Our vision and mission is to change the way foreign words are learnt all over the world, offering language learners a new and different experience through an innovative and well presented product that adapts to their specific needs.

You probably expect us to say that we’re going to make the world a better place and this is what motivates us... Well, not this time. We saw a free market niche and decided to take this chance and develop a successful business. People nowadays need a tool to help them learn foreign languages more effectively. We can deliver it.

The main problem we face is the language barrier between peoples. This specifically applies to EU as a multi-lingual community. Therefore, a well-balanced mix of active and passive learning is needed to help people learn while doing something else (working, traveling, jogging).

In a study published on Oct 19, 2018, Aura Interactiva company identified 10 necessary shifts of learning which must characterize modern education. Worddio is designed to answer to (almost) all of these addressing the following three, we believe, main challenges to e-learning tools:

·         Personalized learning - Necessity to shift from a fixed learning system to an adaptive learning path.

·         Collaborative knowledge – opportunity for learning communities for teachers and learners.

·         Invisible learning – adopting new learning mindset and creating a continuous learning environment.

From other side the biggest challenge for learning a foreign language is time. Advanced online technologies provide many learning opportunities but all of them require 100% focus for a long period of time which many people do not have.

Professionals: adults looking to improve their foreign-language skills for business or career reasons

Casual learners: travelers, expats, or other persons wishing to learn a new language or enhance their current knowledge

Sector-specific: Service workers, such as call-center staff or healthcare workers, who can perform better with a larger vocabulary and accurate pronunciation.

Youth: 12-20 year-olds studying secondary languages in schools or universities

Special Educational Needs: people with Dyslexia, ADHD, ADD and other learning conditions

‘Anxious’ language learners: those for whom language learning causes a great deal of anxiety

To solve this problem, we turned the flashcards that students often use to memorize words into audio flashcards.

Over 1000 people say that Worddio is a great tool for learning new words.

With Worddio you can learn new words on the move or while doing something else, without touching their phone. Through this method, the learner will also memorize the pronunciation in the correct way, spoken by a native language speaker.

We safe students time!

Worddio focuses only on vocabulary (rather than grammar or syntax), and only on audio.

We built the app so people can grow their vocabulary and improve their pronunciation while simultaneously doing other activities (walking, driving, housework, exercising, etc.). Users progress through the sets by simply repeating the words or phrases, without the need to swipe, click, or type.

Although there are many other language apps on the market, they all require direct interaction from users. Worddio is the simplest, quickest way to reinforce vocabulary and pronunciation passively. We have tested the Worddio method with nearly 300 students and 6 professional language teachers to confirm that memorizing new words was faster and easier.

WHY FLASHCARDS?

Flashcards are a proven method for increasing vocabulary and improving pronunciation. Worddio enhances student’s retention rates with audio repetition: sets of words and phrases are presented in the student’s mother tongue and the target language so students can practice as they hear the words.  

WHY PASSIVE LEARNING?

Passive learning methods are recognized as ideal supplements for language learners because they can reinforce the lesson content and keep students engaged outside the classroom:

“For users looking to gain practical language skills, linguistics research has shown evidence that creating a robust vocabulary can give a learner comprehension of about 70 to 80 percent of the language.” (Techcrunch)

Worddio is an ideal supplement for students who are enrolled in language courses, as well as casual learners who do not have time or money to devote to full language study courses.  For teachers and language schools, Worddio provides an easy-to-use support mechanism with customizable word sets.

Worddio is looking for a suitable investor to help us scale up the project and in order to continue developing the app and deliver more hands-free experiences and individually-tailored content to our users.

To meet these challenges, we are constantly developing our team, our knowledge and skills. We have passed and successfully completed the largest pre-accelerator in the world - Founders institute. We also became part of Loyal.VC and Innovation Capital acceleration program.

We have more than 2000 reviews in app market with average score more than 4.5 from 5, which validate our successful product market fit.

AppStore 

GooglePlay

- subscriptions: 1, 3, 6 and 12 months,lifetime

- up-sales of premium content - advanced flashcards by topics, Audiobooks and Podcasts.

- Ads - general or targeted based on user profiles

- Apply data & technology to other platforms/apps/fields...

Developing a B2C model on a global level takes time and resources to break even, but once that happens, the return on investment is maximized at scale.

The main advantages of our product are our app’s passive learning method and our huge stock of professionally recorded audio-flashcards in 34 languages.

The key innovation in our go-to-market strategy is the holistic data-driven marketing approach - we have developed a methodology for smart optimization of our digital marketing efforts through the use of in-house predictive machine learning models trained on the Worddio's usage data. Our unique behavior models perform better than standard sales funnels as they are specifically designed and constantly updated for Worddio's customer base, which allows us to estimate very early whether a certain market is the right one for us or not, and how to change our marketing approach to reach more paying users.

Data is the new currency and we invest a lot of time and resources to gain as much of it as possible. We monitor more than 100 behaviour events into the app. We are currently training machine learning models to recognise the type of user after 200 in-app clicks.

That’s especially useful in the market penetration phase, when we would know very early whether a certain market is the right one for us or not, and how to change our marketing approach to reach more target users using predictive machine learning models.

We also believe that the way to go in today’s world of innovation is Artificial Intelligence. In our roadmap we have planned developing multiple features to reach a final goal: the ultimate hands free experience.

The Global Online Language-Learning market is growing fast with projections to reach  25.73 billion USD by 2027, according to a Verified Market Research’s report. Our research estimates a Total Available Market of 1.2 billion users and a Serviceable Available Market of about 800 million users.

We have technology that allows us to build psychological profiles and predict users' behaviours without accessing their sensitive data. We can build bespoke learning paths, custom sales funnels, and target ads.

The data gathered allow the pursue of three main objectives:

• optimzing marketing resources by leveraging predictive machine learning models
• creating individual learning paths based on users needs
• upsale of particular content or products

As a mobile app, Worddio is easily scalable across the globe. Our first 40 thousand installations came from over 170 different countries. Expanding on a new market requires not only a continuous effort and funding, but also knowledge of the users.

Mobile app distribution is quite specific and Worddio leverages data science to understand its users, thus increasing the speed and accuracy of monetization and specialization. 

Our strategy is based on the following principles: applying a scientific approach, developing custom-tailored machine learning solutions, and collecting behavioural data rather than asking users specific questions. To accomplish this we are currently developing:

• in-house attribution model - shows where our users come from.

• machine learning models - allow us to predict, within 200 clicks, the likelihood that a user will convert from a free trial to a paying plan.

• specially-designed avatars - can determine each person’s individual learning style using the OCEAN model for personality characterizations.

The combination of the above solves the following key challenges:

• quickly and precisely identify the most effective markets, channels and even content in our funnel to concentrate marketing resources accordingly.

• optimize remarketing efforts and apply individual funnels for each user by leveraging the ML predictions into the automation platform Velocity.

• design specialized learning pathways for each user by suggesting appropriate content based on their individual needs.

Worddio is currently collecting data for nearly 100 events in the app. A series of new functionalities already in development would allow revealing not only behavior but also psychological traits for the users. The data gathered allow the pursue of two main objectives:

• optimzing marketing resources by leveraging predictive machine learning models;
• creating individual learning paths for each user based on their particular needs.

In addition, the insights for the behavior and psychological profile of Worddio’s users create the opportunity for additional personalized actions, for example:

• upsales of particular content or products.
• recommendations and/or actions related to external platforms/products/apps.

The language learning apps space looks crowded but in fact there is a specific empty niche - passive learning.

There are a lot of language learning apps on the market, but none of them use a passive learning method to save time for their users - Worddio is the only one that does.

We are opening a new market group to support language learning. The Worddio app is a pseudo-passive learning app powered by AI which saves student time.

Notable events:

• Kahoot buys Language Drops - an app with similar customer profile to Worddio, for $50 Million
• Duolingo raised $65 Million in 2020 ($30M 2/2020 + $35M 11/2020). The company has a $2.4B valuation and is now cash-positive.
• Owl Ventures, an edtech VC, has recently raised an additional $541 Million for two new funds focused on

Investment shifts 

The COVID pandemic has prompted a major surge in B2C language products; prior to 2020, investments were substantially skewed towards employee-training and other B2B models as investors focused on the issue of global workforce talent and retention. With the vast majority of people now homebound, however, the growth in edtech and language learning has shifted dramatically towards B2C based companies. 

Consumers are now the majority of users & purchasers for language software. A great proportion of these customers are parents seeking help with remote-learning for their children. This trend is expected to continue for several years as government spending on education will be negatively impacted due to the economic recession, shifting the burden of educational support tools onto the consumer. A similar phenomenon can be seen in the workforce, as greater competition for jobs incentivizes people to enhance their skills, and obtain certifications for those skills.

Ivan Manev

Chief Engagement Officer

20 years Senior Responsibilities in Sales, Operations, and Project Management

Mario Gorki

Head of Developments

10 years Senior Mobile Developer 

Programming Languages: Java, Swift, Dart, C#, C++, SQL, MySQL, PostGres

Kiril Genov

Head of Data Science

10 years Financial Management & Control, Project Management 

4+ years Data Science, AI and cognitive chat bots

Yordan Yordanov

Head of Marketing

7 years experience in digital marketing, 3 of which as a senior  manager overseeing 7 figure yearly budgets. 

5 years as a founder of several startups.

Ilian Stankov

Head of content management

8 years High-end Enterprise, Cybersecurity & Technical Supervision.

2+ years of experience as an English teacher.

Programming languages: HTML/CSS/JS, Python, C.

Spoken languages: English, Spanish

Dimitar Manovski

Back End Developer

5 years Full Stack Web Developer, Programming Languages: PHP, Javascript, MySQL, HTML, CSS

Dragomir Minkov

Velocity platform administrator

14 years Software Architecture, Database Administration,

Data Warehousing , Main technologies and tools: Microsoft SQL Server, .NET Frameworks, Power BI, PowerShell, Python, PHP, JavaScript

Krasimir Daskalov

UI/UX web and mobile designer

5 years UI & UX Designer, Front-End Web Developer, 

Technologies – HTML, CSS, SASS, JavaScript, React and React Native

Maria Jekova

Customer service manager

8 years Technical Writer, Data Quality Specialist, Validating and improving data quality, Translated Computer Science books

Desislava Genova

Social media designer

1 years Digital Designer, Social Media and Brand CommunitiesMain  tools:   Adobe CC, Figma, Sketch, AffinityTranslator and Interpreter of German