Insight
Hacker: Founders should prioritize top-tier VCs even on worse terms
“You should always try to raise money from the best tier one VCs, even if the terms are slightly worse, because so much signaling.”
Insight
Hacker: Raising $3M in venture funding is harder than raising $100M
“It's harder to raise three million than it is to raise a hundred million.”
What-if
Hacker: Duolingo could not have raised any funding in Europe
“But I can guarantee you Duolingo would not have been able to raise any money in Europe.”
Disclosure
Hacker: Duolingo had zero revenue for its first five years
“You know, we had zero dollar revenue for the first five years.”
Insight
Hacker: Technology can deliver the efficacy of 1-on-1 tutoring universally
“With technology, there's a way we believe that anyone can have access to a, the equivalent of a one-on-one tutor with the same efficacy.”
Assertion Supported
Duolingo was an launch partner for OpenAI's GPT-4 release
“We were one of the launch partners of OpenAI when they first launched GPT-IV”
Assertion Supported
Duolingo created 148 courses in one year using AI
“It took us, I think, 12 years to build the first hundred courses or so. And now, within one year, we built another 148 courses.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hacker: Future learning apps will generate personalized exercises on the fly
“But really, I think the future is going to be quite different where you say like, hey, you know, you might be interested in, in rugby, and you have a trip planned to, I don't know, France. I think France also is, is big into rugby. And, you know, you could the…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hacker: The future of educational content will be 100% multimodal
“I think it's going to be multimodal. A hundred percent.”
Disclosure
Hacker: Content generation has been Duolingo's biggest AI win
“We use AI in three ways at Duolingo. Number one is content generation, and that's where we've seen, you know, the biggest success. It's just completely changed it, like how we produce content.”
Disclosure
Duolingo pays for any employee AI productivity tool without mandates
“We don't mandate. Duolingo is surprisingly egalitarian and bottom up, and we just say, use AI tool or use whatever makes you more productive, and we pay for it.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Severin Hacker: AI hallucinations are not a problem for Duolingo
“Not a problem if they hallucinate, because we teach languages. As long as the language is correct, grammatically correct, it is okay, you know, if it makes up a historical fact. It's, we don't teach history. It's like, hallucinations are not a problem for our …”
Opinion
Hacker: Silicon Valley overhypes rapid AI replacement of software engineers
“I think there's a lot of Silicon Valley hyperbole around software engineering getting replaced very quickly. I'm less sure about that.”
Insight
Hacker: AI coding tools perform poorly on large codebases and create unfixable tech debt
“On the software engineering side, I think what they're really good at is going from zero to 80% for a simple app. You know, it's like, it's the replet, the lovable, and then the larger the code base, even the one that generates itself, the larger the code base…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hacker: Lower software production costs will lead to more app creation
“And then the other thing it does, it just lowers the cost of lines of code, of software, right? So production, producing software. And then there's the Jervin's paradox, which says, you know, if you, the cost of a good goes down, you will actually have more de…”
Assertion Supported
Product, Engineering, and Design Account for 70%-80% of Duolingo's Workforce
“Inside Duolingo, we have the three biggest functions within Duolingo are product, Engineering and design. Okay. Those compose probably about. 80%, 70 to 80% of our workforce.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hacker: AI will cause product, engineering, and design roles to converge
“But with AI, you can see that there's maybe like a new role, kind of a product engineer designer, like one person who can do all of these roles to certain, you know, degree, like they can build a prototype and then maybe at some point they need to hand it off …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hacker: Computer science degrees will remain a good investment for five years
“I would say for the next five years, probably still like a Good investment.”
Prediction Open · timeframe May 2045
Severin Hacker: AGI and UBI will replace human jobs in 20 years
“I believe that's gonna happen. Again, the big question is, is when is it gonna be? I don't think it's gonna be next five years. It's not going to be, maybe it's going to be next 10 years if you really see a broad adoption of these technologies, more likely may…”
Insight
Severin Hacker: Tech leaders fear AI because they risk losing purpose
“For a lot of people, The job is just, they do it for the income. They don't derive purpose from it. And then I think, you know, we are in, in, in this the people that derive purpose from their job who work the most, et cetera, you know, the tech people and the…”
Disclosure
Hacker: Duolingo continues hiring software engineers directly from universities
“And we're actually not doing that at Duolingo. We still hire from universities.”
What-if
Hacker: Duolingo's viral social media presence required hiring Gen Z talent
“Dueling wouldn't be where it is today in terms of you know, our social media presence if we never hired from Gen Z.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hacker: AI handles 70% to 80% of Duolingo customer support tickets
“And we have found for a lot of the, you know, AI can do 70 to 80% of the tickets that we get.”
Disclosure
Duolingo uses Decagon for AI customer support
“We use Tekagon.”
Disclosure
Duolingo restricts AI features to top subscription tier over unit costs
“Right now, vertical ability is, is in our, so we have three tiers. We have you know, the free tier, there's super, and there's max, and it's mostly in our max, the higher tier subscription because of that reason, right? So, so we would like to give this to eve…”
Disclosure
Duolingo uses ElevenLabs for AI voice generation
“For our voices, we also work with 11 labs and they're just amazing models, amazing voices.”
Opinion
Hacker: Many edtech companies are 'homework cheating' businesses hit by ChatGPT
“When ChatGPT came out, one of the first killer use cases for it was homework cheating, for the lack of a better term, okay? So if you were in the homework cheating business, That was devastating. That was really bad. So, so some of our, I'm not going to name t…”
Insight
Hacker: Maintaining user motivation is the hardest part of language learning
“So it's the actual motivation. And, you know, by the way, this is one of the key insights of Duolingo. It's like, and we've been sharing this with the entire world for the last 10 years, and still nobody seems to believe us. And so the hardest part is motivati…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hacker: Duolingo users would switch to social media over competing apps
“If you ask our users, what do you do if Duolingo went away? They never mentioned any of our language learning competitors. They say, oh, I would spend more time on social media.”
Opinion
Hacker: OpenAI should target search and social media over language learning
“If I was Sam Altman, you know I would go after the big trillion dollar companies. Like, why go, go into, you know, language learning when you can go into search or social media?”
Prediction Open · timeframe May 2028
Hacker: Duolingo will not launch standalone apps for new subjects
“No, no, no. No more new apps. If it's education, it goes into the main app.”
Assertion Supported
Hacker: Duolingo PM built initial chess course prototype using Cursor
“He was able to build this first version just using cursor and a bunch of AI tools. And the prototype is what convinced us that we should do this.”
What-if
Hacker: Duolingo would have rejected chess course without working AI prototype
“If it had just been a Figma design, we probably was like, ah, you know, ah, maybe, maybe not. But the prototype was. So good that it convinced everyone.”
Assertion Supported
Hacker: Duolingo built its chess course in a record nine months
“Because of AI, again, we were able to build this within nine months. This is fastest way ever created a new course.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hacker: Duolingo aims for its score to become standard language proficiency metric
“One thing we're also very passionate about is, is the Duolingo score. I'm not sure if you notice it within Duolingo, but we now give you a score, like how good you are at this language. And we want this to become the way people talk about language proficiency.…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hacker: Duolingo sees massive engagement drops whenever push notification services fail
“Still makes a huge difference, and we know because whenever the service goes down that sends the push notifications, you can see the dip. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. It's huge. It's massive.”
Insight
Hacker: K-12 schools are fundamentally childcare, which AI tutors cannot replace
“In fact, you know, a lot of K-II is childcare, you know, and so even if you solve one aspect of it, like, let's say you have an AI tutor that is really, really good, you still need to solve the childcare problem.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hacker: AI tutors will become the primary learning method in the future
“And by the way, the other thing is like, so I do believe that the AI tutors will become really, really, really good. And it's gonna be the way most people learn most things in the future.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hacker: AI will never motivate students on why learning matters
“It's like an AI will never tell you like why you should learn this. It's like the help you learn it, but it's not going to tell you know, why should I learn this? Why is this important?”
Insight
Hacker: Duolingo's streak feature relies on loss aversion mechanics
“The streak is exactly this loss aversion mechanic, right? So it's like, it's motivating to build up your streak, but it's like, I absolutely do not want to lose my streak, right?”
Assertion Open
Hacker: Duolingo proactively restored user streaks during Iberian power outages
“By the way, also when there's, you know, there was a power outage in, in Portugal and Spain, we proactively extended their streak, so, so they don't lose it.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hacker: CEO Luis von Ahn still attends most Duolingo product reviews
“He still does. So that's a founder mode for him. It's like he's still in most of the product reviews. And I think that's rare for a company CEO of a company like our size, where the CEO sits in most of the product reviews.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hacker: Luis von Ahn initially resisted hiring product managers at Duolingo
“I was the one who pushed for hiring our first product manager. It was actually interesting because Luis at the time, he's like, oh, we don't need product managers. He's, he had seen some of them at Google. His previous company was acquired by Google. So he had…”
Assertion Supported
Hacker: Duolingo was once bigger on TikTok than Nike
“I think at some point we were bigger on TikTok than Nike.”
Disclosure
Hacker: Duolingo's marketing team consists of approximately 40 people
“And I have, I think, 40 or so, 40 people or so.”
Disclosure
Hacker: Duolingo operated with a zero-dollar marketing budget during early growth
“For a very long time, we had no marketing budget. So we didn't advertise Nothing like zero dollar marketing budget because we're also not profitable. We also didn't have any revenue.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Severin Hacker: AI will enable companies built with 10x fewer employees
“We're in the middle of this massive transformation. You can build companies with probably 10 times fewer employees.”
Insight
Severin Hacker: Flat organizations without hierarchy cannot scale
“There was like this belief that you can run a completely flat organization, right? No, no managers. No hierarchies, no levels. And. I think that's not really possible. At a certain scale, you need to have managers or layers, or you need to have some sort of hi…”
Disclosure
Hacker: 80% of CTO focus at Duolingo is AI, remainder on M&A
“I'm now a little bit out of the weeds, and I'm thinking more, right now, actually, I'm only focused on two things. One is like, this question is with AI, like, what's gonna happen? Like, what does the future look like in, you know, in our space? What is the im…”
Insight
Hacker: Prior working relationships are the top factor in M&A success
“And with M&A, it's the same thing. I actually think it's, do you have prior experience working with this company? Yes or no? So I would say that's the number one advice is like, Have you worked with them before?”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hacker: Language learning startups predictably grow fast and then fail
“Every single year there was one or two companies that grow really fast in, in language learning, one or two, and inevitably they go down again.”
Insight
Hacker: User retention is the only metric that ultimately matters
“Ultimately, the only thing that matters in our space is retention. So if you can spend as much money as you want. If you don't have retention, it's a leaky bucket. All these people are going to leave.”
Opinion
Hacker: Duolingo only fears competitors with higher user retention
“The one company I'm scared of is one that has higher retention than Duolingo.”
Insight
Hacker: European AI founders should 100% move to Silicon Valley
“If a young founder, European founder came to me, it's like, Hey, I have this brilliant idea of how to use AI or like a new model or something like that. What should I do? It's like a hundred percent. Go to Silicon Valley. A hundred percent. You absolutely maxi…”
Opinion
Hacker: European skepticism toward founder ambition harms its tech ecosystem
“I think a lot in, a lot of people in, in Europe, you just like, you're kind of like, why are you doing this? Like, why, why, you know, like, or they look at it as like, oh yeah, you know, they're just doing it for the money or there's this suspicion. Almost of…”
Disclosure
Hacker: Duolingo has no offices in Silicon Valley or California
“Duolingo does not have an office in Silicon Valley or anywhere in California”
Insight
Hacker: Opening an SF satellite office creates a talent drain to local giants
“It creates this internal funnel of your best employees moving from your HQ to Silicon Valley. Which by itself is not a problem. The problem is then they get recruited away by the whatever the hot Silicon Valley company is at the time. You know, like it could b…”
Disclosure
Hacker: I angel invested in Pittsburgh due to zero local competition
“I started angel investing with a very similar thesis in Pittsburgh because there's no one other than me and Luis.”
What-if
Hacker: Strict US immigration rules would benefit European tech
“In a way, the best thing that could happen to Europe is if the U.S. Made it really hard to immigrate for founders. You know, if they made it really hard, if they restricted immigration such that you know, people like me couldn't, couldn't move there anymore, t…”
Opinion
Hacker: The EU AI Act is among the dumbest regulation ever written
“I can work with the EU regulation on AI, which is, I think, some of the dumbest regulation ever written. It's literally like, you know, the Ottoman Empire, they had when, you know, they invented the printing press, it's like, oh, this is not good. It's not goo…”
Disclosure
Hacker: Duolingo's biggest early mistake was delaying monetization
“I think that the two mistakes we've made at Duolingo, they were not fatal, but obviously the two big, big ones were one, we waited too long with monetization. So we just didn't take it seriously enough early on.”
Disclosure
Hacker: Duolingo waited too long to hire senior managers
“Number two is what we also waited for too long hiring more senior managers. So we just, for, you know, up, up until 30 employees or so, it was completely flat. It was a lot of people from new grad. It was pretty chaotic.”
Disclosure
Hacker: Duolingo bypassed seed rounds using NSF university grants
“We never raised seed or pre-seed. This was because we had these NSF grants. So we built this project inside the university. So Series A was our first round.”
Disclosure
Hacker: Duolingo had only one Series A offer, from Union Square Ventures
“We may have to cut this afterwards, but I think we only had one offer. It was Union Square or back to university.”
Disclosure
Hacker: Silicon Valley VCs passed on Duolingo over Pittsburgh location
“We actually did get a lot of interest from Silicon Valley VCs at a time, but they all made it a requirement To move to Silicon Valley. So we're like, you've got to move here, right? Like, when are you going to move here? That was the, always the question. Okay…”
Assertion Supported
Hacker: Duolingo has never conducted employee layoffs
“By the way, we also never had a layoff.”
Disclosure
Hacker: Duolingo took standard dilution deals and turned down higher valuations
“We never did the third type. We always got pretty much a standard deal. I think the last couple were more competitive. And, you know, by the way, we could have raised a lot more at higher valuations, but we didn't do it for the reasons mentioned before.”
Opinion
Hacker: Bing Gordon is a rare product-obsessed VC
“Bing is actually great. You know, Bing is, is, is a rare type of investor because he is very product minded. You know, he uses the product and he gives us a lot of feedback on the product. He's obsessed with product. Most investors are more, you know, they're …”
Insight
Hacker: Non-CEO founders typically leave startups within 4 to 5 years
“Most founders that are not CEOs, they leave after four or five years, you know, once they're fully invested, or at least when they, you know, when they get acquired or IPO.”
Assertion Supported
Hacker: Duolingo finance team grew from 2 to 25 post-IPO
“Before we went public, our finance team, for example, was two people. Now it's, I think, 25 or so.”
Insight
Hacker: Public markets value predictability over profit margins and growth
“The financial markets, they really care about predictability. So in fact, I feel like they care even more about that than they care about the actual. You know, profit margins or growth or whatever.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hacker: Duolingo spent five years finding a business model aligned with its mission
“It's not a single day, but it's the first five years we had. We just didn't know how to, you know, find a business model that aligns with our mission. It was hard.”
Insight
Hacker: Founders have much faster feedback loops than angel investors
“You know, I think that there's things that are, there's overlapping, there's an overlap between being a good founder and a good investor, but ultimately they're different things. And first of all, the, you know, the investment cycle is 10 years, right? So, so …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hacker: Duolingo ran ~300 A/B experiments on its streak mechanic
“We've probably run 300 experiments fine-tuning the streak mechanic, and that's where you get the gains in retention, and that's what ultimately drives the growth of Duolingo”
Insight
Hacker: Product growth comes from continuous process, not single features
“That's the secret sauce. It's the process. It's not a single feature.”
Insight
Hacker: Companies need big feature changes to avoid local maxima traps
“The trap you can run into is you only run tiny experiments, right? Like on, on your purchase page or you run these tiny experiments on, on copy or something. And I think it's very important that you have your portfolio of changes. So you have lots of low risk,…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hacker: Human-to-human interaction value will rise significantly despite AI
“No, I, that, that I don't believe, I don't, in fact, I think, no, I think the human to human interaction, the value of that will go up significantly.”
Prediction Open · timeframe May 2030
Hacker: Pre-2022 art will increase in value as verified human creation
“In, in the art world, I believe that art that was made before 20, 22 is gonna increase in value because it's verified human.”
Insight
Hacker: Half of founders fall into depression after leaving their companies
“And I have talked to many founders who left their company, and there's like, I'd say half of them fall into a depression because their identity is the company.”
Insight
Hacker: Purpose-driven founders build more successful companies than money-focused ones
“I think that the counterintuitively, the founders that start with a purpose and a mission and are not focused too much on money end up usually doing better”
Disclosure
Hacker: Duolingo founders signed a brief written contract outlining roles and decisions
“So, you know, we, I wrote down a little contract between the two of us. I still have a copy at home. Where we outline exactly like, you know, this is how we're going to make decisions. It's like this short. This is how we're going to make decisions. This is, y…”
Disclosure
Hacker: Duolingo founders only meet one-on-one biweekly, sometimes for just 10 minutes
“I only meet with Luis every other week for, and sometimes the meeting is last 10 minutes”