Benjamin Houy
@BenjaminHouy
Followers
3K
Following
8K
Media
223
Statuses
6K
Learned how to code and reached 10K MRR with @copycatcafeapp. Moving to Cyprus with @emerald_springs to expand to other languages next year.
Düsseldorf, Germany
Joined July 2017
A month ago, I shut down Lorelight. Today, @emerald_springs and I are rebranding French Together to Copycat Café. Two very different decisions. Same lesson underneath them both. With Lorelight, I spent 7 months building a tool for a problem that didn't need solving. GEO
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Just because you don't like a person/country/ideology doesn't mean there is nothing to learn from them. We would all be doing a lot better if we could leave ideology aside and learn from what works (and doesn't work) elsewhere.
@soerenlindhoff @dhh @MaMoMVPY You are right, these are real issues the US needs to address. But just because the US has issues doesn't mean we can't do better and address our own failures too. Healthcare, welfare etc, require money. If we continue the current trajectory, there won't be any soon. We can learn
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I wish there was something like @copycatcafeapp for Turkish and Greek. I genuinely find most gamified learning tedious because there is no clear connection between what I learn and speaking.
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Keep getting this French propaganda video everywhere I go. You can leave France but France won’t leave you.
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After more than 3 years working in global communications agencies, I made the decision to quit and grow @frenchtogether with @BenjaminHouy We gave Germany a year, but we both came to the same conclusion: it’s just not the most conducive environment for running a business. Too
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French Together is now Copycat Cafe. Same method. Same 1k+ learners New name that finally describes what we teach: copy native speakers until it sticks. Spanish, Italian, and a mobile app are next. Brand by @ToolboxOfDesign If you are tired of Duolingo, give us a try!
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That’s only true if your followers are your target audience. Which is rarely the case. I have a decent following on X but almost never get signups to @copycatcafeapp from it.
@jackfriks Not hating, but it is only possible because you have so many followers. Someone like me has no way to get that many downloads so quick without spending money. But props to you for growing your account over the years! I hope to do the same.
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Does anyone know a good US trademark lawyer? Need someone who can help with refiling a word trademark that already received an office opposition but was then dropped (because we didn't respond to the opposition).
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Sending hugs to everyone at @Cloudflare right now, rooting for you!
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Is it just me or is Cloudflare down again? Seeing 500 errors everywhere suddenly.
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Not going to lie. I will be happy when 2025 is over. It was an incredibly tough year for me. - Went through a divorce - Started a new relationship and almost blew it because of how traumatised I was - Lost some of my closest friends because of it all - Started a new B2B SaaS
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So I'm using @cartesia_ai Ink-Whisper for the AI chat transcription in @copycatcafeapp and a user just reported something pretty strange. "recorded a response, and the words 'jesus christ' appeared in the textbox at least 100 times" Are religious AI hallucinations a thing
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Only thing is... Some people have complained that they don't like the new lesson flow. Others say they love it. How do you know what's a legit complaint vs someone needing time to get used to a change? How do you improve without killing what people loved about your SaaS?
After 12 years running French Together, I released @copycatcafeapp 2 days ago, New name. New positioning. New design. It's a lot. Was worried the "copycat" angle was too aggressive but people seem to like it.
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After 12 years running French Together, I released @copycatcafeapp 2 days ago, New name. New positioning. New design. It's a lot. Was worried the "copycat" angle was too aggressive but people seem to like it.
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Tempted to just remove it tbh, Probably prevents many legit signups and the free trial requires payment details so not a big deal if some fake signups happen.
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I keep having issues with Cloudflare Turnstile failing legitimate users. But I don't want to just remove it and leave my signup page exposed. Anyone found a good alternative to filter out bots?
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The problem is adding AI for the sake of AI. AI has its uses and it's a great language learning tool but it's just a tool at the end of the day. An AI-first strategy is the equivalent of deciding you will only speak with a megaphone from now on because you found out that it
Duolingo announced it was going “AI-first” just over six months ago. Since then its stock is down 64%.
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Wired be like: "Ruby is not a serious programming language and survives on affection not utility" Shopify: $100B market cap GitHub: $7.5B acquisition Airbnb: $80B market cap Very unserious. Very useless.
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Duolingo Year in Review: 500 day streak Real life: panics when a native speaker says hi I hear this story every day. Duolingo is great at motivation but it's unlikely to make you fluent. Want to be fluent? Learn by copying native speakers and actually speaking.
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Yup. Duolingo is great to keeping people motivated (which is no easy feat.) But I have yet to meet someone who has reached anything close to conversational fluency with it.
His company is coming for Duolingo, building a platform that teaches students languages through immersive learning. Take a look behind the scenes at Gabb Global's innovative approach to virtual language education. The full episode of Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch drops Wednesday:
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