- Busuu is a language learning app named after an endangered Bantu language from Cameroon.
- The startup was recently bought by US company Chegg for $436 million (€385 million).
- Its founder, Bernhard Niesner, created a platform where learners are also teachers.
“No dschin wong Bernhard” — my name is Bernhard — is how Bernhard Niesner introduces himself in Busuu.
Bernhard Niesner named his online language learning platform after Busuu, an endangered Bantu language from Cameroon.
It’s a special language that he wanted to preserve, but there was also a more practical reason behind the choice of name.
“The name sounds cool and the domain was still available for €10,” said Niesner with a laugh.
The startup was recently bought by US company Chegg for $436 million (€385 million).
Small beginnings
It all started with Niesner’s interest in languages.
“I’ve always been drawn to faraway places,” he said. “I learned Spanish during my studies, and spent a semester abroad in Buenos Aires. After that, I was a backpacker in Latin America for four months.”
“I don’t think I would have survived that trip if I hadn’t learned Spanish at university and Portuguese in Brazil. That’s when the effect of languages began to fascinate me,” said the 42-year-old.
Before his backpacking trip, Niesner completed a degree in commerce in Vienna and worked for two years at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants in Munich.
“It wasn’t that exciting to always have to tell people what to do instead of doing it myself. I preferred doing my own thing,” the entrepreneur explained.
While studying for his MBA in Madrid, he met a like-minded person, fellow student Adrian Hilti.
“Our idea was to enable many people to achieve their dreams through languages,” Niesner said.
While their fellow students left for well-paying jobs after graduation, Niesner and Hilti rented a five-square-meter office where they worked for 12 to 13 hours a day, unpaid, on an idea for their own company — a language learning platform for everyone, where people could learn a language quickly. The start-up capital was provided by Niesner’s former job in management consulting and Hilti’s family.
People are afraid when learning languages
“I can still remember very clearly how many hours I spent standing at the whiteboard drawing the designs of what Busuu should look like. And Adrian inputting it into the computer right away,” Niesner said.
One thing was a priority from the start.
“We realized on our own travels that you don’t learn languages alone. Acquiring a new language on your own, without a community, is like learning to swim without ever having seen the water: You have to learn the technique and then be able to try it,” Niesner said.
“But many people are afraid of making mistakes when they speak, of embarrassing themselves. We wanted to build a community where you didn’t have to be afraid and could learn directly from native speakers, among other things,” he added.
The solution was obvious. On the Busuu platform, every learner also becomes a teacher by tutoring others in their own native language.
“This way, a German hears that an English person absolutely makes mistakes when learning German. That then lowers their own inhibitions when practicing a new language,” he went on.
Customer numbers grew faster than he himself had expected.
“We realized we’d hit upon something for which there was a real need in the market,” said Niesner.
Today, Busuu says it has more than 120 million users across the globe. Half a million customers pay for a premium account that offers language courses in twelve different languages.
Niesner sees clear advantages in online learning. Busuu uses evaluations of more than 10 billion data points to design learning courses.
“We know exactly when a user has looked at which vocabulary, and based on this data we can now calculate when this vocabulary is likely to be forgotten again and counteract that in advance. The best university professor can’t keep up with that,” he explained.
Takeover and investment attempts came along quickly. Many wanted to become part of the Busuu boom. To date, however, Busuu has only raised over $18 million (€16 million) in outside capital — that’s little compared to other European startups with similar balance sheets.
So why the decision to sell to US education company Chegg now?
Niesner and Hilti reached a point with Busuu where they needed massive capital for further growth or they’d have had to take the step of going public. The US online tutoring company came along at just the right time.
“Chegg gives us access to its own six million paying customers. And still has two billion dollars on the balance sheet after the acquisition. So the plan is to invest heavily in us. For us, it’s a shortcut to the other alternatives,” Niesner said.
“Plenty of room for improvement”
After the takeover, Niesner will remain at the helm of the group and wants above all to drive expansion in the B2B sector. At the moment, Busuu has companies like Inditex, Massimo Tutti, Adidas, Puma, and FC Bayern Munich among its clientele.
“There’s still a lot of room for improvement,” the CEO said.
In addition to his native language, he speaks Spanish, Portuguese, and English. He also speaks a little Busuu — “for professional reasons,” so to speak.
Yet things aren’t so good for the language.
“Back then, eight people in the jungle could still speak Busuu, but today there are unfortunately only two or three,” Niesner said.
“We put a lot of audio material online and even had little learning units on our platform to revive the language.”
But interest in learning Busuu has remained low, he said.
“Where is the next bar?” is something Niesner can also say in Busuu. Perhaps phrases like this will encourage more people to pick up the language.
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