There are tons of resources for learning English, but not as many for near-native speakers who still want to improve their fluency. This description applies to Stan Belyaev and Yuri Rybrek, and it is what inspires them to create fluidly.
Using AI, Fluency acts as a coach that gives users feedback and suggestions on their spoken English. This makes it similar to ELSA and its AI Speech Tutor, as well as online and offline one-on-one coaching solutions, but with the difference that Fluently is generating its feedback by listening to calls.
Users can fluently record and transcribe their real-life calls using Zoom for work, for example. However, there is also the option to practice with an AI coach – either “Ryan” for daily chit-chat, or “Kyle” for mock interviews, which are often preferred by foreign candidates looking to land such a job. Hope that requires advanced English speaking skills. As is more and more often the case.
While they're scratching their itch, the pair estimate there are 84 million non-native employees who work in English-speaking environments. It's hard to say how many of them will want to understand more easily, but it's a pretty big niche, growing, and a much less crowded space than ESL as a whole.
This potential market helped Y Combinator smoothly enter its Winter 2024 batch, and close a $2 million seed round with participation from Pioneer Fund, SID Venture Partners, and individual angels, before Demo Day.
It doesn't hurt either that Fluency leans heavily on the tech side of edtech. Rebrick told TechCrunch that three of his distributed team of four are engineers. With a shared background in machine learning, he and his former university roommate have the kind of track record that excites VCs these days with internships at Amazon, Google and Nvidia.
It may raise eyebrows that none of them are teachers, let alone academics. But creating a product that they themselves need gives them an edge. For example, they know that people who are already fluent are more interested in solutions that can be used in the background, and they only point to problems that need attention. Required.
Another point is that Fluently wants to be a one-stop shop for better speaking skills. Rather than accent, the goal is comprehension, and includes improving pronunciation, grammar and speed, as well as expanding one's vocabulary. Rebrick said remedial advice, such as Grammarly or Ludwig's for writing presentations, can be another addition.
In its current, beta form, Fluently is clearly in its early days, and is not immune to crashes. But for users who don't mind sharing their credit card details to give its free trial a spin, it already gives a strong sense of what it can achieve. For example, you really learned how to pronounce “computer” better, which can be quite useful when you work in tech. At least for some, it might be worth the $25 a month that Fluency plans to charge.
There is still a page that Fluently can take from Duolingo to help users correct their mistakes and track their progress. This is usually key in helping people stick to their goals, and motivation to learn a language ebbs and flows. But instead of holistic learning, it seeks to leverage technology to address the specific difficulties a user faces in achieving near-fluency and complete mastery.
A concern with personalization can be privacy, especially with an app that runs in the background and has access to the mic. For this reason, Fluent insists on telling users during onboarding that their privacy is guaranteed, with locally stored audio, encryption, and data secured from third-party providers. On the latter, the startup notes that “data sent to third-party providers for transcription is anonymized, and not used for training.”
Some of this has been made possible by the recent release of Apple Silicon, Rebrick said. This is linked to another limitation of the beta version: it is only available on MacOS. However, Fluently is already building a waiting list of users to notify when its Chrome extension is ready.
With that in mind, the seed round will help fluidly hire another team member, and get cash to spend on marketing at the right time, Rebrick said. “When you have a small team, you prioritize what needs to be done first,” he said with a smile.