Where goalsbecome stories.
Onuai is a live platform. A visual journey map that becomes your life story.
It gives a creative person the structure they need, without losing the freedom and agency they crave.
Independent workers are the first market. The need is broader: people building lives through changing energy, uncertainty and life disruption.
It feels like an all-in-one place for a creative life.
Six waypoints. One pitch.
Independent work is
our first market
Americans earned income independently in 2026.
Full-time independent work has grown 114 percent since 2020. It now accounts for 22 percent of all full-time workers in the United States, up from around 11 percent in 2019.
Most of them are not doing it reluctantly. 78 percent plan to stay independent or build something larger, and only 1 percent say they are dissatisfied with the way they work.
MBO Partners by Beeline, State of Independence in America, published September 2026. Survey of 4,557 US adults, 2,063 of them independent workers.
What a job is
actually giving you
You leave for freedom and agency, and you get them.
From then on you have to create all five of these yourself, on top of the work itself.
Onuai is how you get the structure back without getting a boss back.
Ambition without
external structure
My mind can feel like an eight-lane highway. The ideas, ambition and potential are there. The risk is whether I can create enough structure, alone, to stay with what matters over time.
Self-directed work asks the same person to choose the priority, set the deadline, manage changing energy and notice progress.
That becomes harder when attention competes, time feels slippery and intensity pushes the rest of life aside.
My greatest fear is not that the startup fails. It is being forced back into a life that does not fit because I could not build the structure required for freedom.
Founder and core-user experience. This describes lived experience, not a diagnosis.
One loop for a
self-directed life
The loop stays short: choose the direction, take one step, see what happened and adjust.
Walk it yourselfIt inspires me to keep reaching for my visions.
The route holds
when life does not
A season in Onuai, drawn as the route it is.
During personal loss, I could choose presence without guilt. The dream was still there, and I had a clear way back when I was ready.
The work itself becomes a walk.
A timed next step matched to today's energy and focus. Every step taken is logged as a Footstep, so progress stays visible.
Why existing tools
fall short
Onuai keeps direction, capacity, action and reflection in one place.
It gives the next step without flattening the person into a task list, and makes the work feel worth returning to.
I’ve used many apps for tracking progress, moods, and reflections. Onuai is the first place that brings it all together in a way that feels like an adventure rather than a chore.
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The structure is built
on evidence
Onuai makes progress visible and keeps it connected to the direction that gave it meaning.
Harkin and others, Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence, Psychological Bulletin, 2016.
What it feels like
from the inside
My days are so much clearer now that I’ve built Onuai into it.
I’m able to create an encompassing safe space for reflections, goals, and step by step actions, meanwhile getting a juicy dose of soothing dopamine I attribute to its user design and flow.
This is such an incredible asset to my life and I am so excited for whoever gets an invitation to use it.
Built, and about to be tested
with a real cohort
Bigger than
an app
Back the dreamer. Help people choose what is theirs to build, and keep walking long enough to build it.
A world shaped by dreamers. An ecosystem for dreamers, and a festival to make it visible to the world.
A software company would stop at the first two. We are building the rest because a tool on its own has never been enough to change how somebody lives.
Cohorts are the
first onramp
Anyone can use the platform on their own, and people do.
It is understood fastest through a program, because a cohort gives a shared start date, guided setup and others walking at the same time, so nobody has to configure the system alone. The platform carries the journey afterwards.
A pilot program runs in December with Tokyo Design Community, and the first official season starts in March.
Four times a year, the Seasonal Reset is open to anyone. It helps people close one season, see what happened and choose the next focus.
Focus now,
ecosystem later
Whether programs create activated users who continue on the platform and choose to pay.
A small team across
Sweden and the US
Pontus joined in September as backend developer. Onuai Unfold AB is for profit and mission locked, built along the lines Eric Ries sets out in Incorruptible, with a structure that gives back to the movement rather than one designed to exit.
What we are
raising
Twelve months of runway.
The platform has a strong foundation and real feedback from users to act on, so this expands something that already works.
Community holders, coaches and partner places are how Onuai reaches people, and one good introduction is worth more than a month of outreach.
conversation with Frida
25 or 50 minutes, US only — whichever fits. Write if a call is not the right shape for you.