Say Global

I am Yeon Jeong (Jenny) Cho, CEO and co-founder of Say Global Inc. (“Say”). After graduating from Princeton University, I started my career in finance working as an investment banker at a major American bank, where I learned a lot about different industries and companies. I started Say with a friend from Princeton (Yongmin Cho) and another friend from University of Pennsylvania (Quan Nguyen) who share the passion for bringing equal opportunities to the older generation and providing high quality language education to students all around the world.

Say provides 1:1 online tutoring lessons with professionally-trained, native and bilingual tutors using our all-in-one online platform. With K-culture becoming a worldwide phenomenon, trends show that Korean is also generating a lot of interest from language learners. In addition to the rising popularity of online learning due to COVID-19, language learners now look for personalization. Say capitalizes on these trends by offering a convenient platform for language learning, starting with Korean. Say specializes in 1:1 online video lessons using speaking-focused curriculum that connect professional tutors with students worldwide. 

What sets Say apart from other language learning services, besides our high-quality curriculum, platform, and tutors is our social mission to employ retired Korean professionals. While Korea is the fastest-aging country in the world, age discrimination remains a large issue. By connecting retirees with students, Say not only provides jobs for seniors but also bridges generations and cultures.

Language learners are looking for accessibility, personalization, and affordability. Currently, students studying Korean language often begin with self-studying and learn from cheap (or even free) audio, video, and written content. However, this gets them only so far - conversational fluency comes with speaking practice with native speakers. 

We see rapid growth in the numbers of people living in Korea for career and personal reasons, Korean companies expanding overseas, and foreigners aiming to find a career at Korean companies. Additionally, the online language education market has a CAGR of 18% from 2020-2024 (Source: BusinessWire). 

Based on the size of our main customer segments, price per unit, and number of units sold, we estimate the size of the total available market (TAM) to be $870 million or 2.4 million people globally. The growth rate is expected to be 31%, the primary driver being the rapid growth of the K-pop market. 

Out of this, the size of the serviceable available market (SAM) is calculated based on the portion who would benefit from 1:1 lessons. The size of the SAM is expected to be $315 million or 0.9 million people. The growth rate is expected to be 24%.

Say provides 1:1 online tutoring lessons with professionally-trained, native and bilingual tutors using our own speaking-focused curriculum. Curriculum is designed by Korean language experts with more than 10 years of experience at the best language institute in Korea. Lessons are conducted online from 7am to 11pm Korean Standard Time, so anyone can learn regardless of their location or time zone and save on transportation cost. 

How Say works is very simple. A customer purchases a “pouch”, which is a bulk of lessons. We offer different-sized pouches. Also, there are different types of pouches: Core, Specialized, and Test-Prep. Core focuses on speaking, while the others focus on specific needs like business Korean. Once the customer purchases a pouch, he or she can browse through the library of courses and fill the pouch with different types of lessons. Then he/she can schedule a lesson with any preferred tutor and select a preferred topic. Say offers great flexibility and customization. 

Each lesson is US$33, and the most popular pouch is the 10-lesson Core pouch priced at $297.99 for 10% off. Tutors get paid for the lessons they taught during the month at the beginning of the following month.

Say’s mission is to create jobs for seniors and bridge generations and cultures. When the co-founders volunteered at a senior center in Seoul, we saw that there were so many seniors who were experienced and talented but had nothing to do after retirement because of age discrimination. 

Korea is the fastest-aging country in the world, with almost 16% of the population being over 65 years old [Source: United Nations ESCAP]. While the population is aging at an extremely high rate, the country is not yet prepared to provide the right kind of support, both financially and socially. Many seniors have more than 30 years of work experience and yet become instantly isolated from the society after retirement. 

We believe that there is a lot of untapped talent and hope to provide meaningful, senior-friendly jobs that 1) are not too physically draining (Say tutors teach at the comfort of their home), 2) help seniors easily make use of their knowledge and experience, and 3) are socially engaging. Say trains retirees to become professional Korean tutors and provides an opportunity for them to use their knowledge, career experience, and time in a meaningful way.

Babyboomers (born in 1946-1964) contributed most to the economic development of Korea but are the most isolated after retirement. Seniors are pushed towards early retirement around 50 years old, as there are so many babyboomers and competition in the job market grows rapidly. And once they retire, they are seen as a burden to the younger generation. 

However, we believed that retirees still have the time and energy to contribute to society and could be the givers, not just the receivers. Say creates opportunities for seniors to stay active and remain financially independent.

While on his military service at a local senior center in 2014, Yongmin discovered that many of the elderly were unhappy and yearning for more purpose in life. Meanwhile, his friends at Princeton were learning Korean, but lacking access to native speakers to practice speaking. This sparked an idea to bring the two groups together through Korean tutoring. The project was a great success: seniors not only loved working with the students, but also quickly became talented teachers. The students enjoyed being able to improve conversational skills. 

Deeply moved by this business opportunity driven by a strong social mission, Quan and I joined the team shortly after. I was Yongmin’s classmate at Princeton and was always hoping to someday build my own company. At the time, Quan was working as an English teacher who had studied Korean for years. All three of us grew up abroad and experienced how difficult learning a second language could be.

We also realized that there are so many seniors whose talents are currently untapped. Many experience forced retirement and isolation. We were eager to fix these issues and build a company that would create tremendous social value for Korean learners and the senior citizens.

While we volunteered at the senior center and spent a lot of time talking with seniors, we learned that age discrimination is not an issue that was going to solve itself. In Korea, over 16% of the population is 65 years old or over, and this number is expected to grow to over 20% by 2025. Since I was in school, I would see articles about the country’s aging population issue and how it puts a burden on various aspects of society, including financial market, housing, transportation, and healthcare.

More importantly, seeing our own parents wondering how they would spend their post-retirement time and friends who show serious concern over how they would have to support their own parents in the future, we believed that this was an issue that affects everyone, not just the retired seniors. 

Every day as we interact with our senior tutors, we learn how much of a positive impact Say has on their post-retirement lives. They not only feel fulfilled, but also become more financially stable and healthy. Seeing how Say changes their lives is the main driver for our team.

My co-founders and I are uniquely positioned to tackle this global issue because we bring over 15 years of experience collectively, have a global perspective, and most importantly, we believe in each other. We have been working together since 2014, even before we officially launched Say as a startup. 

We possess balanced and complementary skill sets. Quan’s creativity and inspiring energy make him well-suited for the role of CMO. He is a Vietnamese American who has been studying Korean for 7 years, so he understands what our customers need. Yongmin, our COO, has lived in 5 different countries and has a wide network of advisors and friends. His strengths lie on the operational side of execution, and he led the recent launch of our website2.0. I grew up in both Korea and the US. After graduating from college, I worked as an investment banker, where I developed my analytical and communication skills. I am skilled at team management and business development. 

We grew up in diverse cultures, which helped us develop a global mindset and skills necessary to targeting a global audience. Also, we experienced the difficulties of picking up a new language and mastered a second language, so we have a deep understanding of language learning. 

Working together for more than 5 years, we have been driven by the same mission and passion to solve this global issue, and this will continue to act as a glue throughout the next phases of our growth.

In 2016 when we decided to pivot Say into a startup, Yongmin, one of the co-founders, had 2 years left in college. It was my first experience running my own company, but I certainly knew that not having a full-time co-founder could affect the team morale and productivity. However, I also believed that a co-founder who was here from the very beginning would mean so much more than just the time he could invest. It was more about the commitment, ownership, and responsibility. 

So when I began this journey, I told myself that we should look far ahead and that we would do anything and everything to survive and succeed in the two years Yongmin was in school. I set up a system for the team to check in regularly and made sure that Yongmin would take on the right kinds of projects that could be done alone and overseas. 

One of the key qualities when running a startup is maximizing resources for problem solving. We were able to stick together to grow during those years, and in 2019, Yongmin graduated from Princeton and moved to Korea to join us. Ever since, we have been making even greater progress.

Working as CEO of a company means you need to run a tight ship. But I learned that you don’t always have to be in control of everything. As a leader, I’ve realized that good leadership involves trusting others to rise to the occasion. When we hired our first full-time staff after she started off as an intern,  it was a big step for the company and our team dynamic. While this new staff was still transitioning into her new role, I saw a bottleneck in the way work was assigned to her and how the co-founders clashed with our own expectations and delegating style. The new staff did not get much ownership over her tasks because we were micromanaging her.  

I knew this could lead to major conflicts down the road so I got the team together and we discussed how to clearly define our expectations and to give larger responsibilities to the new staff. We would give her projects that could be led by her and allow her to execute and take full responsibility for the results. Essentially, we had to let go of the training wheels. After this intervention, our staff significantly improved her performance level.

Say’s business idea came to us one day as we were having a conversation with retirees at a senior center. We saw that there were a lot of intelligent, talented retirees with 20 to 30 years of valuable career experiences who were eager to make the most out of their post-retirement lives. We asked ourselves what they could offer and immediately thought of our friends back at Princeton who were taking Korean classes. They always wished there were more opportunities to practice speaking and we thought seniors would be perfect speaking partners. 

The project was so successful that other colleges started to reach out and more seniors wanted to participate. And today, that same project has become an award-winning startup with a global audience. Say is the only startup that provides meaningful, sustainable jobs to seniors in Korea by connecting them with language learners. 

Instead of giving in to the stereotypes that students would not want to learn with the elderly and that seniors would be hard to work with, we ran test lessons to gather insights, sharpened our idea, and eventually developed a whole system that maximizes seniors’ talent while minimizing operating costs. Our tutor recruiting, training, and managing system is all online and we are consistently working to automate our operations while maintaining the high quality. We believe that innovation comes with not only an original idea but perseverance in execution.

Globally, advanced economies are facing crises due to aging populations. Both the UN and the WHO have recognized aging as a major global issue that has serious economic, social, and political implications. Nearly 50% of those who reach the statutory pension age do not receive a pension. In Asia, poverty rates for the elderly are higher than for other age groups [Source: UN World Population Ageing]. This is why Say hires seniors as tutors. If Say creates more sustainable, senior-friendly jobs, then societies can benefit socially, financially, and economically. 

Say’s product is composed of three main parts: over 130 speaking-focused Korean lesson topics, 20 professionally-trained native and bilingual tutors who are senior citizens, and our all-in-one web-based video conferencing platform. With these inputs, we were able to sell one-on-one Korean lessons and grow our followers to over 55,000 on our social media channels where students learn with our Korean language content. Language learners prefer online lessons because of higher accessibility and convenience, and students enjoy learning from professionally-trained senior tutors who are devoted and talented. 

The lessons are very effective in helping students improve their speaking skills. Over 99% of our reviews are rated 5 out of 5, and our students consistently tell us that they feel more confident after learning with their tutors. Also, another great outcome of our service is that there are more senior-friendly jobs that help seniors stay active both socially and financially. 

Say greatly impacts both students and tutors. A lot of our customers are foreigners living in Korea and those who want to work for Korean companies. Say helps foreigners in Korea adapt better and pass language tests to get a visa more quickly. Also, it helps customers secure jobs more easily. On our supply side, we are creating even greater long-term impact. Socially, Say decreases suicide rates (Korea is #1) by helping seniors fight depression and isolation. Financially, Say decreases poverty among the elderly and relieves financial stress for the general population. Lastly, Say increases the economic growth of Korea by helping seniors stay financially active.

We prefer to keep this information nonpublic and confidential.

We recently launched our website2.0 in the beginning of July. Our new website not only has updated features and better UX and UI, but also allows students to learn flexibly (scheduling, choosing courses and tutors). The new student dashboard was designed with scalability in mind, so it will be much easier for Say to add different kinds of lessons.

In the next year, we are focusing on expanding our services to include group lessons and test-prep. We tested group lessons briefly last year, and launched our first test-prep course a couple of months ago. While group lessons will help us capture a wider audience as they will be priced lower and offer a different kind of learning experience, test-prep lessons will serve a niche market in which customers have clearer needs. 

Within the next 5 years, we envision expanding into other languages. We have made significant investments in our product development. Therefore, we can leverage not only the platform, but also the know-how in training seniors and developing content. Our 5-year plan will have a significant impact on the number of seniors, as we will be able to hire senior tutors globally.

To expand our services to online group lessons, we need to design the courses based on the insights gathered from our previous group lesson test. The biggest takeaway from the previous test was that it was important to tweak the current system so that students can easily schedule and match with others of similar level, as learning with similar level students is critical for a good learning experience. 

The success of our five-year plan will depend on a few factors. First, there are key partnerships that we need to secure in order to grow rapidly. Also, expanding into the overseas market entails new risks because we will need to develop curriculum in other languages, find the right distribution channels, and overcome cultural challenges. 

Additionally, we should also be mindful of the risk of having limited resources as a startup. In order to expand and grow, fundraising will also be critical.

In any business, there are risks and barriers, and it is critical that we assess and minimize them in advance. We are confident that we can design a good course for group lessons because we have already tapped into the market, conducted market research, tested the product, and gathered helpful feedback from our users. We have also designed our new website in consideration of our future plans to expand the services. Therefore, we could quickly test group lessons in different formats and continue to tweak and improve. 

The risks related to expanding into new regions could be addressed by hiring regional experts who understand the cultural differences. Our team is very diverse and has a very global network of friends and advisors, so we will certainly leverage that. Our team will also ensure to test the market before making large investments. 

Lastly, I will continue to update our financial projections and plan ahead for fundraising to minimize any financial risks. My experience in finance helps me assess our current situation and plan out our finances. Also, our team has always been phenomenal with maximizing our resources as well as optimizing and prioritizing our use of funds. We built Say from bottom up, from no funding at all in the beginning. Now that we are in a much better position generating revenue, I am confident that we will be able to continue to grow.

Since 2017, we partnered with the Seoul City 50 Plus Foundation (50+ Foundation) to source and train seniors. The 50+ Foundation is the largest senior center run by the Seoul City Government, where seniors can take classes, find job opportunities, and be a part of an active community. Because they have a large pool of talented seniors, they help recruit seniors, while Say takes charge of the selection process and education. They also cover all of the expenses for recruiting and training the seniors. 

We also partner with institutions and schools that have new batches of foreigners who come to live in Korea every year. Minerva Schools at KGI (Minerva) is a university headquartered in San Francisco that sends students to a different country every semester. The sophomore fall semester takes place in Seoul, Korea, so we hold information and teach-in sessions for their students and offer Korean lessons to those who need it. 

We hold similar kinds of information and teach-in sessions for Fulbright Korea, which is a US government-funded cultural exchange scholarship program, and Korvia Consulting, which is a consulting firm that helps foreigners find teaching jobs in Korea.

Say helps Korean language learners practice speaking Korean with professionally-trained native tutors anywhere, anytime. Because our service is conducted 100% online, we can offer it to anyone in the world. In fact, our customers are either from countries with little access to native tutors or in Korea but outside of Seoul where they have no access to language institutions. As a result, our sales strategy involves online ads, influencer marketing, microblogging, and video content marketing via social media channels. So far, Facebook (FB) ads have been the most effective. 

Each lesson is 55-minutes long and costs $33, and a portion of this is tutor fee. Lessons are sold in bulks with larger discounts offered for larger packages. We also have special courses including business Korean and test-prep. We came up with this pricing model by benchmarking other successful online language tutoring platforms and doing our own price testing. Our customers love that they can get high-quality Korean education from native tutors at an affordable price, anytime and anywhere. We pay tutors for the lessons taught during the month at the beginning the following month, so there is no cash shortage. According to the survey we had, most of our tutors do not work for financial reasons – however, we want to continue to pay them reasonably (our hourly rate is significantly higher than the minimum wage in Korea) as our mission is to create jobs for seniors.

We have been generating revenue from the day we launched our service and broke even in 2019. Our business model is designed so that we generate profit and avoid cash shortages throughout the year as customers purchase 1:1 lessons before learning and we pay tutors after lessons are conducted. Also, our business is not seasonal. 

As we increase our expenses to grow the company, we closely monitor our spending and metrics such as CAC and ROAS. This way, we can ensure that we spend every dollar efficiently. 

Throughout the past 3 years, we were able to invest in product development and marketing with the funds we raised through grants and awards. We will certainly fundraise for larger projects that require more resources. However, we will continue to focus on sharpening our business model and operations to become profitable and cash positive in the near future.

We prefer to keep this information nonpublic and confidential.

We prefer to keep this information nonpublic and confidential.

We prefer to keep this information nonpublic and confidential.

I love that The Elevate Prize is not only committed to social impact but also one of the largest global competitions. As a startup that serves a global audience and has plans to expand into new markets, Say definitely will benefit from a global network of coaches, partners, and investors. Also, we believe that The Elevate Prize will help bring Say to a larger audience and getting media attention will help greatly as we expand our reach. 

Additionally, winning The Elevate Prize will certainly accelerate growth and increase our enterprise value to a whole new level. With the prize, we hope to build a strong team and develop our platform further.

We invested a lot of resources in developing and improving different parts of our product, such as our online learning platform, tutor quality, and curriculum. As a result, we have a service that our customers love. The average rating on over 5000 reviews is 4.9 out of 5, and 99% of all reviews are 5 out of 5. Our repurchase rate is also very high. 

Our key metrics like ARPU, LTV and retention are great and our customers really love our product, so we believe that the key driver for our future growth is customer acquisition. We do not have a large budget for marketing, so we could use expertise in marketing and sales, brand awareness, and media exposure.

n/a