This is a rare opportunity and I’m looking for the right person to seize it.
I’ll speak in first person as the reason we’re looking for a CEO is quite personal. Let me explain...
Hello! I'm Ikenna Obi, the co-founder and current CEO of Fluyo, an innovative language learning startup. Imagine a platform where language learning meets the excitement of games like Pokémon, World of Warcraft, and the charm of Studio Ghibli. That's Fluyo for you. After three years of dedicated development in stealth mode, we launched on Kickstarter and achieved a record-breaking feat – becoming the most funded app & mobile game in Kickstarter history with over $1.2M raised.
Why Fluyo? Why Now?
Our mission is bold yet simple: to help as many people as possible become fluent in a new language. Our approach blends pure fun with unparalleled learning effectiveness, addressing the key challenges faced by language learners: motivation, follow-through, and comprehension. We seek to build an app that is 5x the fun of apps like Duolingo, while also teaching better than the current gold standards of language education (apps like Language Transfer).
The opportunity at hand is a rare one: Fluyo is on the verge of launching to a massive audience (1M+ subscribers on YT), backed by a solid product in Alpha testing, a strong fanbase, and a dedicated team. We already have most of the ingredients of success and a very clear roadmap towards it.
What we don’t have is my health.
I’ve been building Fluyo alongside my team (10+ people) completely remotely from my bed. Back in 2020, I began to have health issues which developed into Severe Long Covid from 2023 onwards, which has left me bedridden since. Unfortunately, my health has declined to the point where I’m no longer able to manage the day to day operations and will need to withdraw to a more hands off Chairman-like role, mainly overseeing long-term strategy and sharing the app with my YouTube audience.
Historically as a CEO, I've mainly been focused on product and marketing. I'm a passionate language learner and a gamer with a background in design. Hence, over the last four years, I've designed most of the UI and UX. I've brainstormed and came up with most of the features the app currently has. I've led the Kickstarter marketing effort in order to raise money, as well as provided leadership towards our entire team.
Hence, for someone to replace me, they also need to be a similar type of CEO, product-focused with a strong background in product design and management, while simultaneously being extremely passionate about language learning and familiar with most of the largest language learning apps. They need to have a passion for gaming and significant leadership experience and marketing capabilities. It's quite a multifaceted role.
Fluyo has great potential. As a prelaunch startup we already have a proven audience, a history-making crowdfunding achievement, a proven ability to build a product, and a proven valuation.We fully believe we can be one of the biggest companies in the language learning industry in 4-5 years time as well as make a mark in the realm of AI. Moreover, the positive impact we can have on the world, from making something as challenging as learning a language into something as fun as a video game, is enormous.
The ultimate goal for this position is to lead our company to 1M+ paid monthly subscribers over the next few years, to supercharge our product, to scale the team up and to deliver our vision to the world.
If you’re entrepreneurial, see the vision and have the skills we are looking for... this is the job for you.
- Ikenna Obi, Co-Founder of Fluyo (www.instagram.com/ikennaobi)
What we offer:
💰 Salary: Basic starting salary of $70k. Salary can scale to $300k+ over next few years depending on paid subscriber milestones hit. No upper limit.
📈 Total Equity Possible: 5-9%
Base Equity: 5-7% (Standard monthly vesting over 4 years with 1 year cliff. We’ve been recently valued at a post-money $8.3M valuation after an investment. The value of our base equity offer (5%) is valued at just over $400k on paper, but can very easily be worth an order of magnitude more post app launch)
Equity Bonus: Up to 2%achievable by hitting paid subscriber milestones (discussed in interviews)
🌍 Work From Anywhere: 100% Remote working (our team is based in 10+ different countries worldwide)
🎓 Mentorship: We have two members of our board of advisors who are adept at operations & business strategy that have founded their own 8 figure businesses who’d be advising you if desired.
💼 Your Role:
Put simply, we need a CEO who can come in, use the app religiously, identify all the ways that the app can be better aesthetically, functionally and product market fit wise. Implement those improvements, both by creating product specifications to deliver to engineers as well as by designing UI and UX themselves. And then once our product is ready to launch, figuring out how to get it out there into the world in front of as many people as possible and incorporating feedback once it's launched to continue iterating and building the best language learning app possible.
In bullet points...
Strategic Leadership: Guide Fluyo from its current Alpha stage to a successful global launch and beyond. Set and achieve ambitious targets to grow Fluyo into a market leader.
Product Champion: Use Fluyo daily, identifying and implementing improvements in aesthetics, functionality, and market fit. Co-design the UI/UX and collaborate with engineering teams on product development to insure perfect implementation of features.
Operational Excellence: Manage day-to-day operations, including company finances, legal aspects, payroll, and high-level strategies. Host our bi-weekly all hands and leadership meetings. Guide, nurture and unblock the paths of your direct reports via one-on-one meetings.
Team Expansion and Culture: Scale our team from 10 to 100+, fostering a remote-first culture that's among the best in the world, leveraging technology like AR/VR for team collaboration and culture-building.
Marketing and Growth: Strategize and execute marketing campaigns for maximum impact, integrating user feedback for continuous product evolution. Grow Fluyo to 1M+ paid monthly subscribers by 2027.
Visionary Leadership: Sync with and expand upon our vision, establishing a direction for Fluyo and leading the team to new heights.
Who We're Looking For:
A driven, entrepreneurial individual with a burning passion for language learning and gaming. (Familiarity with most major language learning apps, methodologies and having taught yourself a few languages is a must)
Proven experience in product management and UI/UX/Product design, especially in mobile apps or EdTech.
Strong leadership and team-building skills, with experience scaling a startup or managing within a startup that has scaled.
Amazing design taste and ideally some familiarity with either Adobe XD or Figma
Excellent strategic, communication, and problem-solving abilities.
Experience in a product leadership role at a major tech company or in founding a successful startup (preferred).
Able to work 6 days a week and long hours when necessary, comfortable with a startup's dynamic pace.
Able to work well with minimal oversight. I am only able to provide a few hours of guidance per month via mainly voice messages and text until health improves. We need someone incredibly self-directed.
Application Process:
Submit application
Interview with co-founder
Design task + Alpha build critique
Interview with Language Manager and Art Director
Interview / final questions from Ikenna
Decision Made
Want to print your doc? This is not the way.
Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (
CEO of Fluyo (product design focus)