In today’s society there are over 59 zettabytes of information. Despite its impressive size, the fact that this global knowledge base is primarily encoded in English (i.e., 90%+ of scientific research is published in English) means that the over 6.6B non-English speakers have limited access to technical know-how, innovation, and new developments that occur worldwide. For expanding businesses, young graduates, scientists, researchers, and immigrants, English proficiency is an essential gateway to economic opportunity as it broadens horizons, lowers barriers, and speeds information exchange. As more and more multinational companies like Airbus, Samsung, Daimler-Chrysler, etc., mandate English as the common corporate language, the incentives to learn English have never been greater, and the demand for talent with English proficiency far outpaces supply. However, access to acquiring professionally relevant English skills has been persistently limited by a lack of tailored, flexible and affordable upskilling resources.

In the United States, which has always been a polyglot nation, low levels of English proficiency are the most significant risk factor for underemployment. In a recent study examining the costs of untapped talent, it was found that within the immigrant population, those who reported speaking English “not well” or “not at all” were five times more likely to be in low-skilled jobs than those who speak English natively. As another data point, the 20 million Americans with limited English proficiency who comprise over 10% of the working age population in the US, earn 25-40% less than their English proficient counterparts.

Although there are many English-learning solutions on the market, traditional curricula cannot address the professional knowledge gap because they typically only teach conversational English or generic “business” English.

Solution

Slang provides an adaptive, digital, ML-driven language-learning platform focused on professional English. This groundbreaking software tailors language learning to specific roles and professional vocabulary (e.g., accounting, maintenance, customer service) each of which may require a different level of emphasis on writing, speaking, reading and listening skills. Its innovative, learner-centric approach encompasses every domain of specialized English and provides meaningful access to global knowledge. For prices as low as $6/month, a Slang subscription makes specialized English much more accessible to students and workers in low- to middle-income categories. Organizations that might, in the past, have reserved English training for those in top management due to the high costs of domain-specific in-person classes and tutoring, can now expand a catalytic benefit to all individuals. The company is currently targeting Latin American markets, specifically Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, with plans to expand to the US market.

Why We Invested

English language learning is a $15B market in the Americas and $98B worldwide. In Slang, we saw a large opportunity, a company armed with a unique and defensible competitive advantage, and a mission-oriented team led by Diego Villegas. Diego is a non-native English speaker from Colombia. Prior to founding Slang, he was the founder and CEO of MASA, a Colombia-based technical services business that grew to 5,000 employees and $200M in revenues and was acquired by a European based-multinational. In the post-acquisition integration, Diego saw many of his employees get laid off because of their lack of English proficiency, which motivated him and Kamran Khan, an MIT-trained AI expert, to found Slang.

The focus on professional English differentiates Slang from the myriad of general language solutions in the market. Slang is architected and designed to rapidly deploy new knowledge domains and languages. While the initial curriculum was designed to teach English to Spanish speakers, the company was, in a matter of weeks, able to quickly add support for Portuguese speakers in order to launch in the Brazilian market. Additionally, the team is focused on user experience and committed to positively impacting the economic well-being of workers, which has driven outsized NPS scores relative to industry averages.

Impact

We believe that Slang has the ability to remove the barriers preventing many low- moderate-income workers from accessing career opportunities within the knowledge economy. Slang’s professional English solution should drive increased upward mobility and higher employability, along with higher productivity and career-related knowledge in three main ways:

Expansion of access to knowledge: as workers’ English proficiency improves, they are able to access a wider range of high-quality content, including training and professional development courses, technical and reference manuals, and scientific research.
Leveling the playing field for a global workforce: as English has become the lingua franca for business, improving the professional English skills of workers enables businesses of all sizes to participate more effectively in the global economy and drive better economic outcomes for workers, businesses, and countries.
Narrowing the knowledge gap between employee classes at the companies they serve: the affordability, flexibility, and specificity of Slang’s solution results in more training options even for blue-collar or nonexecutive roles, which traditionally don’t have access to English training.