The lessons weren't the problem.
I took Spanish classes, then English ones. I did the exercises, learned the conjugations, ticked off the lessons. On paper, it was going well.
Then came the moment to speak to an actual person, and everything locked up. I knew the words. I had just never said them out loud to another human being.
So I went looking for a partner.
That's what everyone tells you to do: find a native speaker and talk to them. So I signed up for the language-exchange apps. And that's where something strange happens.
You text. A message, a corrected sentence, and that's where it stops. Weeks go by and nobody ever picks up. Almost nobody is really there to learn — and there's no way around it: to get comfortable in a language you have to speak it with someone, regularly.
The hard part was never the grammar. It was finding someone to speak with, week after week.
And when I did find someone, it didn't last.
Every once in a while it clicked. A good conversation, someone motivated, and we'd say "let's do this again next week". Next week never came.
Finding a reliable person who could keep a standing appointment turned out to be harder than learning the language.
So I built it.
PalVivo is the app I was looking for back then. You tell it the languages you speak and the ones you're learning, and it finds your opposite: someone learning your language who speaks the one you want. You both have something to gain — that's what makes people show up.
And the call isn't an option buried in a menu. It's the whole point. Half in your language, half in theirs, with the same person, week after week.
— Maxime Dubé, founder of PalVivo