HejHugo started with two people who couldn't stop talking about languages.

We're LJ and Kat, partners who've spent the last few months travelling together across Europe and Southeast Asia, with a brief stop back home in Canada. Between us we've got Canadian, Croatian, and South African roots, so being surrounded by new languages has always felt normal, not intimidating. It's actually where we're happiest.

When we first met online, we'd send each other voice messages on WhatsApp, teaching one another little bits of our own languages back and forth. It worked, but it was slow, and it wasn't going anywhere on its own.

Kat teaches at an English immersion school. Her students light up the moment they start speaking, but the progress would always stall the same way. They'd go home with a worksheet, and without anyone to actually talk to, that's all it stayed. A worksheet.

She saw the same gap in her own learning. Taking Czech lessons in person, she'd have a full hour of real conversation, and then nothing until the next class. The talking stopped the moment the lesson did.

We talked about that gap for months on the road, between one language and the next. LJ, with a background in digital marketing and building things online, finally said: let's just build the thing you wish existed.

So we did. HejHugo is built on one simple idea: a tutor's voice, recorded once, so students can keep talking long after the lesson ends. Because the real goal was never just homework. It's helping people actually become confident speakers.

(And yes, "Hej" is Kat's Croatian side saying hello.)