Start-ups aim to help you learn a language without breaking the bank
Along with losing 20 pounds, learning to parlare Italiano or sprechen Deutsch is apparently high on the list of New Year’s resolutions for many people.
“Learning a language is kind of like getting a gym membership or a NordicTrack,’’ says Christopher O’Donnell, director of product management for Transparent Language Inc. “Jan. 1 is our biggest sales day of the year. But let’s just say there’s more impetus to start learning a language than to continue doing it.’’
Transparent, based in
Also part of the language learning cluster are two companies, Woburn-based 8D World Inc. and EnglishCentral Inc. of Lexington, which have raised venture capital for sites that teach English to nonnative speakers in Asia.
As with many businesses mov ing from the physical world to the virtual, there’s a cloud of confusion hovering over price: How much should it cost to become fluent in French? Berlitz charges $499 a year for its eBerlitz Fusion program, introduced last April, which includes online exercises and live group review sessions run by an instructor over the Web. Rosetta Stone, best known for its CD sets sold at mall kiosks and in airports, introduced TOTALe in July. It combines independent exercises, review sessions, and an online community of fellow learners: Unlimited access is $999 per year.
But start-ups and companies such as Transparent, which has 75 employees, theorize that a much bigger market of language learners exists - if the price is right.
Transparent built its business on selling language learning software (priced at $89.95) to diplomats, executives, and the armed services. But the company is now trying to find customers through social media, using its Byki subbrand: You can join Facebook groups (like Facebook.com/learn.Norwegian) or follow the @Frenchlanguage account on Twitter, which serves up a new vocabulary word daily. At Apple’s iTunes Store, you can find $7.99 downloadable applications that associate vocabulary words with pictures, in such languages as Arabic and Tagalog. (There’s also a free application, with a limited amount of content in 15 languages. Just search for “Byki’’ to find all of Transparent’s apps.)
Lingt Language Inc. is a Cambridge start-up run by two MIT alums, Justin Cannon and Chris Varenhorst, that offers online instruction in Mandarin Chinese at no charge. Lingt plans to expand to other languages and eventually will begin charging a small annual subscription fee - perhaps $30 - to language learners who enjoy the system and who want to continue using it beyond a trial period, Cannon says. “We think a lot of embassy employees and corporations are looking for cheaper solutions than Berlitz and Rosetta Stone,’’ he says. “There’s a real vacuum.’’
LangoLab is another Cambridge start-up that is using captioned videos (everything from Subway sandwich commercials to music videos) and follow-up tests to teach foreign languages. But founder Adam Duston says that it hasn’t been easy to raise money from investors and that the company is developing a new business plan that will seek to generate revenue by selling an iPhone application.
Where the money is, it seems, is in helping residents of other countries learn English - especially in Asia. “Here in the States, learning French or Spanish is kind of regarded as a hobby,’’ says Cannon. “Everywhere else in the world, it’s an essential, career-building skill to speak English.’’ He says that Lingt plans to eventually offer courses for English learners.
At EnglishCentral, chief financial officer Rich Westelman says, “If you look just at China, Japan, and Korea, there are approximately 400 million people actively learning English, and they’re spending something like $20 billion a year.’’ The start-up uses news and sports videos to teach English to Japanese speakers, with speech recognition technology that can correct pronunciation flubs. “It listens to you, plays back what you said, and it plays back a native speaker’s pronunciation,’’ Westelman explains. “It also gives you a score, and can point out if you dropped an ‘S’ or confused ‘R’ and ‘L.’ ’’ EnglishCentral plans to eventually introduce a subscription offering; earlier this year, it received an unspecified amount of funding from Google Ventures and Atlas Venture of Waltham. The company has offices in Lexington and Tokyo.
8D World Inc. operates out of offices in Woburn and Shanghai. Chief executive Alex Wang says he is spending 80 percent of his time in China, where the start-up is trying to partner with public schools, media companies, and private academies teaching English as a second language. Wang started the company with Rick Goodman, a veteran of the video game industry who oversaw the successful “Age of Empires’’ franchise, distributed by
“They’d built this very interesting prototype over a year without raising a dime,’’ says Alex Finkelstein, an investor at Boston-based Spark Capital. “And they were very targeted at 7-to-12-year-olds, initially in Asia. If they can crack that market alone, we’d be incredibly happy.’’ (Next up after China is Korea, in 2010.) Spark, along with the Chinese firm Gobi Partners, has put $7 million into 8D World so far.
Finkelstein says he has been tracking language start-ups such as Livemocha of Bellevue, Wash., that offer free courses in the hopes of eventually “up-selling’’ users to a subscription service, a business model sometimes called “freemium.’’
“Many of the freemium companies are doing a good job at attracting users, and they seem to be saying they’ll figure out the monetization later,’’ Finkelstein says. With Spark’s investment in 8D World, “we’re focusing on generating revenue from Day One, both by selling subscriptions and also virtual goods that you can purchase as you participate in the world.’’
Teaching languages online seems to be one of those suddenly trendy opportunities that lots of entrepreneurs have decided to pursue. “There are maybe a hundred companies out there trying to do something in this space,’’ says Duston at LangoLab. “Almost none of them have revenue. We’re trying to be one of the two or three that does.’’
Scott Kirsner can be reached at kirsner@pobox.com. 
