I love what I do. I mould great ideas into MVPs, bring teams together and start companies. I bring 5 core beliefs to each startup I am involved with: 1) the power or asking “why?” questions; 2) the necessity of mental representations for deep learning; 3) the importance of learning by doing (using the best methods available); 4) The role of shared goals and the process of creating them and executing to them; and 5) the importance of building and nurturing a strong and scalable company culture from day one.

His favorite quote is: “Be so good they can’t ignore you” – Steve Martin

James LaLonde started his career as an early employee of Microsoft Japan and led the subsidiary’s rise to the first billion-dollar revenue subsidiary of a software company in history. After his nearly 15 year corporate career which culminated in a role as CEO of a NASDAQ listed software company, LaLonde decided to become an entrepreneur and started RTM Asia. Currently based in Beijing, LaLonde has co-founded two companies in China in the last 5 years. The first, Yodo1, is now the largest private publisher of mobile phone games in China. The second, yoli, is the innovative new way to learn English or Mandarin all in WeChat; bringing the study anywhere, anytime Uber-style model to language learning. A lifelong lover of people, culture, languages, reading and writing; LaLonde has published a best-selling business book in Japanese and writes regular articles in Chinese for his own WeChat account and other media.