Launch HN: Univerbal (YC W23) – Language learning with a conversational AI tutor
Hi HN we’re David, Sam and Philipp and we’re building Univerbal (https://univerbal.app).

We’re an AI language learning app where you talk to your AI Tutor, just like you would with a human one. Here’s a short demo of what that looks like in an actual conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IukKGc00juY

We actually started as a Show HN over a year ago and the responses we got from the HN community led us to apply to YC and make an actual company out of a side project (original Show HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32993130). We were called Quazel which we have since realized is too hard to spell and only makes sense in German.

We started off as only offering open-ended conversations. While that is still at the core of what we do, we quickly realized that we need to solve a bigger problem for learners than simply giving them the option to hold a conversation with an AI. Tutoring is (usually) the highest quality of education you can get. The curriculum is based on your interests and needs, you move at your own pace and you get personalized feedback about your specific mistakes.

At the same time, the reality is that tutoring is prohibitively expensive for most people, let alone that it can be very time-consuming to find a tutor that you like and you have to work around their schedule. We want to fix these issues by providing an AI Language Tutor that’s available whenever you want and affordable to everyone.

Now the tricky thing about this, is that a human tutor (to no one’s surprise) actually does many things at the same time, which are very much not straightforward to approximate, even with AI. The interaction part of a tutor session is already the main interaction in Univerbal, through speaking and having the replies read out loud. The hard part intervenes when you try to replicate the progress tracking and tailoring of the curriculum.

These are things that tutors automatically do, and getting a system, even one that’s based on LLM to do something like that is very hard! Our current approach is based on “Skills” (e.g. I can introduce myself), that a user works towards. These are a measure of where the user currently stands and we use this progress in a feedback loop to come up with relevant and interesting next lessons for a learner.

I often get asked, “Ohh so is it like Duolingo?”. When I get that question, I smile, feel something inside me die and then say that, while Duolingo is a great language-learning app, we don’t really see them as our competition, rather we see online tutoring platforms (italki, verbling, cambly etc.) as the companies we’re “attacking”.

We already have a couple of success stories. One of which comes from an Australian user who’s living in Italy and has successfully prepared herself for her Italian B2 language exam by using Univerbal :). If you’d like to give it a try, you can try it without an account for free for 7 days (no credit card required). Afterwards, it’s about $10ish/month.

One thing I’d love to get HN’s opinion on is how much gamification you think we should add. On the one hand, we don’t want to become a “game” and a Tutor lesson is always a “hard” thing and kind of exhausting, but there is obviously some balance to be struck there. Thoughts?

David, Same and Philipp (me :) )

You can try it without an account at https://chat.univerbal.app