ARTIFACT: The Investor Memo Detailing Why Speak Decided to Launch in Korea
This season of Spotlight On, we’re inviting guests to share artifacts—decks, emails, agendas, dashboards—from an inflection point in building their business. Together, they offer a wealth of wisdom on how great companies navigate pivotal moments.
It’s rare for founders to think strategically about geography right at launch. Typically, that will be a default of their location, and they’ll instead spend their time thinking about industry, age, household income, etc.
But Speak’s decision to launch in Korea as its first market has been a massive part of its early success in building an AI language learning app that actually helps people achieve fluency. We think other founders and operators can learn from their approach, so we asked co-founder Connor Zwick to share the November 2017 memo he sent to investors outlining his and co-founder Andrew’s decision to launch in Korea. It’s succinct, well-researched, and loaded with the conviction Connor discusses as the essential trait of successful founders in his accompanying episode of Spotlight On, where you can hear more about Speak’s journey from Korea to a global language learning app.
