10/28/2015 Lingo Media Corporation COO Gali Bar-Ziv on Beating Rosetta Stone Inc. in Language Learning - Midas Letter

http://www.midasletter.com/2015/10/lingo-media-corporation-coo-gali-bar-ziv-on-beating-rosetta-stone-inc-in-language-learning/ 1/4

Username Password Remember Me Login » Lost your Password? WEDNESDAY, OCT. 28, 2015 SUBSCRIBE TO RSS

Lingo Media Corporation COO Gali Bar­Ziv On Beating Rosetta Stone

Inc. In Language Learning

Written By: James West | October 14, 2015 | Posted In: Top Stories

Listen to the interview with Gali Bar­Ziv:

Lingo Media Corporation (CVE:LM)(OTCMKTS:LMDCF) COO Gali Bar­Ziv discusses how is company’s

proprietary and modular approach to building Electronic Language Learning modules will outperform Rosetta

Stone Inc. (NYSE:RST) offerings in their Colombian deal with SENA.

Full Transcript:

James West: Gali, thank you for joining us today.

Gali Bar­Ziv: Thank you for having me.

James West: Gali, can you give me an overview of what it is that Lingo Media does?

Gali Bar­Ziv: Our company is a ed­tech company. What that means is that we develop state of the art

technologies that will allow teachers, administrators, and most importantly, learners, to interact with pedagogical­

based lessons and content and exercises and inter­activity, all the way from preschool age group all the way to

young adult, professionals, and even students that seek to pursue PhD studies in western countries. All­around

language learning.

James West: Right. So primarily, learning English?

Gali Bar­Ziv: Primarily learning English.

James West: Okay. So essentially you’re in competition with, the biggest of the big, I guess, would be Rosetta

Stone?

Gali Bar­Ziv: Yes.

James West: Yeah, sure. So I saw that you released news last week regarding a deal with the Colombian

government Ministry of Labour, SENA? And it suggested it was a multi­million dollar deal. So what exactly does

that entail, and how is that important to Lingo Media?

Gali Bar­Ziv: It’s important in a number of different facets. Number One, Senna is the leader in all of Latin

America, a bellwether for learning initiative, and when they adopt some sort of a solution, usually other countries

follow suit. There are sister organizations to Senna all over Latin America, whereby the government essentially

funds the training of their population in the vocational occupations. For instance, they own their own hotel, and the

people who work in the hotel are de facto trainees that would, thereafter, go to work in the hospitality industry in

the country.

Number two, as part of this agreement, we are developing the largest library of digital objects and lessons,

whereby a teacher would have the ability to select what lessons they want based on skill level, topic, key words,

etcetera. What the contract really is enabling us to do is to look into the future and say how can we empower the

Follow @MidasLetter 26.3K followers

Midas Letter Financial Radio Podcast

Lingo Media CEO Michael Kraft Interview

Podcast

October 14, 2015

James West: Michael, thanks for joining us today.

Michael Kraft: Thank you [...]

Listen Now »

Legendary Investor and Author Jim

Rogers on Gold, Russia vs U.S. and Gold

vs USD

October 14, 2015

James West: Mr. Rogers, thank you for joining us

today. Jim Rogers: I’m [...]

Listen Now »

Red Eagle Mining CEO Ian Slater Podcast

Interview

October 13, 2015

James West: Ian, thanks for joining us today. Ian

Slater: Thank you, [...]

Listen Now »

Midas Letter Tweets

How Alibaba Can Resist China Slowdown ln.is/www.wsj.com/ar…

James West @MidasLetter

Show Summary

10 Tuesday AM Reads ln.is/www.ritholtz.c…

James West @MidasLetter

The Incredible Shrinking Hedge-Fund Fee ln.is/bloombergview.…

James West @MidasLetter

Show Summary

Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc (VRX), Nobilis Health Corp (NHC), and DH Corp (DH) Hit by Pump and Dump Attacks ln.is/www.midaslette…

James West @MidasLetter

$VRX, $DH.CA, $HLTH @zerohedge New US scourge for #investors : The Reverse Pump and Dump midasletter.com/?p=10802 #fb pic.twitter.com/wrpOIfMFzy

James West @MidasLetter

27m

2h

3h

4h

4h

Tweets Follow

Tweet to @MidasLetter

Home Company Research Financial Radio MidasLetter TV Subscribe to Midas Letter

Canopy Growth Corp. (TSX.V:CGC) 2.57 ­0.01 ­0.39% Poet Technologies Inc. (TSX.V:PTK) 0.91 ­0.04 ­4.21% Urthecast Corp. (TSX:UR) 2.05 ­0.09 ­4.21% NXT Energy Solutions (TSX.V:SFD)

00:00 00:00

10/28/2015 Lingo Media Corporation COO Gali Bar-Ziv on Beating Rosetta Stone Inc. in Language Learning - Midas Letter

http://www.midasletter.com/2015/10/lingo-media-corporation-coo-gali-bar-ziv-on-beating-rosetta-stone-inc-in-language-learning/ 2/4

teacher? How can we give the teacher the tools to deliver to the classroom a solution that will be somewhatunique to each student? So, students that require enrichment will have lessons that would focus on thatenrichment. When you have students that may have some difficulty, the teacher would be able to assign somelessons that would work on their deficiencies, say, pronunciation or grammar, etcetera.

James West: Okay. So then, if say, for example, I’m in the business of, let’s say, insurance, then I can receivecustomized training for the language pertaining to the insurance industry?

Gali Bar­Ziv: Not necessarily. You have two types of English solutions: so one type is what we call Englishproficiency. What that means is that your English skills are going to improve by virtue of undertaking the studiesof the platform and content that we deliver. The second is, if you seek to undertake a specialized type of English,which would relate specifically to your occupation. I think a good example would be lawyers, because they wouldhave certain legality words that may not be used in general English, like Constitution or sovereignty. So if youwould pursue a specialized English, you would have to take maybe a different course. Our courses are gearedtowards what are called the general proficiencies English.

James West: So you have offerings for from kindergarten right up to PhD level academia?

Gali Bar­Ziv: Yes.

James West: Great. So how many people actually use this platform right now in the world?

Gali Bar­Ziv: I can tell you that our platform was used by over 10 million users worldwide, and with thisagreement, it will be close to double that amount.

James West: So is there – can you extrapolate a general revenue per user over time, from that number?

Gali Bar­Ziv: I think it would be probably unfair for this type of conversation to have that, but we are veryconfident that because we are at the forefront of both the technology and the type of content that is beingdeveloped, that the adoption worldwide is going to be quite significant. Every country has a different pricing modelbased on the particular currency or buying power of the particular institutions, but we see a great growth potentialin many countries now that are very hungry for English.

James West: What are the numbers roughly worldwide, for people learning English right now?

Gali Bar­Ziv: Some estimates put it at 1.8 billion or 2 billion people that are learning English.

James West: Okay. So with your platform, you basically build these modules and you deliver them on acustomized basis, for example, to Senna. Do you have to build new modules and software and platform everytime you get a new customer?

Gali Bar­Ziv: No. So we are in a great margin business, because most customers do not require a specializedproduct. What they do require is to provide a solution in different ways. So let’s call it to slice and dice it. That iswhere the technology comes into play; that’s where the flexibility of our platform comes into play. That where themodularity and the configuration of our software can be best utilized. So we can provide an institution the ability tooffer only one level, over a certain period of time of access. Some sort of a rolling access. Just many differenttypes of possibilities.

Some clients do require customization, and we have developed and earlier this year we released one, a verysophisticated offering tool that we use and we intend to make additional improvements to that tool, and make italso a commercial tool that we can sell to other organizations.

James West: So then is the benefit of this education technology platform over conventional languageeducation, is it a situation where, so let’s say you have a class of 30 students, and say 5 percent of thosestudents are advancing very quickly and 60 percent are advancing at a moderate level and a further 45 percentare advancing slowly, is it so customizable that people can more or less advance at the maximum rate at whichthey can absorb the lessons?

Gali Bar­Ziv: In principle, absolutely, and this is where we have a big advantage. The challenge of today’sclassroom is that it is very difficult for the teacher to gauge the true progress of the students. Some of them maybe shy, but they may have good English skills, and you would usually find it when you keep providing them withquizzes and tests. The advantage of an online solution that tracks everything is that you can see the patterns oflearning, the speed of interaction, and obviously, the progress. Everything is logged, where the biggest weaknessof a physical classroom, if it is only taught in a physical classroom, is that you never really know the true level of astudent.

James West: Right. So then, if it’s that customizable – I actually used Rosetta Stone to use Spanish. Before Ihad a better grasp of it, it was the first program I used. But I found Rosetta Stone was kind of clunky in that it wasso standardized and uniform in its optionality. I actually found that it didn’t move fast enough for me, and thebiggest problem I had with using it was that it couldn’t engage me, because I couldn’t accelerate the flow of theinformation. So I was constantly getting distracted and my mind was wandering because the program moved soslow. So is yours something that differs from that in that you can actually speed up the rate of learning?

Gali Bar­Ziv: Throughout our programs, a learner is asked to take different, what we call progress orachievement tests. That is in order to gauge whether they truly accomplished and acquired the skills and the levelthat was provided to them in a previous level, in order for them to proceed to a more advanced level. We alsohave different placement tests that the learner will take in order to trace the student – not everybody starts fromzero, every person starts from a different level.

So we have different tools throughout our offering to both make sure that the student is challenged enough – it’s a

10/28/2015 Lingo Media Corporation COO Gali Bar-Ziv on Beating Rosetta Stone Inc. in Language Learning - Midas Letter

http://www.midasletter.com/2015/10/lingo-media-corporation-coo-gali-bar-ziv-on-beating-rosetta-stone-inc-in-language-learning/ 3/4

very fine line between not challenged enough, so somebody’s bored, and learning a language is all about

motivation – or, if somebody’s, if the challenge or the level of English is too high, and then the learner will be

frustrated, and again, motivation will go down, and so is the learning.

So we have different tools throughout our offering to ensure that the student is always placed in the right spot, if

you will, of their true level.

James West: I see. So the system would detect the rate at which I was absorbing my lessons and adjustaccordingly?

Gali Bar­Ziv: It would not adjust accordingly all the time; it would actually go against the principles upon whichwe designed our courses, which is the common European framework of reference. By the way, Rosetta Stone

does not, as far as I know, does not design their course according to the common European framework of

reference, which is a set of principles of teaching and pedagogical principles of how to build content and lessons

and educational program.

Again, what the program would do is that it would keep testing you. It would keep checking that you actually

completing and achieving the challenges and the skill level that was provided to you before. If you can

demonstrate in those tests your level, the system will allow you to progress faster. If obviously you’re going to

show that you did not – you know, sometimes people say ‘this is really easy for me’ but then when you ask them

the questions, they can’t answer the questions. So it would gauge exactly where you’re at, and based on that, it

would determine whether you need some more enrichment, or it’s okay, you can move to the next level. To some

extent, if your English is at a high level, you would progress very quickly. Rapidly.

James West: Okay. So you mentioned that you were in a high margin business. What are your margins

generally?

Gali Bar­Ziv: The margins are anywhere from between let’s say 70 and 90 percent.

James West: Oh, okay. Wow. So that’s great. So you build this system, you create all these modules, and then

you can re­sell them?

Gali Bar­Ziv: Correct, yes.

James West: I see. So it’s sort of like a build it once and sell it multiple times, model.

Gali Bar­Ziv: Yeah. The difficulty is in the building. It’s to build big enough library. It’s almost, if you think, if youwrite one book, if you author one book and you try to put it in a library, it would somewhat get lost, but if you

author a series of books, let’s call it an encyclopedia that would have many different volumes, it would be a little

easier. So we’re not offering only ten hours of learning, we are offering hundreds of hours of learning. So whether

you are a beginner or whether you are at an intermediate level or whether you are in an advanced level, you’ll be

able to still engage with the program, and you will still have the depth and breadth of content and activities to

challenge you and to ensure that you are truly learning, because that’s the most important objective that we have.

James West: You bet. So then, what kind of expertise does Lingo Media have in­house to develop this,essentially, software?

Gali Bar­Ziv: We have – the definition of our company is ed­tech. what it means is that we have two wings, two

arms, that function as one. On the one hand, you have the pedagogical team; we have experts that come from

the field. They may have been teachers, they may have been people that have designed courses in the past. And

on the other side, you have a technological team. You have programmers, designers, instructional designers, and

those people aim to create and develop the mechanisms upon which we can deliver the content in an engaging

and fun way.

James West: Okay. So you’ve got programmers, teachers, lesson designers, all in­house at Lingo Media? Youdo all this yourself, you don’t outsource it?

Gali Bar­Ziv: Yes.

James West: Okay. Great. So that makes it highly proprietary, I would think. Okay, well, Gali, that’s a great,interesting interview. We’re going to leave it there for now. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Gali Bar­Ziv: My absolute pleasure, and thank you for having me.

James West: Bye­bye.

Share This Article

(1) Reader Comment

Pingback: What Are Online Learning Modules | Aceonlineschool

Leave A Reply

Name (required)

10/28/2015 Lingo Media Corporation COO Gali Bar-Ziv on Beating Rosetta Stone Inc. in Language Learning - Midas Letter

http://www.midasletter.com/2015/10/lingo-media-corporation-coo-gali-bar-ziv-on-beating-rosetta-stone-inc-in-language-learning/ 4/4

Twitter

Facebook

RSS Feed

Company Research

Premium Newsletters

Top Stories

Commentary

Financial Radio

MidasLetter TV

Subscribe

Contact Information

Sitemap Contact

Toronto:

Midas Letter Financial Group Ltd.401 Bay Street28th FloorToronto, ON M5H 2Y4

+1 (647) 348­8000

New York

Midas Letter Financial Group LLC405 Lexington Avenue26th FloorNew York, NY 10174

+1 (917) 675­4777

Zürich +1 44 260 5000Email: midasletter@midasletter.com

Subscribe

Email (required)

Website

Comment (required)

Post Comment

© 2015 Midas Letter. All Rights Reserved.Home About Contact Privacy Terms and Conditions Refund Policy Unsubscribe