#882: Why Kids Can Learn 10x Faster Than We Think — Niels Hoven of Mentava (Tim Coaching Session)

Niels, getting ready for this was a fun trip down memory lane. I remembered our first long Mentava conversation: I was freezing beside a river in British Columbia, digging through your site and kids’ videos, thinking, yes, I remember why I invested. Before I nitpick your bio and website copy, give me the short version: what is Mentava?

Mentava lets kids learn at the fastest pace they can manage, rather than the pace their age gets assigned. Our first product is early-literacy software that helps preschoolers, generally around age three and up, reach independent early-reader territory: Green Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop, Elephant and Piggie.

We’ve had two-year-old twins reading those books before three, a three-year-old learn in roughly three months, and a kindergartener catch up so quickly his teacher had never seen anything like it. He went from admiring a classmate who could read to telling his mom, “I can do that now.”

People worry early academics will stress kids out, but kids want to learn. Mentava began during the pandemic: my wife and I had three young kids, two full-time jobs, and a six-hundred-square-foot one-bedroom apartment. I wanted them to teach themselves because I couldn’t be their teacher at every step. The apps were only okay, but our kids still learned surprisingly well. Nobody was really designing for three- and four-year-olds to learn independently.

My background is games and tutorials, so I saw design problems all the way down. Reading instruction isn’t mystical: teach letter sounds, then blending. A cheap book can do that, but a parent supplies the labor. For a toddler on an iPad, tiny things like accidental belly touches matter. We built optimized phonics, child-proof UX, and motivation design: lower the learning hoop, make progress visible, and don’t replace a kid’s desire to learn.

I like the hoop metaphor. A slot machine puts an absurd prize beyond an incredibly low bar: press a button. Your challenge is different, obviously, but related: make phonics easy to engage with and rewarding enough that kids return. Now let’s talk messaging.

We serve a niche that cares deeply about education, can pay, and has kids who aren’t being supported academically. But we haven’t found the language. We’re excellent at product design and weaker at marketing, especially because parents may not recognize the problem until their child is bored in school and the easiest years for acceleration have passed.

Drop terms like “unusually fast,” “high-achieving,” and “top-performing.” Don’t imply a child must be a one-in-a-thousand genius. Be clear: children move at their own pace, and parents don’t have to become tutor, nag, scheduler, and homework cop. Maybe it’s faster learning for kids and less nagging for parents. Test it; don’t tattoo it on the building.

My pathological honesty kicks in: kids usually want to use it, but parents sometimes still prompt them. We’re talking about three- and four-year-olds. The difference is it’s less likely to become a battle. A parent says it’s Mentava time, and the kid is generally ready to put down Legos and go.

Don’t promise a fantasy you can’t defend. But you can ask what it would feel like if your kid wanted to learn. One exaggerated claim makes people doubt everything else. Your strongest proof is real: a kid asking for the letter game, a parent saying one week beat months of kindergarten, or someone dropping a tutor because the software works.

Our fourteen-day trial communicates the difference better than copy. But readiness matters. A young child may know every letter sound and still be unable to blend them. We test reading direction with something like dog-fish versus fish-dog. If it isn’t clicking, we steer them toward letter sounds and suggest returning in three to six months.

Put a quick readiness check on the site before signup. It can capture email, save unsuitable families a frustrating trial, and give parents genuinely interesting information. Be explicit about age range. If two-year-olds rarely succeed, saying three-and-a-half and up is useful filtering. Then the homepage needs testimonials, audio on the video, clarity on what this is for, and a concrete action like that two-minute check.

We’re piloting in schools, and I’d love school use to be cheap or free while families using us like a private tutor pay premium. It’s five hundred dollars a month. That shocks people until some tell us they replaced a tutor and think we should charge more. We also offer a lower-price arrangement for families who love it but can’t afford it, in exchange for permission to use weekly child videos in marketing.

Price can signal seriousness, so don’t apologize for it. Premium customers can fund a better product and eventually more access. Your referral coupon got zero tracked referrals, but that needs experiments, not a funeral. At five hundred dollars a month, selectively recommending Mentava may matter more than a credit. Prompt around the first wow moment, test high-value rewards, and make sharing easy without asking parents to announce, “Look at me, rich asshole.”

Our best retained customers come from X and word of mouth. X arguments about whether children should learn quickly find the people who already believe in acceleration. Meta can deliver cheap leads, not always families who value this enough to pay. And I don’t want Mentava versus teachers. They’re often constrained and trying their best. I want parents to know early reading gives them leverage to say, “My kid can already do this; please offer more.”

For people who don’t know they have this problem, spend time with the converted instead of boiling the ocean. Your strongest archetype sounds like first-generation immigrants, thirty-five to forty-five, often in tech, who see education as a ladder and invest in it. Find concentrated communities, listen to their questions, and create surround sound for a precise group.

That’s the big lesson: think sideways. I’m already doing customer intro calls, so I should treat them like comedy open mics—test a line, see what makes people lean in, ask what pain got them to sign up, and kill what falls flat. We’ve left opportunities on the table to get the message dialed in.

Look for uncrowded channels and formats, then test quickly before committing. Get on a stage if it reaches the right crowd, even with a broader talk about motivation design, education, or learning. Define success beforehand: recruiting, customer conversations, feedback, not merely applause. Niels, I’m a huge fan of the mission and product. Check out Mentava, and give him thoughtful feedback.

Whether or not you ever try Mentava, advocate for your child throughout their life, especially around education. Never let anybody make you feel guilty for doing that.

That’s a great place to land. And to everyone listening: be a little kinder than necessary to other people, but make sure your compassion includes you, too.