Excited to announce that Ginger has been nominated as a “rising star” by CHINICT, China’s leading Internet Conference. CHINICT 2012 is taking place in Beijing May 24-25 and I will be giving a talk there among other good old friends. Ginger is growing fast now and is getting serious traction around the world. Really excited for the times ahead If you’re in Beijing that week, let me know if not catch the awesome live stream on Techcrunch. A big kudos to Franck Nazikian for inviting me and for organizing this great event! Oh, while we’re at it. Go and download our new awesome Ginger Chrome extension 

Hey, I just wanted you to know that I have taken on a new challenge. After a couple of years as an active advisor to a number on companies in the gaming / mobile space including my own startup, Playhopper, I recently decided to do something new, something unexpected and something that that I have never done before. It all started, at Le Web (thanks to my old friend @loic for the invitation!) in Paris when I ran into a Yoni Cheifetz, general partner at Lightspeed Israel. Yoni kept raving about this company, Ginger, that he had privately invested in. 

I didn’t think much about it then but agreed to swing by and take a look at it once back in Israel. Said and done, I started a series of meetings with the founder, Yael Karov. Yael is an amazing entrepreneur deeply rooted in natural language processing technology and linguistics. Even more impressing, she has managed to build this company, raised $15 MM while juggling with three kids and still remain a real Mensch. Beat that!  

Initially I dismissed Ginger as a boring software for grammar correction. But boy was I blind. After digging much deeper into the technology, the platform and the potential usages, I realized that I had just seen the tip of the iceberg and that perhaps the company just did not have the right positioning & message. 

So what does Ginger do? 

Ginger’s mission is to help people expresse themselves better and improve their English communication. For the billions using English as a second language and learning English, Ginger’s innovative products serve as a companion anywhere you type, helping you to communicate like a native speaker. 

Ginger’s Proofreader product is the market’s leading contextual grammar and spell checker. It corrects text based on context and is able to correct severe spelling and grammar mistakes. What’s really unique is that based on the user’s mistakes corrected by the Proofreader, Ginger’s Personalized Tutor helps users learn from their own mistakes. It automatically creates an entertaining personalized learning program with tailored lessons and quizzes for each user. 

However, there is much more under the “hood” than currently meets the eye, and we are working on a number of products aimed at improving communication and conversations between people on all platforms. In fact, I can’t wait to share more. But everything has its time.

Meangingful Challenge

I’ve been looking for a meaningful challenge that addresses a real problem, carries a huge market opportunity, and is rooted in deep technology with a scalable platform. Ginger has all this and much more. Yael Karov has founded an impressive company with a fantastic team, coupled with some of the best Natural Language Processing experts and linguists you can find. 

In what way is it meaningful? 

Its a meaningful because billions of people use English as a second language and even more are learning English around the world. However, it is really difficult to really improve your English unless you live or work in an English speaking environment. We want to change that. To add to the meaningfulness, Melinda & Bill Gates foundation have reported that there potential significant impact on lifetime earnings by improving English ability. Now that’s food for thought. 

What is the market opportunity? 

• More than 1 Billion people using English as a second lanaguage (ESL) on a daily basis and more than 
• $50 Billion spent worldwide on English Learning
• 100′s of millions monthly searches on English learning and grammar
• $1.7 Billion is spent on Online English Learning by 2014 with an annual growth of 22%

In what way is Ginger’s technology scalable?

• Novel statistical linguistic language model  
• Learned automatically from the “infinite” Internet corpus  
• Indexed 1.5 trillon words & counting  
• Language model will reach 95% in 2012 
• No serious competition 
• 4 pending patents : 3 awards, several grants

Ginger’s technology is good for many other things like voice (we do have our own TTS technology) contextual multi-media prediction.  We also have a number of API’s available you can plugin to ang “Gingerize” your product/platform. 

Real People

And perhaps one of the most important thing: real people & real menschen! I’ve come to a point in my life where I just want to work with great real people. Life is too short to spend working woth A-holes, no matter how smart, talented and celebrated they are. You have only one life. Make sure you spend it on something that really matters and with real people. 

In short, Huge Pain. Big Market. Growing fast. Amazing product. Winning team. 

Now be a friend go and Like us on Facebook and Twitter ! 

Ginger in Techcrunch

This is a post I wrote for the Quora Review earlier this week.

As Quora is rapidly growing out of its Silicon Valley nest and is spreading its wings across the world, the question is: How will Quora deal with internationalization? Having experienced facebook’s internationalization efforts at first hand, I am intrigued by what approach Quora will take when the right time comes. After all Quora is a very different animal than Facebook.

Anybody who has been involved in internationalization efforts knows that it stretches far beyond than just translating a bunch of strings into a new language. It is said that, every translations is a new interpretation, but I wonder, is every question equal everywhere?

Assuming that Quora will crowd source the translation in a similar way to facebook , I dont’ think that the translation in itself is going to be much of an issue. I think the question the questions of identity and cultural sensitivity is going to be more challenging. That is, if Quora wants to stay close to it current identity.

Will Quora suffer from multiple personality disorder?

While Quora currently is perceived as an almost elitistic-like Q&A site colored by what is important in Silicon Valley , i.e. focused on  technology, venture capital, startup gossip and entrepreneurism. I can’t help to wonder if that “identity” is scaleable ? And even if it is, is that something that Quora could and should strive to guide & maintain at any price? Will Quora embrace and encourage multiple identities throughout different markets even if their nature might be very different from its original identity ? How will Quora deal with turning into a site where the questions and answers will be centered around political views and religious orientations rather than technology, startups and venture capital ? How will Quora deal with two politically opposed groups lashing out against each other in a fierce Q & A battle in Iran? Monitoring and managing the active Quora community members to ensure that they uphold and follow Quora HQ policy can be tricky. One the one hand, you’d like the Quora community to set the tone and give them “editorial” freedom within reasonable limits. On the other hand, what if that goes out of hand in a direction contrary to Quora’s original vision? Is that good or bad? It begs the question: Will Quora be able to live with multiple “personalities” ?

How will Quora deal with cultural sensitivity?

Are all questions equal in every country and region? What can you ask where? Are there questions that are off limits in certain regions for political, religious or cultural reasons ? If so, how would the Quora community deal with them?  What is irony in Bahrain and what is offensive in Poland? What is a sarcastic question in Italy and what constitutes a leading question in Russia? When does a question become antisemitic in Germany and racist in France? Can you ask how to make a Cheese burger in Israel, or where to find a bar in Saudi Arabia? Would it be offensive to ask where to buy contraception in Italy? Moreover, who will monitor the editors to ensure that the strike the “right” balance?

How will Quora deal with privacy and data protection in different countries?

If you’ve ever been involved in growing a company internationally, you know that it will come sooner rather than later. The privacy backlash. The data protection headaches. Every country has their own issue with privacy and data protection and Quora will have to comply with local laws and regulations  in each and every market they operate in. The question is, can a question be illegal in certain countries? Likewise, can an answer be illegal in some countries?  What will Quora do if it gets a request from the FBI via a foreign government to share the private data on one of its citizens for having asked “sensitive” questions? And if so, how will Quora protects its users from getting into trouble? These are just a handful of questions that comes to my mind when thinking about what challenges Quora might face with regards to internationalization.

The mother of all questions is: How will Quora approach internationalization?