41–50 of 125 posts
I feel like there was a time when those coding problem websites with points and leaderboards and such struck a good balance between learning and a game. Then they seemingly all got co-opted by the interview prep industry.
There's certainly a market for "calm" learning, though you've already identified the main challenge: there's a smaller larger market for people who want to be educated than entertained, and the market for "calm education" is going to be an even smaller subset of that education market.
Essentially you're looking for the people who are saying "I want to be educated, but I'm not looking for the most efficient way to do it. I would prefer to move at a slower pace being driven purely by intrinsic motivation, rather than using extrinsic motivators in order to encourage me to move more quickly"
That market certainly exists, but it's a small enough niche that you'll likely have to be compete at a high price point to be viable. As point of comparison, Mentava costs $500/month, so if I were building a calm learning app (for an even smaller market), I would try to figure out a way justify an even higher price point than Mentava's.
I run a productivity desktop app by myself and have been doing it full time since 2017. The app is a one time payment, free support, no gimmicks, no marketing. Support is becoming time consuming, but profit is high enough that I may hire a few people to help soon.
Good luck! High growth rates with investors is one way to do things, but not the only way.
However, due to the more user-driven approach to this learning method (output-focused, user has to put in effort to chat with the AI and get feedback), there is more friction with using the tool. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - in fact, more friction can lead to more meaningful experiences. That being said, I believe the market will push tools to be low friction and low effort (i.e. gamified apps) that are focused on consumption rather than tools that require more user effort.
just my 2c from a fellow builder. if curious, check it out here! would love any feedback
Not doing subscriptions for an app that has ongoing server costs is going to bite you, you may want to reconsider that. Your biggest issue is going to be that language learning for adults is largely an unsolved problem. I know people with 1000+ day streaks on Duolingo who are nonetheless not fluent, and from everything I’ve read, it seems clear that spaced-repetition techniques are not sufficient (and possibly not ne…
while I'm wary of sprinkling AI magic fairy dust on top of everything, the fact that ChatGPT voice mode and the app is fluent in many languages, an interesting conversational partner for the immersion aspect.
1. Effectively infinite engaging comprehensible input at your level 2. Fantastic way to practice new vocabulary and grammar patterns (AI can provide correction for mistakes) 3. Somewhat fun - if you view chat as a choose your own adventure, the experience becomes more interesting
Yes, according to Duolingo's (obviously biased) CEO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st6uE-dlunY Found this episode fairly interesting (without being particularly interested or personally invested in the space)
He talks about how they wanted to let people know that they would stop sending them notifications after five days of inactivity, but that the "passive-aggressive" nature of that notification actually got people to come back. To me it illustrates that it's such a fine line to walk if you want to respect the user but also maybe push through their own lack of motivation.
(I'm not a user of Duolingo so I can't speak to where they land on that but it's clearly controversial)
I won't say what you are building is a mistake. But just based on what you described, if I were interested in learning a language through your app, I would not just be comparing it to other language learning apps, but I would also be comparing it to language textbooks/workbooks, classes at a community college or MOOC, or language courses on DVD/CD/YouTube/etc. I guess I think that apps are good at gamifying things, if that were to be a goal. If you are stripping that away, what makes your app unique compared to all those other resources? How does your app replace or supplement other things?
And to be clear, I imagine there could be plenty of things that make your app unique! I just would want to know what those things are before diving in.
I tried learning a language via Duolingo for a while. I treated it as "free flash cards with pronunciation," and tried to ignore the gamification and cutesy animated characters. I ditched it when it went all-in on AI slop. I've since found a free 1990s-style website that has common phrases, conjugation rules, etc. with pronunciation, and have learned much more.
So yes, I see value in programs like this.
[1] to be fair, my STEM brain enjoys looking at my review statistics and charts. But they are non-intrusive and one has to actively look for them, so it's nowhere near gamification.
I'll give you one example, and you can decide for yourself. Mid of this year, I accidentally found out about a great independent language learning app [1]. It clicked for me. It was no bullshit, no gamification, and no distraction. I used it for one or two months, 700 hours in total. I can attribute to it some progress in learning my target language. Then I went on vacation for a few weeks and completely forgot about…