There are a lot of resources out there to learn English, but not many for those who are still near-native speakers and want to improve their fluency. This description applies to Stan Beliaev and Yurii Rebryk, and it is what inspired them to create Fluently.
Using AI, Fluently acts as a coach to give users feedback and tips on their spoken English. This is similar to ELSA and AI Speech Tutor, and is similar to online and offline one-on-one coaching solutions, but Fluently listens to your calls and builds feedback.
Users can record and transcribe their own aspects of a live call in Fluently, for example, while using Zoom for work. However, you also have the option to practice with an AI coach. “Ryan” for casual chit-chat or “Kyle” for a mock interview are often priorities for foreign applicants seeking jobs that require advanced English speaking skills.
The two are scratching their own itch, but they estimate that there are 84 million non-native English speaking employees working in an English-speaking environment. It’s hard to say how many of those people would like to be more easily understood, but it’s a large enough niche that it’s growing and arguably a much less crowded space than ESL as a whole.
This potential market helped Fluently participate in Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 placement and close a $2 million seed round with participation from Pioneer Fund, SID Venture Partners, and individual angels even before Demo Day.
It didn’t hurt that Fluently leans heavily on the tech side of education technology. Rebryk told TechCrunch that three of the four-person distributed team are engineers. He and his former college roommate, who share a background in machine learning, have the kind of background that excites VCs these days, with internships at Amazon, Google, and Nvidia.
It may be frowned upon by education experts, and none of them are teachers, but creating a product that they need themselves gives them an advantage. For example, they know that people who are already quite fluent speakers are more interested in solutions that can be used in the background, and only draw attention to the problems that need to be solved.
Another point is that Fluently wants to be a one-stop shop for better speaking skills. The goal is to be understandable rather than accent-oriented, and that includes pronunciation, grammar, and speed, as well as vocabulary expansion. Another addition could be advice like Grammarly or Ludwig’s writing suggestions, Rebryk said.
Fluently, currently in beta form, is still in its early stages, so it’s not safe from crashes. But for those who don’t mind sharing their credit card information for a free trial, it already gives a strong sense of what it can accomplish. For example, I actually learned how to pronounce “computer” better, which could be very useful if you work in tech. For some, at least, it could be worth the $25 a month Fluently charges.
There are still pages that Fluently can pull from Duolingo to help users correct mistakes and track their progress in a gamified way. This is generally key to helping people stick to their goals, and motivation to learn a language tends to ebb and flow. However, rather than learning in a holistic way, the idea is to focus on a user’s specific struggles, leveraging technology to move from near fluency to complete proficiency.
One concern with personalization may be privacy. This is especially true for apps that run in the background and have microphone access. For this reason, Fluently insists that users be informed during onboarding that their audio is stored locally, encrypted, and that their data is protected from third-party providers to ensure privacy. Regarding the latter, the startup notes that “data sent to third-party AI providers for transcription is anonymized and is not used for training.”
According to Rebryk, some of this was made possible by the recent launch of Apple Silicon. This has to do with another limitation of the beta version: it’s only available on macOS. However, Fluently is already building a waiting list of users who will be notified when the Chrome extension is ready.
With that in mind, the seed round will help Fluently hire other team members and free up cash to spend on marketing when the time is right, Rebryk said. “When you have a small team, you prioritize what to do first,” he said with a laugh.
