My job should not exist, at least if you take an economics-inspired, idealized view of the world. In classical economics, lower prices should automatically bring more customers, reducing the field of selling to merely order-taking and the field of marketing to only market research, offering design, and related topics. In reality, our biggest barrier isn’t price–rather it’s awareness of our product. If you’re reading this, you probably already know that Skritter’s a great way to learn Chinese characters (and, yes, Japanese characters too), but there are still far, far too many people out there who have never heard of Skritter, and I want to fix that.
I’ve been working with George, Scott and Nick to see what we can do grow Skritter. We’ve got a number of projects lined up to understand the market better and raise awareness of Skritter, particularly amongst Chinese teachers. I want the help I got learning Chinese characters from Skritter to be available (and known) by everybody who even thinks of learning Chinese or Japanese.
My own reason for studying Chinese is personal. My wife is originally from Beijing, though we met in Toronto during university. Gatherings of family and friends are much more enjoyable when one can communicate and I felt I didn’t understand a big part of her life not knowing much about China and being unable to speak Chinese. So I set my mind to learning Chinese and I’ve had a lot of fun doing it.
As for why I joined Skritter, there is another story. A nice little cafe opened near my house called Central Avenue Cafe. It was reasonably priced, had good food, a nice staff, and a decent atmosphere. Unfortunately, the cafe didn’t market itself well and was soon out of business. The cafe had a coffee focus but didn’t open for breakfast and didn’t do any promotion even though it was close to, but slightly out of the way of, several apartment buildings. Now, Skritter isn’t in any danger of going out of business but I do want to do everything that I can to make sure that it’s a long-term success. Frankly, I can’t imagine learning Chinese without it anymore.
As for why the Skritter team took me, well, you would need to ask them of course! I have worked at several other start-ups including some from the dot-com era and have lived and worked in four countries on three continents now. My undergraduate education is in Math and Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in Canada though I did a Master of Arts in Diplomacy afterwords in the US.
I’ll leave you with three characters that are supposedly about people from Sichuan Province ( 四川省) that a Chinese teacher of mine taught me:
不怕辣 – búpàlà – Not afraid of spicy (food)
辣不怕 – làbúpà – Spiciness, not afraid (of that)
不辣怕 – búlàpà – Not spicy, afraid (of that)
怕不辣 – pàbúlà- Afraid of non-spicy (food)
Mmm, tasty Sichuan food (四川菜)!
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Study this post’s Chinese vocabulary in Skritter (add to your queue):
不怕 – Unafraid
辣 – Spicy
四川 – Sichuan Province
菜 – Food/Dish