⚡ How the Founder of CAPTCHA Transformed the Way We Learn Languages

Morning Innovators ⚡ With todays edition falling on International Women’s Day, we want you to think about and celebrate the incredible women running start-ups, pioneering change, inspiring innovation, and shaping the world around them. Happy International Women's Day!

🥳 The best funding opportunities, events and jobs in the start-up world
📰 The biggest news stories in the start-up world
🦉 How the founder of CAPTCHA transformed the way we learn languages
🍸How a simple bar challenge can get your business millions of views online
👀 Our favourite start-up to keep an eye on this week
🤳 A tool that helps you source great quality user-generated-content

✨ Last weeks most clicked link was this opportunity to apply for Y-Combinator’s Summer 2024 cohort.

Happy hustling,
Rich & Gary

🎤 Events/Opportunities

🌋 Molten Ventures have announced that they’ve successfully raised £55m to back Europe’s most ambitious founders.

🅰️ Project A are in the middle of deploying their $375m fund to early stage European tech companies. Learn more here.

🧼 The UK BAA are currently accepting applications from CleanTech founders to participate in their London-based pitch showcase event. If you’re working on something exciting in areas such as; energy efficiency, retrofitting or building homes, sustainable and affordable energy generation, waste reduction and recycling, biodiversity and environmental quality, carbon capture, low emission transportation, then this could be a great opportunity for you to connect with potential investors.

👩 We also wanted to highlight some great female-focused opportunities:

• The Female Founders Fund (FFF) offers investment to transformational technology companies in the pre-seed stage (the earliest stage of start-up funding) that have been founded by women.

• Astia is a global fund that invests in women-led, diverse businesses. The company accepts applications all year round from high-growth companies with at least one woman in a position of significant equity and influence.

• AllBright is a global collective for ambitious women to connect, learn, and inspire across digital and physical spaces.

• Early stage fund, BBG Ventures is focused on consumer tech start-ups with a female founder.

• Girl Geeks support untapped talent and females in STEM through offering inspiration, connections and opportunities.

💼 Job opportunities

⚽ Growth Marketer, Fanvue
🏃 Mid-Senior Web/UI Designer, Stadion
💻 Full Stack Engineer, Lightdash

💸 Female-founded UK start-ups received more VC cash than start-ups in any other European country last year, but gender investment disparity remains a major issue. UKTN

🤖 What does the new UK budget mean for innovation and AI? TechRound

💳 Monzo hits $5bn valuation with backing from Alphabet as part of a $430m funding round, as it eyes US expansion. Sifted

💵 OpenAI share Musk emails, that reveal his ambitions to create a for-profit company with him as the CEO. FT

🎮 Twitch is planning a big app redesign, the first in 5 years, that takes after TikTok and allows users to easily jump between bite-sized bits of content. TechCrunch

🦉 Duolingo's Odyssey: From Academic Project to Global Language Phenomenon

The world-famous language learning app Duolingo started not in a garage, but within the academic halls of Carnegie Mellon University, where Luis von Ahn, a prodigious mind already known for CAPTCHA, and his astute graduate student, Severin Hacker, dared to dream. Their vision was clear yet audacious: to democratise language learning, making it accessible and free for everyone, everywhere.

The seed of Duolingo was sown in the fertile ground of von Ahn's previous successes, but it was watered by a deep-rooted desire to use technology for the greater good. Growing up in Guatemala, von Ahn had first-hand experience of the transformative power of language; it was a tool that could unlock doors to new opportunities. This realisation became the bedrock of Duolingo. The duo envisioned a platform where technology wasn't just a tool for convenience but a bridge to educational equity.

Duolingo's infancy was marked by a blend of academic rigor and entrepreneurial zeal. The founders didn't rush to market. Instead, they meticulously crafted their idea, ensuring that the technology could genuinely serve its intended purpose. The initial model of Duolingo aimed to intertwine language learning with content translation, a symbiotic relationship where learners would contribute to translating the web while acquiring a new language.

The catalyst for Duolingo's explosive user growth was as unconventional as its business model. Luis von Ahn, leveraging his academic prestige and recognition, took the stage at a TED conference. With the charisma of a seasoned educator and the clarity of a visionary, he introduced Duolingo to the world. This wasn't just a presentation; it was a clarion call to join a movement.

Post-TED talk, Duolingo's landing page became a hive of activity. Over 300,000 individuals, touched by the promise of free language education, signed up to be part of the beta phase. This wasn't just a user base; it was a community of early believers, each with a story, each with a reason to embrace this new tool. The waiting list became a testament to the pent-up demand for accessible education.

Attracting its first users was a blend of strategic brilliance and serendipity for Duolingo. The founders tapped into their academic networks, spreading the word through educational forums and university channels. They understood the power of word-of-mouth in tight-knit communities, especially among language enthusiasts and tech early adopters.

But beyond the initial surge from the TED talk, Duolingo's early user attraction was deeply organic. The platform's intrinsic value proposition – free, high-quality language education – resonated with a broad audience. Each new learner became an advocate, sharing their learning journeys on social media, further amplifying Duolingo's reach.

From its very first users, Duolingo learned and adapted. The platform was a living lab, with each interaction providing data to refine and enhance the learning experience. This iterative approach to growth wasn't just about scaling; it was about evolving in tandem with the users' needs. Features like gamification and personalised learning paths were outcomes of listening intently to the early user base and innovating to keep them engaged and learning.

Duolingo’s growth underscores the importance of a compelling vision, the power of community, and the necessity of iterative growth fuelled by real user feedback.

A stopwatch and a buzzer got this bar over 4,500,000 views on one single post, this game of going viral is a piece of cake!

This bar invites customers to try their game, you have to stop the stopwatch on 10 seconds flat to win a free drink. One catch, you’re not allowed to look at the timer! Though, I hope it’s a non-alcoholic drink as the person in the video is 13 years old at the very most!

The video of the fun and very cheap game was shared by a twitter account that amassed over 4 and a half million views. The issue for the bar is that they didn’t attach the name of their venue at any point throughout the video, so we don’t know how we can play.

People love to play low barrier to entry games like this that can really lean on people’s competitive nature, which is why the video has gone viral!

Can you play a game like this with your customers?

Each week we’re featuring one start-up we love. We’d love this to come from community recommendations, so if you know a start-up doing something awesome who deserves a shout-out, please reply to this email. 

This week we’re spotlighting Passes - a creator monetisation platform founded by Lucy Guo - The co-founder of Scale AI.

Passes.com is a platform that empowers creators to monetise their content and connect with their audience in multiple ways, including subscriptions, tips, livestreaming, and exclusive messages. It stands out for its brand-friendly environment, ensuring no negative stigma for creators. The platform features anti-screenshot technology, unique watermarks to prevent leaks, and offers various engagement tools like live streaming, video calling, and SMS notifications. Creators can earn through direct interactions, with a transparent fee structure, and the platform is selective, generally requiring a minimum follower count for joining.

Each week we highlight our favourite tools - either something we’ve been using in our businesses, or tools that our innovator community have recommended.

This week, we’re sharing Twirl, co-founded by Lara Stallbaum. Twirl is a leading platform for sourcing user-generated content (UGC), specialising in connecting eCommerce brands, marketing teams, and agencies with a diverse network of over 1500 creators. It streamlines the UGC production process, from briefing to content delivery, ensuring brands receive authentic, high-quality content quickly and efficiently. Twirl's service includes vetted creator talent, easy project management, and flexible, transparent pricing, all aimed at enhancing brand authenticity and engagement across various industries.

Next week we’ll be looking at how a forgotten USB stick during a bus-ride led to the formation of one of the world’s best known file-sharing platforms. As usual we’ll also be highlighting our favourite start-up of the week, funding opportunities, and plenty of awesome tips, tricks and tools.

P.S. Connect with us on LinkedIn…