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 20 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
Hacker: Duolingo was once bigger on TikTok than Nike
“I think at some point we were bigger on TikTok than Nike.”
Malik: Duolingo achieves a world-class 50% 12-month user retention rate
“Yeah, that's 12 month retention at 50%. World-class. And the engine they have built is incredible.”
Von Ahn: Duolingo was close to breakeven during Series E
“Yeah, we negotiated that down. It's because we didn't think we needed more money. I mean, Break even very soon.”
Hacker: Duolingo finance team grew from 2 to 25 post-IPO
“Before we went public, our finance team, for example, was two people. Now it's, I think, 25 or so.”
Duolingo was an launch partner for OpenAI's GPT-4 release
“We were one of the launch partners of OpenAI when they first launched GPT-IV”
Product, Engineering, and Design Account for 70%-80% of Duolingo's Workforce
“Inside Duolingo, we have the three biggest functions within Duolingo are product, Engineering and design. Okay. Those compose probably about. 80%, 70 to 80% of our workforce.”
Von Ahn: One-on-one tutoring outperforms 98% of standard classroom students
“I mean, there's a lot of studies in educational psychology that show, you know, the most famous one is something called the Bloom's Two Sigma study. It shows the following. It compares a student In a standard classroom, let's say with 30 other students or 20 o…”
Von Ahn: Duolingo raised $108M while keeping headcount to just 100 employees
“We have raised about a hundred and eight million dollars. So we would be able, we only have about a hundred employees.”
Malik: Early adoption of unique channels drove growth for Dropbox and Pinterest
“Dropbox, Dropbox, like with the referral program, Groupon and email, Pinterest and SEO, Duolingo, and just like a totally unhinged social media, right? All of them were kind of first to this concept and it really, really worked.”
Duolingo's social media team aims to hire a standup comedian
“I actually, my dream is to hire a standup comedian for my team.”