Around 80% of our team speaks English as a second language. When communication is the job, language gaps hurt meetings, slow decisions, and chip away at people's confidence.

We started by finding entry points that already match how people work. Meetings happen in Google Meet, so we built a Chrome extension. Most written communication goes through Slack, so we added a bot there too. Together, they deliver meeting summaries, tips, and practice exercises right after each call.

We wanted Tippy to feel like a buddy, not just a tool. After exploring a few concepts, we landed on the simplest shape that scales equally well as a large illustration and a tiny extension icon.

We went public gradually. First, with a small pilot group, we installed the extension manually and collected feedback directly. Once the core experience held up, we announced it at a company-wide meeting. Requests to join came in fast.

Then we tested two hypotheses: add practice exercises based on mistakes from meetings, and build an in-extension chat for quick translations and proofreading without switching tabs.

After launch, 65% of users engaged with the exercises. That told us where to focus. Only 2 users tried the chat, so we planned to make it more visible in the next phase, and drop it entirely if adoption stayed low.

The final solution was a browser extension that analyzed meeting speech from transcription and delivered feedback, personalized tips, and follow-up exercises through a Slack bot.

From there, the next phase was about monitoring chat adoption, improving the exercises, and adding progress visualization.

The results came fast. In one month, we launched an MVP, reached 80 users, and saw 65% of them actively use it weekly.

The key lesson I took away was how much people appreciate a tool that fits into how they already work, not the other way around.

Launch simple. Validate demand before building anything complex.