Yes, I speak French, although not quite fluently. It’s enough to interact with customers and agents in a pinch, but when I go out to do serious user research, I bring someone from our team who has better language skills. The language barrier is significant, and I would say somewhat hurts our ability to design the best possible products—we’ve done a lot to overcome it though, and it’s not one of our biggest bottlenecks at this point. Now our team is big enough that I don’t even do that much user research on my own, and all the product managers I manage speak fluent or native French, so it’s easier for them :)
Before Senegal, we did a lot of our initial user research in Ethiopia, which had a greater proportion of English-speakers, and it was easier to get started there.
Yes, I speak French, although not quite fluently. It’s enough to interact with customers and agents in a pinch, but when I go out to do serious user research, I bring someone from our team who has better language skills. The language barrier is significant, and I would say somewhat hurts our ability to design the best possible products—we’ve done a lot to overcome it though, and it’s not one of our biggest bottlenecks at this point. Now our team is big enough that I don’t even do that much user research on my own, and all the product managers I manage speak fluent or native French, so it’s easier for them :)
Before Senegal, we did a lot of our initial user research in Ethiopia, which had a greater proportion of English-speakers, and it was easier to get started there.
(I’ll let Ben answer the internet-related ones)