How Toucan Co-Founder and CTO Shaun Merritt Hacked the Art of Language-Learning

Yeah. I mean, tell us a little more. I mean, I know there's a lot of language learning kind of, you know, apps out there. So talk a little bit about, you know, how you got to this idea with Toucan and then, yeah, tell us the story.

Absolutely. Yeah. So it really all starts at kind of the philosophy behind Toucan. The co-founders, Brandon and Taylor, and I really kind of saw this pattern of companies trying to build habits for people and take time out of their day. Right. It's all about how do you create habits and how do you get somebody hooked on a product to spend 20, 30 minutes of engagement on their product. And when we kind of saw that and started thinking about building our own company, it was really about what are the existing habits that people have and how can we layer into those and improve them. And so that's really the core thesis of QCAN is we want to uplevel an existing habit and help you learn something new, whatever that habit is. And where we started is a browser extension. And when we realized the power of browser extensions, we realized that this is actually perfect for language learning. It's a really seamless integration that we can do around language learning in your browser, where you just install this extension and it starts translating keywords and phrases anywhere you go throughout your day. It's kind of like an in-between version of somebody who's learning Spanish and changes their phone to be Spanish. But the core thesis around Toucan is really how can we enable people to learn without taking time out of their day.

And the way that we're doing that right now is through a browser extension.

Got it. So talk to us, I mean, how, how is Toucan different than the other products out there?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So a lot of other existing language learning platforms demand time, right? And time is our number one valuable asset. Like time is not something that you can get back or earn more of. And when you think about existing competitors in the language space, they're all things that you have to devote 20, 30, 40 minutes per day to, to really progress. And we're not saying that we want to compete against that.

In fact, we actually think that we're a great kind of like addition to that system. If you want to study on Babbel, Duolingo, all of these amazing products, you can. And that's great because then you can use Toucan To really accelerate that learning and make sure that you don't forget it. We're kind of the layer in that makes sure that you're using that language throughout your day, even if you have kind of studied already.

Got it. So can you walk us through kind of, um, you know, traction for the product right now? I mean, you could talk about number of employees, revenues, growth rates, things like that.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So Toucan's really exciting. And from day one, uh, we basically had the idea and launched the first version of it within like a Honestly, a week. And from that moment, we saw that there is something really special. You talk about when, when products kind of figure out like what their magic moment is. Toucans is the first time somebody sees an inline translation. When they're browsing their favorite article and they see a translation, they get super excited and you can actually see it on their faces. So from the first moment we launched and we started seeing people's reactions, we knew that there was something special there. And every moment after that is really about how do we get people to that magic moment faster, and how do we improve retention on our product. And so from the beginning, it has really been this like amazing idea that people really gravitate towards. And where we're at now is we've built a product that has incredible retention because it's really passive, right? You're learning a language as you go throughout your day, and it's bettering an experience that you do already. So the retention on the product is amazing. That's really where we've been focusing for the past year and a half is how do we build up retention? Next stage is really around how do we grow our product and how do we monetize our product? And in terms of company, we raised a seed round about 6 months ago and we grew the team. We're now about a 12-person team, which is really exciting, and it's just continuing to grow from there.

Got it.

So, I mean, what would be like a case study of this in action? I'm kind of visualizing it right now. So is it, you know, we add a Chrome extension and then if I'm reading an article, let's say I want it to I want to see, because I know that let's say I watch something in, you know, Chinese, I understand the language, but when I look at the subtitles, like I start to understand the words, right? And you start to be able to read that way. Is it kind of a similar type of experience here?

Absolutely. And so what we do is we really try to integrate this everywhere you go on the web. So if you're reading a New York Times article, you'll still read it in English, but there will be keywords and phrases mixed in that are in your target language. And there's a lot of language learning kind of ideology about there— out there, uh, specifically Stephen Krashen, who's this great researcher. Um, he talks a lot about how reading and just listening in languages is actually really the way to, to level up your language skills. Um, and so with Toucan, we make that really seamless. Just, you don't even have to do anything throughout your day. It's just there passively for you.

Got it.

I'm just looking at the Chrome extension now. And so what languages would be best for this? Because Chinese is obviously too complex, in my opinion, for starters. So is it— I guess, what are the most common ones you see people starting with?

Yeah, so definitely Spanish right now is our most popular. Oddly enough, Mandarin is one of the highly requested languages, one of the most requested languages that we offer. And what's really interesting about this is we have to balance, like, user perception of what Toucan is with what we're, like, capable of doing, right? Because some words don't translate exactly, right? And that's always going to be an issue, but different users have different kind of preferences around what gets translated and how accurate they want it to be. Because some want the reminder about what this word is, and they want to understand that they learned it in Duolingo, and now they want to see it on Toucan. So we can go into all these languages, uh, as long as we set like user expectations around them.

What would be like some, some case studies of this working out for people? Like how long did it take for someone to go from 0 to, you know, um, 1 from a Spanish perspective?

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the amazing things about Toucan is we have different kinds of difficulty settings and you're going through the onboarding experience right now. You'll see that you can kind of progress and change those difficulties. What we find is a lot of people download the product and initially go on the easiest setting and then slowly progress up and further. And with Toucan, the really amazing thing is it actually understands what you're learning and will adapt what you're learning based on what you've learned in the past and how you learn best, right? And so it's really exciting because users can kind of take this journey on their own and Toucan will adapt that for them. And we see users— the, the most Relevant way that that surfaces is when users increase the difficulty setting on their own. It's kind of an indicator to us directly that they're ready for that next level.

Got it. So, I mean, still, is there anything like, uh, you know, maybe from 0 to level 1 or something? How long would that take, uh, like an average Joe?

Yeah. Oh, so actually this is really interesting. I forgot the number off the top of my head, but Stephen Krashen kind of talks about, um, the number of times or the number of exposures you need for a word. To really understand it and the number of exposures you need for like sentences or phrases in a target language. Um, and with Toucan, what we've established is it's kind of around like 70-ish because it's a really passive— it's a really passive form of engagement. And what's incredible is like across our 40,000 user base, we're doing 50 million translations per day. So users encounter a lot of translations, which means that they're able to get up to that 70 number really quickly. So Toucan is really about like language acquisition and understanding words, and you can kind of piece that together with other language learning programs that you're going to use.

Got it. And so, uh, how do you guys— I know that it's a freemium model, right? But, but how do you guys make money?

You said it exactly. We're a freemium business. So you install Toucan, it's free to use. We offer multiple things behind the paywall. That includes more translations, access to our mini games, basically all these deeper forms of engagement. So users that want to use Toucan passively, just install it and have it work on their browser, can use Toucan for free, while users that want a deeper engagement to be able to learn deeper— what I mean by that is like play games associated with the words that they've learned or get more translations— like that's a premium feature. And on top of that, We have this feature called Own the Word, and Own the Word is also like when we talk about monetization at Toucan, we really right now we're so early that we focus it around growth as well. And Own the Word is this feature where users can actually buy words or phrases, and you could see that if you, for example, if you hover over the word coffee, you'll see that it's owned by Morning Brew, the newsletter.

And this is like a really powerful thing, but actually enhances learning because there's this really powerful technique of associating something that you know with something that you don't know, and that will help you kind of remember those things better.

Interesting. So it sounds like, okay, there's a SaaS model, but then also, you know, people can buy ads for their words, the words that they want to own.

Yep, exactly.

And the cool thing about that kind of like advertising model is it's not really advertising. It's like It's actually just deeper forms of learning. Like we only approve things that will deepen the engagement on that learning. So if you're looking at coffee, like it makes sense that it's like Morning Brew or something that, you know, and, and can kind of latch onto.

So, I mean, cause right now you guys are still growing right now. So like a Morning Brew as an example, could they just say, hey, like we want to buy this word in perpetuity because the price is obviously going to grow and grow.

Right.

So. Yeah, so we don't offer that right now. We do do partnerships though, and that's another way that we grow. So my co-founder Taylor, she is hands down the best in the world at like business development and partnerships. And so she's been fantastic at establishing a lot of partnerships and growth, and even the Own the Word feature, like the way that that came about was all through partnerships. We essentially gifted a lot of words to really incredible brands, really incredible people. and had them post about it on Twitter, all within the same hour. And it was this moment of— I mean, it drove a ton of traffic to Toucan. It's really like, that's kind of a growth engine for us as well.

Got it. So how are you guys growing right now? I mean, I know there's discoverability in the Chrome Web Store, but how else are you guys getting distribution?

Yep, absolutely. So word of mouth is our biggest growth lever right now. People talk about it on Twitter, People talk about it on Facebook, they tell their friends, and really what is driving this is kind of the novelty around the idea of Toucan, this thing that you could learn a language passively throughout your day.

And the moment you see it working, it's a really special experience and people share that out a ton. Beyond that, leveraging monetization, right? So I mentioned we're focusing on kind of monetization, but how can we leverage that for for growth. So you'll notice as you continue to use the product, we offer referrals, and that's the way to kind of share out your referral system so that you could get other people subscribed to premium, and that drives growth as well. And then own the word is another really big growth lever for us as well. People love owning words. Like, it's such a simple concept, but you can kind of think of it like the highway signs, like Somebody adopts a highway, somebody adopts a word, and the first thing that they want to do is share that out to their friends.

And so that's a really good growth lever for us as well in terms of viral growth. And then partnerships.

And like I said, Taylor is really good at partnerships, but working with other people to find like shared incentives so that we kind of share growth along with them.

Got it. And what would you say is the grand vision for this? Is it to sell to one of these big language platforms or what is it?

Yeah, so the, the grand vision of Toucan is actually to help you learn anything without taking time out of your day. So it's not like going to be sold to somebody. It's really like, how big can we make this and how much can we kind of help people learn? There's a version of Toucan that is beyond languages. Imagine if you wanted to learn iOS development or science or math. What are ways that we could teach this passively throughout your day?

Got it.

That's amazing. Um, so working towards wrapping up here, I, I mean, so what would be your favorite business tool not called Toucan?

Um, I don't know if this is a business tool necessarily, but I've recently become pretty interested in Obsidian. Uh, it's kind of like Roam, uh, Roam Research, but it's kind of a free version. It's just really interesting. Like, been working a lot on NLP technology and there's a lot there to wrap my brain around. And having a tool that can kind of map that thinking together has been really valuable.

Got it. And how about your favorite business book?

Oh, I'll actually just name the one I'm reading right now. It's called Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows. It's just, it's really interesting, like thinking of the world through systems, but also having kind of the vocabulary to be able to do that and understand like how to build these systems and charts and Got it.

Awesome. And actually a bonus question. Where do you typically get your information from? Is it like a Twitter? Is it like RSS feeds? I'm just curious, like where are the most compelling— what's the most compelling place you go to to get all your information?

Other people, honestly. I like try and stay away. I'm not like big on social media. I do have a Twitter, but I'm not really posting very much. Or consuming. I think most of the stuff I just learned from other people asking questions and kind of hearing what they're talking about.

Got it. Awesome. Well, Sean, this has been great. What's the best way for people to find out more about you?

Uh, feel free to send me an email. I'm sean@jointoucan.com. All right.

Easy enough. Sean, thanks so much for doing this.

All right. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Don't forget to check out the next video over there. Okay. Over there. And before we go, Open a new tab, levelingup.com, to learn more about the book. We may or may not have other goodies tied to this book. All right, levelingup.com in a new tab. You check out the next video first in a new tab, and we'll see you later.