Grow from accent training into overall spoken-English fluency after raising a Series A

David BarnardWell, last thing I did want to touch on before we wrap up is the kind of shift away from just focusing on accent to a broader mission with the company. So I wanted to give you a chance to talk through that.

Anada LakraFor sure. So from day one, we've actually called ourselves an accent training app. And the reason for that is that ... The vision has always been, we need to help people speak more clearly and confidently. But we also know that the biggest pain point that we're hearing from a lot of people at this last mile of fluency is their accent, and it seems like such a differentiated and spiky pain point that we can create a product and scale a product initially that focuses on that wedge.

Anada LakraAnd now we've reached the point in the market, in our brand, in our revenue as well, where we ... And also, we raised the Series A that allows us to build towards that vision of getting to the next level and using this wedge to expand into this larger market of spoken English fluency. Again, we're not going after early level learners. The focus is still largely the same learner. We're just going maybe a step earlier instead of last mile, going a …

Anada Lakra… their lives so much, but on a day-to-day, are they actually posting about this on LinkedIn as much as they're telling us or are they bringing this to their colleague? There's this kind of shyness about talking about something like this because you don't want to offend people. And at the same time, I feel like this does them more of a disservice because at the end of the day, again, it's not about accents, it's about communication confidence.

Anada LakraAnd that's a big part, by the way, of why we're also doing this expansion. First of all, it is to give people a better product that better solves their need and captures more of the things that makes them struggle with their English beyond their accent. But second, it is also to escape a little bit this almost antiviral word of accent. That's why also the Accent Oracle was so fun because we kind of turned it on its head and we made a fun viral experience out of a word that people tend to shy away from. It's always a thing that it's on my mind of like ... As we grow, it's really important to figure out how we combat and how we boost the word of mouth and combat this idea of, "I don't want to share this product with others, even though it's very helpful for me."

Anada LakraThere are other industries that went through this and have seen an evolution. Mental health was something where people did not talk about it and then it almost feels like overnight, but of course not overnight, with a lot of hard work from a lot of people involved. It then became something that people are talking about more publicly and it got de-stigmatized. And I hope that we're part of that conversation of doing the same thing for speech.