Growing up in Japan, Yutaro Nishiyama (Kellogg ’25) prided himself on his English proficiency: He even placed 16th in the country on a national mock English exam during high school. However, upon arriving in the U.S. to attend the Kellogg School of Management, he realized his spoken English skills were nowhere near where he thought they were.
“Having a simple conversation with my friends still agonized me and my confidence crumbled,” Nishiyama said.
That frustration led him to create InstaEnglish, an app designed to help others build real conversational fluency.
Nishiyama said that in many Asian countries, English education focuses almost entirely on reading, with little emphasis on speaking. He recalled spending less than an hour actually speaking English throughout all of high school.
Wanting to find a more effective, research-based approach to language learning, he began working with linguists at Northwestern.
“The first step is conceptualization, where you conceptualize what you want to express, and that does not depend on your language knowledge. It is more like a picture in your brain. The second step is (to) formulate. So, (you) formulate a sentence following the rules of language and grammar vocabulary. The final step is articulation. You articulate that sentence with proper pronunciation and tone,” Nishiyama explained.
InstaEnglish combines these steps to help Korean and Japanese speakers improve their conversational fluency in English. A Thai version, spearheaded by second-year Kellogg student Angie Opastirakul, is set to launch within the next two to three months.
“InstaEnglish started out with (the) Japanese language because Yaturo is from Japan, and he also expanded into Korean,” Opastirakul said. “Given where I came from, my idea would be to help him localize the app even more in the Thai language.”
During his first year at Kellogg, Nishiyama applied to VentureCat, a startup competition hosted by The Garage, NU’s hub for student entrepreneurship. The program provides funding, mentorship and exposure to pitching, helping students turn ideas into real companies.
Nishiyama’s initial application to VentureCat was rejected. But he reapplied and secured a spot in the 2025 competition, where he pitched his language learning app.
Nishiyama’s app was judged in the Consumer Products and Services category and considered for the Final Grand Prize. Competing in VentureCat gave Nishiyama an opportunity to refine his pitch for InstaEnglish and connect with investors and mentors.
“The process was pretty intense,” he said. “VentureCat is composed of four or five categories, and the category that I participated in was consumer segment, and consumer segment is, I believe, the most competitive.”
In May, Nishiyama won first place in the Consumer and Service category and earned second place in the Final Grand Prize category, winning a total of $50,000.
Entrepreneur Melanie Kahn (Medill ’99) served as a judge in the 2025 VentureCat competition. Kahn praised the team behind InstaEnglish and their cohesion during the VentureCat event.
“It seemed like (InstaEnglish) had already very good traction in Asia with their product and looked like they had a strong roadmap to be able to grow the business beyond Asia,” Kahn said.
As InstaEnglish expands, Nishiyama said he plans to remain focused on what inspired him in the first place: helping people connect through conversation.
“(Yaturo) was solving a problem that he specifically encountered by creating his learning program in a way that better fit how people process language and learn language,” Kahn said.
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