Cambly (YC W14) Offers On-Demand Access To Language Tutors

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Nice work Cambly! The app is very simple and well designed. Plus, I love your logo.

Immersion is clearly the way to go when learning a new language. I learned more French trying to haggle with the waiter for more ice in Biarritz, than I ever did in Madame Lefebvre’s class.

I like that Cambly pairs me with a friendly native speaker rather than a professional teacher. And, I’m a big fan of the on-demand marketplace idea.

Questions for Cambly:

1) Users are required to download a separate app for each language. As you add more languages a user may be learning French and Spanish simultaneously. Are there plans to merge everything into one app so that I can toggle between two different languages?

2) Do you find that users are selecting tutors based on attractiveness?

If Cambly is WebRTC-based and are looking for a solution for measuring the media quality, drop us a note and look at our measurement API http://staging.callstats.io/api

How does this differ from Verbling (YC S11)?

Wasn't this on Shark Tank?

any one know how this differs from livemocha.com?

Yes, in that LiveMocha is free and Cambly charges you $20. Don't get me wrong, the concept is great, the design is awesome, but language exchange (tandems) is not foreign language teaching. There are other online services out there such as Iboux [1] that charges less than $20 for a private class with an actual professional teacher with an actual syllabus.

[1] http://www.iboux.com

LiveMocha isn't in YC and won't have to pivot in a few months due to a poorly thought-out business model.

Be nice.

The language immersion market is big enough for quite a few companies to co-exist. Time will tell.

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