When Ivan Crewkov's smart speaker startup crashed and burned after Amazon launched Echo, he thought his American dream was over. Moving from Siberia to Silicon Valley only to watch his company Cubic.AI collapse wasn't exactly the California dream he'd imagined. Little did he know that his daughter's struggle to speak English in a Mountain View preschool would spark an AI revolution that's now teaching 22 million children annually and has raised $13 million in venture funding.
"It was a disaster," Crewkov recalls about his first startup's demise in 2014. "It made zero sense to compete with Amazon and Google; we ended up selling the company." Just one week before their planned Kickstarter launch, Amazon had unveiled Echo, instantly rendering Cubic.AI obsolete.
But sometimes, the best ideas emerge from our darkest moments. After relocating his family from Siberia to Mountain View, California, Crewkov watched his 4-year-old daughter Sofia struggle for months to make friends at preschool because she couldn't speak English. "Sofia struggled to begin speaking English for the first 3-5 months in preschool," Crewkov shares. "We were worried because she couldn't find friends and play with most of her peers because of the language."
