Babbel Live, a virtual classroom launched in 2021

In February 2021, Babbel, a market-leading language learning app, launched Babbel Live, a virtual classroom offering live online tutoring classes to small groups. It quickly scaled, recording a 300% increase in subscriptions and a 400% increase in revenue from H1, currently supporting tens of thousands of learners taking part in up to 15,000 classes per month.

No shortcuts

Babbel Live's journey was one of perseverance and trial-and-error. The first attempt involved building everything from scratch (video call feature, teacher interface, recommendation system), which turned into an enormous undertaking that hindered fast iteration. The second attempt adopted a leaner approach relying on third-party integration, but the private one-on-one tutoring proposition proved too niche to build critical mass. The third attempt pivoted to group classes, which were more cost-effective for consumers and had better unit economics, integrating off-the-shelf solutions for video, scheduling, and freelancer management, letting the team focus on the classroom experience.

What's their secret?

Babbel had championed digital, self-study language learning since 2007, but entering the crowded digital tutoring market meant developing a new revenue strategy and delivering something unfamiliar: a human touch. Having established competitors actually helped, indicating the market was hungry for the solution and providing a baseline for pricing and messaging comparisons. Babbel differentiated with several strategies: embracing a "startup attitude" with open, cross-functional collaboration; investing in teachers rather than automation; offering unlimited access to the entire ecosystem regardless of subscription length; keeping data handy from day one with a dedicated product analyst and UX researcher; simplifying the pricing proposition to reduce cognitive overload; and skipping the free trial, since users need enough time to experience a premium product's full value rather than being given an easy off-ramp.

Episode sneak peek

• On product-led growth: "I think it's where everyone's going in terms of making sure that you create a healthier, more product-led growth, a growth that can compound on the free assets that you have, which is a critical mass of users, the value of a product, and so on."
• On simplifying the acquisition flow: "There was a huge cognitive overload when they were getting to the price page. They had to decide the intensity and duration of commitment to this new product. When we understood that blocker, we came back to design a pricing positioning that would simplify the choice."
• On subscription: "Subscriptions work very well for short-term length subscriptions. For premium products, it actually often dilutes your conversion... you cannot experience the full value of the service in just seven days or in just a free trial."
• On data: "We took this approach to attach a metric and a threshold to each and one of those questions and make sure from the beginning that we could measure those things. So data for us was very relevant at the start, even if we didn't have a lot of function."

More about Belen Caeiro

Prior to Babbel, Belen Caeiro led the international roll-out of SoundCloud's monetization options and was involved in the early-stage development of other online companies in the entertainment and ticketing industries. Now based in Berlin, Belen is originally from Argentina and has lived in Spain, Singapore, the Philippines, the United States, and the Netherlands.