@travisk ca 2016. vc shows up for the meeting at the hotel bar, starts drinking heavily. so much that their handler afterwards apologizes on their behalf, to us. no worries, it happens. they send us a term sheet. they break the term sheet.
Ca 2014 an investor signed final investment docs, then wrote they were out of money and unfortunately couldnโt wire, then apparently FORGOT they hadnโt ever wired, then months later wrote asking for a company progress update, completely unaware they werenโt investors in the company
i built a company in the prior generation of this space. like vitamins, the rewards to the language learning process are far off in the future and, for most hobbyists learning a language other than english, too low in the maslovian sense.
duolingo was asked how they decide between making a lesson more engaging or more effective. they said engagement every single time. effectiveness doesn't matter if the user is gone.
at my company, we found that learners having a specific, recurring (human) teacher did wonders for retention. there is accountability to a human being that is difficult for software (ai or not) to replace.
if you lower the effort or increase the reward, more people succeed.
lowering effort: moving to a foreign country and osmosing the language
increasing reward: non-english speakers learning english
the effort : reward ratio for english speakers learning another language makes it so *very* few who start get all the way through to proficiency.
to get through, you must either lower the effort or raise the reward.
lowering effort: living in the foreign country and osmosing into it.
raising reward: non-english speakers learning english. only lingua franca of the global economic elite