He hated Chinese lessons. Now he makes 6 figures with an edtech venture and learning center

Dan Tang used to hate learning Chinese, finding it “boring and dry.” The former investment analyst grew up in a mostly English-speaking household in Singapore, and he didn’t see a need for it.

But then an opportunity to work in Taiwan’s finance sector came along. He took the job, which involver covering tech, despite being “barely fluent” in Chinese. The move forced him to take learning the language to heart, and he found it wasn’t the dull task he remembered.

Combining his newfound interest in language and experience in tech, Tang founded KidStartNow to show Singaporean children that learning Chinese can be easy and fun.

VocabKing has essentially developed a game whose mechanics revolve around learning Chinese. / Photo credit: Shutterstock

While the company started out 10 years ago as a physical learning center, Tang eventually realized that KidStartNow needed to have an online component to set it apart amid the intense competition.

His team coded their first prototype with gamified features in 2013, back when it wasn’t mainstream.

The prototype assigned avatars to children, who would get rewards from a teacher when they answer questions correctly.

But like many startups, Covid-19 drove KidStartNow to take its online ventures up another notch. The company developed VocabKing, a digital platform for gamified Chinese learning.

In essence, Tang and his team developed their own game. It comes with a pet-based battle system and animated stories, and its mechanics are tied to learning and backed up by science.

The company is now raising an angel round to bring VocabKing, which has been spun out of KidStartNow, to overseas markets such as North America.

Tang aims to double VocabKing’s paid subscriber base to over 1,000 over the next 12 months. The physical center and digital business are generating over US$500,000 in revenue combined.

Here’s our conversation with Tang, which has been edited for clarity and brevity.

How would you position yourself in the market against competitors, alternatives, or similar players? Any changes over the years?

We differentiate ourselves in three ways.