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Luis von Ahn and Duolingo

By Stephen Walsh on May 31, 2016

Luis von Ahn

Luis von Ahn

CEO and Co-founder of

Duolingo

Duolingo is a free language learning website and app. Its value proposition is that is provides everyone with a fun, effective, world-class language learning experience. To raise money for its ad-free product, Duolingo provides translation services to customers, such as CNN, by leveraging the translation power of the users of the app and website. Duolingo has 200,000 active monthly users. It’s learning algorithms tailor the language courses to the learner, increasing difficulty and complexity while reviewing previously learned content as the user may require. It has won a number awards and its success is in no small part due to its fascinating and innovative CEO and co-founder, Luis von Ahn.

Luis von Ahn’s claim to fame is a simple but elegant solution that has annoyed anyone who has tried to create an email or register for almost anything online.captchaThose strange little pieces of texts that you are forced to type to confirm your humanity, called CAPTCHAs, were invented by von Ahn as part of his doctoral work. Feeling guilty for the seconds wasted by the millions of people forced enter them, von Ahn invented reCAPTCHA. This new program puts the human effort to work. When you enter the distorted words via reCAPTCHA, you are not just verifying that you are not a bot, you are digitizing literature from around the world. This type of harnessing of previously wasted effort has been the work that von Ahn has championed for years. He calls it Human Computation.

Luis von Ahn’s successes and projects speak to his skills as an innovator and a inventor. He recognizes ways to leverage effort in new and interesting ways. His ability to do this is bolstered by his professional background in computer science and cryptography. Just read his Wired article or watch his TED Talk and you will get the sense that he is driven by a passion for learning as much as any monetary profit. His team at Duolingo also augment his skills with further expertise.

Reflection: I first heard of Luis von Ahn on an episode of the Tim Ferris Show. Minutes later I was ‘playing’ Duolingo and learning French, German, and Spanish. The app itself is great; free, fun, and effective. But I was mostly compelled by the genius that von Ahn’s “Human Computing” or crowd-sourcing, represents. Basically, he created value out of wasted energy. Duolingo is a product where everyone benefits. The service is free without advertising but the business is still profitable. The success of this venture makes me think about all the ‘wasted energy’ of students in school who churn out reams of work for a grade at the end of the year. What if some innovative entrepreneur could harness all that potential? Imaginez les possibilités.

 

 

Information drawn from:

http://www.businessinsider.com/luis-von-ahn-creator-of-duolingo-recaptcha-2014-3

http://www.androidcentral.com/luis-von-ahn-duolingo-founder-next-goals-and-new-found-love-india

https://www.techinasia.com/how-duolingo-got-110-million-users

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duolingo

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7 Jun Posted on Luis von Ahn and Duolingo

As a previous user of Duolingo I was very intrigued to learn about the creator and the story behind the app. His commitment to making the content free is quite inspiring, especially since he is still able to turn a marginable profit. His venture seems to be steady, but I also don't see much improvement or endeavours to further it to the next level. Seeing as I did a post on Duolingo's "rival" app, Memrise, this was a good read and helped me make comparisons as well.

7 Jun
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onctomek @onctomek

As a previous user of Duolingo I was very intrigued to learn about the creator and the story behind the app. His commitment to making the content free is quite inspiring, especially since he is still able to turn a marginable profit. His venture seems to be steady, but I also don't see much improvement or endeavours to further it to the next level. Seeing as I did a post on Duolingo's "rival" app, Memrise, this was a good read and helped me make comparisons as well.

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3 Jun Posted on Luis von Ahn and Duolingo

I like duolingo and his idea behind it, one-on-one tutor is better than classroom setting! As a person with no academic background in education, My view of seeing education might be slightly different than my fellow classmates. I think education should be available to anyone who is willing to learn, instead of to anyone who enrols into school. Indeed, Duolingo and many other open source apps are promoting this idea. Therefore, with more new apps like Duolingo and Coursera, education in the 21st century is becoming more open and available. I would like to watch how duolingo help people master another language in the future.

3 Jun
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yuandi du @gipsdu

I like duolingo and his idea behind it, one-on-one tutor is better than classroom setting! As a person with no academic background in education, My view of seeing education might be slightly different than my fellow classmates. I think education should be available to anyone who is willing to learn, instead of to anyone who enrols into school. Indeed, Duolingo and many other open source apps are promoting this idea. Therefore, with more new apps like Duolingo and Coursera, education in the 21st century is becoming more open and available. I would like to watch how duolingo help people master another language in the future.

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2 Jun Posted on Luis von Ahn and Duolingo

I was interested to learn how this free service makes a profit. Luis seems committed to free (or at least affordable) language education and was also relatively honest about the shortcomings of Duolingo. The aspiration of moving it toward a world-class language teaching tool that is as effective as the best one-on-one tutors is a lofty one and it sounds like there are plans to further develop this app/service. He's definitely an innovator, but I'm curious to see where this product goes next and whether or not he stays on throughout its development.

2 Jun
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mme_dl @sdillonl

I was interested to learn how this free service makes a profit. Luis seems committed to free (or at least affordable) language education and was also relatively honest about the shortcomings of Duolingo. The aspiration of moving it toward a world-class language teaching tool that is as effective as the best one-on-one tutors is a lofty one and it sounds like there are plans to further develop this app/service. He's definitely an innovator, but I'm curious to see where this product goes next and whether or not he stays on throughout its development.

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2 Jun Posted on Luis von Ahn and Duolingo

Luis Von Anh is as you correctly state in your biography an innovator. Something that struck me when reading his biography and watching the videos was the importance of elegance. It is difficult enough to come up with a unique idea it is another thing all together to make the new idea elegant. I should preface that by elegance I am speaking in engineering terms where one is looking for a unique solution that is simple and effective. Though Doulingo is quite a complicated program behind the scenes, to the user and someone looking to invest, it is simple to grasp and solves the problem. I was struck by how important it is to spend the time to simplify our ideas. Without an easy to grasp solution one is unlikely to be successful.

2 Jun
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benjamin king @benking

Luis Von Anh is as you correctly state in your biography an innovator. Something that struck me when reading his biography and watching the videos was the importance of elegance. It is difficult enough to come up with a unique idea it is another thing all together to make the new idea elegant. I should preface that by elegance I am speaking in engineering terms where one is looking for a unique solution that is simple and effective. Though Doulingo is quite a complicated program behind the scenes, to the user and someone looking to invest, it is simple to grasp and solves the problem. I was struck by how important it is to spend the time to simplify our ideas. Without an easy to grasp solution one is unlikely to be successful.

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