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> when we have enough content for language learners, we will launch our learning app globally. You have a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem there. Before you l
by yorwba 5y ago
> when we have enough content for language learners, we will launch our learning app globally.
You have a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem there.
Before you launch, few people will hear about you and even fewer will contribute content. But without content, your app isn't attractive enough. And the people it's most likely to attract are English learners, not English speakers.
I think you could somewhat get yourself out of this by becoming a multi-sided marketplace. E.g. Chinese users who want to learn English upload videos in Chinese, which unlocks English content for them. Those videos then get used on a site for people who want to learn Chinese. (hotpotchinese.com is already taken, but the maximally generic hotpotlanguages.com apparently isn't.) That way, network effects are in your favor.
It won't get you across the initial hurdle of not having enough content to launch at all, but you can try to get the flywheel going by providing content in your native language. I think that'll be faster than waiting for people to participate in this contest. (But maybe I'm wrong about that. How many videos did you get so far?)
- brudgers 5y agoI don't think a chicken/egg farm avoids the chicken/egg problem. The problem is achieving market liquidity. The primary rationale for uploading Chinese content is the expectation that there will be English content. There is almost certainly asymmetry between those wishing to learn English versus Chinese. To me, the way to get content is to pay for it. If there is not money for that, the business is under-capitalized (most are). If it doesn't make economic sense to pay for content, then the business itself probably isn't economically viable...it simply cannot achieve the imagined state where there is a market on which to charge rents.
- tianshuo 5y agoTried that before, doesn't work. The problem is that people who learn foreign languages and people who are good at making videos are two total different groups. We've done this before, got ten thousands of videos, but the content was too random, too difficult for most learners and video quality was not good enough, and we're trying it again as a contest, where what creators can say are semi-restricted as video tasks.
- yorwba 5y agoToo bad it didn't work out, but props to you for not giving up. Good luck with the contest approach!