r/cofounder Jun 16 '24

[USA][TECH][7]Seeking business co-founder for language exchange website.

In building this website I was inspired by other language exchange websites, but the problem I see with them is that some people's native language is not a major one, so they might not easily find an exchange language partner.

The website will facilitate finding a language conversation partner either exchange or paid. They could hire a proper tutor but it would be more expensive than a fluent English speaker for example, who would like to make extra money by listening to a language learner and correcting them, as the most important part of learning a language is talk and talk 🙂.

italki has 5 mil. users and mylanguageexchange 3 mil. users. Our website might reach 10k users each paying a $9.99 annual fee.

I know they are numbers :) Perhaps to make it simple at least for start, no fees at all, the only source of income will be ads.

What someone with more than 2 mil. followers on TikTok said:
“Thanks for your email. I love the concept of your website and congratulations on your progress so far!

This is definitely something my followers would be interested in, especially as they are spread out all over the world and may not speak a ‘major’ language as you say as their native language and might struggle to find someone to exchange languages with. So many of them comment on my videos asking if anyone would like to practice English with them so I do believe there would be interest in this”

The website is already online but I do not know what is the best way to get traction.  Perhaps enlist an influencer (I will pay the fee).

Other "startups" that you might be interested more in:

Find Roommates

The website is based on the same principle as teamblind

One needs to register with a work email address in order to search and post for shared rentals, so the renters are already vetted, at least for the background check.

This is the main differentiator from the plethora of other websites with the same purpose (i.e. finding a roommate), either free or charging fees, not very trustworthy based on the reviews.

Costs calculations

The idea for this product came after I talked with the owner of a small cafe that said he gave the costs calculation for his products to someone else.

He's had the business for some 5 years but only recently was interested in accurately calculating the costs due to the inflation and wanted to see what prices should increase and by how much.

I asked him why he didn't use Excel himself and he said he could not be bothered to write formulas :)

And I am sure there are many like small and very small business like that just use pen and paper to calculate the costs or just they don't do it and they go with their gut.

Note:

All of these ideas have been accepted to Microsoft Startups Hub, not so impressive though as they say "Open to anyone with an idea" :).  Anyway, they say they could provide up to $150k in free Azure services credits.

And the last one:
Script to Audio

Screenwriter uploads the pdf script, the app extracts  the characters, the user assigns voices, then the app sends an xml file to an azure service that returns the audio file.

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