Bootstrapping an EdTech Startup with a Paycheck to over $5M: Karyn Koven, CEO of LanguageBird (Part 1)

Karyn has built a technology-enabled business that is already over $5M in revenue and sits at the cusp of a tremendous scaling opportunity by leveraging AI.If you are mulling AI startup ideas, this kind of tech-enabled service that is fully optimized with AI could create tremendous value.

Sramana Mitra: All right, Karyn, let’s start at the very beginning. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background?

Karyn Koven: I’m from Los Angeles. I currently live in Los Angeles. I’m a rare Los Angeles native. I was born in Santa Monica, which people visiting here always think is kind of funny. This is where I’ve lived except for college. For undergraduate, I went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison. But LA is my home. California is my home. My family’s here. I grew up here, and obviously I’m in education. I have an EdTech company.

Sramana Mitra: How did you get to that EdTech company? What training?

Karyn Koven: Growing up here, I was always very interested in teaching. I started right out of college. I majored in English and journalism, and after college I started at an advertising firm. Although it seemed very glamorous, my heart was really in teaching and working with people to do good things. What really matters to me is the outcome and helping people.

I was fortunate enough to be able to jump into teaching. At the time, Los Angeles needed more teachers, so I left the advertising agency and started teaching. From teaching, I went into counseling because I loved helping—especially at the school where I was—first-generation students get into colleges. That was very important for me to help them continue their educational journey or to be able to fulfill a dream or mission that their family had in coming here. I helped them find scholarships.

My teaching English parlayed into college counseling, and I did that for many years. I helped to start a charter school, also here in the San Fernando Valley, and did many things there.

I had never thought of a school or a charter school, or starting a school, as being a startup, in the same way people categorize that in business. What I learned later was it really is. There are a lot of aspects and attributes of a school, on the administrative side, that are like running a business: having many customers, many different demands, employees, budgets, people to be accountable for, growth, and student improvement.

I really experienced all of those things and learned along the way from mentors and people who helped during those years of forming the school. That helped formulate what I knew about starting something.

Our school was a technology school. In 2002, we opened a school called High Tech High with one-to-one computers, smart boards, etc. It was really revolutionary. We believed students should know technology and function in the classroom as they would in a future workplace. That would set them up for future success. We also had a robotics team, which was our primary varsity sport, I would say.

I think my interest in technology stemmed a bit from that and from supporting students who wanted to major in computer science, robotics, and related fields. I’m a lifelong learner. I appreciate learning new things, and as soon as I feel like I’ve mastered something enough, I need to create new problems for myself. I love the stage where you’re putting out fires, solving problems, or learning new things.

I was at the school, working with students and growing that capacity, for about 15 to 17 years. During that time, I went to UCLA to get my graduate degree and my doctorate in educational leadership. I wanted to write my dissertation about online learning, and my dissertation committee rejected it. They said I absolutely could not do that because it was 2007, and online learning would never be a thing for K-12. They said there wasn’t enough research or data to complete studies, so I had to pick another topic.

But I was really passionate. I saw the potential that technology had in the K-12 space. There were already plenty of adults, probably like your audience, who had realized they could learn a lot of things—even for free—online. Now, decades later, the world is totally different.

My interest in online learning and in providing all students with a high-quality education started very early, before I even thought of LanguageBird or starting it as a company or EdTech company.

Sramana Mitra: So when did you start that?

Karyn Koven: I started LanguageBird in about 2012 or 2013 and officially formed the company in 2015. Prior to that, I was writing curriculum and getting approval. One of the things that students in the K-12 space look for is to make sure it’s a quality academic program that is certified or accredited.

In order to do that and to officially be a school where people can get credits, you need to be teaching students for a couple of years and then apply for accreditation.

Sramana Mitra: Is LanguageBird an online school?

Karyn Koven: It is, yes. We teach 15 world languages one-to-one, live via video chat, for credit to middle and high school students. We’re fully accredited as well as NCAA approved.

There are several aspects to LanguageBird. One is the accredited courses, which are the most popular. We’ve also expanded to work with students of all ages. We’ve followed our students to college and universities. We’ve worked with their parents and with organizations and companies to provide one-to-one customized language learning.