Back in August, MindSnacks, the DreamIt Ventures accelerator grad and makers of language learning games for the iPhone, raised $6.5 million from Sequoia. The funding was validation of the 2.5-year-old startup’s core mission: To help gamers turn those nagging Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja addictions into opportunities for learning. → Read More
Learning a new language can be tedious and frustrating. Thankfully, a new generation of startups are leveraging advances in mobile and web technologies to make that process more enjoyable and rewarding. Today, companies like Livemocha, PlaySay, Voxy, italki, MindSnacks and Duolingo provide increasingly viable alternatives to traditional language-learning software — the Rosetta Stones of the… → Read More
The language learning service Duolingo currently has about 300,000 active users and continues to grow rapidly. Starting today, the service’s users will also be able to work through their lessons on their iPhones, as the company just launched its first mobile app. → Read More
Duolingo, the language learning and crowd-sourced translation service founded by reCAPTCHA founder and Carnegie Mellon professor Luis von Ahn, just announced that it has raised a $15 million Series B round led by NEA, with participation from Union Square Ventures. The service never took any angel funding, but it raised a $3.3 million Series A round lead by Union Square Ventures last October. → Read More
Rosetta Stone, for those unfamiliar, are the makers of the oft-advertised language learning software of the same name. The 20-year-old Virginia-based company went public in 2009, and today makes learning software for over 30 languages that is used in over 150 countries. Yet, in spite of its brand recognition, a number of translation and language-learning startups have begun to pop up with savvy… → Read More
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