Outlier Linguistics

Over 100 million people are learning Chinese worldwide, but it's extremely difficult; we use cutting-edge research to create amazing tools that make it easier.

  • Stage Full Product Ready
  • Industry Education
  • Location Taipei, Taiwan
  • Currency USD
  • Founded May 2016
  • Employees 4
  • Incorporation Type C-corp
  • Website outlier-linguistics.com

Company Summary

Two aspects of Chinese make it very difficult to learn: characters & tones. 3 weeks ago, we launched a mini version our highly-anticipated Chinese character dictionary for Pleco (iOS/Android Chinese dict platform w/ 10+ mil. users). 1441 pre-orders & 750+ copies sold since the launch; it's the fastest-selling new Pleco add-on ever. Next: finish the full version, make a tone training app, and on to a complete mobile solution to learn any language.

Team

  • John Renfroe
    CEO & Co-founder

    John moved to Taiwan in 2011 to study Chinese, and just 18 months later was accepted into a Master's program in NTNU's Graduate Institute of Chinese to study linguistics and paleography. Used his presence and reputation in the online Chinese learning sphere to drum up interest in our Kickstarter, which raised over $91K (121% of our goal). Now learning Japanese in Tokyo.

  • Ash Henson
    CTO & Co-founder

    A former NASA electrical engineer (signal processing), and later a software engineer. Quit engineering to learn Chinese. Now a PhD candidate in the Graduate Institute of Chinese specializing in historical phonology, paleography, and excavated texts. Using that knowledge plus his software background to change the way Chinese characters are taught—and how languages are learned! Fluent in five languages and speaks several others to varying degrees.

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