Severin Hacker
Co-founder and CTO, Duolingo. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutivescientistinvestor@severinhacker ↗severinhacker.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Hacker co-founded Duolingo alongside Luis von Ahn while earning his Ph.D. in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. He leads the company's engineering and technology strategy, scaling the gamified platform into the world's most widely used language-learning app.
1shows
1appearances
82statements
8resolved
8supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
7said about them ↓ Everything Severin Hacker said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
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.”
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…”
Hacker: Many edtech companies are 'homework cheating' businesses hit by ChatGPT
“When ChatGPT came out, one of the first killer use cases for it was homework cheating, for the lack of a better term, okay? So if you were in the homework cheating business, That was devastating. That was really bad. So, so some of our, I'm not going to name t…”
Hacker: European AI founders should 100% move to Silicon Valley
“If a young founder, European founder came to me, it's like, Hey, I have this brilliant idea of how to use AI or like a new model or something like that. What should I do? It's like a hundred percent. Go to Silicon Valley. A hundred percent. You absolutely maxi…”
Hacker: European skepticism toward founder ambition harms its tech ecosystem
“I think a lot in, a lot of people in, in Europe, you just like, you're kind of like, why are you doing this? Like, why, why, you know, like, or they look at it as like, oh yeah, you know, they're just doing it for the money or there's this suspicion. Almost of…”
Hacker: Strict US immigration rules would benefit European tech
“In a way, the best thing that could happen to Europe is if the U.S. Made it really hard to immigrate for founders. You know, if they made it really hard, if they restricted immigration such that you know, people like me couldn't, couldn't move there anymore, t…”
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: Raising $3M in venture funding is harder than raising $100M
“It's harder to raise three million than it is to raise a hundred million.”
Hacker: Silicon Valley overhypes rapid AI replacement of software engineers
“I think there's a lot of Silicon Valley hyperbole around software engineering getting replaced very quickly. I'm less sure about that.”
Hacker: AI coding tools perform poorly on large codebases and create unfixable tech debt
“On the software engineering side, I think what they're really good at is going from zero to 80% for a simple app. You know, it's like, it's the replet, the lovable, and then the larger the code base, even the one that generates itself, the larger the code base…”
Hacker: Lower software production costs will lead to more app creation
“And then the other thing it does, it just lowers the cost of lines of code, of software, right? So production, producing software. And then there's the Jervin's paradox, which says, you know, if you, the cost of a good goes down, you will actually have more de…”
Hacker: AI will cause product, engineering, and design roles to converge
“But with AI, you can see that there's maybe like a new role, kind of a product engineer designer, like one person who can do all of these roles to certain, you know, degree, like they can build a prototype and then maybe at some point they need to hand it off …”
Hacker: Computer science degrees will remain a good investment for five years
“I would say for the next five years, probably still like a Good investment.”
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.”
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.”
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: 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: Public markets value predictability over profit margins and growth
“The financial markets, they really care about predictability. So in fact, I feel like they care even more about that than they care about the actual. You know, profit margins or growth or whatever.”
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: Founders should prioritize top-tier VCs even on worse terms
“You should always try to raise money from the best tier one VCs, even if the terms are slightly worse, because so much signaling.”
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: 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…”
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…”
The other half of the tape: Severin Hacker's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 2 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Cem Kansu 3Harry Stebbings 2Gina Gotthilf 2
Every mention by year
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20VC 7
2025 5 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Severin's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-founder and CTO, Duolingo | 1 | 82 | 100% 8/8 | full record on 20VC → |