🇮🇸 Just Speak Icelandic For 90 Seconds: Bara tala

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Jón Gunnar Þórðarsson at Startup Iceland 2023. (Photo: Elías Thorsson)

By Elías Thorsson

Nine new startups gave 90-second pitches at Startup Iceland to try to entice investors and introduce themselves to the entrepreneur community. One of those was the language learning app Bara tala.

The need for foreign employees in Iceland has led to around a fifth of the nation’s workforce being non-Icelandic speakers. Seeking a way to integrate an increasingly international workforce into the Icelandic labor market, Jón Gunnar Þórðarsson set out to create Bara tala, or “just speak”.

“Bara tala is built on the same Icelandic language database that ChatGPT used to make
Icelandic the world’s second official language behind English,” says Þórðarsson. “We’ve created an app that utilizes all the amazing work that OpenAI has done to help those 56 thousand people in the workforce who don’t speak it.”

Þórðarsson says that Startup Iceland founder Bala Kamallakharan, who has been a mentor to him over the years, had encouraged him to give a pitch to investors and attendees at the event. He says that forums like these are vital to foster a vibrant entrepreneurial culture and to bring people together.

“Startup Iceland is very important to the startup scene and it is especially the conversation with other founders and the community that is so important,” says Þórðarson.

Bara tala is currently available as a B2B product but is set to launch in a B2C format in the fall.

“Now, we have a minimal viable product, and we have a deal with the teaching platform Akademias to sell our product and companies can already sign up. But from September we’ll be ready to roll out for the entire Icelandic market.”

FURTHER STARTUP ICELAND 2023 COVERAGE

Elías Thorsson is a journalist, writer, and marketing specialist with extensive experience covering business and technology affairs in Iceland. He has been covering Startup Iceland 2023.