Ken and Kyla Ettinger, co-founders of SpeakEasy, tell us how their app helps parents improve the language development of their children from a very early age. With Kyla's background as a speech language pathologist and Bubble's no-code web app building platform, the two were able to enact their vision on a wide scale.

Tell us about your app and what it does.

SpeakEasy helps parents boost the speech and language development of their children, from birth-to-five. We empower parents with evidence-based activities and effective teaching techniques, all written by a speech therapist. The SpeakEasy Language Journey is customized to the language stage of their child, and is built for parents of children with or without speech delay.

How does your app work?

New users answer a few questions to place their child in a language developmental level (E.g. "Does your child combine two or more words?") and then create an account. We offer a free trial to our subscription service, SpeakEasy Unlimited, so that parents can try out the app to see how it will help them. Once they are in the app, we have tutorials that guide users to actions including:-Watch language technique videos, covering topics such as getting Face to Face with your child-View at-home activity ideas, including why each one works and how to adjust it for your child's needs-Read interactive articles about speech and language development-Track their child's language skills and development, and 'level up' to more advanced activities when appropriate

Tell us a little about your background and how you discovered no-code tools like Bubble.

I have a business background working in for-good tech companies after getting my MBA from Stanford in 2016, but the heart and soul of SpeakEasy are its speech and language ideas, created by my wife and cofounder, Kyla. Kyla is a speech therapist who knows how essential parent engagement is for a child's development, which is why we built SpeakEasy as a parent empowerment tool.
My first exposure to Bubble was as an internal tool at a company I had worked for previously. I could tell that it had lots of potential, but did not have the chance to dig in while working there.

Why did you build your app on Bubble?

As non-technical cofounders, Bubble is perfect to enable people like my wife and I to take our vision and create it. Not only did Bubble enable us to build an app without coding, it allows us to continue to rapidly experiment and improve our app in a way that would be impossible if we relied on a technical team of engineers. We can take an idea and deploy it to our app in days if not hours.

What have been your milestones or successes so far?

We launched our web app in March, 2020, and our mobile app on iOS and Android in July. Since then, we have had over 10,000 downloads; over 8,000 accounts created on Bubble; and over 700 cumulative paid subscribers. We have been able to grow through a combination of speech therapist recommendations (we also have a version of our app built specifically for speech therapists); social media (@speakeasycommunity); and paid advertising.

What are your future plans for your app?

We continue to add new content and new features to the app to make it as useful as possible for parents and caregivers. We plan to continue to do so for the years to come and plan to become the leading speech development app for early language learning.

Learn more about SpeakEasy: Instagram | Facebook

About Bubble

Bubble is a leader in the no-code movement. Bubble offers a powerful point-and-click web editor and cloud hosting platform that allows users to build fully customizable web applications and workflows, ranging from simple prototypes to complex marketplaces, SaaS products, and more. Over 500,000 users are currently building and launching businesses on Bubble - many have gone on to participate in top accelerator programs, such as Y Combinator, and even raise $365M in venture funding. Bubble is more than just a product. We are a strong community of builders and entrepreneurs that are united by the belief that everyone should be able to create technology.

Do you want your app featured by Bubble? Reach out to us and tell us about your app. In addition to this series, we sometimes select our best apps to showcase on our website.