Welcome to the 102nd edition of Start-up Society! This blog highlights some of the most exciting start-ups in the country striving to keep the American Dream alive.
Make sure you check out the previous issue, if you have not already, here!
Fluent
HQ: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Founded: 2020
Employees: 17 (on LinkedIn)
Did you know the word ‘entrepreneur’ first appeared in a French dictionary in 1723? In Meet the Entrepreneur #25, we dive into the world of language startups in our conversation with Gavin Dove, Co-Founder & CEO of Fluent — the hot new chrome extension that’s giving Duolingo a run for its money!
Watch/Listen to learn how Fluent can help you learn a new language simply while you browse your favorite sites on the web.
This article provides a summary of the conversation. For the full details, tap into the podcast here!
What is Fluent?
Fluent is a language learning company for Spanish, French and Italian (more languages are on the way!). When you are teaching someone a language, it is a multi-year process. Companies playing in this space are battling for attention against more entertaining products (Netflix, YouTube, etc.). Fluent is a browser extension that inserts language learning content into the web pages you are consuming or reading while browsing on the internet. Inserting gamified lessons into a Bloomberg article or a Reddit thread is a seamless way to get folks to learn a language while doing the generally more entertaining things online.
Our founding team is comprised of first and second generation immigrants, so we have seen firsthand the struggles of learning a new language in order to assimilate. As founders, we understand how important and impactful learning a second language is.
Tell us about your background, and what sparked your interest in engineering and languages?
My father was an engineer and when I started my secondary schooling in Montreal I was leaning into mechanical engineering and robotics. I won a few robotics competitions with my team and fell in love with solving complex problems in specialized teams. I eventually started my first company, Blaise Transit. We were working with the government to help make bus travel in Montreal more efficient for the folks using the system. As we were waiting for long sales cycles to close, I did some aerospace engineering in Montreal and moved in with one of my best friends, where we encountered another problem of learning French. Fluent was born out of our need to adapt to the multilingual culture we found ourselves steeped in.
Biggest challenges/achievements?
Fluent’s biggest challenge is the fact that we are baking language lessons into the context of what you’re already reading online. Duolingo requires you to open the app to do the lesson, which lends to a more intense learning session, but is not as front-of-mind as embedding lessons into your browsing activity. Our biggest achievement is building something that has strong retention at 40% even as far as 30 days out. On the other hand, Duolingo’s day 1 retention is 40%.
Who is your target audience?
A mass majority of language learners want to be able to speak the language, but there is more than just knowledge that enables this. You need confidence to speak a new language. There is a first step of understanding the general grammar and how the language is structured and then there is another step of expanding your vocabulary so you can feel more confident in your speaking abilities. Languages follow the Pareto principle where the first 1000 words you learn will make up 70% of the most commonly used words in a language, the next 1000 make up 80%, and the next 1000 make up 90% of the language. Fluent is optimized to expand your vocabulary past the first 1000 most common words you learn, to give you the confidence to go out and start having conversations.
What languages do you know?
I am fluent in English and I can struggle through Cantonese (my mother’s side of the family is from Hong Kong). Currently, I am using Fluent to sharpen my fluency in French!
What was it like acquiring the 16,000 users you currently have?
First things first, are you solving a problem? We focused on floating our solutions in language learning forums on Discord and Reddit to receive feedback and iterate our MVP. We are focused on getting our first 1M and 10M users. We have tapped into promoting language learning with TikTok.
What is the entrepreneurial scene like in Canada?
The VC scene in Canada is fairly conservative. Most of our investors come from outside of Canada. What we are seeing is successful entrepreneurs who have exited their start-ups taking more risky bets as Angel Operators. I also got introduced to NEXT Canada, which is an entrepreneurial network in Canada, during my first start-up. I met a lot of movers and shakers in the Canadian start-up scene.
What is it like working with 27V, one of your international investors?
Out of all the investors on our cap table, Atin Batra has gone above and beyond anyone else. He is truly founder-friendly and makes more introductions than anyone else! He is also deeply supportive on a personal level even in downtimes which is very rare.
What kind of advice would you give to founders?
Raise money if you can. However, companies that raise off of hype will collapse and the investors with dry powder will focus on companies with good fundamentals. Heading into a recession, be more focused on building a generational company instead of splashy marketing.
Tell us about your business model
There are about 1.8 billion people in the world learning a second language. We are focused narrowly on building out a valuable product. We are offering a paid offering at first to build out the company and then switch to a freemium model with a perfected product to grab the larger parts of the market. This process is super focused on the quality of feedback you get from paid customers.
What are some habits you keep to help maintain a level head?
Finding a co-founder that you can be in sync with is important. Supporting and being supported by your team helps relieve stress in times of high intensity. Also, solitude is important for generating original thoughts and is extremely relevant in these times of hyper-connectedness.
Any parting words?
If you are trying to learn a language, check us out at fluent.co
If you are an entrepreneur, it’s a crazy, magical journey and it’s the most rewarding thing you’ll do!
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Authored by Arteen Zahiri, Rumeer Keshwani, Elham Chowdhury, & Julian Ramcharan