplace that is free for students. Working professionals post "plans" phrased as "I'll give you job-hunting advice, so can you do ◯◯ for me?", and students apply with one click; once approved, a chat room opens for scheduling and consultation, followed by a student review. The corporate site lists the company's business lines as media operation, web promotion and event businesses, and the company holds a fee-charging employment placement business licence number (13-ユ-309091). Recruiter-facing functionality includes a scouting feature through which companies send selection invitations to students with matching profiles, and professionals can register plans covering their own company's new-graduate or internship recruiting.
Use of the OB/OG visit service is free for students. The corporate site identifies the company's businesses as media operation, web promotion and event businesses, and lists an employment placement licence; the site also maintains a dedicated section for corporate recruiting contacts, and job postings reference building a corporate sales organisation and monetisation of the web service. Specific pricing is not disclosed in the available material.
Traction
As of the Google Play listing updated 19 August 2026, the app reports over 1,300,000 matches made, about 47,000 registered working professionals, a matching rate above 70%, more than 400,000 reviews available to students, and 10,000+ downloads on Google Play. A company article dated January 2025 cited more than 200,000 users, approximately 35,000 registered professionals, around 1 million cumulative matches and professionals from roughly 5,000–6,000 companies. Individual professional profiles on the site show review counts up to the low hundreds.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
Matcher describes itself as one of Japan's largest OB/OG visit and job-hunting consultation services, citing roughly 47,000 registered working professionals, more than 1.3 million cumulative matches and over 400,000 reviews as of its August 2026 app listing (about 35,000 professionals and roughly 1 million matches as of a January 2025 company article). Registered professionals are said to come from about 5,000–6,000 organisations spanning large corporates, ventures and central government bodies, with examples cited including Mitsubishi Corporation, Itochu, Mizuho Bank, SMBC, Nomura Securities, Nippon Life, Toyota, Honda, Recruit, NHK, Nippon TV, DeNA, CyberAgent, Mercari, Rakuten, the Ministry of Finance, METI and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
The core distinction from the conventional Japanese OB/OG visit process is that matching is independent of the student's university, faculty and year, replacing career-centre paperwork, cold email and phone outreach with one-click applications and in-app chat. Because registered professionals sign up on the premise of accepting visits, the company reports a matching rate above 70%. The reciprocal "plan" structure, in which the student fulfils a small request from the professional, is presented as lowering the psychological barrier to asking substantive questions. Additional trust mechanisms include ID/employer verification badges, published five-point ratings and written reviews of professionals, real-name registration and monitoring.
Technology
Matcher is delivered as a web service plus native iOS and Android applications, with in-app chat, message templates and archiving, search and filtering across industry, job function, consultation topic and location, a review and rating system, verification badges, and a company scouting feature. Engineering job descriptions on the corporate site reference Ruby on Rails web development, iOS and Android app development, Linux server operations, AWS infrastructure and data analysis.
Go-to-market
Acquisition is direct-to-student through the web service and iOS/Android apps, supported by the Matcher Dictionary content site, which ranks for job-hunting search topics and funnels readers to registration. Registration is possible via Facebook account or mobile phone number. The company reports coverage by media including NHK, Nikkei, Yomiuri Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun Digital, Sankei News, TechCrunch, THE BRIDGE, Techable, PRESIDENT Online, CNET Japan, Mynavi News and others. On the supply/monetisation side, the corporate site advertises a recruiter-facing entry point and job openings for a sales hire to build out the corporate sales function, including alliances with related service providers.
Japanese university and graduate students conducting new-graduate job hunting (including science-track, graduate, international, regional and already-graduated students), working professionals willing to accept OB/OG visits, and employers seeking to reach and scout student candidates.
Geography
Japan-focused. The company is headquartered at T-FRONT Building 7F, 1-3-3 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0052. Search filters cover all 47 prefectures, and plans are offered both in person (concentrated in Tokyo and Osaka, sometimes tied to specific stations) and online, allowing participation regardless of the student's location.
History
Matcher Inc. was established on 2 November 2015. The service's public update log records incremental feature additions from early 2016 onward, including plan editing and display controls (February–March 2016), profile fields for internships, skills and work history (April 2016), event applications (May 2016), the iOS app (September 2016), profile fields for consultation topics and future goals (2017), identity and employer verification for professionals (April 2019), two-person visit requests (March 2019), a ban on drinking during meetings (March 2019), detailed search filters (December 2020), and mandatory phone-number verification plus review screening in January 2026. A company-cited PR Times release accompanied an Android app launch and a full iOS app renewal at the point the service passed 200,000 users. Reported scale grew from roughly 35,000 registered professionals and about 1 million cumulative matches as of early 2025 to about 47,000 professionals and more than 1.3 million matches as of the app store listing updated in August 2026.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 7
launches, deals, and filingsPhone-number confirmation became required for new registrations to prevent duplicate and false accounts; some review submissions also became subject to screening.
Users became able to search plans using detailed preference conditions.
Added a function to verify the identity and employer affiliation of registered working professionals (OB/OG).
Students became able to request an OB/OG visit together with a friend.
Matcher released its iOS application, announced in the service's update log.
Users became able to apply for events through the Matcher platform.
A PR Times release cited by the company reported the launch of an Android app alongside a full renewal of the iOS app, at a point when the service had surpassed 200,000 users.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Matchermatcher.jp · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Matcher do?
- Japanese platform matching university students with working professionals for OB/OG visits and job-hunting advice.
- Who are Matcher's investors?
- Matcher's investors include Colopl Next.