hello vue welcome to the show today how are you i'm doing well thank you good
i'm so excited to have you on all ears english today to introduce you to our audience guys in
today's episode we have a silicon valley based ceo and entrepreneur originally from vietnam
and the founder of the ed tech startup elsa that stands for english language speech assistant
it is the world's smartest ai pronunciation coach with 40 million users at this point boo that is a
lot of users congratulations first of all that's amazing thank you thank you so much you must have
worked really really hard to get to this point so i'm going to continue to give our listeners
a little bit of background of where you are from and what you have done guys before founding elsa
vuvan earned an mba and a masters in education from stanford and lived in singapore denmark
and worked for the top four global management consulting firm booze and company that is quite a
resume you know many of our listeners are also in the business world and i think today's episode is
going to be fantastic for you guys you're going to be inspired we're going to learn how vu was able
to achieve her dream of founding this app this venture funded app despite you know doing this
in your second language and in a new culture is that right vu yes that's right awesome so can you
tell us a little bit about the elsa app what it's all about what it does and what we need to know
no thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share with all es english community
elsa as we as you said stand for english language speech assistant is a product that relies on our
proprietary voice recognition technology that we built in-house a few years ago that has a
very unique ability to understand you when you speak english with all of the different accents
but then also be able to pinpoint the exact mistakes that you have when you speak english and
then eventually giving you the instruction in real time about how you can improve those mistakes that
you made whether you have to speak slower faster emphasize in different parts of the sentence so
that other people can easily understand you yeah telling you how to move your tongues and
your lips in different positions so that you can fix those pronunciation mistakes that you just
made i love that yeah i think a lot a lot of the challenges that some of our listeners tend to have
is feeling nervous feeling embarrassed about their pronunciation and feeling that the only time they
can actually practice is when they're in front of a native speaker or in a conversation so how does
elsa kind of fix that it seems like we can work on this kind of at home in a private space and then
be ready when it comes time to connect is that right that's right so it's a mobile application
right so it's like your personal coach that's what we have is the name elsa it's like a private buddy
that you can open at any time whenever you have time before you go to sleep when you wake up in
the morning right and then you're practicing we have a very smart engine that will understand
what your challenges are on your personal learning journey and then we just recommend you
today here's the five things that you want to focus on so that you can improve it and it's
a learning journey right you don't improve over time overnight but over time you will follow the
learning lessons and the paths that we set out for you and then you will get the feedback and
then improve it right it's true and there's really not a lot of apps out there in the world you know
helping us improve our pronunciation there's a lot of vocabulary apps a lot of podcasts like this one
but it is actually kind of hard to find specific lessons in pronunciation and that's why i like
this yeah no you know because you know i can talk to you like this and you might be listening to my
english but you're not going to pause at every single second and telling me what i do right
and wrong exactly so we need that feedback for the learners and that's why we're creating elsa
to give that feedback on your personal space you don't have to feel embarrassed by another person
you don't have to feel interrupted in your conversation and yet you get all of these powerful
feedback uh by the ai yeah well that's the key for me right once we get past that embarrassment
then we are free and we can practice as much as we need and we can then connect because on
all layers english we talk a lot about connection not perfection and i see this being a key tool to
get to the ultimate goal which is not perfect pronunciation it's actually human connection
right whether you're pitching your company to a vc a venture capitalist or whether you're
consulting in a worldwide firm you need to connect isn't that right yeah and you know the other thing
is that that credibility that you build and one of the research that i learned when i was
doing my research in education was that when you speak english with like a very strong accent that
people had a hard time understanding you yeah people trust you a little a lot less right like
20 less in your credibility yes professional world trust is everything right so i think it's also
very important in improving your credibility your confidence um right your overall communication
yeah that's a good point you know you could be so much more qualified than anyone in the room
but if you don't have the trust you can't achieve the dream attrib achieve the the career or the
raise or that kind of thing so guys i want to encourage you right now to go over and grab
elsa we're going to get into vu's story a little bit more but first go over to allersenglish.com
and we have arranged a special deal for you guys you can get 85 off a pro lifetime membership or 40
off a pro one-year membership so i want to encourage you guys to go over there so you
can get to that level of trust and connection that we all want awesome so vu i would love to turn to
your story and see how this came about you know i would love to hear a story from you at some point
building your career where you realized that you needed elsa and you decided to build it can you
share something with us yeah i know definitely you know i was born and raised in vietnam so learning
english has been a big part of my journey right we all know the importance of english
why english will open doors and opportunities for you and i have been spending so much time
learning english really for years i would be very good at reading and writing i probably do very
well in all of my english tests yes but there's so many moments that i realized when i speak english
people had a really hard time understanding me but that manifested a lot more when i started
moving abroad especially when i was in uh in the us doing my mbas thing for it okay you know
classroom like mba people wouldn't care about your grades anymore people care about what you
had to contribute in the classroom yes and so just like a lot of our friends i raise my hand
like hey i have this idea i want to contribute to the class and more often than not what i realized
in those moments in the classroom was that our professor would be listening to me and say thank
you for your contribution and then move on to the next person would be answering something
and then professor would say wow that was such a good idea let's dig deeper into that idea oh so
okay that's so frustrating oh my gosh during there i was like wait i just said the exact same thing
five minutes ago how come i didn't get that same attention right and you know lots of things going
into your head you are female you're from asia it's just so many things but it happened more
often than not and i reached out to my classmates and professors and asking for feedback and the
feedback was that they had a really hard time understanding my english back then okay i didn't
respect my opinion but for them to understand me they have to ask me to repeat again and they
might not have that time or they didn't want to embarrass me so then they decided to ignore
it i like to move on to another person and it was extremely frustrating as you said i could be very
smart i could just like have all of these amazing ideas but if i couldn't really communicate it
well yeah straight and you feel handy handicapped in a little bit right and you had the expertise
yes exactly in those moments i'm like wow what can i do to improve my speaking it's not that i
don't know english i'm very good at english yes i couldn't get to speak correctly other people would
understand me and i wish like somebody really told me what i uh what's going on right what did i not
do correctly so that i can improve it and fix it right and and it was one of the moments where
i really really want that personal coach uh that can help me improve my english speaking journey
i love that that is i love when innovation happens because of a key moment a moment often it is kind
of a painful moment right and this is so key for our listeners guys i imagine a lot
of you have been in a very similar situation you're in a graduate school program or you're
in a corporate setting in the us the uk australia and for whatever reason people are not resonating
with what you're saying but you're saying the exact same same thing that everyone else is saying
painful honestly um okay but clearly this led to innovation this led to you creating elsa
getting the funding and now how many users you said 40 million users is that right
oh my gosh okay so now our listeners clearly want to get some tips from you on how to do this so
could you offer us today vue three key tips on how to achieve our dreams make our dreams a reality
even in a second language and in a new culture what would be your first tip for our listeners
you know the first thing is to have a dream right like uh to be honest right a lot of us are so busy
with our lives that we forget that we can have a dream because dream is tax free right nobody's
going to tax you so go ahead and dream big dream anything right nobody can determine whether your
dream is big or small all right like nobody can say oh you shouldn't drink that you should bring
these right so i think have that freedom to dream is really important and it's really important to
remind yourself every once in a while just do a little reflection what is that that i'm
working towards it's like what is my big dream am i working towards that and it's okay if you don't
work towards that right now but can you revisit that in a year from now so that you make sure
that you work towards that because otherwise once you go by five years goes by ten years goes by
then you realize that you're not working towards a bigger dream yes and that that that that you're
pursuing chasing after all right and that dream could be anything that's personal to you sure
it doesn't really matter you don't let everybody dictate whether that dream is good dream or not if
it's your dream it's your dream and i would love for everybody to you know take that personal time
for yourself don't let the busy life dictate what you should do in your life and then dream it's
free this dream it's free i love that that is so good do you have just a follow-up to that do
you have a ritual like every new year's day you sit down and have a conversation with yourself
or do you have something you put on your wall to make sure you remember what your dream is and you
hold yourself to it or is it just trying to keep it in mind there are different milestones one of
the biggest um time that i realized i didn't have it was you know i grew up in asia right
it's very busy you gotta get to the top school you gotta get the best grade you gotta go to the
top company you gotta get promoted and so you call track and it's very successful track but it might
be the draft that the society set out for you i think the biggest uh tourney moment was when i
actually applied to stanford and one of the essays was asking what mattered most to you and why um
and that was the first moment that i never really answered that question i actually don't know i'm
like wait what do you mean like how do i even know this one right so then once you start answering
that question a lot of the questions come up about your dreams what is that i really want to achieve
uh long-term short term and and so so so that was the the start of that and believe it or not it was
an essay that i wrote like 13 years ago i still read it every once in a while just to see has
that changed what mattered to me has that changed and if so do i now know what is the new thing that
matters to me or i forgot about that because it's not like heavy new year resolution or things like
that i think it's just like every once in a while especially when you feel like you're a little lost
remind yourself to go back to that core question right and then try to reflect on it and see
whether that makes sense for you how do you know your loss is also another skill right like
you you feel like you're drifting around you're doing something but
you get joy out of it i think that maybe sometimes you realize that hey yeah i need to get back to
the core of it and knowing whether i have uh i'm working towards something or not i love it
so good so it sounds like the the key here is living a little bit more intentionally right
going a little bit below the surface of what the average person would do because average people
don't create you know venture funded companies or achieve the dreams that they want in life
right guys you don't have to have the exact same dream but everyone does have a dream so
go a little below the surface try to find it so tip number one guys have a dream it's tax-free
i love it so good but what would be your second tip for our listeners to achieve their dreams
you know the second one surround yourself with people that can help you whether that's mentor
your buddies your coaches your advisors right because for this stream it's a big one you
can't succeed alone you could smartest person but you always the smartest in that one skill
to do anything it takes like 100 skills that you don't know right so surrounding yourself by the
people that willing to help you that mentor you is extremely important because the journey of elsa is
not the journey of my own i can't do this company it's like a lot of people directly are indirectly
helping me you know you wouldn't believe but in the very first moment i was just like being
calling up every single friends of mine that started the company and asking them what to do
even now i'm still calling up people because every single journey that you go to raises a
set of new challenges i haven't seen before all right so yes that network of support is really
important to help make sure that you succeed in your dream and your goal because they can
complement everything that you don't know and how to do it right but they also keep
you motivated you know every once in a while when you're like oh my god that dream is so big
because about why is that achievable why are you the right person to do it and so they also
if you forget about it they're going to be asking you hey what are you doing towards that that they
hold you accountable towards that as well because it's very easy to forget about those so i think
having a network of support uh the community uh big and small far near doesn't really matter okay
for help is is important yeah i love that being resourceful right the smartest most successful
people that i know guys do lean on their resources quite a bit don't feel embarrassed to pick up the
phone this is something i personally struggle with sometimes i don't want to bother the person
or they're probably busy right but if i picked up the phone and asked for help i would i would
build that connection with that person and get the help i needed so guys the second tip from vu
is be resourceful use the people in your life and realize that whatever you are creating your dream
is not going to happen alone just you right it's going to be a whole company or a team or a family
whatever it is i love that so good so far i love these tips boo do we have a third tip for
our listeners before we finish up today i think the third one is to really know yourself right
know what you're really good at and then know what you're not good at and be honest about it
and then because once you know what you're really good at and not what you're not really good at
then you can figure that way you need help and in cash into the second point i just mentioned
like figure out who can help you in my case for example i know that i can do a lot of things
but i know one of the most important things i want to succeed moving to the us which is
a very new country very new culture a very new language if i want to succeed here one of the
basic foundation is that i have to communicate well in english right otherwise i have to move
back home and i was very honest about my my my weakness i worked really hard to
find out different solutions in improving my english and because i know that without
overcoming that english communication barrier because i felt embarrassed i lost my confidence
i didn't want to socialize with other americans just because i don't believe that they understand
me right i stuck it in my little circle that would be limiting my ability to succeed so knowing that
my english is not good i didn't actively figure out the solution to work on it and improve it
you know it eventually led me to pursue my dream right i worked on my personal
challenge my pain point um but then it turned out into a bigger idea that i had to to help
um eliminate that challenges for a lot of people but i think back to the
the advice that i got is really understand your challenges understand your witnesses understand
where you go that and just be very honest about it there's nothing to be embarrassed about it right
i need to talk about this one i'm going to figure out how to work on it in my case i really work
on my english skill and i continuously working on that way and then i build a company to help other
people who are in the same challenges like me to then improve that weakness as well
yes i love that so know your strengths know your weaknesses and then get to work on your
weaknesses right and that's clearly what you did because then you were able to build that company
get your team on board get your investors on board and move forward this has been fantastic boo
i want to thank you for coming on the show and before we finish up today i want to let
our listeners know one more time where they can go to try elsa guys go over and grab this
special offer that we have arranged for you go to allersenglish.com slash e l s a and again
we have the special pro membership available for you 85 percent off a lifetime membership
and 40 off your one year membership so go over to alliersenglish.com elsa and join
today boo is there any final message you'd like to leave for our the allers english audience here
i mean thank you so much for having me uh and being part of this community right like just speak
really good english you're gonna feel so much more confident and opportunity is gonna be wide open
for you we're here to help you unleash your full potential or like just like solve any challenges
that i personally had before and i'm just here to help thank you i love it thanks so much it was
great chatting with you today i really appreciate it i'll see you next time take care thank you bye