About Sotenbori
Why we built this
AI can write your email, summarize your meeting, and draft your presentation. What it cannot do is have the conversation for you. Giving hard feedback, pushing back on a volatile boss, navigating a conflict with a peer: these happen in real time, between people, and the outcome depends entirely on how you show up.
Most professional skills can be practiced. You can write code, run numbers, review designs. But when it comes to the conversations that actually define careers, most people have nowhere to practice except in the real situation, when the stakes are highest.
Sotenbori is built to change that. We give you a realistic rehearsal environment: AI personas that push back, get defensive, and behave like real people. You get scored after every session, you see exactly what you did well and what you missed, and you go again. The AI is the sparring partner. You do the communicating.
What we measure
Every session is scored across six communication dimensions:
- Adaptability:How well you adjust your approach as the conversation shifts
- Empathy Accuracy:How accurately you read and respond to the other person's emotional state
- Authenticity:Whether your responses feel genuine or formulaic
- Emotional Regulation:How well you stay grounded under pressure
- Outcome Reached:Whether the conversation actually reached a real outcome
- Reading the Room:How well you recognized and navigated the persona's specific sensitivities
For hiring teams
We also offer assessment tools for organizations. Instead of guessing how a candidate handles conflict from a 30-minute interview, hiring teams can send a link and let the candidate demonstrate it. You see a full scored report before the first phone screen: the same six dimensions, an AI coaching note, and the full conversation transcript.
The personas
Our AI personas are designed to be realistic, not easy. They have consistent personalities, hidden emotional triggers, and specific communication patterns that make each conversation a genuine challenge. The only way to get a high score is to actually listen, adapt, and navigate skillfully. Scripted answers do not work.
Contact
Questions, feedback, or partnership inquiries: reach us via the Support page.