I didn't want to be a tourist.
I wanted in.
Thirteen countries. In every one, the real conversation was behind glass — the dinner after the dinner, the joke that needs context. Everything below is pulled straight from the years it took to get in.
I tried every app.
Every one you've already tried. I aced every lesson and froze the second a real person spoke to me. They gave me words. Never nerve.
Then real teachers
changed everything.
A few weeks with Yudy and Aldana and I wasn't studying Spanish anymore — I had a relationship. I cared if I missed a session. I advanced more in those months than in three years of apps combined.
Then they killed it.
The platform ran on unlimited human classes for one flat price — a dream for the student, a loss for the business. So of course it shut down. Depth costs money, and someone always pays.
me: 3 a week ≈ 150 classes
→ they earned ~$4.50 a class off me
no teacher on earth costs $4.50
= they lost money on every class. so: AI carries the reps (tireless, cheap)
+ humans carry the depth (paid fairly)
one memory between them.
Things this company will never do.
- Forget that connection is the point.
The waiter in Mexico City. The grandmother who only speaks Portuguese. We're the treadmill — real life is the race.
- Farm your attention.
No streaks, no shame widgets, no notifications engineered to make you anxious. The only number we celebrate is conversations you actually had.
- Squeeze the humans.
Teachers are paid fairly and treated as the destination, not a cost line. Teachers staying is the whole strategy.
- Try to keep you forever.
We succeed when you leave — out there, ordering in French, arguing in Spanish. Come back for your third language.