Sasa ShotaroCEO of LivCo Co., Ltd. Shotaro
Sasa

CEO of LivCo Co., Ltd. Shotaro Sasa

Profile

Graduated from Chuo University, Faculty of Law. In the first year of university, Shotaro Sasa visited the Philippines for the first time and was greatly impressed by the warm-hearted people there, which sparked his interest in the potential of developing countries. In the fourth year of university, He was selected as a 6th scholarship recipient of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's "Tobitate study abroad Japan" programme and was stationed in Myanmar as the local manager of the NPO "e-Education". While promoting video education, with local youth He started Myanmar's first career and higher education media company Live the Dream Co., Ltd. , grew it to one million users and sold it. Then he went back to Japan, joined Recruit Co., Ltd. and was involved in the SaaS business for hotels, a new business for "Jalan" platform. After that, he established ASEAN HOUSE Co., Ltd. (now LivCo) in the wake of the Myanmar coup d'état and runs a global HR business. My motto: ‘Failure is normal, success is manly.’

Story

  • 1994Birth~early life

    A well-off primary school life in the wake of the great earthquake

    Born in Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture, when I was one month old, the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake hit Hyogo, after which I relocated repeatedly to Osaka, Tokyo and Tochigi due to my father's work at the time worked for a major life insurance company that requires him to relocate to various places all over the country. Through frequent school change, I developed my first sight and communication skills with people. At primary schools in Tochigi Prefecture, while being passionate about soccer, I was the only student that year who attempted to enter the prestigious Shiba Gakuen private school and succeded.

    A well-off primary school life in the wake of the great earthquake
  • 2008Age 14~18

    Drastic life changes after parents' sudden divorce

    However, when I entered junior high school, my parents suddenly divorced. I managed to continue attending a private junior high school, but my mother and I did not have the financial means to afford it, and I often felt inferior to the young men around me who all came from wealthy families. On the way home from school, everyone would buy and eat Famichiki (fried chicken from FamilyMart) for 160 yen a piece, but I had to put up with onigiri made by my mother. I was on the baseball team, and while everyone around me was buying new gloves every so often, I kept using the same one for six years. In my last tournament, I felt ashamed that I couldn't make it as a starter and make my mother proud.

    Drastic life changes after parents' sudden divorce
  • 2014Age 18~19

    Rejected twice by the University of Tokyo, entered Chuo University with disappointment.

    Feeling inferior due to my family situation, I also lost some baseball matches and was looked down upon by those around me as a ‘big talker’. In order to make up for such a situation, I decided to study hard. I tried twice, once as an active student and once as a ronin, to enter the University of Tokyo from a score of 35, but my efforts were in vain, and I entered Chuo University, my eighth choice. This resulted in another complexes I had developed in my life. After entering university, I still had a strong sense of inferiority to those around me and could not fit in at university or in clubs, so I spent many days only working part-time.

    Rejected twice by the University of Tokyo, entered Chuo University with disappointment.
  • 2015Age 20~21

    Life-changing encounters with the warm people of the Philippines

    My university life drastically changed during a study-abroad programme to the Phillipines. I applied and was accepted to a scholarship programme that I found on a university notice board. I wasn't particularly interested in English or going abroad, but perhaps I wanted to ‘take the first step’ to prove myself to those around me and make up for what I had lost. Hence, i went to Cebu Island in the Phillipines to study.

    Studying english during the weekdays, I was required to participate in NPO volunteer work on my days off, so I helped out at soup kitchens and taught Japanese. As I came into contact with Filipinos, I was moved by how they were always cheerful, smiling, and working hard at whatever was in front of them, no matter how difficult the situation. I came to realise that I, who was better off, should not be looking down on them.

    Looking back, before coming to the Phillipines, at the time success for me was to gain fame by participating in the Koshien (Japanese high school baseball league) or being accepted into University of Tokyo, but life in the Philippines helped me realise that success in life is to ‘live cheerfully, happily and to make a move for the sake of those in front of you’. When I returned to Japan after my study in the Philippines, people around me told me, ‘Sasa, you have become cheerful’. Thanks to the Filipinos, I became a person who can laugh, get angry and shed tears.

    I want to erase poverty from the world !

    However, despite how bright and cheerful the Filipinos were, I also learnt that there are many people who cannot escape poverty and are succumbed to diseases that are curable in Japan. I became interested in international cooperation out of a selfish sense of duty: ‘I am living in a privileged environment, and I must do more to solve the problem of poverty for the sake of the Filipino people who have taught me important things. This was the moment when my negative motivation to ‘prove myself to others’ turned into a positive motivation to ‘help others’. After that, I spent my university breaks building schools in Cambodia, went backpacking to more than 40 countries, mainly developing countries in Africa, visited and interviewed people in slums in various countries, and wrote a thesis on microfinance, which aims to solve social problems by encouraging the poor to become more self-reliant.

  • 2017Age 22

    Taking a temporary break and be a representative for an NPO in Myanmar

    Another life-changing encounter awaited me in Myanmar, which I visited for research for my microfinance thesis.While still a student, I was offered a position working as a local representative in Myanmar for the NPO e-Education. I took a leave of absence and started working there while receiving scholarship funds from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology as a 6th year student of Tobitate Study Abroad Japan. e-Education delivers video lessons to children in developing countries who do not have access to sophisticated education. As the Myanmar local manager of the project, I was in charge of negotiations with the local government and curriculum development to deliver video lessons to the Chin State, which is said to be one of the most impoverished regions in Myanmar. At the time, Myanmar did not yet have an internet environment, so I worked with local staff to deliver video lessons on USB through a 30 hours bus rides.

    Taking a temporary break and be a representative for an NPO in Myanmar
    Change of plan, founded "Rikunavi for Myanmar" startup as a student

    However, in the course of the project, I realised that many students is lacking in motivation even though they have a good learning environment. I also recalled that in the past, when I had no hope for the future and did not want to go to school or participate in club activities, it was ‘information’ that supported me. The information that is available on the internet and books helped to motivate me about the future and overcome the difficult times. In Myanmar, where the military continues to control information, there was an overwhelming lack of such ‘information’. Myanmar students did not have an image of what kind of universities there were, the advantages of going to university, or the career options after graduation, and this affected their motivation to study. So, we thought we should provide such information on universities and careers, and when we looked into it, we found that all the websites providing such information were in English and only reached a small percentage of students in Myanmar. I decided that if this was the case, I had no choice but to set up my own Burmese-language career and higher education media and decided to start a student enterprise together with local youths.

    Live the Dream media in despite of various hardships, delivers professional-styled documentaries similar as those from the NHK on the success stories of celebrities, gone viral and quickly grew to be a media with one million users. We went through many hurdles while on the way to this point, including a strike by local employees, but when we walked down the street and saw people happy to see the information website we had created from scratch, we felt confident that we were changing the world, little by little. This was my first experience of success after a series of failures at home, in baseball and entrance exams. And what made me happiest of all was when an employee, whom I had hired as a new graduate and who was progressing in her career, thanked me by saying, ‘Thanks to Sasa coming to Myanmar, I was able to earn money here and paid my sister's university fees. I came to think that ‘creating jobs’ in developing countries may be the most sustainable international cooperation for raising local education and living standards. Also, when I volunteered in Cambodia, I felt doubt with the limited support to the areas that I visited. However, through media entrepreneurship, I realised that by our own efforts and innovation, we could have the potential to reach more people.

  • 2019Age 24

    Trained in Recruit Co. Ltd. to create a larger business!

    I returned to Japan and joined Recruit Co., Ltd. as a new graduate. To compensate for the lack of "the ability to earn money to create more impact on society" that I felt during my entrepreneurship in Myanmar, I chose Recruit, a well-known B2B sales company, to develop specialized skills in "sales ability to involve both internal and external stakeholders."

    Trained in Recruit Co. Ltd.  to create a larger business!
    Knowing the realities about foreign workers living in Japan

    After I returned from Myanmar, I tried to have contacts with Burmese living in Tokyo. I was shocked to meet Burmese people who thought that "Japan is not a place to come back to". It seems that at their workplaces in Japan they were treated unequally and were made to work overtime like slaves. The number of foreign workers who cannot stand such environments and disappear is 8,000 per year in Japan (2023). In order to encourage more foreign workers to come to Japan in this era of labour shortages, I realised that it is essential to first close the psychological distance between them and the Japanese people, and to create an environment where foreign workers can live and work comfortably.

  • 2020Age 25

    Opened the share house "ASEAN HOUSE" as a side business

    The solution that came to mind was living in a share house like when I lived in Myanmar. Just as I came to like kind-hearted Burmese people, I thought its my turn to make them like Japan. With this in mind, I opened ASEAN HOUSE, a share house where Southeast Asians and Japanese people live together, in Nakano Ward, Tokyo with the money I raised through crowdfunding. To date, more than 60 share-mates have lived there and over 700 people have participated in international exchange events.

    Opened the share house
  • 2021Age 26

    Sudden nightmare in Myanmar

    On the first of February year 2021. A Tragedy happened. A coup d'état broke out in Myanmar and civil war broke out. Burmese people who had worked together with and helped the start-up company were unjustly arrested or went missing. Live the Dream’ had to be sold and handed over to a Japanese investment company, Trust Venture Partners Co. I saw many Burmese people suffering and wondered, ‘How can we create a world without conflict?’ I spent many nights thinking about it.

    Sudden nightmare in Myanmar
    Launching a project in Japan to create jobs in South East Asia to prevent wars

    【No Jobs→No developments on human resource→War→No Jobs】The key to breaking this loop is to create jobs. However, there are no jobs in South East Asia. If that is the case, why not create growth opportunities for Southeast Asians by having them come to Japan to work? These people will one day return to their home countries and use the skills and mindset they learnt in Japan to boost Southeast Asia and create a world without conflict. When they become the core human resources of the country and talk about their memories of Japan, it will also lead to an increase in the presence of my beloved homeland, Japan. Another kicker came when a client in the hotel industry, whom I was in charge of as a sales representative for Jalan at Recruit, said to me: ‘Sasa-kun, if you went to Myanmar, can you introduce me to Burmese people? We are in trouble because we are short of staff’. Well, if there is a shortage of people in Japan anyway, why not have people from South East Asia come to solve Japan's most important problems while creating opportunities for growth? With this in mind, I expanded my existing share house business to launch my current core business, the human resource matching business, and incorporated ASEAN HOUSE. At that time, I also left Recruit and made a second start as an entrepreneur.

  • 2024Age 29

    Company name changed to LivCo Co., Ltd. Aiming to be the first in the industry to offer IPO

    In addition to job matching, our company has also diversified its business to include a human resources development business in Indonesia and a real estate agency business specialising in foreigners, and so I decided to changed its name to LivCo Inc. to reflect the actual situation. The number of employees has exceeded 30 and our business is expanding rapidly.

    Company name changed to LivCo Co., Ltd. Aiming to be the first in the industry to offer IPO

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Company

  • Company Name

    LivCo Inc. (old : ASEAN HOUSE Inc.)

  • Established

    July 2021

  • Capital

    5,000,000yen

  • CEO

    Shotaro Sasa

  • Our Business

    Global HR Platform Business
    Life Support Business for Foreigners
    Real Estate Business for Foreigners
    Media Platform Business for Foreigners
    Human Resource Development Business in Indonesia

  • Address

    YS Building, 5-10-4 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo

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