Severin Hacker
person on 3 shows · 18 statements across 2 episodes · said 38 times in 5 episodes since 2020
How I Built This 29 
20VC 7 
No Priors 2
On the record as a speaker too: Severin Hacker across every show, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
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How I Built This 2920VC 7No Priors 2
2025 7 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
- 20Product: How Duolingo Build Product 10x Faster with AI | Duolingo's Biggest Lessons on Paywalls, Push Notifications and In-App Purchases | Why Small Teams are the Future of Product | Why PMs Will Become Extinct with Cem Kansu, CPO @ Duolingo
- No Priors Ep. 114 | With Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2023 13 mentions in 2 episodes 7 per episode
2020 18 mentions in 1 episode
every mention on every show, scene by scene, with the transcript →
18 statements about Severin Hacker, every show
Severin Hacker: AGI and UBI will replace human jobs in 20 years
“I believe that's gonna happen. Again, the big question is, is when is it gonna be? I don't think it's gonna be next five years. It's not going to be, maybe it's going to be next 10 years if you really see a broad adoption of these technologies, more likely may…”
Severin Hacker: Tech leaders fear AI because they risk losing purpose
“For a lot of people, The job is just, they do it for the income. They don't derive purpose from it. And then I think, you know, we are in, in, in this the people that derive purpose from their job who work the most, et cetera, you know, the tech people and the…”
Hacker: K-12 schools are fundamentally childcare, which AI tutors cannot replace
“In fact, you know, a lot of K-II is childcare, you know, and so even if you solve one aspect of it, like, let's say you have an AI tutor that is really, really good, you still need to solve the childcare problem.”
Hacker: AI tutors will become the primary learning method in the future
“And by the way, the other thing is like, so I do believe that the AI tutors will become really, really, really good. And it's gonna be the way most people learn most things in the future.”
Severin Hacker: AI will enable companies built with 10x fewer employees
“We're in the middle of this massive transformation. You can build companies with probably 10 times fewer employees.”
Severin Hacker: Flat organizations without hierarchy cannot scale
“There was like this belief that you can run a completely flat organization, right? No, no managers. No hierarchies, no levels. And. I think that's not really possible. At a certain scale, you need to have managers or layers, or you need to have some sort of hi…”
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: The EU AI Act is among the dumbest regulation ever written
“I can work with the EU regulation on AI, which is, I think, some of the dumbest regulation ever written. It's literally like, you know, the Ottoman Empire, they had when, you know, they invented the printing press, it's like, oh, this is not good. It's not goo…”
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 spent five years finding a business model aligned with its mission
“It's not a single day, but it's the first five years we had. We just didn't know how to, you know, find a business model that aligns with our mission. It was hard.”
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: Human-to-human interaction value will rise significantly despite AI
“No, I, that, that I don't believe, I don't, in fact, I think, no, I think the human to human interaction, the value of that will go up significantly.”
Hacker: Pre-2022 art will increase in value as verified human creation
“In, in the art world, I believe that art that was made before 20, 22 is gonna increase in value because it's verified human.”
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.”
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”
Founders' dislike of language learning helped them design for average users
“Neither of us likes learning languages. We actually are not language lovers. We don't like learning languages. And I think because of that, we made a Product that works for the average person, as opposed to for people who are obsessed with learning languages.”