Poco a poco, an app that encourages and rewards effort

Hey everyone, I’m Tony. I’ve always been a bit of a language nerd. I grew up in Toronto speaking Cantonese and English in my daily life. Later on, I studied Mandarin and Korean, and even picked up some of the Teochew dialect through my wife. A couple of months ago, I decided to make Spanish the next language that I’d tackle.

A plethora of apps

At this point, there’s already a huge number of language learning apps out there. Everyone knows Duolingo, and there are other popular apps like Babbel and Speak. Each one does something really well: Duolingo makes it a daily habit, Babbel teaches grammar clearly, and Speak gets you talking out loud.

Trying out Duolingo

For the first couple of weeks, I stayed consistent, practiced every day and kept my streak alive. During the third week, I noticed myself feeling less motivated to return to the app. The dopamine rush that I felt after the first few lessons was gone, and it honestly didn’t feel like I was actually learning very much. As a software engineer, I thought: why not build an app to teach myself Spanish, the way I would want it to work?

How Poco a poco works

The main premise of Poco a poco is to teach Spanish through goal-based roleplay. In each scene, the learner is speaking to a character that has their own backstory, personality, and motivations. The learner has to accomplish a set of goals, for example, introducing themselves, asking for directions or ordering food. As the learner progresses, different types of goals start to get introduced, for example, using specific words or sentence patterns, or building complex responses with two or more sentences.

The missing component: effort

I’ve been working heads-down on this app for a few weeks now, alternating between development and using it as an actual user. While using the app last night, it finally dawned on me what I’m actually trying to build. A scene can be finished very quickly if you stick to simple one-liners and the vocabulary that you already know. Alternatively, you could think about what you would actually want to say in that situation and figure out how to say it (the app’s tutor makes this easy). This approach takes much more time and effort, but it also pushes the limits of your abilities, and you end up learning much more this way. This is exactly what I want Poco a poco to be: an app that encourages and rewards effort.

Public launch date

Poco a poco will go live on November 16, 2026. Until then, join the waitlist. The first 500 people to join become Founding Members and get 50% off their first year.