Mentava just had our first fire drill, with a bug that would skip a level under certain conditions.

We don't think any customers ran into it, but the fix is now out so I encourage everyone to update.

Proud of the team for the quick turnaround!

Now back to fixing am and ma 😀

'It's more effective than the in person tutor we were paying for'

there's no customer delight that compares to a parent realizing their kid is even smarter than they thought

To our amazing customers: Stories like this are so motivating for our team. Please keep them coming!

It's true. No one wants to post about the struggles of startup life, like when my first founding hire reneged on his decision to join Mentava. Or when the original vision of the company failed, and I realized to make it work we would have to teach toddlers to read ourselves, and…

An update on how the unplanned launch of our learn-to-read software is going:

Since so many people gave us deposits based on out-of-date screenshots from our 2-year-old fundraising deck, which was never meant to be customer facing, our 'launch' has been a little unusual.…

the biggest challenge of teaching reading is making the learning process fun

kids can do incredible things if you make it fun for them

To our amazing customers: Stories like this are so motivating for our team. Please keep them coming!

'It's more effective than the in person tutor we were paying for'

some people think 3yos shouldn't read.

those people have never seen the joy of a 3yo realizing they've cracked the code of the world around them

We founded Mentava on the belief that today's education software is so bad that we would blow people's minds just by showing them what's possible

No one should pay for Mentava if they don't feel like it's worth it!

Kids have been learning to read without iPads for hundreds of years

We recommend the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons as a cheaper alternative. It's $17 on Amazon and it's excellent

the man is correct

our signup flow is a monstrosity because we focus our time on making life better for kids, not grownups

Mentava uses Lexend font, which is designed to improve reading performance. Lexend uses a single-story lowercase 'ɑ', like handwriting.

After doing Mentava with my daughter, I noticed she was struggling with print books, which use a two-story 'a'. So we introduced serif fonts.

definitely didn't expect this sort of thing to be happening so soon 😳

This is fabulous! I’m often skeptical of “reading” apps because most don’t teach sounding out words correctly. This is the first time I’ve ever seen it done correctly in software.

Can attest. Been using sparingly my with 2.5yo for a few weeks & she already recognizes a handful of letters/sounds.

Excellent combo of learning science + spaced repetition + gamification.

(Eventually) add AI in the mix & the cost to teach literacy & numeracy plummet.

Thanks Lulu! I strongly endorse 'involuntary virality' as a launch strategy for any other teams considering it