Hacker: Opening an SF satellite office creates a talent drain to local giants
Severin Hacker · Duolingo Co-Founder, Severin Hacker: How AI Impacts the Future of Work and Education · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · May 19, 2025 · at 1:11:24
Severin Hacker is the co-founder and CTO of Pittsburgh-headquartered Duolingo. He explains why opening a San Francisco satellite office backfires for tech startups headquartered elsewhere.
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“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 be Airbnb or Uber at the time. Maybe now it's OpenAI or Anthropic. And you basically create a hiring funnel for Silicon Valley and you lose your talent.”
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