Think about how you learned your native language: trying out words, listening to your parents, speaking small fragments, until one day you were talking. Now, think about how you were taught languages in school – the grammar, the emphasis on writing and reading first – and it becomes clear why so few students achieve fluency in a second language. 

Enter Speak. The language learning app uses conversational AI to replicate the experience of practicing a new language with a native speaker. It’s an incredibly savvy application of AI achieving remarkable results: just this past year, over 10 million people downloaded the app and took lessons. 

This isn’t a fluke. On this episode of Spotlight On, Speak CEO Connor Zwick shares how an early start building apps – which all began with a chance airport encounter – and a 10-year-old thesis on the progression of intelligence inspired him to find the best application for the new technology systematically. He also shares many surprising ways he and his co-founder have chosen to build Speak, including why they launched first in Korea and how they plan to grow into the U.S.

Conversational highlights: 

0:00 – Connor’s founder career begins with a serendipitous encounter at the Milwaukee airport

6:24 – How Connor and his co-founder developed a clear conviction that deep intelligence would be able to teach people a new language – in 2015

11:12 – The origins of Speak: from speech recognition to learning flywheel 

16:39 – Why Connor and his co-founder decided to launch Speak in Korea first 

19:12 – How to think strategically about geography when selecting a market 

20:55 – Most people have good startup ideas; it’s conviction that matters

22:45 – Lessons on getting to product-market fit 

27:30 – Speak’s strategy for growing into new markets of both geographies and users

32:37 – Connor on building successful consumer AI: “Productizing consumer AI is super hard.” 

38:24 – How people actually learn languages vs the way we’re taught languages 

41:10 – “You can’t outsource a core competency of your company.”