Hacker: Silicon Valley VCs passed on Duolingo over Pittsburgh location
Severin Hacker · Duolingo Co-Founder, Severin Hacker: How AI Impacts the Future of Work and Education · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · May 19, 2025 · at 1:22:59
Severin Hacker is the co-founder and CTO of Duolingo. He discusses location bias among Silicon Valley investors during Duolingo's early fundraising.
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“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. We're super interested. We want to make a deal here and all when are you moving to SF or Bay area? And we're like, we're not moving. And then they immediately lost interest, by the way, some of them later invested in later rounds. So they, but they didn't want to be the first one in, in a non Silicon Valley company, yeah. And so Unisquare, they didn't care. They said, in fact, they said, we're the only investor that doesn't care that you're in Pittsburgh.”
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