Within a few months of launching the internet-based business ChinesePod, Ken Carroll and his colleagues knew they had a huge hit.
As with so many of the best concepts, it was brilliantly simple: offer Putonghua language courses that could be downloaded onto iPods, allowing people to listen and learn even while jogging or driving. But while the basic premise is straightforward, only an organisation with language-teaching expertise, and staff able to fully understand the internet, would be nimble enough to successfully execute such a state-of-the-art enterprise.
Enter Mr Carroll, 45, fellow language teacher Steve Williams, 30, and technical whiz Hank Horkoff, 32. Between them, they concocted a system of easily downloaded lessons that have proved to be immensely popular with users worldwide last year. To date, the owners calculate that about five million lessons have been downloaded from their site, Chinesepod.com, giving users a free Putonghua primer of a few simple phrases.
ChinesePod's main source of revenue is through luring keener language students to become subscribers. For a payment of US$240, users can have a year's access to a learning centre stocked with transcripts of lessons, vocabulary builders and other language tools. The sales stream is further enhanced by add-ons, at a cost of between US$9 and US$30 a month.
The co-founder is coy about the precise figures but does say that 70,000 people have signed up for the full week's free trial of the online programs. 'It is going up and up and up,' is all Mr Carroll would allow. 'In two to three years we could have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.'
The operation is run from a rented US$4,000 a month nondescript warehouse in a Shanghai suburb, a few blocks and a world of affluence away from the trendy nightlife zone of Xintiandi. Inside, it is a bustling hive of activity, with a core team of translators and technicians beavering away to keep up with demand.
Mr Carroll initially came to Asia in late 1988, to teach English in Taiwan. In 1994, he made the then-precarious, if ambitious, move across the Straits to Shanghai to found a language school with another English teacher.