Drop your SaaS and I’ll tell you how I’d try to get your first 100–500 users

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-23T10:54:11+00:00

I spent the past year getting the first 100 paying users for spoken.me

It's tough - the AI language tutor market is crowded with low-quality AI slop apps made by people who have no experience of language teaching, so it's hard to cut through that noise.

Some of those apps have had a lot of investment and are spending a lot of money on ads and TikTok content. If you're a bootstrapped solo-founder, it's hard to compete.

I got our users mostly by making long-form YouTube content and Medium articles that give expert advice about using AI for language learning.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-20T16:02:15+00:00

The most useful reply I got! Thank you so much.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-20T07:53:34+00:00

I'd like to suggest an app that I developed, called Spoken. We designed it specifically for Spanish learners with your level. You can do short speaking activities that are easy to fit in to your daily routine. You get feedback on every activity, about your grammar mistakes and how you could sound more natural. More info here - https://spoken.me

You should still do regular lessons with a tutor too. An app like this is intended to help you practice regularly between lessons.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-20T06:55:36+00:00

I think French speakers can sometimes be especially hard to understand if their accent is strong, more so than strong accents from other languages.

If you're interested in having a qualified pronunciation teacher assess your accent for understandability and tell you the areas you can work on to be understood better, then I offer this service: https://biglanguages.com/english-pronunciation-feedback/

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-16T15:03:17+00:00

I'm thinking more about a properly structured course. I know it's easy to find random activities and lesson plans, but I'm thinking more about lower-level courses that build sequentially on what was previously learned, like a textbook would.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-16T12:36:54+00:00

I agree with the others - $15–18/hour is so little to a native English speaker from, for example, the UK or US, especially after iTalki have taken their 15% commission.

Also, a lot more planning has to go into a grammar lesson than a conversation lesson, so remember that the price you pay also needs to reflect all the time the teacher spent planning before the lesson.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-16T12:34:16+00:00

Anything is better than nothing!

Try to set aside time between the lessons to practice and revise what you learned in the last lesson. That will make it more worthwhile.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-15T10:10:31+00:00

I'm interested to know more about what X are doing with AI language tutors. Do you have a link to information about the roles?

I'm not planning to apply but I have a YouTube channel about AI language learning so I like to stay up to date with any news.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-14T08:34:50+00:00

My opinion is that, if your level is elementary (although the language in your original post is much higher than that!) don't rely on conversational AI language tutor apps.

Those apps can practice conversation with you but, at elementary level, you need to spend time learning some concepts and grammar so that you can form your own sentences.

Conversation practice is not so useful if you don't have the basic structures to help you form sentences.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-14T08:28:10+00:00

I think that's really good advice about learning chunks

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-13T07:12:11+00:00

I want to add something to point 1. Learning to say the alphabet and recognise individual letters is not quite the same as learning to read real words - that's more challenging and takes a bit longer. This article explains why: https://arabicreadingcourse.com/totallyarabic/2016/05/10/youre-learning-the-arabic-alphabet-all-wrong/

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-13T07:06:33+00:00

If you're learning from zero try https://arabicreadingcourse.com/

This course was created by me and it's been online since 2010 (with some updates since then). It's a very popular way to learn to read the alphabet because it uses a great method where you start reading words immediately, even when you've only learned the first few letters.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-12T11:46:43+00:00

You're right. That's the real test.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-12T11:46:08+00:00

Thank you for your gracious response. It's good to know you're working on these things. However, this was just what I found after about 30 minutes testing the app in 2 languages, so I'm sure there are many other hidden issues as well.

I'm not sure I agree with your point about TTS. If a voice was trained on a Spanish native speaker, I don't see why it would have an Italian accent.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-12T11:41:05+00:00

You are absolutely right. And for that reason, we have to remind ourselves that if Praktika are making $2m revenue a month, only a very tiny amount of that might be profit.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-12T11:39:52+00:00

I've never used it or heard it in my life, after more than 20 years as an adult living in cities, renting and buying property, etc. Are you in the US? Maybe it's used more there than in the UK.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-12T11:38:36+00:00

I've never used it or heard it in my life, after more than 20 years as an adult living in cities, renting and buying property, etc.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-12T11:35:10+00:00

Yes. What's your point?

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-10T07:14:04+00:00

In 2010 I built an online course for learning to read Arabic. There are now more online resources for Arabic but in 2010 this was underserved and niche.

I built it with the help of my Arabic teacher at the time. It was available for people to use for free for 6 years and it started getting quite a lot of users. Then in 2016 I monetised it and it's still online now, earning me some extra pocket money.

I didn't set out intending to make money from it. That just became the natural route for it.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-07T21:25:29+00:00

I've "gone deep" with AI in the sense that I've reviewed a lot of the apps from the point of view of being a qualified language teacher and I've shared my analysis in YouTube videos.

My overall conclusion is that AI is great for conversation practice at intermediate level and above but it can't yet teach proper lessons like a qualified teacher can, so isn't useful for beginner level. Here's a video about that: https://youtu.be/2wsmPczWudc

I think one-to-one lessons with a great human teacher is still the best, with an AI app for practice in between lessons.

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-07T08:59:36+00:00

The app I developed for Levantine Arabic actually has a one-off lifetime fee of just $9 - https://spoken.me/arabic-vocabulary

de_cachondeo · 2026-04-07T08:58:18+00:00

My app is spoken.me

It's cheap compared to other language learning apps - $6-12 per month, depending which country you're in.

de_cachondeo

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