Gotthilf: Tumblr failed to pay her for six months over wire issues
Gina Gotthilf · Gina Gotthilf: Lessons Scaling Duolingo from 3-200M Users; How to Master PR and Comms | E1028 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jun 21, 2023 · at 7:20
Gina Gotthilf, Co-Founder and COO of Latitud, discusses operational chaos during Tumblr's early growth stage while she was managing expansion in Brazil.
0:00 / 0:10exact quote · 10.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I wasn't paid at Tumblr for six months, because they couldn't figure that out, and I was like, I was living with my parents, like in my childhood bedroom at the time when I was 25, and like working out of like my childhood bed, literally.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Gina Gotthilf
Gotthilf: PR was the primary growth lever for Tumblr LatAm and Duolingo
“And it honestly was the most important lever that helped Tumblr grow in Latin America and that helped Duolingo grow.”
Gotthilf: Statistically significant failed experiments reveal high-leverage user moments
“If you run an experiment with statistical significance and it harmed your product, that means that you found a moment that really matters to users. And if you found a moment that really matters to users, you can manipulate it in multiple ways for positive and …”
Gotthilf: Educational apps inherently struggle with user retention compared to games
“Games get retention, right? And education apps do not get retention, right?”
Gotthilf: Badges became Duolingo's single most effective growth experiment
“It ended up being the most effective thing that we did and collected collection of experiments where we were, we could impact not just growth numbers, but every single metric across the company, like monetization, et cetera.”
Gotthilf: Duolingo's government partnership in Colombia failed to generate real user adoption
“I worked with the Colombian government, the Mintic, which is the ministry of technology there to get Duolingo into public schools. You would think, wow, Gina, that's amazing. You got Duolingo into public schools. You've got the whole population. No, it actuall…”
Gotthilf: Most non-top journalists copy-paste press releases due to workload pressure
“I would say that most journalists, not at the top publications, but you would be surprised with most journalists. Tend to be fairly lazy. And I don't fault journalists. They have way too many things to do. They're trying to click, you know, get clicks. They ar…”