inspiredworlds

Crazy good blog post.

I live with Tom for a few months and I can say Tom is definitely passionate about Adioso and fighting for survival any way he can. To me, Fenn and Tom are two of the pioneers in the startup scene in Australia. I know that there were people in Australia doing startups before then, but for the current generation of new people doing startups they are an inspiration and the people we look up to.

When someone talks about YC in Australia, you can be sure that the name Adioso isn't too far off. I love using Adioso, even before I met Tom & Fenn. It such a cool idea and I still use it as my first point of call for looking for flights. If only they could keep adding more flights! I'm glad that they have gone back to open ended text search - that is what made them unique and easy to use.

As a user, you sometimes don't know where you want to go, BUT you want to go somewhere. You might know the origin destination and possibly the end destination, which makes Adioso great to use.

I also had an interview with an incubator in the US, and who do you turn to? The guys with the experience. So I asked Fenn for help which he was more than happy to assist with and he gave me some invaluable advice to prep me.

I'm sure these tough little cockroaches just won't die easily and they can figure it out.

Its great to see this kind of discussion on Hacker News and how people are hacking their way to learning a language. I think its kinda difficult to obtain that level of fluency without living in the country, being immersed, and communicating with other people. There are certainly tools and ways that can aid you to learn - I've done similar things to learn a language such as learning from movies/tv shows/CD's/books/mobile apps/sitting near people on the train and listening to their conversation.

I've actually made it my mission to make languages fun and easy to learn, and started a company called Native Tongue. If you are interested in learning a language check out our vocabulary mobile apps for Spanish and Mandarin. They're called Spanish Smash and Mandarin Madness.

http://nativetongue.com/

epic story. Sounded like she was level headed and calm about the ordeal and that helped her to survive (in addition to her experience with the rainforest).

the last minute or so is brilliant. shows how easy it is. its actually quite painful sometimes to upload pics to various online albums. one easy solution would be good. I actually thought that dropbox would be doing something like this in the future.

I've checked out Memrise for the first time. I like how it teaches you and then question you to see if you've memorised it. Adding game elements also helps to make language learning more engaging. The difference with our app is that it was built as a game and you learn the language as a by product and we're primarily focused on mobile.

We're planning on doing a demo video which will showcase the app, which we'll post on the website and on this forum.

I've heard of DuoLingo, its a great concept. Really good intro video on the home page too.

The education sector has tremendous opportunities for disruption and startups in this area are able to make a difference at the same time.

We can make a change in the way people learn and at Native Tongue we're also creating a more connected world as more people learn a new language that allows them to communicate with other people. That's what keeps me motivated!

Yes, we believe the same thing about disrupting the language learning market!

There are a lot of well known products out there like Rosetta Stone but there are opportunities for startups to create more compelling and entertaining products at lower price points. We really wanted to create something that was also fun and addictive to play which is different to traditional language learning products.

thanks!

We feel that if you can progress through each stage (which contains 15 levels each) and get to the end of all 3 stages (45 levels), you will have learnt the words pretty well. Right now, we're focused on teaching vocabulary.

Glad you like the design and pricing point as well. We want to make it affordable.

Yes, its the first app we've developed. We've been working on it since September 2011 and released on android first.

I don't have much coding experience. My role is business and operations. One of my co-founders has worked on mobile development previously at a sports mobile application startup.

I see that you are also involved with languages. Would be great to speak to you.

Great news for Australian startups! Congrats to the Bugherd team.

hilarious!

I love this guy's hustle. He knows his products inside out, his margins and his markets.

seating chart is a good idea, or at least direction of the camera.

Great concept and like how you can change views! Been following them since they were veokami.

Great post. Should be combined with healthy eating too!

I can't exercise as much now because of health reasons, so I find that doing little things also helps like parking further away which forces me to walk more or taking low intensity exercises or group exercises which are more social as well.