There are a lot of resources for learning English, but not many for native speakers who still want to improve their fluency. That description fits Stan Belyaev and Yuri Rebrick, and it’s what inspired them to create Fluently.
Using AI, Fluently acts as a coach, giving users feedback and advice on their spoken English. This makes it more like an ELSA, an AI-powered speech tutor, as well as online and offline one-on-one coaching solutions, but with the difference that Fluently builds its feedback from listening to calls.
Users can fluently record and transcribe their side of real-life calls, for example while using Zoom for work. However, there is also the option to practice with an AI coach – either “Ryan” for everyday conversation, or “Kyle” for mock interviews, which is often a priority for foreign candidates hoping to land a job that requires advanced English speaking skills. , as is often the case.
While the duo struggle to find jobs, they estimate that there are 84 million non-native workers working in English-speaking environments. It’s hard to say how many of those would like to be understood more easily, but it’s certainly a large enough category, a growing one, and a much less crowded space than English as a Second Language as a whole.
This potential market is what helped Fluent acquire In Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 batchand even before the demo day, to close a $2 million seed funding round with participation from Pioneers Fund, SID Project PartnersAnd individual angels.
It also didn’t hurt that Fluency relied heavily on the technological side of educational technology. Among its distributed team of four, there are three engineers, Rebrick told TechCrunch. With a shared background in machine learning, he and his former university colleague have the kind of track record that gets venture capitalists excited these days, with internships at Amazon, Google, and Nvidia.
This may be surprising because none of them are teachers, let alone experts in education. But building a product they need themselves gives them an advantage. For example, they realize that people who are already fluent are more interested in solutions that can be used in the background, and only pay attention to issues that need to be addressed.
Another point is that Fluently wants to be a one-stop-shop for better speaking skills. Rather than accent, its goal is ease of understanding, and this includes improving pronunciation, grammar, and pacing, as well as expanding vocabulary. Rephrasing tips, like those offered by Grammarly or Ludwig for writing, can be another plus, Rebrick said.
In its current beta form, Fluently is clearly still in its early days, and is not immune to crashes. But for users who don’t mind sharing their credit card details to try out the free trial, it really gives them a solid sense of what it can achieve. For example, I personally learned how to pronounce the word “computer” better, which can be very useful when working in technology. For at least some, this may be worth the $25 per month that Fluently plans to charge.
![Fluent - computer pronunciation](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Fluently-computer-pronunciation.png?w=619)
There’s still a page Fluently can take from Duolingo to help users correct their mistakes and track their progress in a gaming fashion. This is often key in helping people stick to their goals, and motivation to learn a language tends to ebb and flow. But rather than learning in general, she wants to leverage technology to focus on the specific difficulties a user has in moving from nearly fluent to complete proficiency.
One concern with customization might be privacy, especially with an app running in the background that has access to your microphone. For this reason, Fluently insists on telling users during orientation that their privacy is guaranteed, with audio stored locally, encrypted, and data protected from third-party providers. Regarding the latter, the startup notes that “data sent to third-party AI providers for transcription is anonymized, and is not used for training.”
Some of this was made possible thanks to the latest release of Apple Silicon, Rebrick said. This has to do with another limitation of the beta: it’s only available on MacOS. However, Fluently is already creating a waiting list for users, and they will be notified when its Chrome extension is ready.
With that in mind, the seed round will help you hire another team member and have money to spend on marketing when the time is right, Rebrick said. “When you have a small team, you prioritize what needs to be done first,” he said, smiling.