Kamby

Learn Khmer with gamified lessons & native speakers. For family, for friends, for love.

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Kamby is a language learning app dedicated to Khmer, the Cambodian language.

🇰🇭 Inspiration

My personal story

I’m French, but my Dad was born in Cambodia. He migrated to France in the 1970s as a war refugee. Unfortunately, I grew up never learning his mother-tongue. The Khmer language sounded too difficult, and learning resources were scarce.

However, everything changed when I moved to Cambodia last year — and fell in love with a Khmer woman. This time, I had to try harder to learn Khmer.

First, I decided to build an app to help myself memorize words. Then I realized there were many other people eager to learn Khmer.

Cambodian History

It’s a little dark, but it’s important to know.

Between 1975 and 1979, Cambodia was under a communist regime that led to genocide. 1/4 of the population was lost. The worst part is that intellectuals were specifically targeted: teachers, doctors, artists,…

It set the country back, and the trauma is carried through generations of Cambodian people all over the world. Some were fortunate to survive by fleeing, like my Dad.

The Khmer Diaspora

As a result, the Khmer diaspora has spread globally: USA (~360k), France (~80k), Canada (~42k), Australia (~57k), New Zealand (~12k),…

Across the diaspora, many grow up sharing a deep longing for **identity & belonging. For us, **learning Khmer is a bridge to connect with our heritage and bond with our family.

However, Khmer is hard!! It has the longest alphabet (74 letters), very unique sounds, and few learning resources compared to other languages. For example, Khmer is still not listed on Duolingo.

That’s why Kamby’s mission is to make Khmer easy to learn.

📱 What it does

We’ve kept it simple: only 2 features.

  • Short lessons to learn everyday Khmer. Tap the big “Start lesson” button on HomeView.
  • ‘Practice My Words’ helps you review and memorize what you’ve learnt.

1. Gamified structured lessons

Kamby’s main feature is a clear path of 65 lessons (and counting), designed to be used in the real world: introducing yourself, ordering at a restaurant, complimenting your loved ones, making plans with friends,…

What makes Kamby special:

  • Real Cambodian voices. Every word is recorded by a native speaker. No AI.
  • Always explain grammar
  • Lessons feature the cultural context within behind the language
  • Every new word is clearly introduced, then immediately used to build useful sentences
  • Lessons are designed to be quick and fun
  • the whole app is available in both English and French (since many diaspora, like me, are from France).

2. Practice my words

The ‘My Words’ feature helps you review the words you know, and practice with a spaced repetition system. Each word comes back just before you would forget it: after a day, a week, or months. Users can keep track of the words they know in a list that lets them search and listen.

🧑🏻‍💻 How we built it

With love, Claude & Codex, SwiftUI, some UIKit, Supabase, and ofc RevenueCat. The RC paywall editor & the RC MCP are clutch. I realized the RC MCP can even create the ASC products for me. Love it, and thank you.

For audio, I invested in a microphone and recorded my girlfriend who was born and raised in Cambodia. I’m so grateful to her, couldn’t have done this without her help.

🥵 Challenges I ran into

Learning Khmer while building Kamby

Learning Khmer is hard enough on its own. (It’s listed under category III by the US Foreign Service Institute, aka, it’s difficult) But making a language learning app while learning it myself is very hard. Producing the lessons takes way more time than building the app. For months, it felt like I was trying to run a train (the app) while I was still laying down the tracks in front of it (my own knowledge of Khmer).

Letting go of my developer identity

I spent years learning to code. Now, I almost never read code. The whole game is product and marketing. Rewiring my brain for our post-AI world is a major challenge, but tbh I’m loving it!

✨ Accomplishments that we’re proud of

Blowing up on instagram & facebook

We just started posting on social media, and we’re surprised and honored by how many people are engaging with our posts, reaching out to us, sharing their stories.

The onboarding

The first version of Kamby didn’t have an onboarding, and they only saw the paywall when they hit a locked lesson. Less than 1% conversion download to trial & paid.

On Sep 30, I released a new version with an onboarding, and conversion immediately exploded.

The idea: Show value first, paywall after. Users learn their first Khmer words before even creating their profile. As I’m writing this tonight September 30, we just jumped from 1% to 30% conversation download to trial or paid.

Making an impact while making money

Almost every person who wants to learn Khmer has a compelling reason why. I’m honored to be part of their learning journey, and being of service to them is my biggest accomplishment.

Some real examples:

  • a 23yo French student. Her grandma is a Cambodian refugee like my Dad, and she grew up hearing her grandma speak Khmer. She uses Kamby to learn to talk with her Grandma.
  • a 30yo English teacher. He married a Khmer woman, is living in Cambodia with their first kid on the way. He wants to learn Khmer to speak his wife’s mother tongue, and he expects his child to know both English & Khmer.
  • a 57yo American spending his retirement in Cambodia. He’s learning Khmer to interact with locals in his daily life. And when locals hear you speak Khmer, they’ll give you the most beautiful smile. That alone is worth learning imho

📝 What I learned

Ignorance can be a strength

Because I’m a beginner too, I know where people struggle. That’s why I’ve designed the exercises to ramp up difficulty gradually, and to never ask too much at once.

Building an app business is about service

I’ve learnt to obsess over the problem I’m solving, and the people I’m serving. It’s the first time in my life where I have such clarity of: 1) who is my customer; and 2) why they need what I’m building.

🚀 What’s next for Kamby

The mission stays the same: make Khmer easy to learn.

Growing and building a community

  • Android. Currently in active development, beta test planned in 3 weeks. highly requested!!
  • Social media. We’ll grow organically on TikTok, Threads, and YouTube, just like we started on Instagram.
  • NGO collabs. I’ve been meeting organizations around Siem Reap and will donate subscriptions to volunteers to help them help people.
  • Micro-influencers (5-50k followers) are already reaching out, we’ll be negotiating collabs.

More lessons + app polish

  • 3 new arcs are already in the works: Life at Home, Family & Identity, and Cultural Events
  • Khmer script. Today we only learn with romanized Khmer, but we want to teach the Khmer Script with 74 letters.
  • More UI/UX whimsy. Animations, sounds… a lot more polish everywhere.

Thank you so much 🙏

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