Gina Gotthilf was Head of Growth at Duolingo. She explains why the Duolingo growth team looked at mobile game mechanics for user retention rather than other education apps.
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Insight
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 …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Disclosure
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…”
Opinion
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…”
Disclosure
Gotthilf: Latitud grew by giving accepted founders pre-written humble-brag copy
“With latitude, one of our biggest growth levers was when we started admitting startup founders, so we work with early stage startup founders in Latin America and we started admitting them, we created this token that said like, You know, I am, I was selected to…”