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Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

313 points mariano54 | 2 comments | 26 Jun 25 14:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source

Hey HN, we're Mariano and Anton from ISSEN (https://issen.com), a foreign language voice tutor app that adapts to your interests, goals, and needs.

Demo: https://www.loom.com/share/a78e713d46934857a2dc88aed1bb100d?...

We started this company after struggling to find great tools to practice speaking Japanese and French. Having a tutor can be awesome, but there are downsides: they can be expensive (since you pay by the hour), difficult to schedule, and have a high upfront cost (finding a tutor you like often forces you to cycle through a few that you don’t).

We wanted something that would talk with us — realistically, in full conversations — and actually help us improve. So we built it ourselves. The app relies on a custom voice AI pipeline combining STT (speech-to-text), TTS (text-to-speech), LLMs, long term memory, interruptions, turn-taking, etc. Getting speech-to-text to work well for learners was one of the hardest parts — especially with accents, multi-lingual sentences, and noisy environments. We now combine Gemini Flash, Whisper, Scribe, and GPT-4o-transcribe to minimize errors and keep the conversation flowing.

We didn’t want to focus too much on gamification. In our experience, that leads to users performing well in the app, achieving long streaks and so on, without actually getting fluent in the language you're wanting to learn.

With ISSEN you instantly speak and immerse yourself in the language, which, while not easy, is a much more efficient way to learn.

We combine this with a word bank and SRS flashcards for new words learned in the AI voice chats, which allows very rapid improvement in both vocabulary and speaking skills. We also create custom curriculums for each student based on goals, interests, and preferences, and fully customizable settings like speed, turn taking, formality, etc.

App: https://issen.com (works on web, iOS, Android) Pricing: 20 min free trial, $20–29/month (depending on duration and specific geography)

We’d love your feedback — on the tech, the UX, or what you’d wish from a tool like this. Thanks!

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jphelan ◴[26 Jun 25 17:03 UTC] No.44389205[source]▶
I tried the app. I love that you’re tackling this and I’m rooting for you. I’ll tell you about myself, my experience, and my thoughts.

I’m currently learning French as a beginner and I’ve learned other languages in the past. I’ve trued Duolingo as well as italki and frantasic as well as just ChatGPT. I am very familiar with Anki and I think it’s critical to make your own flashcards by choosing images and sounds. I don’t want auto cards.

My experience with Issen:

* it’s frustrating when the conversation partner doesn’t remember what it just said - it means I can’t get a chance to ask que c’est que ça veut dire.

* it’s frustrating (just like with ChatGPT) that the conversation partner tends to interrupt and jump in while I’m thinking. I think many learners speak slowly and spend extra time thinking. ChatGPT allows you to hold the glowing circle and it won’t interrupt while you do.

I’d love to see the chat bubbles have more in depth features like:

* much clearer indicator of hover or click words for translation, and more features like example sentences or click to pronounce

* an option to ask for an explanation of some or all the text

* for my own text I’d love to see feedback with more UI native elements about how accurately I pronounced each word and any grammatical mistakes I made. The text summary is a great start

I found myself ignoring the features of the chat bubbles and only in writing this feedback did I notice them! They could maybe use more contrast and clear UI emphasis. Duolingo does a good job of making their UI very clear with this kind of feedback.

I think it’s important to build features that augment the app to work around LLM limitations. My guess is a lot of the settings change the prompt and that’s great but I think it leaves too much room for hallucinations to nosedive the experience.

I’d also love to see some way to have a hold to talk or something similar.

I’m very conscious at this point about the cost of these lessons and I have a hard time finding the price. Frantastic is absurdly expensive and it made me switch to italki where human conversation is literally cheaper. Without differentiating more from ChatGPT I would have a hard time justifying an additional subscription to my wife!

Edit: I found the pricing and it’s a tough sell! ChatGPT is cheaper.

I think you can both differentiate further from ChatGPT and keep cost down. I’d recommend to try to get more value out of each API call, so learners are more aligned with the cost per interaction- like make it so I’m enticed to spend a little longer reviewing the chat bubbles. My suggestions are mostly about how I want more engagement with each utterance anyway. Right now it’s very tempting to just keep making more and more utterances and IMHO that drives up costs while being frustrating for me.

I’d be happy to discuss! I wish you success.

replies(1): >>44389530 #
1. mel0n_ ◴[26 Jun 25 17:38 UTC] No.44389530[source]▶
Have have you found to be the most helpful services/resources when learning French? I'm starting this journey
replies(1): >>44389787 #
2. jphelan ◴[26 Jun 25 18:07 UTC] No.44389787[source]▶
Congrats! I'm happy to suggest some ideas. This is near and dear to me so I've got a lot to say lol. I think when beginning French the most helpful services for beginners relate to pronunciation and language comprehension because that is the "secret trick". Seriously, I recommend giving pronunciation/comprehension a lot of attention at first. There are only like 10-20 new sounds (plenty of resources to find the list if you search IPA French https://www.frenchcourses-paris.com/french-lessons-in-paris/... find one that clicks for you) so don't worry that it's too much even though I know it's hard and looks cryptic at first. I think most people end up mis-learning to read French like it's funny English then they will never have a good experience and certainly won't be able to have a conversation. I had the same experience with Chinese where if you don't learn tones at the start then it will always be miserable. For example in Chinese you can ask for dumplings and people literally just hear you saying sleep unless you add the right inflection (like the way we make a statement a question vs a demand).

In terms of the exact resources for pronunciation - The Fluent Forever guy has a good anki deck for $12 (I bought it and I'd recommend it - just have patience and know he tends to over explain IMHO but the cards are linked in there and they're great) https://blog.fluent-forever.com/chapter3/ and I'd recommend finding your own favorite YouTube videos to explain how to pronounce the French R and nasal sounds. I would try watching some YouTube in French just to wet your beak. Know that it's frustrating to not yet have good comprehension but keep at pronunciation/comprehension and you'll get there.

I recommend making Anki cards for like the top 100 and then the top 500 words, and include images and sounds (Anki strengths).

I'd suggest to have a goal of understanding some rewarding things like children's T.V. (Bob l'éponge) or language learning YouTube (Easy French) - really fun. Then after you master some early words and feel like you have a "French ear" jump in and do some "early reader" kinds of book (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/short-stories-in-french-for...) because that will be really rewarding and reenforcing.

I also recommend jumping in to italki probably earlier than you feel comfortable (or this app, as it continues to improve!) and doing some community conversations in just an unstructured way. Just be ready to try a couple people and find someone you like. If you can travel to France I think that is probably best, too! You'll be very happy that you've got a good "R" at this point.

I think at that point you're ready to look at the A1/A2/B1/B2 test content and learn it on your own pretty easily or work with a structured tutor. It should be chill and not too challenging at that point.