Spker

Where it started

I came to UC Berkeley in August 2024 after years of AI English apps and 1:1 tutoring in Korea. I thought I was ready. In class discussions, I wasn’t. I could follow the conversation but couldn’t get my point across in time, and many of my Asian classmates had the same problem.

What finally helped was a small-group discussion in one of my classes: three or four people, one topic, and enough room for everyone to talk. Spker started as a way to recreate that room for learners who don’t have one.

Crafting the format

The first sessions ran on Zoom with friends from Berkeley and my Korean community. After testing different group sizes, we settled on one leader and three members. That’s small enough that everyone talks, and big enough to feel like a real discussion. Groups are matched by level, each session starts from a curated article, and leaders are trained to guide the conversation instead of correcting every mistake.

For the first year, I ran scheduling, payments and feedback reports myself with Google Sheets, Apps Script and Google Docs. In the first five months, with no ads and no website, 200+ of 400 sign-ups became paying members, 86% of trial members converted, and over 90% renewed after their first 8-week cycle.

Listening to 700 members

By May 2026, 730 people had joined. I analyzed conversation data from 400 of them, went through the CRM logs of all 700+, and read every exit message. Three problems kept coming up:

1. Progress was invisible. Members felt better after a few sessions, then stopped feeling it. “I couldn’t feel myself improving” was the most common reason for leaving.

2. Feedback came too late to use. Reports arrived as Google Docs, and shadowing feedback only came at the end of a cycle.

3. Quality depended on the leader. Article prep and session flow changed from one leader to the next.

These became the priorities for v2:

• Progress: Every report scores vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and fluency, and maps the result to one of 18 CEFR sub-levels, from A1− to C2+. After five reports, members unlock a growth view.

• Feedback: Up to 10 corrections per area, each with the original sentence, a better version and a short reason, delivered in the app after every session.

• Consistency: Every leader gets the same article package (summary, vocabulary, discussion questions), and the same rules apply to every group.

Building the platform

I wrote the product spec myself. It’s a single source of truth covering every rule, from attendance codes to refunds, and I built it with a part-time team of engineers and a designer. The flows below were the starting point.

What v2.0 automates:

• Attendance is read from each participant’s Zoom record. No manual roll call.

• Reports: Speakers in the transcript are matched to members, and reports are generated and sent automatically. Leaders no longer review or send them by hand.

• One account, two roles. Members and leaders switch spaces in the same app, on web, iOS and Android.

• An admin console handles groups, leader payouts and exceptions, like a failed report or a missing transcript.

Rethinking the business model

The original model was $10 per session plus a $100 deposit, and most platform income came from late and no-show penalties. That kept attendance high, but it tied revenue to members failing. v2 replaces it with a free first session and session passes of 5, 10 or 20 sessions, from about $20 down to $10 per session. Leader pay now scales with the number of members in each session, and leaders earn a bonus when a guest they hosted becomes a member.

We also added two group types alongside community groups: native-speaker groups, and creator groups, where an English-speaking creator leads a five-person, 90-minute cohort.

Where it stands now

v2.0 launches in October 2026. The first test of the new funnel didn’t go well. In September, 17 people signed up, 4 booked a guest session, 1 attended, and none became members, even though most of them knew me. The drop happens between sign-up and the first booking, not after the session. So the launch gives a free guest pass right after phone verification, adds one-on-one onboarding, and rewards leaders for conversions. I’m tracking every channel with UTM links as we invite our 900 past members back.

We also explored a separate AI tool for non-native speakers at work, and paused it to focus on the club.

Reflection

After more than a year of running Spker:

• People don’t pay for practice. They pay to feel progress. That’s why the CEFR level and growth view became the core of the product, not an add-on.

• Leaders are the product. Session quality depends on them, so leader tools and leader pay got as much design time as the member app.

• Automate what you’ve already done by hand. Every rule in v2 is something I ran manually for a year first, which is why the spec could be precise.

To follow along, visit spker.club