Venezuelan Andres Moreno founded Open English, an online English language school targeted toward Latin Americans with classes running 24/7, back in 2008. Now, the school is worth an estimated $350 million and has 100,000 students.

Open English has 5,000 students in the United States and recently opened a headquarters in Miami, Wall Street Journal reported. The school is taught by native English speakers.

Moreno, 31, abandoned college and a potential engineering degree in order to open the school. The Venezuelan had lived in eight different countries as a child, including the United States.

"We wanted to create something that was monthly and cheap and allowed you to get started," Moreno, Open English co-founder and chief executive, told WSJ at the offices of Technology Crossover Ventures, a venture-capital firm that invests in the school. "That has been the niche Open English has filled."

The school has succeeded by targeting middle class members of Latin America. About half of Latin Americans, or about 300 million people, use the Internet. According to WSJ, comScore Inc., a market research firm, reported a 17 percent growth in the number of Latin American Internet users from April 2013 until April of this year, a growth five times faster than that of Europe,

"The demographics are there," said Cate Ambrose, president of the Latin American Private Equity & Venture Capital Association. "You have a growing middle class and a young demographic with a climbing increase in the consumption of technology."

Open English costs about $80 per month, features live lectures and small group classes.

"[Open English isn't] trying to create an app to teach people a few words because there are companies in the U.S. that do that very well and others that teach 30 different languages," Moreno said.

Launching and sustaining the school was a struggle. At one point, Moreno was down to just $700 and left Venezuela for Silicon Valley to find investors while sleeping on a friend's couch outside. He eventually raised $2 million, and his company now has about 2,000 employees.

"The on-demand nature of it, the ability to get live instruction, is pretty critical," Jeff Lieberman, managing director at Insight Venture Partners, which invested in Open English, said. "Obviously, Internet access is a requirement, and in Latin America Internet access and infrastructure is rapidly increasing."
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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.

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