Toucan helps you learn a new language by immersing you in it while you browse the web. When you visit a webpage, Toucan quickly translates a set of words and phrases into the language you’re trying to learn. So you’ll increase your vocabulary by seeing translated words within the context of a language you already know. Learning a new skill is one of the most challenging things we can do. It’s also one of the most fun. Toucan uses experts in the science of habit formation, learning and human behavior to create the best possible environment for you to learn.
The long term goal of Toucan is providing access to education that fits throughout your day. Right now the focus is on language learning because it fits in the browser ecosystem well. In the future, Toucan wants you to learn anything as you go about the day. The learning environment is flexible--it could be across the web or adding learning to an existing digital habit. We are open to being an extension, an app, or even a SDK that integrates with other apps. Toucan aims to weave learning in context throughout the day, making it both fun and streamlined.
All current apps/products all compete for people’s time and attention. Any company entering the market is grabbing a smaller chunk of the same pie.
Most people spend their time on the web. Toucan can help them feel a sense of control over their day, progress towards bigger picture learning goals, all while doing things they enjoy like watching Netflix or reading The New York Times.
Toucan can be easily adopted because we are not creating a new habit, rather, we want to help your existing habits become slightly healthier and more productive.
When we think of diversity, our team thinks about opinions, ideas, experiences. This comes to play especially when different perspectives are used as input to create a cohesive product that serves many people. We need and value pushback, which brings insight into solving harder problems.
Usually companies speak in terms of “culture fit”. What they usually mean is someone who has similar ideas. Toucan looks for diversity in ideas and people who can be “culture add”. We are not looking for individuals to fit a certain mold, but love to think about what they can bring to the table that is different from everyone else.
There are many interesting problems that Toucan is solving:
During the interview and onboarding process, our executive team tries to understand an individual’s long-term goals. For example, say an engineer wants to transition into a design role; our leadership team could then actively help them get involved in design conversations or tasks. Ultimately, mentorship comes from a place of first understanding what people aim to achieve, and also setting aside the time to enable them to do so.
We have weekly 1-on-1s, and 6-month/yearly goal-checking conversations. In exploring mentors, we try to connect people with the right mentors in-house, or in the case that they don’t exist, connect them with experienced mentors within our networks. We believe mentorship and personal development is number one priority and see it as essential in order to solve the difficult problems at Toucan.
One example of this value is an engineer that is interested in NLP and ML. Although it is his first time working with these tools, Toucan created an environment that is safe to explore, provided the right resources and mentorship, and now he is moving towards the goal of becoming a data scientist, and simultaneously delivering on product goals. Since some problems tend to be vague or abstract, the team also loves to collaborate to set guardrails; in other words, help everyone clearly define the problem and what success looks like on a weekly basis.
Toucan believes taking care of yourself mentally is one of the most important things, because it is the bedrock everything else stems from. Mental health affects everything from what we build, how we grow, to choosing which advisors we talk to.
Toucan is considerate as a product of the user’s mental health. We are making it okay to continue doing the things you love to do, and inject health and learning to make you feel good at the end of the day. As a product, we try to be mental-health conscious.
As a company, we believe innovation comes from a place where it is okay to fail and fosters psychological safety. In our culture, we try to take care of each other as people. At the core, although there is a job to do and product, we deeply care for one another.
We offer a $100 monthly reimbursement (mental health stipend) to any outlets of your choice whether that’s meditation apps like Headspace, therapy apps like TalkSpace or Joyable, or virtual/in-person counseling. Sometimes you’ve just got to unplug. To help out, Toucan offers $300 a quarter for you to get out. For now, that’s a staycation and outdoor experience; in the future, this can be applied to Airbnb rentals and hotel stays.
Toucan likes to believe that people entering a new field are able to create the best innovations, because they are able to push the boundaries of those realities and domains. With failure, we are always looking for the lessons learned. As a result, our roadmap includes both problems that we know we are likely to solve, and also tons of hard problems that have a high risk of failure.
Toucan’s environment being safe to fail is almost an expectation. When a team member encounters their first failure, they discover it’s really part of the culture to fail, and that reinforces their understanding that it really is safe to learn and improve from tough challenges at Toucan.
We strive for open communication. We are constantly talking to one another. We are transparent on information like our funding to our team. The co-founder and executive level sets the norms for the team. Great ideas come from open communication, and see being closed as only stifling potential innovation. Some tools that help foster open communication at Toucan include weekly 1-on-1s, 6-months reviews, as well as monthly all-hands where all questions are welcome.
Toucan is always looking for feedback on the interview process.
