Description:
OUR PURPOSE:
"We break down language barriers by empowering native speakers to share their language." THE PROBLEM:
There are 2 billion language learners in the world today, but 1,5 billion will give up learning to speak the language. You can learn grammar in a classroom or vocabulary on an app, but both methods are lightyears away from having a real conversation with a native speaker. As Markus Witte, the CEO of the highest grossing language app in the world, publicly states: "If you want to learn a language, you need to speak to a human". The best way to learn is immersion! What are you waiting for? Move to Spain! Take classes! Speak Spanish in the streets or practice with friends over a glass of wine!
Even though many of us sometimes dream about it, most of us can't just "cancel" our lives and run away to another country.
Imagine a solution that could bring Spain into your living room. THE SOLUTION:
We are offering a gig-economic marketplace for offline language learning - face-to-face. Native speakers in your city create courses on our marketplace, and we use AI to match those courses with you, no matter if you are learning a language for your career, for love or for travel!
Plug in the language and your location and we show you courses based on your interests. Are you conquering a new market? Take a course about business culture created by a native speaker with business experience. It takes 3 clicks to book and you will have a native speaker teacher knocking on your door. TARGET USERS:
Our target group is "Professionals age 25-34". They request customized lessons, the option to plan when and where they get the lesson and they also request a faster way to learn. They usually work in business, IT and education and roughly make up 40% of our user group. TRACTION:
We have 10.000 users, 3.200 monthly users and we have facilitated 16.000 offline language meetings. We needed to answer the big question: "Do people want to buy offline language lessons from native speakers?". We tested our paid marketplace in Aarhus, Denmark, where we hired 14 teachers to teach various languages and made €11.000 over 2 months. We sold 331 lessons at an average rate of €35 per lesson. We served 121 customers who on average bought 2,6 lessons.
But hiring teachers isn't scalable, so now we have just released the beta of the multi-sided marketplace where native speakers can be on-boarded, create and sell language lessons in Aarhus, Denmark. We release the marketplace to the rest of our users in July. We won Get in the ring Madrid, Venture Cup Service innovation and we are in the semifinals in Global Pitch and Startup Avalanche. We have been accepted to the alpha program, so we are competing in Collision, Rise and Websummit. We have partnered with 11 universities who are recommending our service to their 300.000 students. TESTIMONIALS:
"I learn English with Swap Language for my career. The personalized content was exactly what I needed before taking a job in South Africa." - Joachim, Engineer from Denmark. "I love the fast-paced learning! I have improved super-fast compared to when I was in a regular language school". - Alma, Graphic designer from Latvia.
"I have learned more Danish with my native teacher in 3 lessons than I have in the last 2 months at University - and Danish is my MAJOR!" - Wesley, Master's student from France. PRODUCT:
Being tested in Aarhus, Denmark.
Step 1. Put in languages you speak, languages you want to learn and your location.
Step 2. Explore courses that are matched using AI to fit your motivation to learn or go on an adventure in other categories.
Step 3. Book it. TEAM:
We are a team of language learning, programming superstars who will stop at nothing to break down language barriers. Why us? Well, the founders are both learning their fifth language, have invested €40.000 euros and have hitchhiked from Denmark to Spain to open up 4 international markets including Germany.
Nichlas Walsted (CEO): BSc in Corporate Com. and Spanish. and MSc in Information Technology. Has previously build startups, amongst others the marketing company, Dijitall. The best campaign raised a small client’s sales with $700 000 (15xROI).
Allan Hermansen (COO): BSc in Corporate Com. and Spanish. and MSc in Information Technology. Has built the guerilla campaign where we hitchhiked 3500km through Europe, were shown in 4 national media and opened 4 new markets.
Marcin Gadomski (CTO): BSc in Computer Science. Has coded since he was 14 years old and has led developer teams in multiple conglomerates.
Jonas Baandrup (Investor): MSc in Medicine. Is running a medical clinic and e-commerce business selling formula (breastmilk) to the Nordics and China. MARKET:
All language services worldwide make up a total available market (TAM) of €92B with language learning services in the EU and US making up €39B (SAM) equivalent to 1,1B lessons every year. Over the next five years, we will sell 9,6M lessons and host €330M in transactions. Almost half of all language services are delivered by freelancers. By giving them a marketplace for their services, assist them with AI and machine translation and give them access to local customers, we will revolutionize the distribution channels, the quality and the structure of the entire language industry! BUSINESS MODEL:
We are taking 18% in commission on each transaction. (3% from the seller and 15% from the buyer).
We sell 9,6M lessons in the period 2019-2023. The average fee of €6 will result in a revenue of €59M. SCALE:
Growing through our free service. Having a free language exchange service has made it possible for us to scale to 10.000 users without spending money.
Growing with viral loops - We allow our users to see their impact on breaking down language barriers by adding friends to Swap Language and thereby more languages.
Growing with universities - We are recommended to 300.000 students and the full student potential students in the EU and US is 40,6M.
Growing with communities - A growing network of 51 ambassadors are hosting group swap language meetings all over Europe. FUNDING:
We have, in our angel-round, raised €110.000 at a €550.000 post-money valuation. We currently have €110.000 in the bank for 8 months of runway. In the next round, 8 months out, are we looking for €1.100.000 at a negotiated valuation. Our exit strategy is to hit the targets of our 5-year-plan and go IPO in 7 years. Thank you for reading. Nichlas
CEO at Swap Language
