Leading AI Transformation at Lingoda
As CPO of a Series C EdTech company, I turned an abstract product vision into a unified AI strategy that became the board-level blueprint — across both consumer and enterprise.
The situation
Lingoda is a global online language learning platform built around live classes with real teachers. When I joined, the company was at an inflection point: the consumer business was shifting from growth-at-all-costs to profitable growth, the enterprise segment was scaling fast but running on manual operations, and AI was fundamentally reshaping the competitive landscape.
There was a product vision on paper, but it wasn't translating into action. Teams kept saying they didn't know what the strategy meant for their work. Consumer and enterprise operated as separate worlds with no shared direction. Features were being built without a clear sense of how they connected.
I was brought in to define a clear path forward and drive the organisation through it.
Three problems at once
Strategic clarity
The existing vision was too abstract for teams to execute against. Squads were building in isolation, without understanding how their work fit into a larger whole. There was no unifying story that connected consumer and enterprise.
A moat under threat
The company had invested years in high-quality learning content — one of its strongest differentiators. But AI was making it possible for new entrants to generate comparable content overnight. The old advantage was eroding.
Growth through product, not spend
Marketing budgets were being deliberately cut. The product needed to become the primary lever for conversion, retention, and lifetime value.
How I approached it
Deep listening before connecting dots
I spent the first months immersed in user research, feedback analysis, and conversations across every function. Not to validate a hypothesis — I didn't have one yet — but to understand the real pain points deeply enough that the strategy would emerge from them.
Students were frustrated that their progress felt invisible. Teacher feedback was inconsistent and subjective. Enterprise clients kept asking the same question: “How do I know my learners are actually improving?” The classroom team was rebuilding infrastructure without understanding why it mattered strategically.
These weren't separate problems. They were symptoms of a learning experience that was fragmented — what happened in one context didn't connect to any other.
Built a unified product strategy around AI
Over 18 months, I developed a strategy that reframed how the company thought about its learning experience. Instead of building disconnected features — a classroom here, a practice tool there — the strategy connected every learning touchpoint into a coherent system where AI powers feedback, personalisation, and progress tracking across the entire learner journey.
Critically, this unified consumer and enterprise for the first time. Both sides shared the same fundamental need: making learning outcomes visible and measurable. One strategic framework served both.
Turned a competitive threat into an advantage
On a parallel track, I led the company's response to AI commoditising educational content. Rather than defending the old approach, we embraced it: we built an AI-powered content production pipeline with human experts in the loop at every stage. This dramatically reduced the time and cost to create new courses — turning a defensive problem into the ability to enter new markets faster than competitors.
The outcome
Board-level alignment. When I presented the strategy to the board, it was the first time they could see how every product initiative connected into a coherent vision with clear defensibility. It became the company's strategic blueprint — applicable across both business lines.
3×
increase in learner engagement with AI-powered practice features
60%
enterprise segment growth YoY without proportional headcount increase
Months
for new language launched to reach meaningful revenue share
Significant
improvement in early retention and churn reduction
Lasting direction. The strategy continues to guide the company after my departure — consistent with a pattern in my career where the strategies I build outlast my tenure.
What this story shows
This wasn't about arriving with a framework and applying it. It was about spending enough time with the real problems — user pain, competitive threats, strategic confusion — that the connections became visible. And then having the conviction to define a clear direction and the ability to drive it through to execution.
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