Shadowing Practice: startup diaries ep. 9 - taking on quizlet and duolingo - Learn English Speaking with Video

Welcome to episode 9 of Startup Diaries.

My brother and I are building our first app, Lutus, and we're trying to replace Quizlet and Duolingo.

Last episode, I talked about how AI has changed education.

This episode, we're planning the next stage of Lutus and building out the Lutus universe.

If you haven't joined the Discord yet, check it out, and I hope you enjoy the video.

Guess who's back?

Back again. Did you shower?

Yeah.

Did you miss me?

No. That's the welcome home I get.

Can you sleep with your app?

Nope.

I stepped on the plane.

Mom said you marinated chicken, but I wasn't sure if I should eat that or

if I should cook my own food Because I don't know if you want to eat your own chicken.

I need a haircut.

I feel like I just got a haircut,

so I did I got a lot guess what I've been craving No,

not food No, I said it's not food.

It's gonna make you really happy Yeah When you left,

you left all of your dishes out everywhere.

I would be enough.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

The past is in the past.

We're moving forward into the future now.

Our way to love is to let go.

Look how nice this weather is though.

It's finally warm.

People say that it doesn't get cold in California, but that's not true.

It gets really cold, but thankfully, it's sunny now.

I just sprayed the inside of the pan with avocado oil.

We have an avocado oil spray.

It is high key fire.

Meeting it with burrata today because we need to finish this burrata before it goes bad.

When I was gone, Matias was working on a lot of sound effects.

So he used 11 labs, and a lot of GarageBand too, so he's making a lot of custom sound effects for us.

You want to show us some of them?

sidebar navigation here it's kind of quiet it's like subtle

and then we got the stack and then the close also has

that and save list also has that and then by default everything has a simple tap sound

so there's basically three different markets

that we're addressing one is is business to students one is business to consumer and then one is business to business

this is three different markets that we're trying to tackle

and this is like super spread out

if you're trying to create your own business this is not

a smart strategy right you do not want to go after

three different markets you want to go after one market who you know is willing to go for your product

and again another one of the downfalls of building an education product

and this is another the reason why investors hate education products.

But basically, Khan Academy is mostly tackling the business to student market.

Is a normal person gonna use Khan Academy?

Probably not.

Is a normal person going to use Duolingo?

Yes.

Is a student going to use Duolingo?

No. So our platform eventually is going to cater to all three markets

and right now our platform best caters to business to students.

But the thing is are these features that we have right now enough to get students to pay?

Not necessarily.

Yeah.

This is a really hard customer to target.

The easiest customer to target is consumers.

If we had a curriculum in our app, you can just walk up to any person and be like, hey, you trying to learn another language?

I got you.

There's no friction between studying.

Like right now, you have to know what you want to study.

You have to know all the words that you need for whatever exam or test, and then you have to add them to a list.

Versus if we had curriculums like Duolingo, there's already a structured path that we have that's laid out for anybody to kind of come here, no matter what level, right?

On a scale of difficulty of acquiring users.

So this is the easiest.

This is like the second easiest I would say.

Not necessarily to market to, but to acquire paying users.

Sure.

And then this is the hardest, right?

So we're currently...

We are currently here.

And this chart helps us clarify maybe what direction we want to go to in terms of this next month.

Right.

And it sounds like building curriculums is really where we're going to need to focus our attention.

So I think building out the Ludus universe visually, I think, is is something that you should do while I'm developing the curriculum.

What do we want it to really feel like when you're entering the world?

Not that we would open a store one day, but if we had a store, you know, like what would it feel like walking into that store?

What would, you know, like even our stickers look like, things like that.

Just figuring out our design language.

I think we need a little bit more of that so that when people use it, they really feel like they're entering a universe.

One of the questions

that all startup founders have to navigate is like what is going to make someone use your product

if someone else comes out with something exactly the same that's cheaper

and the only answer to that is having a strong personal brand

or a corporate brand so

that is what Matias's job really lies in it's just building a really nice experience

and brand for us so

that we have some defensibility against other companies who want to knock us off

or whatever so I think that if you really create a nice storyboard or whatever for us, that will be really important.

Okay, Matisse is doing a lot of art stuff right now

and putting together a lot of reference images and we're looking for an art book that we have, The Art of Steven Universe.

And we don't know where it is, so we're gonna go downstairs to go look at the hotel.

Come on, wait for me.

Why didn't we turn on the lights?

100

Bruh.

101

Moist.

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I guess it's not that.

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I feel like I saw it in your room.

104

The modality.

105

Okay, so Matthias has put together a lot of reference images, inspiration for our platform to think about the design assets that we want to build.

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If you don't know already, we already have three characters, Lucifin, Marmunch, and Drivet, but building out a universe requires a lot more than just designing characters.

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I think makes the difference for a platform where the mascot

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or whatever just feels like added on versus a real part of the program.

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So we spent a lot of time gathering references in terms of like environments, props, everything.

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So here we have some environment studies, and then we have some general environment and like web assets that we can utilize.

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And then here we have icons and badges so that we can integrate that with our leaderboard system that we have.

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And then one thing we were kind of working on for

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a little bit is figuring out how we can integrate a merchant

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or a shop page later down the line where users can spend their credits

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or coins and buy skins for their creatures or cosmetics.

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So we have a nice background image that we're planning on creating, and then we'll have some UI, UX elements over top that people can interact with.

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But if you look at this, right, it looks fun, it's super cool, but it feels too gamey, and then it doesn't feel like a serious learning tool anymore.

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So we have to find the right balance, and Matthias did this mockup here where he put in these icons, these are just sample icons from somewhere else,

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and you can see that it doesn't feel right anymore.

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He put them into our platform, and this doesn't look good.

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He has to figure out a right way to get

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that balance to make it feel still like a learning tool but fun.

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So Matthias made some sketches here of different versions.

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So this, I think he just put containers on top of this drawing from somewhere else.

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But these are actual sketches that I designed just trying to integrate certain aspects of our app.

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I was thinking it could be fun to have like creature tails

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or creature heads pop up every now and then if you're on the page, that could make it feel a little bit more alive we would have like our coins

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and like ludus elements help sell the world a little bit more.

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And so Matthias really loves sketching and he likes figuring things out on paper.

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And then he gets really excited about that.

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But sometimes I have to remind him like we got to step back

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and make sure that we're getting the big picture things first.

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So this sketch is very useful, but he was sketching a whole lot of other things too.

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So I was looking over him and I was like, Matthias, what are you sketching?

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Yeah, he started sketching these different buttons here.

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Or just like card elements.

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Yeah, these illustrations for buttons and I see him doing all this stuff and like, okay, this is very important to figuring out style, but like you can really get sucked in on this

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and like want to start drawing all the icons for every single button.

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And then so I saw him doing that and I was like, okay, Matthias, pause.

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Like, let's take a step back, make sure we're having our eye on the prize.

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Because, you know, that's kind of what we did in our app when we did the redesign.

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We just got into all the details.

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And then obviously we're really proud of everything that we put out so far.

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But we want to stay smart about our effort because, you know, everything is high effort.

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Are we gonna say that we're kinda...

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...Pokkabon?

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Oh yeah, alright.

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Basically, when you build a universe, you have to think not just about things like characters, but physics, laws of nature,

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etc. And that can get really complicated really fast.

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So if you've ever watched anime, Marvel, DC, Star Wars, any kind of fantasy universe,

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you'll know that the best ones are ones where the universe is really well thought out.

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And it's actually really complicated and really difficult to make a really compelling universe.

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And in my opinion, the reason why anime isn't as mainstream as like Marvel,

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DC, or whatever, is because they don't have as good universe building or it's too complicated.

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Right now my brother and I were watching Jujutsu Kaisen

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and there's a lot of scenes where they pause

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and have a voiceover and explain to you what's going on or how things are working.

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And in my opinion, that's because their universe building is way too complicated.

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And you know, Matthias really is into universe building, but I think it's easy to get carried away with like the magic and stuff.

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So I told him like, we know Pokemon works, very simple,

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like let's not overcomplicate it uh i'm really tired i think i adjusted to new york time already

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and new york is three hours ahead so i'm feeling extra sleepy

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and i think i'm gonna get a really good night's rest

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lately whenever i feel really tired i'm just really grateful

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because you know i've had insomnia in the past i mean i still have insomnia sometimes

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because i just think about all the things

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that i need to do you know

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when i have things to do i just want to do them right away

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but um recently i'm just like okay i'm gonna try to sleep when I'm tired.

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It's hard because waking up early doesn't necessarily fit with my schedule.

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Like, I need to edit the videos to post the next morning, you know?

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So waking up early doesn't necessarily work for our schedule.

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I'm also really grateful for my brother and his ability to do all this design stuff because it's so hard.

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It is really, really hard to do and it's not just art ability but critical thinking.

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You really have to think a lot about the universe that you want to build, the kind of experience you want to create.

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It might seem straightforward, but if you sit down and try to figure it out yourself, it's actually really difficult.

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So I'm so glad that I have someone like him who can do all of these things because he's also, you know, drawing everything manually.

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We're not using AI too.

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And I really respect that about him that like he knows exactly what, how he wants things done and he's good enough to do it, you know?

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I think there's a decent amount of people who kind of know what they want, but then don't have the skills to do it,

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but my brother actually has the skills to do what he wants when it comes to design and art.

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So this is the partnership we have.

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He'll design the thing and then I'll make it work basically.

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It really feels like my parents gave me the best startup co-founder, so I'm super grateful.

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Every day working with my brother is just like another day that I experience so much

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gratitude because literally I cannot imagine anyone better for for me and the company.

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All right I'm gonna go to sleep now I will see you tomorrow for another adventure.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: startup diaries ep. 9 - taking on quizlet and duolingo - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?