Arne Schepker, CEO of the popular Berlin-based language learning platform Babbel, has stepped down, with the company's co-founder and former CEO Markus Witte saying, “While we search for Arne's successor, He will return to lead the company to this stage. Please be patient,” the company said. This new phase naturally involves AI.
Mr. Witte will not assume the CEO role for the time being, but will instead serve as executive chairman and managing director.
Schepker told me that after serving almost exactly five years as sole CEO and several months ago taking over as co-CEO with Witte, who previously held the position, he decided not to renew his contract. told. Mr. Witte will continue in his role as Executive Chairman and will now serve as Managing Director.
“I couldn't say 'yes' strong enough. As a CEO, I don't think you can do your job with just 100% commitment. You have to be 180% no matter what. And I couldn't get there and I didn't feel it was good enough and right enough for the team, for the company and for the shareholders, so I decided not to extend the contract,'' he said.
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Mr. Schepker joined Babbel in 2015 as CMO. At this point, he said, he feels the same pattern repeating itself. He couldn't be more excited about the next round of creating the team's annual budget and setting OKRs.
“That's the number one reason. Reason number two is that the timing is actually very good because we're moving into a new phase as a company anyway,” he said. Additionally, I would like to spend more time traveling with my family, at least next year. “Don’t expect anything from my LinkedIn feed until next winter.”
He also said it was a pleasure to sit down with Mr. Witte for the interview. “The founders who built the company, developed our first products, built our culture, and laid the foundation for everything I was able to work on, who I deeply trust and have strong alignment with. “I think the person who is there is a great transition,” he said.
During Mr. Schepker's tenure, Babbel's revenue increased sixfold to approximately $300 million and the company's team grew to approximately 1,000 people.
“We accomplished what we wanted to accomplish,” he said. But perhaps what he's most proud of is that the company has been able to help students, and now Ukrainian refugees, with their language learning needs during the pandemic for free.
“There’s no monetary value to it. You can’t even prove the ROI. You still can’t, but whether it’s a press conference, a candidate interview, or just a dinner with friends, it gets talked about.” If you don't, there will be no conversation.”
So what's next for Babbel? Witte says that as technology changes, AI will play a more direct role in helping people learn new languages. He told me that he believed he could do it. Although Babbel was already leveraging machine learning internally, it never called itself an “AI company.” Instead, we always focus on the teachers and experts who helped create our courses (this is also what differentiates us from competitors like Duolingo).
Babbel CEO Arne Schepker and co-founder Markus Witte (white shirt) Image credit: Babbel/Amin Akhtar
However, Witte acknowledged that technology is advancing so rapidly that it is difficult to even think about strategies beyond the next six months.
“We're at a stage where even the people building large language models don't know what the next generation will be able to do,” he said. “So I think even companies our size, even if they're not an early-stage startup, need to be more nimble than ever.”
And at this stage, as the founder (and one of the company's largest shareholders), he believes it may actually be an advantage for the founder to return to the helm of the company. company strategy.
In Witte's view, the combination of large-scale language models that tend to excel at language-related tasks and Babbel's deep language learning expertise has reached a point where the company is changing the way it educates its customers. Masu. Previously, this technology did not exist. “We've reached a point where what we said before is no longer true,” he said.
Schepker also said that at the core of Babbel's mission and the problems it seeks to solve are human problems.
“The problem to be solved is still human language learning. You still want to talk to someone in another language. You want to have a conversation with your loved ones, your family, whatever it is,” he said. Ta. “Here, for Babel, we are using all the pedagogical knowledge we have, all the data we have, and using this new technology to combine them to create real, personalized There is a real opportunity to create a powerful language learning journey, and in the end it will actually solve the problem for us, because we have made language learning easy. However, there are still challenges.”
In addition to addressing the changes brought about by AI, Witte said he also wants to focus on creating more “moments of joy” for the company's employees and users. “Those things that bring a smile to your face, on every level, that's what I aim for,” he told me. “That's kind of my mental model right now. I don't think you need to be great at everything. I don't think you need to be great at everything, but you want moments of joy in every dimension, every level. is.”