Why Latitud invested in BeConfident, applying AI to language learning

This is part of our "why we invested in" series of posts – a glimpse into what we look for when writing the first check for top emerging founders across Latin America. As investors and journey partners, we hope this series will inform and inspire other early startup creators in the region.

TL;DR: investment overview

Latitud is proud to announce why we invested in BeConfident, an education startup that enables people around the world to learn English by exchanging voice messages with AI. These four young technical entrepreneurs attracted 6.5K paying customers across 60+ countries while bootstrapping a WhatsApp version of the experience and are now developing a more robust app experience.

The market: Despite massive demand, only 5% of the 650M people in Latin America are fluent in English. Learning the language remains expensive for most: traditional language courses represent 25% of the population’s monthly income.

The startup: BeConfident's AI-powered tutor allows its 100k+ users across 60+ countries to practice speaking English throughout the day via text and audio, offering feedback and corrections in real time. Users can benefit from on-the-go learning, at a significantly lower cost than traditional language courses, paid in installments.

The round: BeConfident raised a R$ 2.5M ($500K) Pre-Seed. We were their first investors alongside angels (some through our introduction). The full list of angel investors include seasoned edtech founders Rodrigo Salvador (Passei Direto) and Rodrigo Terron (Rocketseat), plus experienced founders/operators such as André Penha (Quinto Andar), Doug Scherrer (Nubank), and Parker Treacy (Cobli).

At Latitud, we believe BeConfident stands out especially on its founding team, its product, its traction, and our ability to add value. Here's our BeConfident's investment thesis in more detail.

1. Founding team

Felipe Tiozo, Robson Amorim, Luan Cavallaro, and Felipe Silva are hustlers who have known each other since childhood in the outskirts of the city of São Paulo (Brazil). They’ve been programming since they were 10, participating in various programming competitions up to winning this year's HackBrazil (Harvard/MIT) with BeConfident.

The startup was created because the founders themselves were frustrated by the limitations they faced because of their lacking English skills. After an immersion abroad, one of the founders realized the best way to learn English was by talking to natives, yet that option isn’t affordable to the vast majority of people.

2. Product

The co-founders’ technical skills were paramount to creating an AI-powered English tutor that could teach via WhatsApp, Latin America's most popular communications app.

When the student talks about their daily routine and passions, BeConfident's algorithm understands their proficiency level and keeps the conversation going accordingly, teaching English lessons in the process. The tutor can incorporate a series of profiles to match each user's preferences, e.g. a celebrity, a nature lover, a writer, etc. With time, it learns and adapts to each user’s idiosyncrasies.

The team is now building the in-app experience which will become core later in the year.‍

3. Traction

BeConfident has been lucrative since day one, accruing $700k in revenue just in its first nine months, all bootstrapped. A lot has happened since we invested and they’re now at $1MM in ARR with over 100k users across 60+ countries and consistent growth getting 1,000 new students and $90K in additional revenue per week.

4. Our ability to add value

An important part of our investment decision process is understanding how we can really add value to each startup on their journey from 0 to 1.

Since Gina was an early employee at Duolingo and led their growth efforts from 3m to 200m users, she is uniquely suited to mentor BeConfident in the early days.

Why we’re excited

This team has shown it can overcome large barriers and build something a lot of people want and are willing to pay for, in a lot of countries, very scrappily. They were early movers in the learning-with-AI game, strategically leveraging the most popular conversation platform across Latin America, and can now leverage large amounts of user data to create more personalized experiences. They also have the opportunity to enter new countries, add new languages and tackle other business models like B2B.

We're committed to supporting BeConfident's mission of making language learning accessible and affordable while boosting the region's educational and professional advancement.

A quick word about Latitud

Latitud is your partner from -1 to 0, 1, and beyond 🚀.

With our invite-only community, we gather super promising and early-stage founders across Latin America so they can work on their -1 to 0 (ideation). And as the leading pre-seed venture capital firm in Latin America, we become partners to top entrepreneurs inside and outside our fellowship so they can go from 0 to 1 (early product and traction).

Besides receiving their first institutional check, founders in our portfolio 1. become an even more selective part of our community of founders and mentors, 2. get transformative guidance, especially in fundraising, and 3. form tight connections with downstream venture capital funds.

Latitud is led by operators turned general partners Brian Requarth, Gina Gotthilf, and Tomas Roggio. Through Fund I and II, we've already invested in 70+ amazing startups led by amazing founders (check them out).

Our bet in BeConfident is another proof of our commitment to backing early-stage startups transforming industries and bringing positive impact to LatAm.

Sounds like you? Then we'd love to have a chat! Pitch your startup here.