WordBrewery (http://wordbrewery.com) teaches languages by scraping real sentences from news sites around world, then processing each sentence with an algorithm that estimates (on the basis of word frequency and other variables) how likely the sentence is to be useful to learners at different levels.
We are now a member of 1776 and participating in Microsoft BizSpark, so we are on the right track. But I am new to the startup world, and I am funding the website entirely by myself at this point using money from my day-job paycheck. What is the best way to pursue seed funding at this early stage while we are developing core features? Do I need to organize it as an LLC or corporation to get funding?
I like the idea for WordBrewery! That's a clever model for optimizing language learning.
Yes, you will need to incorporate your company to raise seed funding. A really easy way is using Stripe Atlas: https://stripe.com/atlas - they will do all the paperwork for you to get a company legal structure.
You're probably at the stage where it makes sense to apply to accelerators. Any major accelerator program will help you with the legal structure as well as providing funding.
Excellent, thank you! We will be adding many features in the next few months, but my favorite is individualized but automatically generated language courses. We will use the technology you see on the site's front page to present users with sentences on an individualized basis depending on what words they already know. If a user knows the 500 most common Spanish words, for example, we will show them an authentic sentence that uses one or more of those 500 words plus the 501st most common word. As the user demonstrates knowledge of more words, the set of possible sentences for that user will gradually increase. This will reinforce existing vocabulary while building new vocabulary as efficiently as possible.
WordBrewery (http://wordbrewery.com) teaches languages by scraping real sentences from news sites around world, then processing each sentence with an algorithm that estimates (on the basis of word frequency and other variables) how likely the sentence is to be useful to learners at different levels.
We are now a member of 1776 and participating in Microsoft BizSpark, so we are on the right track. But I am new to the startup world, and I am funding the website entirely by myself at this point using money from my day-job paycheck. What is the best way to pursue seed funding at this early stage while we are developing core features? Do I need to organize it as an LLC or corporation to get funding?
Thank you, Ryan