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.
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Hacker: Duolingo's viral social media presence required hiring Gen Z talent
“Dueling wouldn't be where it is today in terms of you know, our social media presence if we never hired from Gen Z.”
Duolingo restricts AI features to top subscription tier over unit costs
“Right now, vertical ability is, is in our, so we have three tiers. We have you know, the free tier, there's super, and there's max, and it's mostly in our max, the higher tier subscription because of that reason, right? So, so we would like to give this to eve…”
Hacker: Maintaining user motivation is the hardest part of language learning
“So it's the actual motivation. And, you know, by the way, this is one of the key insights of Duolingo. It's like, and we've been sharing this with the entire world for the last 10 years, and still nobody seems to believe us. And so the hardest part is motivati…”
Hacker: Duolingo would have rejected chess course without working AI prototype
“If it had just been a Figma design, we probably was like, ah, you know, ah, maybe, maybe not. But the prototype was. So good that it convinced everyone.”
Hacker: Duolingo aims for its score to become standard language proficiency metric
“One thing we're also very passionate about is, is the Duolingo score. I'm not sure if you notice it within Duolingo, but we now give you a score, like how good you are at this language. And we want this to become the way people talk about language proficiency.…”
Hacker: CEO Luis von Ahn still attends most Duolingo product reviews
“He still does. So that's a founder mode for him. It's like he's still in most of the product reviews. And I think that's rare for a company CEO of a company like our size, where the CEO sits in most of the product reviews.”
Hacker: Duolingo was once bigger on TikTok than Nike
“I think at some point we were bigger on TikTok than Nike.”
Hacker: 80% of CTO focus at Duolingo is AI, remainder on M&A
“I'm now a little bit out of the weeds, and I'm thinking more, right now, actually, I'm only focused on two things. One is like, this question is with AI, like, what's gonna happen? Like, what does the future look like in, you know, in our space? What is the im…”
Hacker: Prior working relationships are the top factor in M&A success
“And with M&A, it's the same thing. I actually think it's, do you have prior experience working with this company? Yes or no? So I would say that's the number one advice is like, Have you worked with them before?”
Hacker: Language learning startups predictably grow fast and then fail
“Every single year there was one or two companies that grow really fast in, in language learning, one or two, and inevitably they go down again.”
Hacker: I angel invested in Pittsburgh due to zero local competition
“I started angel investing with a very similar thesis in Pittsburgh because there's no one other than me and Luis.”
Hacker: Duolingo bypassed seed rounds using NSF university grants
“We never raised seed or pre-seed. This was because we had these NSF grants. So we built this project inside the university. So Series A was our first round.”
Hacker: Duolingo took standard dilution deals and turned down higher valuations
“We never did the third type. We always got pretty much a standard deal. I think the last couple were more competitive. And, you know, by the way, we could have raised a lot more at higher valuations, but we didn't do it for the reasons mentioned before.”
Hacker: Bing Gordon is a rare product-obsessed VC
“Bing is actually great. You know, Bing is, is, is a rare type of investor because he is very product minded. You know, he uses the product and he gives us a lot of feedback on the product. He's obsessed with product. Most investors are more, you know, they're …”
Hacker: Non-CEO founders typically leave startups within 4 to 5 years
“Most founders that are not CEOs, they leave after four or five years, you know, once they're fully invested, or at least when they, you know, when they get acquired or IPO.”
Hacker: Founders have much faster feedback loops than angel investors
“You know, I think that there's things that are, there's overlapping, there's an overlap between being a good founder and a good investor, but ultimately they're different things. And first of all, the, you know, the investment cycle is 10 years, right? So, so …”
Hacker: Product growth comes from continuous process, not single features
“That's the secret sauce. It's the process. It's not a single feature.”
Hacker: Companies need big feature changes to avoid local maxima traps
“The trap you can run into is you only run tiny experiments, right? Like on, on your purchase page or you run these tiny experiments on, on copy or something. And I think it's very important that you have your portfolio of changes. So you have lots of low risk,…”
Hacker: Half of founders fall into depression after leaving their companies
“And I have talked to many founders who left their company, and there's like, I'd say half of them fall into a depression because their identity is the company.”
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.”
Duolingo uses ElevenLabs for AI voice generation
“For our voices, we also work with 11 labs and they're just amazing models, amazing voices.”
Hacker: Duolingo sees massive engagement drops whenever push notification services fail
“Still makes a huge difference, and we know because whenever the service goes down that sends the push notifications, you can see the dip. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. It's huge. It's massive.”
Hacker: Duolingo's streak feature relies on loss aversion mechanics
“The streak is exactly this loss aversion mechanic, right? So it's like, it's motivating to build up your streak, but it's like, I absolutely do not want to lose my streak, right?”
Hacker: Duolingo proactively restored user streaks during Iberian power outages
“By the way, also when there's, you know, there was a power outage in, in Portugal and Spain, we proactively extended their streak, so, so they don't lose it.”
Hacker: Duolingo's marketing team consists of approximately 40 people
“And I have, I think, 40 or so, 40 people or so.”
Hacker: Duolingo operated with a zero-dollar marketing budget during early growth
“For a very long time, we had no marketing budget. So we didn't advertise Nothing like zero dollar marketing budget because we're also not profitable. We also didn't have any revenue.”
Hacker: Duolingo waited too long to hire senior managers
“Number two is what we also waited for too long hiring more senior managers. So we just, for, you know, up, up until 30 employees or so, it was completely flat. It was a lot of people from new grad. It was pretty chaotic.”
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.”
Hacker: Duolingo founders signed a brief written contract outlining roles and decisions
“So, you know, we, I wrote down a little contract between the two of us. I still have a copy at home. Where we outline exactly like, you know, this is how we're going to make decisions. It's like this short. This is how we're going to make decisions. This is, y…”
Hacker: Duolingo founders only meet one-on-one biweekly, sometimes for just 10 minutes
“I only meet with Luis every other week for, and sometimes the meeting is last 10 minutes”