He visited 150 countries, then built Tatako

Max Levoshin's trip around the world took two years. In every country he watched the same thing: how adults talk to small children and how they raise them.

I sorted the standards of communication and upbringing into categories. The countries differ, the cultures differ, and the patterns keep repeating.

The approach gives away the engineer: Levoshin trained in computer science, spent 18 years in technology companies and had two exits from his own companies. He built the best practices and methods into a system, then asked himself the next question: why do they work? He went looking for the answer in cognitive processes and psychology.

That work became Tatako, an English learning app for kids, built for families raising a child with two languages. At its core are original methods built on research in cognitive and child psychology.

The founders made the first lessons for their own kids, and home turned out to be the toughest test: a toddler never pretends to be interested.

I have four children. I want new languages to come easily to them, starting with their first words, long before a school desk.

What science says about the first years#

The US National Institutes of Health call the first three years of life the most intensive period for acquiring speech and language. With the sounds of another language the clock runs even faster: infants can tell apart the sounds of all the world's languages, and between six and twelve months the ability to tell foreign sounds apart drops sharply.

In a study in the same institutes' library, nine-month-old American babies had sessions with live native speakers of Mandarin, and the decline reversed. The same material on recordings had no such effect. So a little one with Tatako is never left alone with a screen: a grown-up sits beside them, and the lesson is built around that.

How a lesson works#

We tested methods with many different children, and each child broke our beautiful theories in a different way. Everything that survived is now built into one simple lesson.

There is nothing to read and the rhythm never changes, so a little one always knows what comes next. Hear it, say it: each word repeats, with a pause to say it out loud. Touch it: pictures appear, and the child touches the one they hear. Name it: the picture comes back without the word, and the child names it first. A small round octopus keeps everyone company. He has eight arms, no socks, and loses count at seven.

Then it is the parent's turn, and teaching English to a child does not require speaking it yourself: the app says each word slowly. After the lesson the parent marks how every word went: New, Repeat more, Understands or Can say. Those marks shape the next lesson: shaky words come back first, and new words wait their turn.

The lessons cover the first English words for kids, from "hello" and "mommy" to colors, animals and what the teacher says at preschool. A lesson takes five minutes: that is how much attention a little one has, and how much time a parent has between breakfast and the front door. One lesson a day beats seven on Sunday.

The family language keeps its place#

Raising a bilingual child does not mean giving up the language of the family: Tatako brings the second one in beside it, a few words a day. The US federal early-childhood program Head Start puts it plainly: young children growing up with two languages do better in school and later in life when they develop both their home language and English.

The company started with English, and more languages are on the way. Tatako lessons already open in the browser on any phone or tablet, apps for iPhone, iPad and Android are in the works, and the team is growing.

Why conversation matters#

I have spent many years investing in other people's companies. In Tatako I invested myself: my own money and my full working day. A venture fund lives ten years. The ability to talk with other people serves a person for life. I don't know another investment with that horizon.

More than 4,000 citizenship and residence cases went through Murblz, his previous company. He drew the same conclusion from them as from his travels:

A passport opens the border. After that, everything comes down to conversation: with a teacher, a neighbor, a doctor, a client.

The obvious objection is why anyone should learn languages in an age of machine translation.

Machines translate words, and they keep getting better at it. Trust, a joke, a deal and a friendship still begin where two people speak directly. That skill starts forming early.

Tatako's mission is to prepare every child to succeed in a world that runs on conversation.

I believe in a bright future, where my children walk calmly into any room in any country and start a conversation.