The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 123 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 3 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Kansu: Calling a product manager a "mini CEO" is the worst definition
“Product managers are sometimes viewed as these like, I'm the mini CEO. I decide strategy and then people execute. That is like the worst definition of a product manager that I've ever heard.”
Hacker: Duolingo could not have raised any funding in Europe
“But I can guarantee you Duolingo would not have been able to raise any money in Europe.”
Stebbings: Consumer Subscription Is Not a Venture-Backable Category
“But I don't think consumer subscription as an asset class, as a subcategory or category, is a venture-backable large enough category. There might be one like Duolingo, and maybe a couple more? But that make it to venture scale returns.”
Von Ahn: Duolingo rejects Silicon Valley's 'hire fast, fire fast' philosophy
“No, I do not agree with that. We're actually doing quite the opposite. We're, Very picky at hiring. I mean, we have raised quite a bit of money. We have raised about a hundred and eight million dollars. So we would be able, we only have about a hundred employe…”
Kansu: AI conversation features outperform human tutoring by eliminating user embarrassment
“AI is way better for this, because you can stumble, you can talk shitty Spanish, you're not embarrassed. A lot of users found it embarrassing to stumble when there's a human looking at them on video.”
Hacker: Silicon Valley VCs passed on Duolingo over Pittsburgh location
“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…”
Hacker: Opening an SF satellite office creates a talent drain to local giants
“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 b…”
Hacker: AI handles 70% to 80% of Duolingo customer support tickets
“And we have found for a lot of the, you know, AI can do 70 to 80% of the tickets that we get.”
Levie: ChatGPT will not replace dedicated language tutoring apps like Duolingo
“I don't think ChatGPT itself is going to become a language tutor. I think it'll have the full capability to be a language tutor at the model level.”
Duolingo's viral TikTok strategy would not have succeeded with remote work
“I don't think so. And I say that as someone who is a homebody and loves being remote, but like, it's honestly like having even, I mean, if you have a suit, maybe, but having the suit and just the random quirkiness and the thing, like the things around our work…”
Duolingo's real competitors are TikTok and social media, not Babbel
“And I'm a firm believer, and I know our CEO said this too, that I don't think like Babbel or Rosetta Stone or other language learning places are our actual competitors. Like our real competitors are like TikTok. And other social media platforms that are like t…”
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.”
Wittenborn: Duolingo commands higher revenue multiples than comparable SaaS companies
“There's now a Duolingo that's, I would just want to stress this, in this current macro, they have a much higher multiple on their revenue run rate than comparable SaaS companies.”
Von Ahn: Duolingo negotiated down its Series E raise size
“We did not want to raise a lot of money, so in a weird situation, we actually were negotiating down on how much money we needed to raise as opposed to up.”
Kansu: Paywall buttons displaying '$0.00' significantly boost trial subscription conversion
“If you write multiple zeros, and you hint at the fact that there's a free trial with multiple zeros, conversion goes up a significant amount.”
Kansu: Two to three subscription choices is the conversion sweet spot
“If we give you more than three packages on one page, it's too much, like too much choice. You also convert way less. I think two to three is, we've seen as a sweet spot.”
Kansu: Duolingo Math and Music took double the time of AI-prototyped Chess
“Our experience with doing this is, was with math and music before. It was triple the amount of people and double the amount of time it takes to get a course out.”
Kansu: Scheduling push notifications at 23.5 hours drives highest user retention
“We schedule a notification Almost exactly at 23 and a half hours later from that time, and we've tested many different timing, and the notification will remind you to practice your Spanish, because we, you just did a Spanish lesson. We've tested many different…”
Kansu: Tasteful ad integration does not hurt consumer app retention
“Putting ads on Duolingo, if you do it tastefully, doesn't kill your retention.”
Kansu: Daily retention is the king of consumer product metrics
“Daily retention is the king of all metrics for consumer products.”
Kansu: Consumer products live and die in the pixels
“Consumer products live and die in the pixels. Meaning if you are working on a consumer product, you have to figure out how to make your change pixel perfect for the user.”
Stebbings: Duolingo built 140 courses in one year with AI
“In 10 years they made a 140 courses with humans, and in a year they made a 140 courses. So 10 years of work took them one year with AI.”
Hacker: Duolingo PM built initial chess course prototype using Cursor
“He was able to build this first version just using cursor and a bunch of AI tools. And the prototype is what convinced us that we should do this.”
Hacker: Duolingo built its chess course in a record nine months
“Because of AI, again, we were able to build this within nine months. This is fastest way ever created a new course.”
Hacker: Duolingo only fears competitors with higher user retention
“The one company I'm scared of is one that has higher retention than Duolingo.”
Hacker: Duolingo users would switch to social media over competing apps
“If you ask our users, what do you do if Duolingo went away? They never mentioned any of our language learning competitors. They say, oh, I would spend more time on social media.”
Hacker: Future learning apps will generate personalized exercises on the fly
“But really, I think the future is going to be quite different where you say like, hey, you know, you might be interested in, in rugby, and you have a trip planned to, I don't know, France. I think France also is, is big into rugby. And, you know, you could the…”
Hacker: Duolingo will not launch standalone apps for new subjects
“No, no, no. No more new apps. If it's education, it goes into the main app.”
Hacker: Duolingo's biggest early mistake was delaying monetization
“I think that the two mistakes we've made at Duolingo, they were not fatal, but obviously the two big, big ones were one, we waited too long with monetization. So we just didn't take it seriously enough early on.”
Hacker: Duolingo ran ~300 A/B experiments on its streak mechanic
“We've probably run 300 experiments fine-tuning the streak mechanic, and that's where you get the gains in retention, and that's what ultimately drives the growth of Duolingo”
Hacker: Duolingo had only one Series A offer, from Union Square Ventures
“We may have to cut this afterwards, but I think we only had one offer. It was Union Square or back to university.”
Duolingo created 148 courses in one year using AI
“It took us, I think, 12 years to build the first hundred courses or so. And now, within one year, we built another 148 courses.”
Hacker: User retention is the only metric that ultimately matters
“Ultimately, the only thing that matters in our space is retention. So if you can spend as much money as you want. If you don't have retention, it's a leaky bucket. All these people are going to leave.”
Hacker: Luis von Ahn initially resisted hiring product managers at Duolingo
“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…”
95% of Duolingo's TikTok impressions are completely organic
“Candidly, most I would say about 95% of our impressions are completely organic and they're for the cost of like maybe duo's costume and like the sushi I had for dinner while like filming and like staying late a little bit.”
Crossing creative boundaries is necessary to discover where the lines exist
“Candidly, like, I've commented on something that I probably shouldn't have before, and I got checked and balanced for that, and it was one of the biggest learning moments where, like, if I didn't cross the line, I wouldn't have known where the line was”
Duolingo ignores agency backgrounds when hiring social media talent
“When we're hiring for our teams, for example, like I don't really care about your advertising experience. I don't really care about like what agencies you worked at. I care more about if I give you like a concept, can you find a trending audio? Tell me what to…”
Duolingo's TikTok views drive app downloads rather than cross-platform followers
“We haven't seen direct correlation, if I'm being honest. I would say more of, like, a one million view thing on TikTok might, would actually have more correlation with, like, app downloads but it kind of stays within its own little realm.”
Duolingo's TikTok strategy operates like a sitcom with ongoing storylines
“I always say our TikTok is like a sitcom. Everything we put out there is an episode. Some are amazing and go super viral. Some are just there to build the storylines, but it's something that can live and function as short form video content, even if it was to …”
Duolingo's TikTok failed with an agency until an internal team took over
“When we first launched our TikTok, we hired an agency to work with us. Before I was kind of in the weeds, like I was just kind of like observing or whatever, and the content didn't hit. And it wasn't until an internal team like me took over that it started to …”
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: 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.”
Stebbings: I pass on great founders in edtech due to churn
“I have turned down companies before because there is an amazing founder, but it's in ed tech, which just hell or high water. The churn is a complete bitch and Duolingo is the leader, but it's still not a hugely valuable company”
Von Ahn: Duolingo's revenues will justify going public by 2019
“Well, we want to be a publicly traded company. I don't know when that'll happen. It's kind of very early to tell. We're gearing up towards that. I think our revenues are going to justify it in maybe, I'm hoping that in 2019 our revenues would justify a publicl…”
Von Ahn: Two-thirds of language learners study English to escape poverty
“Most of the people that are learning a foreign language, about two thirds of them, satisfy three properties. First, they're learning English. Second, the reason they're learning English is in order to get a job. And third, they are of low socioeconomic conditi…”
Von Ahn: Duolingo achieves 55% Day 1 retention, crushing typical edtech
“Of the people who sign up on Duolingo, about 55% come back the next day. That's a number that is comparable to pretty good games, and if you look at usually education companies, the numbers that you get there are, you know, 10% come back the next day, or 15% c…”