AI's Role In Language Learning: Stuart Barrass, Kaizen Languages CEO

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

I'm from New Zealand where I studied business and languages at university - in fact studied Japanese and Chinese, and even chose to study in Japan for a year. Since then I've worked in startups, large consultancies and technology companies across the UK, Europe and New Zealand. My previous experience includes solution architecture, product management and management consulting.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

Kaizen Languages teaches learners how to speak a language by giving you your own AI tutors to practice speaking with. Our AI tutors help you experiment in your new language and correct your pronunciation, grammar and spelling.

What is the origin story?

Patrick (CTO & Cofounder) and I were talking about the languages we had learned and how difficult it was to acquire languages. Doing more research, we found the biggest blocker for most language learners is simply the lack of speaking practice. To learn a language like Spanish it takes 600 hours of speaking practice, and getting that practice is incredibly difficult if you don't live in a Spanish speaking country! In 2018, we decided to create a prototype that used AI conversations as the basis for teaching and practicing languages. The beta was so successful that we raised capital and now have a team dedicated to helping learners reach fluency.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

The Kaizen Languages team are a bunch of linguistic enthusiasts. Everyone can speak multiple languages and we all love learning more about how each other's languages work and are taught. We're also obsessed with tech and how powerful it can be in helping others achieve their goals. But fundamentally, we're obsessed with the mission - making language learning easier than ever.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

I would probably be building another startup, like many entrepreneurs I have many ideas on great new products and am addicted to finding ways to make them real.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

We measure success in how many lessons learners complete and how many new concepts they can learn in life-like situations. Language learning isn’t a sprint and those who succeed know that keeping up the habit is half the pattern. Knowing this, we constantly encourage users to continue learning by completing lessons.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

We've had over 300k downloads to date whilst maintaining a 4.8 star rating, and that's just teaching Japanese! We recently launched our Android app, as well as a Spanish language course that's off to a promising start.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

AI is a very exciting space and seeing what is constantly evolving in the space is incredible. It's also a very broad space with many breakthroughs in areas outside of just NLP. What worries me is with any new technology is how it can be used without consideration of its impacts. AI is an area where it has tremendous potential, but this can be both positive and negative.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

The depth of content covering other startups, founders but also the educational aspect of different tech skills.