The guest
Luis von Ahn: Co-founder and CEO of Duolingo, pioneer of crowdsourcing, co-inventor of CAPTCHA/reCAPTCHA, MacArthur Fellow, and consulting professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
What this episode covers
Tim Ferriss reconnects with Luis von Ahn for an update on how Duolingo grew from roughly 60 employees in 2016 to about 600 and went from a VC-funded private company to a publicly traded one. They dig into how the company finally solved monetization with a freemium ad-plus-subscription model while keeping the product free for 97% of users, and how mission alignment with long-term business success drives most decisions. Luis explains Duolingo's unusual 'metric-based teams' org structure, his evolution from micromanager to manager of managers, and what he learned from hiring a CFO and taking the company public. The conversation also covers new products (Duolingo ABC literacy app, a math app, and the Duolingo English Test), how they catch cheaters on remote testing, plus personal habits and his closing plea about corruption in Guatemala.
Recommended on this episode
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Google Translate
“i have been incredibly impressed specifically with google translate... the translation specifically in japanese has improved tremendously”
“i have been incredibly impressed specifically with google translate with respect to in my case east asian languages because i do still communicate a fair amount in japanese”— Tim Ferriss
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The Top Idea in Your Mind
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“it's very short that they might find interesting it's called the top idea in your mind”
“i want to mention an article for folks it's very short that they might find interesting it's called the top idea in your mind it's by polygram”— Tim Ferriss
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High Output Management
Andy Grove
“one book that i really liked and we make all managers read it at duolingo... it's an oldie but a really good one”
“one book that i really liked and we make all managers read it at duolingo is it's an oldie but a really good one is high output management by andy grove”— Luis von Ahn
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Oral-B iO electric toothbrush
Oral-B
“i got the oral b io this changes your life i mean it just you can't go back”
“easy yeah easy an electric toothbrush ah i got the oral b io this changes your life i mean it just you can't go back”— Luis von Ahn
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TOTO Neorest NX1 toilet
TOTO
“more than 100 bucks but life-changing... it is a significantly better experience”
“yes it's called neorest neo rest toto neo rest and it is hold on it is a specific one total nearest nx1”— Luis von Ahn
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TOTO Washlet seat
TOTO
“it is pleasant to use... yes it does it is pleasant to use”
“i was given as a gift a washlet toto seat so it effectively replaces your toilet seat on your pre-existing toilet and it's a few hundred dollars”— Tim Ferriss
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Built to Sell
John Warrillow
“there are books that you can read that i think are interesting... there's a book called built to sell”
“there's a book called built to sell i think the author's name is john warlow and if someone wants to improve their own business”— Tim Ferriss
The guest's own work
ProductBy the guest
Duolingo
Duolingo
“he's currently the co-founder and ceo of duolingo a language learning platform created to bring free language education to the world”— Luis von Ahn
ProductBy the guest
Duolingo ABC
Duolingo
“it's dual lingo abc that teaches kids when we were working on it we thought kids three to six turns out kids get there's like a downward pressure for learning”— Luis von Ahn
ProductBy the guest
Duolingo English Test
Duolingo
“it's called the duolingo english test so what it is is a standardized english proficiency exam so basically you go there you take a test for call it 30 minutes”— Luis von Ahn
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
ProductReferenced
Spotify
Spotify
“we ended up finding a monetization model that worked out really well which is this freemium model that is similar to what the dating apps do or what spotify does”— Luis von Ahn
ProductReferenced
Google Translate
“if you're going to go to germany or something it's kind of good enough to like if you don't know any german to just kind of you know you speak to it”— Luis von Ahn
MediaReferenced
Squid Game
Netflix
“the squid game the movie games called the one that won the oscar with a basement i know the one you're talking about parasite”— Luis von Ahn
MediaReferenced
Parasite
“the one that won the oscar with a basement i know the one you're talking about parasite parasite so stuff like that korean influence just keeps growing”— Luis von Ahn
MediaReferenced
Clash Royale
Supercell
“the reason i'm learning spanish on duolingo is because you see i used to i don't know play a lot of whatever clash royale or a lot of some game”— Luis von Ahn
BookReferencedISBN verified
Zero to One
Peter Thiel
“there were two books that you mentioned as being particularly helpful or that you would recommend maybe both one was zero to one by peter thiel”— Tim Ferriss
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Ben Horowitz
“and the other was the hard thing about hard things if i'm getting the title right i can never remember this title by ben horowitz yes”— Tim Ferriss
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Muscle Milk
CytoSport
“now it's just a little jug of muscle milk because my trainer gary on his first date... he said drink muscle milk”— Luis von Ahn
MediaReferenced
CD Baby order confirmation email
Derek Sivers
“people should google derrick sivers cd baby that was his company at the time email it's a confirmation email that they would send out when orders came in”— Tim Ferriss
Big reveals from this episode
- A Google Capital partner, Leila Sturdy, took Luis to Kelly's Bar and gave him enough drinks to make him promise to figure out monetization within six months, warning there was 'no bigger fool' left to raise money from at a higher valuation with zero revenue.
- Duolingo landed on a freemium model (ads after lessons plus an ad-free paid subscription) that scaled to hundreds of millions in revenue and powered its IPO, while keeping the app free.
- Duolingo's first monetization attempt was crowdsourced translation: learners translated CNN and BuzzFeed articles, but Luis killed it around 2013 because translation is a race-to-the-bottom business that distracted from teaching.
- Duolingo runs 'metric-based teams' rather than feature-based teams, where each team owns a single daily metric (like time spent learning) that must increase every quarter via hundreds of A/B tests.
- Luis argues forcing everyone to pay would 10x revenue in a single quarter but stifle the word-of-mouth growth that drives the business, so keeping it free is the long-term revenue-maximizing choice.
- Board member Bing Gordon casually planted the idea of going public ('yeah, why not'), which clicked for Luis once the company was roughly breaking even.
- Duolingo is expanding beyond languages into the Duolingo ABC literacy app for kids, an elementary-school math app, and the Duolingo English Test standardized proficiency exam.
- Duolingo prevents cheating on its English test using front-facing cameras, AI gaze tracking, ambient-noise recording, and computer lockdown, and red-teams the system by paying people to try to cheat.
Worth remembering
- The Duolingo owl is green because co-founder Severin Hacker said the one thing he cared about was that he hates the color green, so they made it the brand's main color as a joke.
- About 97% of Duolingo's active users use it for free, yet Duolingo is both the most downloaded and the top-grossing app in the education category.
- Korean is Duolingo's fourth most-learned language for English speakers, driven largely by K-pop and Korean TV shows on Netflix.
- Only about 1% of Duolingo's active users are learning Chinese, far fewer than expected, largely because Mandarin is perceived as very hard to learn.
- In the US, 80% of Duolingo users were not learning a language before the app, meaning Duolingo is growing the market rather than just capturing existing learners.
- Duolingo has more than 1.5 million daily active users with streaks longer than a year, meaning they have not missed a single day in 12+ months.
- Luis credits strength training with personal trainer Gary (former Pittsburgh Steelers strength coach) since 2017, training three times a week, for eliminating his aches and pains.
- Luis recommends the TOTO Neorest NX1 Japanese toilet, while Tim suggests a cheaper TOTO Washlet seat as a few-hundred-dollar alternative.
- A Duolingo San Francisco billboard reading roughly 'work in tech, own a house, move to Pittsburgh' successfully recruited employees, since Pittsburgh tech salaries match Silicon Valley but housing is far cheaper.
- The Duolingo English Test is accepted by about 4,200 academic programs worldwide (including MIT and Stanford) as proof of English proficiency.
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