Duolingo

“Only 20% of our users are in the U.S.”

“I mean, as soon as we put that ad, our run rate went from zero to like ten million bucks a year.”

“By now, I would say we probably have 50 times more users than they do. Our revenue is probably five X their revenue.”

“It turned out, and this is just, we really just didn't realize this subscriptions made us a ton more money than the ads.”

“Our revenue has gone up about 50%. So we used to make about 400,000 dollars a day. We now make about 600,000 dollars a day.”

“And it is interesting because my job these days is 100% just dealing with other people and people's problems.”

“A lot of companies in education eventually turn into marketing companies. For the following reason. You realize, man, making improvements in how well you teach is hard. And it really is very hard. It's, it takes years. So for every dollar you have, you quickly…”

“So I made the difficult decision to cancel those contracts and forget about trying to make money and just raise more venture capital.”

“And we landed a contract with CNN and a contract with BuzzFeed that we were going to Translate all their news from English to Spanish.”

“Leaving cost me quite a bit of money, because some of the reCAPTCHA payment required that I stay there for three years. Yeah, and I did not stay for three years.”

“Yeah, I mean, active users right now, we have about Forty million monthly active users, and about three percent of them are paying subscribers.”

“It was 3.3 million, which at the time, this was a normal Series A. So it's three million dollars from Union Square Ventures and 300,000 from a combination of Tim Ferriss, and Ashton Kutcher.”

“If you want to use Duolingo and start from zero and get to the point where you're the poet laureate of that country, that is unlikely to happen with Duolingo by itself. That's just not going to happen.”

“As soon as we put that ad, our run rate went from zero to, like, Ten million bucks a year. One tiny ad. It didn't even cover the whole screen.”

“By now, I would say we probably have 50 times more uses than they do. Our revenue is probably five X their revenue.”

“The hardest thing about learning a language is staying motivated. So we spend a lot of effort trying to make Duolingo more motivating and more fun, and the way we do that is just by adding game elements.”

“My job these days is 100% just dealing with other people and people's problems.”

“We first ran this interview back in May of twenty-twenty, and a little over a year later, the company did, in fact, go public at a valuation of nearly five billion dollars. And today, it's valued at nearly nine billion dollars.”

“Active users right now, we have about forty million monthly active users, and about three percent of them are paying subscribers.”

“It's 3.3 million, which at the time, this was a normal series A. So it's three million dollars from Union Square Ventures and 300,000 from a combination of Tim Ferriss and Ashton Kutcher.”

“And so when we talk to investors, the first thing I would tell them is, look, the one thing that will not change is I'm not going to charge for people to learn a language here.”

“Subscriptions made us a ton more money than the ads.”

“And at some point we raised money from Google capital G is one of their investment arms. We raised money from them. It was, I believe it was forty-five million bucks that we raised from them.”

“I mean, they've now told me, look, we'd never thought this would work, but you had a really good track record. So why not?”

“Certainly we took too long to monetize. I mean, we didn't, we did not start monetizing until 2017, so it's five years in.”

“What we've learned Is not to bet on these very new products, because you really never know if they're going to work. So it's not that Apple Watch didn't work. Apple Watch ended up working, but what didn't work was apps on Apple Watch. There's just. That's ju…”

“And at some point, we raised money from Google. Capital G is one of their investment arms. And the partner from that firm sat me down and she said, nobody else will invest in this company if you don't figure out how to make money. You know, you're not going to…”

“When we started Duolingo, I can best describe us as communists. We did not want to make money. Nobody in the company wanted to make money, and it was thought of as a, as an evil thing.”

“The reality is it's not even 60 bucks a year. I mean, we can charge 150 and people will pay it.”

“If you take all people who are learning languages on mobile apps, 90% of them are using Duolingo.”