SELF-ACTUALIZATION & REALIZATION AGENCY FOR INDUSTRY
Turning self-actualization into an industry.
SARAI
Toward a world where everyone can fully devote themselves to creating value that only they can create.
[ 01 ] MISSION
Our Mission
Toward a society where intrinsic mastery
becomes the source of value.
A new industry category in which value flows not from efficiency or labor as ends in themselves, but from the deepening and self-expression born of each person's intrinsic motivation — feeding directly into the prosperity of organizations and society.
We call this the “self-actualization industry,” and its creation is SARAI's ultimate purpose. A world where every person can be fully immersed in the value creation only they can do. A society where organizations and individuals integrate their respective mastery and grow together. SARAI works to co-create that infrastructure.
Our Promise and Approach
Our promise to clients
Remove every lid on business growth.
The first step toward a self-actualization industry is to completely remove whatever is capping the growth of the business in front of us. As a business grows, bottlenecks inevitably appear somewhere — people issues, operational jams, systems that lag behind. They keep changing shape, and we identify and take on each one.
The result is a state in which the business can drive straight toward the outcomes it should be pursuing, with 100% of its energy. That is the essential value SARAI provides.
Approach
Hands-on co-creation, with tools of our own.
We do not impose polished systems or generic solutions from the outside. We start by going deep into our clients' front lines, moving the unglamorous, practical work with our own hands and raising our resolution of the field as far as it will go.
At the same time, we bring in the products we have honed in the field — our own SaaS-style tools — and put them to work in each engagement. The hands-on process itself becomes the R&D that sharpens the next product.
How We Evolve
Start with a single breakthrough, and keep evolving with the industry.
- STEP 01
Go deep into the pain of a specific domain
Start small, focused on a narrow domain that is easy to enter and has large room for efficiency gains.
- STEP 02
Raise operational quality, cost, and speed decisively
Outpace competitors on quality, cost, and delivery, and build a firm position in the niche.
- STEP 03
Carry the insights into what comes next
Expand within the same industry, or apply the same playbook to similar problems in other industries.
An organization that keeps evolving
Industries and markets never stop changing — so neither do we. We keep learning from what is happening in the field, updating our hypotheses, and evolving the organization itself.
We do not believe in perfecting one playbook and stopping there. Refining the playbook and growing it into a platform that supports an entire industry is, we believe, the surest way to bring the self-actualization industry into society. We turn the operational patterns honed in the field into software (SaaS and AI agents), building toward a platform that underpins the whole industry. Full, unglamorous commitment to the client in front of us is itself the purest R&D for the industrial infrastructure of the future.
[ 02 ] BUSINESS
What We Do Now
We are putting our mission into practice in a concrete field today. Our first choice is the recruitment agency industry in Japan — long-established, and with great room for transformation. We also build our own product: Shiori, an AI planner-secretary.
Marketing enablement for
recruitment agencies
Specializing in the recruitment industry, we support each firm in systematizing its marketing and management from the front lines. By raising on-the-ground productivity and margins through better systems, we work to change the operating fundamentals of the whole industry — so that each firm can focus on its true value: supporting candidates' careers and solving employers' hiring challenges.
See CA Dojo (Japanese)Shiori — AI planner-secretary
Just talk — your records and your plans gather into one planner, and Shiori acts in your place. We build it as a companion for staying the one who uses AI, not the one being used by it. The app is free, and the closed beta is now open for signups.
Visit Shiori[ 03 ] FOUNDER
Founder's Story
Founder & CEO
Yuhei Baba馬場祐平
Born December 1983
Left junior high school, then high school; qualified for university via equivalency exam
→ B.A. in Political Science, Waseda University
→ Withdrew from the Graduate School of Education, the University of Tokyo
As a founder
- Dojuku (2007–2013)
- Sensei Place (2015–2024)
- SARAI (2025–present)
As an author
- Exams Are a Game (2009)
- The Hunger to Learn (2012)
- A Declaration of Self-Study (2013)
- Confessions of a Failure (2026)
All titles published in Japanese.
Life mission
To trust society, co-create with others through honest self-expression, and keep deepening mastery.
Why this business
For a long time, I was bad at business.
Behind that was a long stretch of feeling that society would never really accept me. Dropping out of school twice, skipping the new-graduate job hunt, choosing nothing but starting my own companies — at the root of it all was a wish to avoid society. I fled its opacity and holed up in technology and in safe places where I could be the protagonist. I kept that up for a long time.
And yet, looking back after winding down two companies, I realized something: the very belief that I was “bad at society” and “bad at business” was me putting a lid on my own potential.
As long as the lid stays on, some things will never go well. But you cannot know until you try. I want to accept my past self while facing the future with everything I have — living a life that integrates the “society” and “business” I once cut away. And in the same way, I want to help many people remove their own lids and live in their own ways. For me, that is the work of creating a “self-actualization” industry in society.
What that takes, I have come to feel, is to keep changing myself. To bring my unembellished self into open spaces of co-creation. To become someone who, with time as an ally, deepens mastery while working with others.
SARAI does not aim to look complete from day one. We face our clients' businesses head-on and solve real problems in the field together, sweating alongside them. I believe that process is itself the way I deepen my own mastery — and the surest way to build the self-actualization industry in society.
[ 04 ] JOIN
Build the Future with Us
The self-actualization industry — together.
SARAI is looking for teammates who will help build, from the front lines, a society where everyone can immerse themselves in the value creation only they can do.
- ◆People who don't shy away from immersing themselves in unglamorous fieldwork
- ◆People who pursue mastery with time on their side
- ◆People who believe in the power of AI, data, and systematization
- ◆People ready to transform themselves through co-creation with others
We are currently recruiting one founding member (intern or contractor) to share the front line of the business.
See careers[ 05 ] CONTACT
Get in Touch
For careers, partnerships, or questions about our services — you are welcome to reach out anytime. Yuhei Baba personally replies, usually within two business days.
Please email us at the address below.
info@sarai-corp.jp