Karyn Koven, LanguageBird: Bootstrapping an Accredited Online Language School

1Mby1M Research · 1Mby1M Case Study

Interviewer: Sramana Mitra

This interview is part of the case study-based research and entrepreneurship education work of 1Mby1M, the global virtual accelerator founded by Sramana Mitra. In this interview case study, learn about Karyn Koven, LanguageBird bootstrapping an online language school.

Abstract

Karyn Koven, a longtime educator and school administrator in Los Angeles, founded LanguageBird in 2012–2013 after years of teaching and college counseling revealed a gap: most schools offered only Spanish and French, leaving students who already spoke Spanish with limited options and little communication-focused instruction. Starting with a single hand-picked Spanish instructor teaching over Skype and hand-written curriculum, Koven personally recruited her first ten students in 2012 by convincing skeptical parents that live video-chat language instruction could work, while continuing to work full-time.

This early Bootstrapping with a Paycheck strategy served as a career lifeboat: Koven could test the model, pay her bills, and validate whether families would trust the curriculum, instructors, and online format without taking on premature financial risk or raising outside capital. The company grew through word-of-mouth referrals from counselors and school officials – 10 students in year one, 50 in year two, and roughly 100 by year three – while Koven manually pieced together off-the-shelf scheduling and student information tools rather than building custom technology.

LanguageBird remained bootstrapped throughout, prioritizing academic quality and instructor training over technology investment even as the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically accelerated demand and normalized online learning. The company has since grown to about 2,000 students, 200 instructors, and $5 to 10 million in revenue, and is now beginning to build a proprietary AI-enabled platform for scheduling and curriculum personalization.

This case illustrates how a mission-driven founder can use Bootstrapping with a Paycheck to validate and scale an unconventional, relationship-centered education business through disciplined spending and word-of-mouth growth, only formalizing technology investment once demand and revenue clearly justified it – reflecting the 1Mby1M principle of proving the model before scaling infrastructure.

Transcript of the Interview

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.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the beginning of LanguageBird. When you were thinking about doing this project, were you already thinking of it as an accredited language school that would serve as supplemental education?

Karyn Koven: Yes. One of the things I saw with my students is that most schools in the U.S. offer more limited options for language – maybe Spanish and French. Most of my students already spoke Spanish, and that was the only language we offered.

What I saw was a lot of students taking language courses not because it was a requirement, but because it was necessary to get into a four-year college. The courses, due to class sizes, were a lot less interactive and less focused on communication. In a language classroom, students should be speaking a lot, not just filling out worksheets.

Our school was project-based, and I realized that many students already spoke Spanish at home but had to take level one and two courses to meet college requirements. Since we didn’t offer anything beyond that, they were essentially wasting time. I thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could offer them other languages? But schools are limited in budget, space, and qualified teachers.

Sramana Mitra: What did you start with and how did you get this off the ground?

Karyn Koven: I started by writing a curriculum for Spanish – something interactive, project-based, student-centered, and individualized. Then I hired a teacher who lived in the Balearic Islands in Spain. She was fantastic. I thought it would be an amazing experience for students to learn from native speakers abroad. Spanish was in high demand and easily accessible, so that’s where we started.

Sramana Mitra: So what was the model? The teacher from Spain was teaching online using your curriculum?

Karyn Koven: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: And were you charging hourly?

Karyn Koven: We charged by the course. Most students enrolled for a semester or a full year. We also offered packages for tutoring and test prep.

Sramana Mitra: One teacher can only teach so many students, especially since this isn’t group learning. It’s one-on-one, right?

Karyn Koven: That’s right. The number of students a teacher can teach depends on the teacher’s availability and capacity.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to when you started with that one teacher from Spain. What were you doing?

Karyn Koven: I was honestly just looking for students who would trust me enough to try this.

Sramana Mitra: How did that come together?

Karyn Koven: In 2012, not many parents even knew what video chat was. When I told moms on the phone that their child could take an accredited course for high school credit, many would ask, “How does video chat work?”

So, the first step was convincing families this was a viable way to learn.

Sramana Mitra: How did you do that?

Karyn Koven: By explaining clearly, using video examples, and sharing how I find instructors. My philosophy is very relationship-based. I emphasized the importance of one-to-one learning and the connection between teacher and student.

Sramana Mitra: Who were these people that you got an audience with?

Karyn Koven: I think it was because I had a background, and it was based on my reputation amongst other counselors and school officials.

Sramana Mitra: They were referring students to you?

Karyn Koven: Correct. In the first year I was hoping to get 10 students. You know, let’s just try this out, see if it’s viable. I still had my job and was working full-time during this period that I was experimenting. I was trying things out, seeing how it worked, trying to answer the question: would this really work? Would this be a more viable, more interesting way that students would want to learn? And could parents trust me, the curriculum, and the instructors?

Sramana Mitra: To cater to 10 students your first year, was it one teacher or more?

Karyn Koven: I think at that time we probably had three.

Sramana Mitra: Three teachers. One was from Spain. Where were the other two from?

Karyn Koven: One was from Mexico, and the other one was living in Brazil.

Sramana Mitra: And all Spanish?

Karyn Koven: We started with Spanish, yes.

Sramana Mitra: And what were you charging these families?

Karyn Koven: Back then, I think for a full year course – 24 private lessons – it was around $2,000.

Sramana Mitra: $2,000 for a year. What were you paying the teachers?

Karyn Koven: It depends on where they were and their experience, but the way I thought about it, in terms of a business model, was that whatever families were paying, broken down per hour, the instructors would get around a third. But it just depended on where the instructors were, their experience, and their education.

Sramana Mitra: Roughly a third of what you were being paid by the families?

Karyn Koven: Yes. So, I’d say usually between $20 and $30 an hour, depending on where they are.

Sramana Mitra: What did you learn from that first experiment of 10 students and three instructors? What was working, what was not working? What did you change?

Karyn Koven: Thinking back, what was working was the relationship that was proven to be possible virtually. Students were comfortable speaking with their instructors. If I picked and trained the right instructors, they were able to gain trust from the students and their families. And trust in the classroom ensures that students take risks. If students are taking risks, they’re open to practicing the language. You’re not going to speak a foreign language or delve into something difficult unless you trust your instructor.

Sramana Mitra: And what was not working?

Karyn Koven: I wouldn’t say it wasn’t working, but one of the most difficult parts was convincing families and students that learning online like this was viable and effective. A big challenge was finding students. When you’re a one-person operation doing all the roles – picking up the phone, handling every position – it’s not scalable.

Sramana Mitra: Not scalable.

Karyn Koven: Exactly. Also, in terms of technology, I had a vision from the start of what I thought it should be. You mentioned the challenge of having instructors all over the world. Coordinating the times when people actually meet – they have to meet at the same time for live instruction.

Sramana Mitra: The backend of scheduling and matching time zones is cumbersome. What about the video chat itself? What technology were you using?

Karyn Koven: Skype.

Sramana Mitra: Okay. So, this was 2012?

Karyn Koven: Yes. 2012 to about 2015, same mode.

Sramana Mitra: And what were the numbers? 10 people in the beginning, and then how did that grow?

Karyn Koven: Year over year we kept growing. The first year was about 10. The second year was probably closer to 50. The next year after that was closer to 100. So, it kept growing incrementally.

Sramana Mitra: And that all came through referrals?

Karyn Koven: Yes, correct.

Sramana Mitra: And you were convincing them personally.

Karyn Koven: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: A hundred students and you were convincing them personally. Okay. So, that brings us up to 2015. What happens in 2015?

Karyn Koven: In 2015, I had a critical mass of students where I was able to look at educational data to show proof that this was working. It was successful – the students enjoyed it, they were making progress, they were improving.

This was a viable and flexible way for this age group to learn, which worked well for busy students. In terms of technology, I had a vision to build a platform like the one we have now. I couldn’t do it then – I didn’t have the resources or the right people, and I didn’t know how. But I could conceptualize what it would look like.

At that time, most scheduling systems were built for in-person setups with everyone in the same time zone. What complicated things was dealing with different time zones.

I hired someone to help build it. They said they could, but I made mistakes in vetting them. In the end, they took a bunch of money and disappeared. So, I just kept going with what we had.

Technology-wise, for a long time, I was “frankensteining” solutions – finding ready-made tools that could be pieced together to do what I needed.

Sramana Mitra: What was that technology? What did you find?

Karyn Koven: Aside from video chat, there was a student information system (SIS) that was off-the-shelf. It needed to be customized – it was designed for traditional schools, not what we do. In supplemental education, we don’t have six class periods and teachers taking attendance the same way.

We didn’t need a lot of the functions; many we did need were missing.

Sramana Mitra: Sounds like the scheduling function a school system wouldn’t have.

Karyn Koven: Correct.

Sramana Mitra: So you had to build it. What ended up happening?

Karyn Koven: The first time I tried to build it, I had a vision, but it didn’t happen. I couldn’t find the right people and didn’t know enough.

Looking back, I was lucky. Had I built it then, I would’ve built the wrong things – not what we grew to need.

Sramana Mitra: Timeline-wise, what’s happening from 2015 onward? When did you reach some level of technology-enabled scalability?

Karyn Koven: It took a long time. We kept piecing things together until we grew to a point where it was clearly necessary. LanguageBird is bootstrapped, so I prioritized hiring on the academic side to ensure a great student and instructor experience.

Technology was pushed aside due to rapid growth. We just focused on getting students in and figuring things out.

Sramana Mitra: You were manually scheduling and just getting on with the business.

Karyn Koven: Correct. We had some functionality in the SIS system to match students, but most of it was manual and required approval.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of numbers are we talking about as we go beyond 2015? How many numbers of students, how many instructors, how was the business unfolding?

Karyn Koven: By the time we hit the pandemic in 2020, we were actually placed in a very good, lucky position. As students stopped going to the classroom, families were looking for more viable solutions.

Sramana Mitra: Online learning became very popular.

Karyn Koven: Correct. In February 2020, we were still explaining to parents what video chat was, but one month later, it became ubiquitous. Now, people use it all the time and understand how it works in their own work, etc. That was definitely a barrier in terms of trust.

In education, especially outside of adult learning, people used to see online education for K–12 students as a one-off – something for students who couldn’t attend traditional school, not a viable way to actually learn. That perception changed during the pandemic. Untrained teachers were suddenly forced into online teaching, which is very different from teaching in a physical classroom.

At that point, families began to see that this was actually how their students learned better. They wouldn’t have known this without that experience. All in all, we saw significant growth during that time and, of course, more trust in online learning as a medium.

At any given time, we have open enrollment, so students can start and end on their own schedule. Currently, we have around 2,000 students learning with us and about 200 teachers.

We also have a “school within a school,” where we train teachers within our program to ensure they are of high quality. They’re not just people who say, “I know the language, so I can teach it,” like an Uber model. These are trained instructors and professionals.

Sramana Mitra: Are they overseas?

Karyn Koven: Many are in the U.S., but it’s about half and half. It’s a great experience for students to interact with teachers overseas. It expands their worldview. When they hear their teacher is in Argentina, Spain, France, or Ireland, it helps them step outside of themselves. Teenagers can be self-centered, so this opens them up to different cultures and perspectives.

We emphasize culture and the ability to speak comfortably with native speakers. Our philosophy centers on project-based learning – students choose topics meaningful to them, and we build instruction around those topics. Every course is individualized and customized, while still meeting academic standards.

There are no exams. Students complete meaningful end projects instead. Families appreciate the customization and flexibility.

Sramana Mitra: What role does technology play? AI is changing curriculum development and personalized tutoring. How much of that are you using?

Karyn Koven: That’s an interesting question because our model is so relationship-based. We use technology like lesson recording and note-taking so students can review content later, but the human connection is still central.

Sramana Mitra: So are you using Zoom as your main platform?

Karyn Koven: We use Microsoft Teams for Education, which includes recording and note-taking.

Sramana Mitra: Are you using AI in curriculum development? For example, if a student wants to learn through the context of baseball, is there a baseball curriculum?

Karyn Koven: Yes. AI helps instructors create personalized curriculums faster. If a student is interested in baseball, AI can help the teacher build a course around that while still aligning with learning standards. This means not everyone gets the same homework or worksheet – everything is tailored.

AI also supports teachers in evaluating students more efficiently, saving them time on grading, planning, and giving feedback. Instructors do a lot beyond classroom hours, so AI helps reduce that workload while maintaining quality.

Sramana Mitra: Is each instructor doing this individually, or have you built AI into your training and systems?

Karyn Koven: Absolutely. Over the past year, we’ve been developing our own platform that integrates all these AI and tech features. It includes scheduling, curriculum customization, evaluation tools, and more. The goal is to bring everything into one platform for a seamless experience.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of revenue level are you operating at right now?

Karyn Koven: We’re between five and ten million. I’m an almost accidental founder, in the sense that I’m just passionate about solving problems in education.

Sramana Mitra: That’s great. I think you’ve done great. You’ve built, established, and validated a business. If you’re doing five to ten million in revenue, you clearly have a business that works and you’re able to do it in a somewhat manual way. You’re using technology, the Microsoft platform, and some AI, but still in a manual way.

You have a tremendous opportunity. Now you have some money. I imagine you have some margin to invest in technology; you have an incredible opportunity to turn this business into a far more scalable business using more tech and AI.

We haven’t talked much about marketing. In the beginning, it was difficult, then COVID made it easier. People want online learning. What is your customer acquisition strategy now?

Karyn Koven: Great question. First, thank you. I think it’s important – and I read and learn a lot – you hear the phrase “if you build it, they’ll come,” but I don’t think that’s always the case.

Sramana Mitra: That’s never the case, actually.

Karyn Koven: I went about this accidentally or by intuition – by just focusing on helping kids, having a true mission, and building something fun to participate in and does good things for kids. It’s expanded from there to include college students, adults, and schools.

I think the mindset is important in entrepreneurship. There’re a lot of times when things get hard. If I wasn’t passionate about it, if I didn’t believe that what we’re doing was good and really serving the students, you just wouldn’t be able to muster the energy.

I believe we’re doing good work. As we’re building, I don’t increase expenditures unless there’s student demand and it improves instruction. It’s nice to have fancy things, but I always ask: what’s the ROI?

To your point about marketing, is it about bringing more students to our platform? That’s good, but once they get there, what makes people refer us, become raving fans, and spread the word – which is really key to our marketing – is the experience they have.

So, I’m more inclined to invest and reinvest in improving the experience that our teachers and students are having, and focus on that. We make sure that everything we do, technology-wise, is improving the user experience and that we’re spending wisely.

Sramana Mitra: I understand your philosophy, and it’s a good philosophy. There are many ways to create reusable tools. For example, in the use case we just discussed, a student wanting to learn first level Spanish through baseball – once that curriculum is created, you can replicate it using AI and make it available to your instructors so that they don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Anytime a curriculum has been created, you want to market it. You have a kid who wants to learn Spanish with baseball analogies. You can write blog posts so people searching for that experience can find you.

Karyn Koven: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: It could be baseball, art, music – so many possibilities. There’s tremendous scalability you can achieve given how far you’ve come. You have a ton of assets in your company that can be leveraged with some technology, some AI, and strategic marketing.

Karyn Koven: Our instructors collaborate within each language. They’re not solo tutors – they share with each other in our inner instructor school. Part of making instructors better instructors, more engaging instructors is having them share these resources so it all can go into one database for them to use and pull out of. If you used it for your class, I can use it for mine.

Sramana Mitra: Very good. Excellent story. I wish you all the best and thank you for sharing your journey.

Karyn Koven: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Key Takeaways

• Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: Karyn Koven started LanguageBird in 2012 while continuing to work full-time. Her ongoing salary provided stability while she tested whether families would enroll in accredited, live, one-to-one language instruction delivered through video chat. She personally recruited the first 10 students, using her professional reputation with counselors and school officials to earn parents’ trust.
• Koven began with a deliberately lean model: hand-written curriculum, Skype, and a small group of Spanish instructors based in Spain, Mexico, and Brazil. This allowed her to validate student demand, the quality of virtual relationships between teachers and students, and the business model before committing to significant technology costs or leaving employment prematurely.
• LanguageBird grew through referrals – from approximately 10 students in the first year to 50 in the second and around 100 in the third – demonstrating that a strong customer experience and trusted professional network can support early customer acquisition without significant marketing spending.
• Rather than building custom technology early, Koven “Frankensteined” off-the-shelf tools, including a student information system, Skype, and later Microsoft Teams, to run scheduling and instruction manually. She deliberately prioritized investment in academic quality, instructor training, and the student experience over premature platform development.
• The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated LanguageBird’s growth by normalizing video-chat learning and changing families’ perceptions of online education. The company scaled to around 2,000 students and 200 instructors, while retaining its relationship-based model and using trained instructors rather than an unvetted marketplace approach.
• LanguageBird remains fully bootstrapped and generates $5 to 10 million in revenue. Only after demand and revenue validated the model did the company begin developing a proprietary AI-enabled platform for scheduling, curriculum personalization, evaluation tools, and instructor collaboration – illustrating a capital-efficient progression from paycheck-supported experimentation to customer-funded technology investment.