Hacker: Luis von Ahn initially resisted hiring product managers at Duolingo
Severin Hacker · Duolingo Co-Founder, Severin Hacker: How AI Impacts the Future of Work and Education · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · May 19, 2025 · at 53:47
Severin Hacker, co-founder and CTO of Duolingo, recounts early internal debates with co-founder Luis von Ahn over whether the company needed to hire its first product manager.
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“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 seen some of them at Google and he had worked with some of them and was like, hey, you know, I don't think they provide that much value and we don't need this, you know, I can do this myself.”
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