Duolingo’s battle for learning in an AI world, with Luis von Ahn
When Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn sent an internal memo about AI last year, he didn't expect it to go viral — or to ignite a firestorm about the future of work. Now he joins Rapid Response to unpack what he got right, what he got wrong, and what the backlash taught him about the real limitations of AI. Von Ahn also reveals why he's made a deliberate pivot in 2026: chasing users, not revenue — and what that bet says about how big Duolingo can get before ads become inevitable. It's a candid reckoning with hype, growth, and the surprisingly complicated promise of technology in education.
Visit the Rapid Response website here: https://www.rapidresponseshow.com/
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How to make learning as addictive as social media | Luis von Ahn (re-release)
When technologist Luis von Ahn was building the popular language-learning platform Duolingo, he faced a big problem: Could an app designed to teach you something ever compete with addictive platforms like Instagram and TikTok? He explains how Duolingo harnesses the psychological techniques of social media and mobile games to get you excited to learn — all while spreading access to education across the world.
This episode originally aired on October 26, 2023.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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
Cem Kansu is the Chief Product Officer at Duolingo, where he leads product strategy for over 90 million monthly active learners. Since joining Duolingo, Cem has played a pivotal role in driving record user engagement, revenue growth, and product innovation, including the launch of Duolingo Math and the wildly successful Duolingo Music. Under his leadership, the company has consistently ranked as the #1 education app globally.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
04:12 – Cem's Origin Story: From Google Ads to Saving Duolingo's Business
06:45 – "Mini CEO" Myth: Why PMs Need to Ditch the Ego
08:55 – The Truth About Design Speed and Pixel Perfection
11:30 – The INSANE Story Behind Duolingo's Viral Chess Launch
14:42 – Why Smaller Teams Are the Future of Product
17:20 – Duolingo's AI Playbook: How They're Building 10x Faster
20:05 – Will Engineers Even Exist in 5 Years? Cem Gets Real
26:10 – Do AI Tools Have ANY Defensibility? Cem Doesn't Hold Back
29:00 – Why Duolingo Took So Long to Monetize (And What They Learned)
33:05 – Cem on Killing Ads, Tasteful Monetization, and Investor Doubt
38:30 – The Secret to Duolingo's Paywall Strategy (And What Not to Do)
42:05 – Cem's Weirdest Retention Hack? A Single Emoji…
46:25 – The Crazy Science Behind Push Notifications at Duolingo
50:00 – In-App Purchases Done Right: GEMS, Freeze, and the Psychology of Value
53:15 – Why Cem Thinks Daily Retention Is the King Metric
55:10 – The ONE Product Feature That Changed Duolingo Forever
57:45 – Will Duolingo Become the Disney of Gen Z?
01:00:00 – Dating on Duolingo?! Cem Reacts to Harry's Craziest Product Ideas
01:03:45 – Cem's Biggest Product Mistakes — And What He'd Kill Tomorrow
01:12:00 – The One Thing Every PM Must Do to Survive the AI Wave
01:14:00 – Duolingo in 20 Years: Cem's Wildest Vision Yet
20VC: Duolingo Co-Founder on Why $3M is Harder than $100M to Raise | Why You Should Always Take Tier 1 VCs Even at Worse Terms | Why Europe Can't Win Unless the US Screws Up | How AI Impacts the Future of Work and Education with Severin Hacker
Severin Hacker is the Co-Founder and CTO of Duolingo, the world's most downloaded education app with over 100 million monthly users. Since its 2021 IPO, Duolingo has reached a market cap of $20BN. The company has raised over $183M from top-tier investors including CapitalG, Kleiner Perkins, Union Square Ventures, NEA, Ashton Kutcher, and Tim Ferriss. Severin is also an active angel investor, with standout bets including Decagon, one of the fastest-growing AI-native dev shops globally.
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
00:00 – Why It's Harder to Raise $3M Than $100M
02:10 – The Real Reason Duolingo Couldn't Have Started in Europe
04:40 – Duolingo's AI Pivot: What "AI-First" Actually Means
07:00 – The 12-Year Bottleneck Duolingo Crushed with AI
11:40 – How Duolingo Uses AI Internally (and Why They Love Cursor)
13:30 – Where AI Still Sucks (Especially in Engineering)
16:00 – Will AI Kill the CS Degree? Severin's Surprising Take
18:00 – The End of Work? UBI, Purpose, and the Future of Labor
25:20 – OpenAI vs Duolingo: Are They Coming for Language Learning?
29:20 – Duolingo's Biggest Mistake: "We Waited Too Long on This…"
39:30 – Duolingo's Secret Sauce: What Investors Always Get Wrong
45:00 – Would You Go Public Today? Severin's Surprising Answer
49:00 – Best and Worst Parts of Going Public—A Rare Honest Take
51:00 – Should Europe Give Up? Severin's Unfiltered Opinion
56:00 – Harsh Truth: "Europe Can't Win Unless the U.S. Screws Up"
59:10 – Why Founders Have to Move to the US to Optimise Their Chance of Success
1:01:00 – Why Union Square Was the Only VC to Say Yes
1:03:00 – The Real Value of Tier 1 VCs (Even at Worse Terms)
1:05:00 – From PhD Student to Billionaire: Does Money Buy Happiness?
1:09:00 – Why Severin Sometimes Lies About His Job
1:10:20 – Founder Marriage Advice: "Write a Contract"
1:11:50 – How to Pick a Life Partner – Severin's Tuesday Night Test
20VC: Duolingo Co-Founder on The Doomed Future of Europe, Reflections on Money, Marriage and the Future of AI
Gaming as the Future of Education with Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn
On this episode of No Priors, Sarah talks to Luis von Ahn, founder and CEO of Duolingo, the world’s most popular education app with over 116 million monthly users and a market cap of approximately $17 billion. Controversially, it has recently committed to being “AI-first.” They discuss why motivation is the biggest challenge in education, how Duolingo harnesses game mechanics and behavioral insights to keep learners engaged, and the company’s efforts to leverage AI to personalize education at scale. Luis also shares thoughts on the Duolingo brand, courses beyond language (chess and math), and the broader impact of AI on content creation.
Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com
Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @LuisvonAhn
Links:
Duolingo is now AI-First: http://bit.ly/3RQzny3
Show Notes:
0:00 Introduction
4:01 Optimizing learning behavior through tech
11:20 Adopting AI at Duolingo
17:25 AI’s threat to content companies
18:34 An unhinged corporate brand
21:28 How do people learn?
25:16 What people misunderstand about Duolingo?
26:24 How AI is transforming learning at scale
30:28 Leveraging AI across the business
Advice Line with Luis von Ahn of Duolingo
Duolingo co-founder Luis von Ahn joins Guy on the Advice Line to answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Luis shares insights on how data can help entrepreneurs understand what their customers really want.
First, Steph in Chicago wonders how to manage expansion opportunities for her art-filled vending machines. Then Blair from Atlanta discusses his challenge of selecting which products to focus on with his tech accessories brand. And finally, Stephanie in Indiana considers the best way to fund more employees for her growing business designing living plant walls.
Thank you to the founders of Good Things Vending, Bair, and Naturspire for being a part of our show.
If you’d like to be featured on a future Advice Line episode, leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and a specific question you’d like answered. Send a voice memo to hibt@id.wondery.com or call 1-800-433-1298.
And be sure to listen to Duolingo’s founding story as told by Luis on the show in 2020.
This episode was produced by Katherine Sypher with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Casey Herman. Our audio engineer was Cena Loffredo.
You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram and sign up for Guy's free newsletter at guyraz.com and on Substack.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Behind the product: Duolingo streaks | Jackson Shuttleworth (Group PM, Retention Team)
Jackson Shuttleworth is a Group PM at Duolingo, where he leads the retention team and the powerful streak feature. The streak feature, which gamifies consecutive days of learning, has been Duolingo’s most important and innovative growth lever and a key driver of their growth to a $14 billion business with almost 600 million users. In our conversation, we dive deep into the history and lessons of this feature:
• The evolution of the streak feature
• Biggest insights from over 600 streak-related experiments
• Biggest specific wins and misses along the way
• Key principles for building effective streak mechanics
• How to operate a high-velocity product team
• Tips for building engaging notification systems
• Much more
—
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Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/behind-the-product-duolingo-streaks
—
Where to find Jackson Shuttleworth:• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackson-shuttleworth/
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• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
—
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Jackson’s background and an overview of Duolingo’s streak feature
(06:00) The impact of streaks on Duolingo’s success
(09:58) The origin and evolution of streaks
(14:50) Key experiments and insights
(24:38) User psychology and engagement strategies
(28:36) Duolingo’s product review structure
(33:07) Designing for clarity and adaptability
(46:59) Developing the Streak Freeze feature
(50:47) Balancing monetization and retention
(54:08) Notification strategies
(58:15) The Perfect Streak feature
(01:00:40) Enhancing the user experience
(01:04:47) Team operations and experimentation
(01:18:57) Who can benefit from streaks
(01:21:00) Lightning round
—
Referenced:
• Duolingo streaks: https://duolingo.fandom.com/wiki/Streak
• How to make learning as addictive as social media: https://www.ted.com/talks/luis_von_ahn_how_to_make_learning_as_addictive_as_social_media?subtitle=en
• Luis von Ahn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luis-von-ahn-duolingo/
• FarmVille: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FarmVille
• Royal Match: https://www.dreamgames.com/games/royal-match
• How Duolingo reignited user growth: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-duolingo-reignited-user-growth
• You’re on fire! Or, how we brought the streak milestone to life: https://blog.duolingo.com/streak-milestone-design-animation/
• Duolingo Doubles Down on Design and Animation with Acquisition of Hobbes: https://investors.duolingo.com/news-releases/news-release-details/duolingo-doubles-down-design-and-animation-acquisition-hobbes
• Hobbes: https://www.hobbes.work/
• Jira: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
• Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/
• Bing Gordon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/binggordon/
• Peloton: https://www.onepeloton.com/
• Bluey on Disney+: https://www.disneyplus.com/series/bluey/1xy9TAOQ0M3r
• Emily in Paris on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81037371
• Multi-position ladders at Home Depot: https://www.homedepot.com/b/Building-Materials-Ladders-Multi-Position-Ladders/N-5yc1vZasew
—
Recommended books:
• A Guide to Midwestern Conversation: https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Midwestern-Conversation-Taylor-Phillips/dp/1984861336
• Fate Is the Hunter: A Pilot’s Memoir: https://www.amazon.com/Fate-Hunter-Ernest-K-Gann/dp/0671636030
—
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.
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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Why Duolingo Worked (with Luis von Ahn, CEO)
Duolingo has fundamentally changed the landscape of self-guided education, starting with language learning. It is now a $9B publicly traded company in a space where everyone thought you could never build a large and exciting company. We’re joined by Duolingo founder and CEO, Luis von Ahn. Luis dives into how learning English was transformative in his personal trajectory and opportunities in his life, inspiring him to create the most successful EdTech product of all time. A few topics in this episode:
How Duolingo became a leader in the gamification and mobile-first movements in the early 2010s
How the company balances rigorous experimentation with gut instinct to build an app with customer experience at its core
The backstory of Duolingo’s “unhinged, yet wholesome” green owl mascot trending on your TikTok feed
Sponsors:
Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning
Luis von Ahn is the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo. There are lots of opportunities to enhance a product like Duolingo with AI, and we talk about all that — but I also wanted to talk to Luis about learning, generally. Duolingo is a global product, and there are a lot of tech tensions there, dealing with different user needs worldwide. We talk about it all in a pretty direct way... including all those unhinged things the owl does on social media.
Links:
Duolingo Introduces AI-Powered Innovations at Duocon 2024 (Duolingo)
Video Call with Lily (Duolingo / YouTube)
AI Boosts Duolingo As Company Posts First Profit (Nasdaq)
Foreign Language Training (US State Department)
Exploring My Villain Origin Story (Duolingo / TikTok)
Duolingo cuts workers as it relies more on AI (The Washington Post)
Why Silicon Valley Is Talking About Founder Mode (The New York Times)
Duolingo's Math and Music lessons finally hit Android a year after iOS (Android Police)
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on taking it back to basics (Decoder / The Verge)
How Duolingo is using its 'unhinged content' with Duo the Owl (Digiday)
How we turned Duo's butt into a viral Super Bowl commercial (Duolingo)
A Duolingo employee has apologised for joking about Amber Heard (The Tab)
Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/24031882
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. This episode was edited by Xander Adams. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Luis von Ahn Explains How Computers and Humans Learn From Each Other
Breakthroughs in generative AI have created enormous opportunities for humans to learn from computers. We can use them to explain the news, understand historical concepts, fix our coding errors, and so forth. But of course, AI also has to learn from human. The technology digests enormous amounts of written text, and often relies on human feedback to calibrate its models. Luis von Ahn has been at the forefront of these back and forth interactions for years. He is currently the CEO and co-founder of Duolingo, the language learning app, but prior to that, he was one of the original developers of CAPTCHAs, the little puzzles you solve to log into websites and prove that you're a human. And of course, in the process of proving your humanity, you're also training computers to get better at identifying red lights, cross walks, bicycles and wavy letters. On this episode, we discuss the history of his work, the future of CAPTCHAs, the success of Duolingo and how he is using today's advanced AI models in aid of language learnings.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
20VC: How Duolingo Scaled to 8M TikTok Followers, How to Create Viral Content, Why Most Companies Suck at Content Marketing and How to Change & Why You Should Not Work with Content Agencies with Zaria Parvez, Global Social Media Manager @ Duolingo
Zaria Parvez is Duolingo's Senior Global Social Media Manager where she is famed for scaling Duolingo's TikTok from 50K followers in September 2021 to 8M followers today. The Duolingo TikTok has 143 viral videos (view counts of 1M or higher) due to Zaria's creativity. What started as a test-and-learn initiative has become Duolingo's most successful social buzz and word-of-mouth initiative to date – all because of Zaria's insights, instincts, and expertise.
In Today's Episode with Zaria Parvez:
1. From College Student to TikTok Star:
How did Zaria make her way into the world of social media and Duolingo?
When did Zaria realize the power of TikTok? What did she do as a first step?
What does Zaria know now about growing on TikTok that she wishes she'd known when she started?
2. How to Create a Viral Video:
What have been Zaria's biggest lessons in what it takes to create a viral video?
What does Zaria mean when she says the best content is "medicine to candy"?
What does the ideation process look like for new content ideas?
How much budget should be set aside for new content?
What does Zaria mean when she says Duolingo's TikTok needs to view like a "sitcom"?
3. How to Tie Success in Content Back to Hard Dollars:
How is "success" in content measured at Duolingo?
How fast does Zaria know if a video is a hit or not? What is the right cadence to post?
How should companies determine whether content is ultimately successful or not?
What is the single metric that Zaria is focused on today?
4. How to Build the Best Content Team:
Why should companies not work with content agencies if they want the best results?
Why does Zaria believe you have to hire troublemakers if you want success in content?
What are the single biggest mistakes companies make w
reCAPTCHA and Duolingo: Luis von Ahn (2020)
In 2000, Luis von Ahn was starting his PhD in computer science when he attended a talk and happened to learn about one of Yahoo's biggest problems: automated bots were signing up for millions of free Yahoo email accounts, and generating tons of spam. Luis' idea to solve this problem became CAPTCHA, the squiggly letters we type into a website to prove we're human. He gave away that idea for free, but years later, that same idea had evolved into a new way to monetize language learning on the web, and became Duolingo. Today, Duolingo is a publicly-traded company with a market cap of $9 billion.
This episode was produced by Casey Herman, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant.
You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram, and email us at hibt@id.wondery.com.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
EP 87: Luis von Ahn (CEO, Duolingo) on The Marketing Formula that Propelled Duolingo to 500M Users
Luis von Ahn is the CEO and Co-Founder of Duolingo, the world’s #1 language learning application. In the episode, Luis shares the marketing formula they use to drive rapid user growth, including the backstory of Duolingo’s famous owl mascot that has become a viral internet sensation. Luis also dives into the A/B testing and product gamification experiments that have helped make Duolingo a $9B public company, as well as a handful of valuable lessons from his entrepreneurial journey.
(0:00) Intro
(0:54) Building a Culture of Iteration and Continuous Improvement
(2:29) The Importance of User Retention in Duolingo's Growth
(3:24) The Power of A/B Testing in Product Development
(7:57) Balancing User Feedback and Data in Product Design
(10:24) The Role of Marketing in Duolingo's Growth
(15:54) The Importance of Setting Constraints in Product Development
(18:35) The Role of Metrics in Decision Making
(24:02) The Power of Viral Marketing and Memes in Brand Building
(30:44) The Impact of Social Media Marketing on User Acquisition
(35:41) The Impact of Passive Aggressive Notifications
(37:42) Dealing with Controversial Content and Backlash
(42:40) The Importance of Being Scrappy in Marketing
(45:13) The Challenges of Teaching Languages
(49:25) The Importance of User Retention in Duolingo
(51:14) The Journey to Monetizing Duolingo
(56:40) The Challenges of Introducing Monetization in Duolingo
(1:04:16) The Expansion of Duolingo Beyond Languages
(1:09:13) Growing User Base and Utilizing AI
(1:11:16) Impact of Going Public on Duolingo's Operations
(1:16:00) The Importance of Employee Selection in Duolingo
(1:22:42) The entrepreneurial journey
(1:33:46) Improving the Education System
(1:37:21) The honeypot website to catch cheating students
Produced: Rashad Assir & Leah Clapper
Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.
Executive Producer: Rashad Assir
Producer: Leah Clapper
Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky
Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member.
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#164 CEO & Co-Founder Duolingo, Luis von Ahn: "The Pitch Was Never Pittsburgh"
Guest: Luis von Ahn, CEO and co-founder of Duolingo
When Luis von Ahn wanted to go to college in the United States, he had to take a standardized test called the TOEFL, or Test of English as a Foreign Language. But there was nowhere in his home country of Guatemala that could accommodate another test-taker, so he flew to war-torn El Salvador, just to take the TOEFL. Many years later, as the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo, Luis and his team “decided this type of thing, we could do a lot better.” Today, more than 4,500 universities accept the results of the online Duolingo English Test — a boon for the estimated 2 billion people currently learning English around the world.
In this episode, Luis and Joubin discuss returning to the office, Carnegie Mellon, identifying strivers, the “Luis dashboard,” ignoring Reddit, pre-meetings, the hardest part of learning, sounding dumb, private security, the job of a professor, digitizing books,
working out every day, April Fools’ campaigns, Duo the owl, and hiring nice people.
In this episode, we cover:
Working in Pittsburgh, in-person (00:57)
How Duolingo hires (06:48)
Growing up in Guatemala (10:29)
Luis’ parents, intelligence, and drive (12:09)
His morning routine (16:56)
Ground truth (19:39)
“The smaller the team, the better” (22:29)
Language education and human behavior (24:32)
Learning English (28:53)
Back to Guatemala (32:03)
CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA (36:10)
Money vs. impact (41:26)
Luis’ TEDx Talk and public speaking tips (44:46)
Love Language and nontraditional marketing (48:46)
Doubling down on what works (53:27)
Slow hiring (56:44)
Would Luis ever start something new? (59:28)
Who Duolingo is hiring and what “grit” means to Luis (01:01:46)
Links:
Connect with LuisTwitter
LinkedIn
Connect with JoubinTwitter
LinkedIn
Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm
Learning From and With AI: Duolingo’s Zan Gilani
When Zan Gilani came to the U.S. from Pakistan to complete his undergraduate studies, he chose to study Chinese because it was rumored to be a difficult language. At the time, the tech industry was booming, and he quickly became interested in applying his passion for foreign languages and learning more generally in a technology-rich environment.
Those interests led Zan to Duolingo, where he has been working in product management for eight years and now oversees the app company’s experiential AI team. What excites him about working at the language-learning app company is his ability to help build solutions that enable personalized education at scale: The app boasts over 16 million daily active users, and AI-driven functionality motivates them through frequent notifications, personalizes learning experiences by adjusting the difficulty of questions in practice sessions, and observes and critiques learners’ performance.
Zan joins our podcast to outline the specific ways Duolingo uses AI and machine learning to drive user engagement, and discuss how the technology can be used to support learning more generally. Read the episode transcript here.
Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.
Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.
Guest bio:
Zan Gilani is a principal product manager at Duolingo. For the past eight years, he has helped grow the company’s learner base from 3 million to 16 million daily active users by working on retention, acquisition, growth in Asia, gamification, and the new-user experience.
He currently leads Duolingo’s Experimental AI team, which uses generative AI to build features that teach learners more effectively. More broadly, Gilani is working on setting Duolingo up for success using generative AI, through external partnerships and internal education.
Gilani grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, and is currently based in New York City. He has bachelor’s degrees in political science and East Asian studies from Columbia University.
We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
Nickey Skarstad (Airbnb, Etsy, Shopify, Duolingo) on translating vision into goals, operationalizing product quality, second-order decisions, brainstorming, influence, and much more
Nickey Skarstad is a Director of Product Management at Duolingo, where she is leading a stealth 0 → 1 product. Prior to Duolingo, she was VP of Product at The Wing, Product Lead at Airbnb, where she led much of the Experiences product team, Product Lead at Shopify, and Director of Product Management at Etsy.
—
Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:
• Mixpanel: https://mixpanel.com/startups
• Dovetail: https://dovetailapp.com/lenny
• Unit: https://unit.co/lenny
—
In this episode:
[3:32] An overview of Nickey’s career
[7:39] What she learned from building product at Airbnb
[8:42] How to maintain and operationalize product quality
[9:44] Metrics that help you maintain quality
[20:08] Which company has most informed her product development approach
[21:57] How to structure your product org
[24:47] Should you go GM vs. functional
[27:18] How you set vision, translate that into goals, and then execute on it
[32:30] Brainstorming advice
[35:04] How to use OKRs effectively
[37:57] How to get better at influence as a PM
[41:23] How to know if a decision is a one-way or two-way door
[42:29] Second-order decisions, and second-order thinking
[46:35] Operationalizing principles
[47:17] Getting your team on board with your strategy
[49:39] Designing a product review meeting
[54:08] Tips for working remotely as a PM
[56:44] Lightning round
—Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/nickey-skarstad-airbnb-etsy-shopify—
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—
Referenced:
• Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows
• Anne Helen Petersen
• Superhuman
• Loom
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#607: Luis von Ahn, Co-Founder and CEO of Duolingo — How to Be (Truly) Mission-Driven, Monetization Experiments, 10x Growth, Org Chart Iterations for Impacting Metrics, The Intricate Path to an IPO, Best Hiring Practices, Catching Exam Cheaters, The Allure of Toto Toilets, The Future of Duolingo, and How to Stand Out in Your Career
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Luis von Ahn (@LuisvonAhn) is an entrepreneur and consulting professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who is considered one of the pioneers of crowdsourcing. He is known for co-inventing CAPTCHAs, being a MacArthur fellow, and selling two companies to Google in his twenties.
He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo, a language-learning platform created to bring free language education to the world. With more than 500 million users, it is now the most popular language-learning platform and the most downloaded education app in the world.
Luis has been named one of the Brilliant 10 by Popular Science, one of the 50 Best Brains in Science by Discover, one of the Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review, and one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company. Luis also won the 2018 Lemelson-MIT prize, the largest cash prize for invention in the U.S.
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[05:03] Why the Duolingo owl is green
[06:47] The core cause behind Duolingo’s creation, and how Duolingo has evolved over the years
[12:48] Duolingo’s monetization efforts that didn’t quite pan out
[21:06] After initial reluctance, how was the Duolingo workforce convinced monetization needed to happen?
[25:06] As machine-driven translation services get more sophisticated, will human beings still seek to learn other languages via Duolingo?
[29:31] The most pursued/influential languages in the Duolingo system currently
[39:14] The development of Duolingo’s org chart
[45:40] Why Duolingo uses a daily metric
[48:33] Book recommendations
[50:26] Luis’ most worthwhile investments
[52:20] New beliefs, behaviors, or habits
[55:20] Recent life-changing purchases
[1:02:39] What Luis’ updated 2022 billboard might say
[1:06:14] What Luis means when he refers to Duolingo’s “mission,” and how the company’s long view affects decision making
[1:12:34] How Duolingo hires good candidates for the long haul
[1:18:50] Why and how Duolingo went public
[1:25:42] The biggest challenges Luis faces as CEO of a public company
[1:30:50] Duolingo is expanding to teach more than languages
[1:36:18] The Duolingo English Test: proficiency testing from home accepted by 4,200 academic programs across the world
[1:39:51] How Luis’ expertise at catching cheaters during his time as a professor at Carnegie Mellon makes Duolingo products more trustworthy as accredited sources
[1:43:39] The brief conversation with Luis’ personal trainer that changed his routine breakfast — to a different routine breakfast
[1:44:38] Advice to young, driven people entering the working world
[1:48:07] How Luis has become better at saying “No.”
[1:49:56] Luis’ request of the audience and parting thoughts
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CBO Duolingo, Bob Meese: Carrying Culture Through Language
Language is without doubt the single most valuable tool we use, and in its use, it ironically builds barriers. Fortunately in recent years with the rise of companies like Duolingo, those barriers are becoming more opaque. In this episode, Bob Meese, Chief Business Officer at Duolingo, joins the show to discuss all the innovative ways that Duolingo is making language learning a more feasible aspect of our lives.
Bob started at Google with a solid 8-year stretch that served as a proving ground for his own professional philosophy. An integral component of that philosophy is to be employee-centric in his vision and execution. In his move to Duolingo, Bob carried that thinking forward. Firmly established at Duolingo, Bob shares with us the impact that the company has on their customers, and even with his own family— namely in making language learning just plain fun. Bob also explores the importance of language, and how Duolingo is striking a firm balance between creating revenue and profit while providing such an altruistic product.
In this episode, we cover:
A quick look at Bob’s time at Google - and how his philosophy on professional inertia played into his decision to move on to Duolingo. (02:47)
Why Bob encourages his star employees to shine, even if it results in their decision to seek opportunities beyond their role and the company. (07:28)
A risk worth taking: The journey that led Bob and his family back to Pittsburgh to begin his career at Duolingo. (10:57)
An overview of Duolingo including current stats, its evolution, and what is on the horizon. (16:20)
A discussion about the monetization of Duolingo, what the company looked like when Bob joined as CRO, and how Duolingo established its identity. (22:51)
Bob reflects on his experience with changing company culture - and shares why he would do it all over again as he looks back on his years at Duolingo. (35:14)
Duolingo’s revenue growth, the timing of the IPO, and why operating as a private company still works after recently going public. (41:05)
Joubin and Bob discuss the impact of language and how it is a core part of human identity - and why Duolingo strives to make learning languages more accessible. (47:28)
Links:
Connect with BobTwitter
Duolingo
Connect with JoubinTwitter
LinkedIn
Email: gtmg@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
A masterclass in crowdsourcing, w/Duolingo's Luis von Ahn
Crowdsourcing is more than a group of people interested in the same cause, it’s a way to tap skills – and scale – that you don’t have. And when it works, it can be the rocket fuel that launches you to scale further than you could have ever imagined. No one knows this better than Luis von Ahn, founder and CEO of Duolingo. Duolingo is a language app with over 300 million users worldwide, who complete over 7 billion exercises a month. It’s their passion for learning that drives them to create even more content for the app – igniting the rocket fuel that Duolingo needs. Cameo appearance by Elizabeth Sampat (game designer and author).
Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/luis-von-ahn/
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ML-Powered Language Learning at Duolingo with Burr Settles - #412
Today we’re joined by Burr Settles, Research Director at Duolingo. Most would acknowledge that one of the most effective ways to learn is one on one with a tutor, and Duolingo’s main goal is to replicate that at scale.
In our conversation with Burr, we dig how the business model has changed over time, the properties that make a good tutor, and how those features translate to the AI tutor they’ve built. We also discuss the Duolingo English Test, and the challenges they’ve faced with maintaining the platform while adding languages and courses.
Check out the complete show notes for this episode at twimlai.com/go/412.
A masterclass in crowdsourcing, w/Duolingo's Luis von Ahn
Crowdsourcing is more than a group of people interested in the same cause, it’s a way to tap skills – and scale – that you don’t have. And when it works, it can be the rocket fuel that launches you to scale further than you could have ever imagined. No one knows this better than Luis von Ahn, founder and CEO of Duolingo. Duolingo is a language app with over 300 million users worldwide, who complete over 7 billion exercises a month. It’s their passion for learning that drives them to create even more content for the app – igniting the rocket fuel that Duolingo needs. Cameo appearance by Elizabeth Sampat (game designer and author).
Read a transcript of this episode at https://mastersofscale.com
Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter at https://mastersofscale.com/subscribe
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reCAPTCHA and Duolingo: Luis von Ahn
In 2000, Luis von Ahn was starting his PhD in computer science when he attended a talk and happened to learn about one of Yahoo's biggest problems: automated bots were signing up for millions of free Yahoo email accounts, and generating tons of spam. Luis' idea to solve this problem became CAPTCHA, the squiggly letters we type into a website to prove we're human. He gave away that idea for free, but years later, that same idea had evolved into a new way to monetize language learning on the web, and became Duolingo. Today, the popular app is valued at $1.5 billion, and is seeing a big spike in growth while people are confined to their homes.
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20VC: Duolingo's Luis von Ahn on How CEO's Can Scale With The Company, How VC Herd Mentality In The Valley Really Works and How Chatbots & AI Play A Role In The Future of EdTech
Luis Von Ahn is the Founder & CEO @ Duolingo, the leading language learning platform with over 100m users. They have backing from some of the best in the investing world with over $100m in funding from the likes of USV, Kleiner Perkins, NEA, Google Capital and even Ashton Kutcher. Prior to Duolingo, Luis is known for inventing CAPTCHAs, being a MacArthur Fellow ("genius grant" recipient), and selling two companies to Google in his 20's. Luis has been named one of the 10 Most Brilliant Scientists by Popular Science Magazine, one of the 20 Best Brains Under 40 by Discover.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Luis, a man as he describes "never great at learning languages", came to found the leading language learning app, Duolingo?
2.) Why do VCs generally believe Edtech to be such a "hard" space? Is that really a fair assumption? How does the role of government change the distribution and landscape of edtech? How does content creation play a pivotal role in edtech today?
3.) What role does Luis believe AI and ML will play for the future of edtech? Will the transition to bots represent a transformational shift in the interface paradigm? How does gamification and edtech integrate? Why does Luis always measure themselves against the most addictive of games?
4.) How has Luis seen himself scale and change as a leader with the scaling of the firm? What story shows an element that Luis struggled with and how did he overcome it? What were the major inflection points in the growth of the firm?
5.) Duolingo recently raised their $25m Series E, how did this round differ from prior rounds? Why did they want to negotiate down the figure they wanted to raise? How did Valley based VCs present herd mentality for the duration of the recent raise?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Luis's Fave Book: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Luis' Fave Blog: AVC by Fred Wilson
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Luis on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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a16z Podcast: The Taxonomy of Collective Knowledge
What do disease diagnostics, language learning, and image recognition have in common? All depend on the organization of collective intelligence: data ontologies. In this episode of the a16z Podcast, guests Luis von Ahn, founder of reCaptcha and Duolingo, Jay Komarneni, founder of HumanDX, a16z General Partner Vijay Pande, and a16z Partner Malinka Walaliyadde break down what data ontologies are, from the philosophical (Wittgenstein and Wikipedia!) to the practical (a doctor identifying a diagnosis), particularly as they apply to the field of healthcare and diagnosis.
It is data ontologies, in fact, that enable not only human computation -- but that allow us to map out, structure, and scale knowledge creation online, providing order to how we organize massive amounts of information so that humans and machines can coordinate in a way that both understand.
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#135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World
Luis von Ahn (@luisvonahn) is an entrepreneur and computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He is known for inventing CAPTCHAs, being a MacArthur Fellow ("genius grant" recipient), and selling two companies to Google in his 20's. Luis has been named one of the 10 Most Brilliant Scientists by Popular Science Magazine, one of the 50 Best Brains in Science by Discover, one of the Top Young Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review, and one of the 100 Most Innovative People in Business by FastCompany Magazine. Luis is currently the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo, a language learning platform created to bring free language education to the world. With more than 100 million users, it is the most popular way to learn languages in the world, and it is the most downloaded app in the Education category on both iTunes (5-star average, 3,300+ reviews) and Google Play. I first met Luis as an early investor in Duolingo, and every time I meet him, I learn something new. In this conversation, we talk about: What 2-3 books and resources he'd recommend to entrepreneurs Language learning tips The clever way he caught cheating students at Carnegie Mellon Early mentors and key lessons learned The story of building and selling reCAPTCHA How to recruit and vet technical talent Duolingo's most surprising sources of users, and much more... Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run. This episode is also brought to you by Headspace, the world’s most popular meditation app (more than 4,000,000 users). It’s used in more than 150 countries, and many of my closest friends swear by it. Try Headspace’s free Take10 program — 10 minutes of guided meditation a day for 10 days. It’s like a warm bath for your mind. Meditation doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive, and it’s had a huge impact on my life. Try Headspace for free for a few days and see what I mean.
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