Deal highlights

• A unique way of teaching language by integrating learning into everyday activities
• Over 6,000 signed-up users for beta with over 50% user retention
• $5 billion online language learning industry
• Technical founders with Facebook, Amazon, and New Oriental (Asia's largest language-training company) experience

Based on the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve, half of new memories are lost within a few days unless reviewed. Language educators and app developers have been scrambling to increase the effectiveness of their lessons. These efforts, however, have done very little to improve results, because they fail to address the core problems.

None of today’s methods have solved the root causes: lack of time, memory, and procrastination.

Language apps schedule learning and review for users, but:

• People ignore scheduled notifications.

• People procrastinate studying.

• People stop visiting school or the app entirely.

• Knowledge fades. Review habits don’t stick.

FlipWord is a Chrome Extension (and soon mobile app) that intelligently and automatically replaces a few words with the language you want to learn on every English webpage, as you casually browse the web.

Simply hover over to access a bite-sized lesson and gamified communication practice. Your knowledge will grow exponentially, quantified through progress charts and various tiny quizzes.

No time must be set aside to learn. Instead, you constantly learn as you browse your favorite content. FlipWord makes sure this personal but effective habit will accompany you through life.

Immersion without immersion

Language is a unique subject. Math and science can be contained in a classroom environment, language cannot. It is a skill used across all aspects of a day. Language must therefore be practiced consistently and in a personalized manner. FlipWord’s approach works with your current routine, naturally maintaining engagement.

Learning like babies do

Babies never fail at learning their mother tongue. Why?

For babies, “language learning occurs spontaneously while playing with toys, listening to parents’ conversation, etc.”  (Kuhl, 2015). Everything they learn comes from their surroundings, gets repeated, and used during daily life. By integrating language learning into an adult’s daily routines, FlipWord enables adults to learn naturally, like a baby.

Natural learning environment

Natural learning environment is recognized as the most ideal instruction.

FlipWord creates a natural experience by augmenting the content you normally browse, providing a comfortable and personalized environment. This is practical since it is tailored to the words and content that you use most in your native language. Research shows that integration into daily life is important for learning. We’ve designed FlipWord to ensure learning a new language is effective and easy, even for the busiest of people.

Spaced repetition

FlipWord’s algorithms are based on spaced repetition, a well-tested method for maintaining knowledge over time. Rather than learning clustered content like in a classroom setting, spaced repetition revisits material before it is forgotten. FlipWord makes spaced repetition in practice very similar to the theoretical curve, placing review near the exact optimal moment required.

Retention – beats industry leader in key metric

Current user retention rate is 50%. This is already above the current retention rate of Duolingo, a popular language learning app.

Sign-ups

Through word-of-mouth, we’ve reached over 6,000 email sign-ups. We have several channels with early results which will help us exponentially grow this number going forward.

8 Languages

Currently, FlipWord supports 8 languages, with material designed by native speakers. We plan to focus on pushing the limits of efficacy with a few, before expanding to cover most of the world’s languages. 

Cozad Top Prize

We've received very positive feedback from our early users. Basic skills (recalling, speaking a few words) are achievable within minutes. 

FlipWord’s business model is structured around learning. A subscription fee is charged every month. For every day you hit your minimum goal, you are refunded – it's free.

Charging based on usage provides an additional extrinsic motivator to learn. In addition, the experience is gamified, making using the app more fun and rewarding for the user.

Based on our initial tests, this method provides a positive feedback loop. Just like grades at the end of a semester, this continuous challenge pushes students to persist in ways they wouldn’t otherwise.

The language industry includes language enthusiasts and test takers. Language enthusiast markets exist worldwide, with around 500 million active learners of all the world’s languages. Test taker markets mainly exist in non-English countries, such as China and Korea, with more than 1.5 billion people actively learning English alone.

In 2015, the most popular app among language enthusiasts, Duolingo, had an income of $3.58 million while New Oriental, China’s English test leader, reached a 2015 income of $1.25 billion. The average spent for each of Korea’s 25 million residents per year is $500 on English training, totalling $25 billion.

Invest in FlipWord

• Improve Learning System – Continuous upgrades over 6 months

  • Add more grammar-based lessons for faster speaking proficiency

  • Increase effectiveness to time ratio; goal to double this year

  • Research effects of gamification to increase motivation and retention

  • Create secondary experiences to augment beyond word replacement

• Features for connecting learners – Continuous upgrades through 2017

  • Users to be challenged through friendly competition

  • Users to communicate directly for extra practice

  • Users to see and hear other’s progress for motivation

• Release Mobile App – Target alpha in 3 months

  • Prototype Android and iOS versions

  • Aim to simplify learning across platforms

  • Adapt similar experience to mobile environment

  • Experiment with unique-to-mobile methods

• Market Experiments – Release within 2017

  • Deploy gamified business model

  • Release pilot in Korean test taker market

  • Partner with educators and influencers

FlipWord started as a way to fill the motivation gap. Thomas experienced self-studying Chinese as a Master’s student majoring in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Four years of high school Spanish had already faded. He wasn’t willing to let that happen again, but still found the language slipping away after trying all kinds of language apps. Frustrated, he created FlipWord, which was designed to help him review Chinese words without any extra effort. He soon acquired a large Chinese vocabulary using FlipWord. As soon as friends of friends started asking how to download it, he knew there was a big opportunity to solve the biggest barrier to language learning. In 2015, Thomas used FlipWord to win the Top Prize at the UIUC Cozad New Venture Competition. With a background at Facebook and Amazon, Thomas used his solid programming knowledge to make FlipWord fast, effective, and intelligent.

Yinghua joined the company as a co-founder after meeting Thomas and working on projects at Hackathons. They shared a common interest in passive language learning but for different reasons. As a language instructor and Master’s student in the Department of Linguistics at UIUC, Yinghua had experienced a common drop-off of language retention among students due to the mainstream language pedagogy flaw -- teaching inside a closed environment. She switched gears and began to design passive language learning apps. After creating multiple award-winning apps through Hackathons, Yinghua officially joined FlipWord in May 2016 and guided FlipWord to become a comprehensive app that teaches all aspects of a language. With a background at New Oriental, Yinghua also leads FlipWord to explore the lucrative market for language testing in Asia. In addition, Yinghua is responsible for all design at FlipWord due to her UI/UX design expertise.

Team

As we’ve grown the company, we’ve added a diverse team of interns from UIUC, Stanford and around the world with strong backgrounds in software development, languages, and marketing. They work with us to build the product, enhance the language content, and engage users. We look forward to growing the team in the future, to bring on more great talent who can help create a paradigm shift from traditional lessons to methods not possible until recently.

Let’s give people the power
of universal understanding

We realize that much of the conflict, large and small, throughout the world boils down to not understanding the other side. One of the biggest barriers standing in the way is language. Only by first understanding a language can you truly see through the lens of a culture and its individuals. Our goal is to tear down that wall.

We believe our simple and effortless methods will increase mutual understanding between peoples of different communities and countries, and lead to more poly-linguals, and a more connected world.

In this spirit, we invite you to become part of our journey.