Yet another language learning app?

I can't finish the first sentence of my pitch without someone saying "what about Duolingo?"

So let's address the elephant-sized owl in the room.

Read their S-1, watch the quarterly public investor presentations, count the TikTok followers — pretty much the dictionary definition of a widely successful business.

And they're not the only big one either (#2 through #10 are all valued north of $100m as well).

I haven't counted, but 70 is probably a safe guess for the total number of legit competitors in the language learning space.

Given estimates that over 2 billion people worldwide are trying to learn another language right now, there are still a lot of slices of pie to go around. But frankly I'm not particularly interested in fighting for the scraps as the App Store's 71st best language learning app.

So why would you try to compete against all of them?

I'm not.

Take a closer look at the competitive landscape for language learning and you'll notice one key similarity across all these players.

Everyone is focused on the "beginner" part of the market, aka making it super addicting fun to get started learning a new language.

Duo & Friends™ are great for teaching you the basics, (sometimes random) vocab, and creating incredibly sticky habits around language learning.

And that's fantastic. It's amazing to live in a world with so much access to free, high-quality content like this.

Low ceiling... Watch your head!

But with all of these apps, you'll inevitably reach a ceiling of how fluent you can actually get.

You simply can't reach conversational fluency if you've only ever done fill in the _____ exercises.

You will never learn how to spontaneously express yourself if your only speaking experience is "repeat after me" exercises.

I can't tell you how many users I've interviewed with a 300+ day streak who still can't actually order a coffee in the real world.

I can't tell you how many eye rolls I've witnessed from intermediate & advanced learners who feel like the apps they once loved before are now a waste of their time (too basic, too repetitive, not relevant).

Trust me, I hit the ceiling myself when my wife and I moved to Copenhagen 2 years ago and eagerly tried to learn Danish using the apps.

Full stop, you can't achieve actual fluency by just doing more and more exercises. What works great for beginners unfortunately stops working beyond that — the plateau effect is real.

And once you hit that ceiling, what should you do? Where should you go next? I wouldn't suggest holding your breath waiting for an answer...

Superfluent helps Intermediate & Advanced learners get to Fluent

We're focused on more advanced learners, not beginners, and our goal is to help them reach true conversational fluency, not just learn their first hundred vocab words.

For the small handful of people who know their CEFR levels by heart, that means we're focused on helping A2 and B1-level learners reach the B2 and C1-levels.

That's our goal. It's that simple.

Every morning, we wake up and try to build an incredible product, inspired by the needs of this specific group of users, aka more advanced language learners.

So how do you do it?

Glad to hear we finally got past the "another language learning app?" part of today's Q&A...

The quick answer is:

• Conversational practice: Practice speaking in real-world scenarios (like chatting with a friend about your weekend plans)
• Fluency Score: After a single conversation, we can accurately assess your Fluency Score and show you exactly how to improve it over time
• Metrics as Motivation: We gamify based on these fluency metrics, so learners focus on actually getting better at the language they're learning (not just earning more gold coins)
• Endless Feedback Loop: You get personalized feedback on every reply, in every chat, every single day to make sure your quick 5 minutes of practice sticks with you

For the full answer, read more about how Superfluent works in our deep dive here:

Ultimately, this recipe contains all the necessary ingredients to consistently challenge advanced learners, while giving them the framework and feedback needed to reach their fluency goals.

Use Superfluent daily and it's pretty much impossible to not break through the ceiling of other apps and improve your fluency.

What about my 423-day streak!?!?!?

No worries, you can bring it with you.

Graduate from Duo & Friends™, but still keep your streak alive. All you have to do is take a screenshot and you can continue your streak in Superfluent. It's that easy.

No one wants you to lose your streak. That would be sad.

Here to compete collaborate

When I look at the language learning landscape, I see 70 potential collaborators, not competitors.

I see 70 companies doing The Good Lord's work helping people go from zero to one with their language learning journey. You rock. Thank you. Please keep it up.

We literally have a screen in our onboarding flow that warns people learning "from scratch" that Superfluent is probably not for them.

So don't be shy to reach out and partner up. You can probably guess my email…

We're just getting started

Keep your eye on the space. In the fun, new AI world we live in, I can safely say there are going to be a lot more winners than losers in this industry. Language Learning 3.0 is well under way.

Keep your eye on Superfluent. We're still in free/public beta test mode, but have a bunch of cool stuff coming soon ;)

— Sam Nevada
Founder of Superfluent