Connor Zwick
@connorzwick
cofounder and ceo of @speak
1/ Excited to announce Speak has raised a $78m Series C from @Accel at a $1b valuation! It' a huge milestone for us and continued validation of our founding idea: AI would fundamentally transform learning. 8 years later, we’re well on our way and believe this more than ever. 🧵
A special bit of silicon valley is that everyone is willing to help each other. Back in 2015, we pinged @karpathy for AI help and (within 2 min!) he offered to meet up w/ us the next day. One of a few formative convos that led to us doing AI research and starting @speak.
🆕 Personalized AI Language Education, with @adhsu, CTO of @Speak! youtube.com/watch?v=tIVKgz… For the first time, Andrew tells the story about building the next generation of AI Language Learning, starting pre-Transformers, getting advice from @karpathy, and why they went bet hard…
Thanks for having me @johncoogan @jordihays!
"I went to South Korea and I saw skyscrapers that were filled with English classrooms. It was very clear the country was obsessed with learning English." - @connorzwick (Co-Founder & CEO @speak) "We thought, the only way we're going to build something interesting is if we…
Morning. Here are our guest call-ins today: - @FoundersPodcast (Founders Podcast) - @katie_haun (Haun Ventures) - @venturetwins (a16z) - @connorzwick (Speak) - @TreyHolterman (Tennr) - @thejamescad (Profound) - @_anish_agarwal (Traversal) - @ayushswrites (Warp) - John Lee…
TBPN | Wednesday, June 18th x.com/i/broadcasts/1…
Fun fact: @speak has 65% brand recognition in South Korea and close to 10% of the population has used us to improve their English fluency. Was great talking to @bquazz on how we got our start there!
Why Korea? What have we learned from building Speak? @connorzwick joined @Accel's @bquazz to dive into AI-driven language learning, Speak's journey & more: accel.com/podcast-episod…
Bloom 2 sigma + The Diamond Age by @nealstephenson were the main inspirations behind @speak!
Why AI based tutors are going to be such a big deal 1:1 tutoring = 2 sigma improvement in learning achievement Image from "The 2 Sigma Problem: The Search for Methods of Group Instruction as Effective as One-toOne Tutoring" by Benjamin S. Bloom
📈 @speak
Here's what happened to that startup's revenue graph in the next year (in blue).
Like many companies, @speak took several hard years of slogging before things started to work. We never gave up because we had strong conviction that it was inevitable all humans would be learning from AI tutors within 5-10 years. So many founders give up prematurely because…
The solution is investing time and effort into figuring out what's worth building. In -1 to 0. That's why we created the @southpkcommons Founder Fellowship: to help the most talented founders discard good ideas for great ones.
Thank you for having me @jchatterleyCNN!
“We’re really an AI native company." Speak CEO @connorzwick explains how his app uses #AI to get language learners talking! Plus, their growing presence in East Asia, and partnership with @OpenAI's startup fund.
These guys were among the earliest of all the startups we've funded to understand what AI was going to make possible, and they have executed perfectly on that early insight.
1/ Excited to announce Speak has raised a $78m Series C from @Accel at a $1b valuation! It' a huge milestone for us and continued validation of our founding idea: AI would fundamentally transform learning. 8 years later, we’re well on our way and believe this more than ever. 🧵