Duolingo’s Luis von Ahn

By scott on September 24, 2018

I’ve been using Duolingo lately in an attempt to learn Japanese. I’ve really been enjoying it – although I do admit to supporting my studies through the app with YouTube videos – and I decided to explore it for this week’s Founder’s Parade.

The Learning Technology Venture – Duolingo

Duolingo is a not-for-profit (freemium) science-driven language-learning platform that can be accessed as a website and as an app. Their mandate is to give everyone a chance to receive “Free language education – no hidden fees, no premium content, just free“, “giving everyone access to a private tutor experience through technology”.

As of 2 years ago, Duolingo had USD$83 million, including investments from Google. It supports tens of millions of users each day. Operational costs were ~USD$42000/day at the time, and they have only grown since. These costs are what led Duolingo to introduce ads in between language lessons.

The Founder/Leader – Luis von Ahn

Luis von Ahn is the Co-Founder and CEO of Duolingo (founded in 2009) and serves as an excellent example of a successful entrepreneur.

Luis was born and raised in Guatemala. He came to the US in 1996, receiving a B.S. in Math from Duke University in 2000 and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon in 2005, becoming faculty there in 2006 in the School of Computer Science.  While there he worked on projects used by millions of people, much of which served as inspiration for what we now call “crowdsourcing“; leveraging crowds (like the average internet user) to do work for the good of everyone. He is also the co-inventor of CAPTCHAs.

Luis’ poor upbringing allowed him to see that high-quality education opportunities are often limited to those with money. He dedicated himself to transforming education and became laser-focused on a single area: language learning. His efforts with Duolingo serve as an example of an entrepreneur creating disruptive change and have resulted in a continual generation of a phenomenal amount of social value.

The Team

Luis seems to have mitigated risks in his company by hiring and working with a variety of smart, talented people, delegating them to head a variety of branches within his business such as:

  • Business Development
  • Company Culture
  • Content & Studios
  • Finance
  • Marketing and International Development
  • PR

Jobs within Duolingo

Diversity within Duolingo

Von Ahn clearly has the background, skills and motivation found in successful entrepreneurs. He has been shown to be an effective leader; he has grown with his company and remained as its head ever since it was founded. He’s an excellent communicator, as evidenced by his interviews, publications, written articles and TED talks. These also demonstrate his strong networking skills, while his elaborate updates on the Duolingo community forums show that he is willing to listen to, interact with, and grow the Duolingo community.

The team behind Duolingo seems to be diverse and extremely competent. Their platform is intuitive and easy-to-use, and the company and the people within it seem to genuinely care about generating social value. Running a not-for-profit venture is a risky venture, and introducing ads to their platform did not go over well with all of its customers. However, by keeping an eye of the data generated by their platform, watching user trends closely, and listening/responding to user feedback, Luis and Duolingo have set a strong foundation upon which I expect this business will continue to grow, evolve, and thrive. And as an added bonus – the app is honestly quite fun to use!

– – – – –

Sources:

Duolingo. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.duolingo.com/info

Duolingo – Current Team | Crunchbase. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/duolingo/current_employees/current_employees_image_list#section-current-team

Forum | Duolingo. (2018). Retrieved from https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/15695026/State-of-Monetization-at-Duolingo

I’m Luis von Ahn, CEO of Duolingo, and This Is How I Work (2018). Retrieved from https://lifehacker.com/im-luis-von-ahn-ceo-of-duolingo-and-this-is-how-i-wor-1791884794

Luis von Ahn. (2018). Retrieved from http://duolingo.wikia.com/wiki/Luis_von_Ahn

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29 Sep Posted on Duolingo’s Luis von Ahn

Hello Scott, Great selection with the founder of Duolingo. I've used the app myself and have found it to be an enjoyable way to brush up on my deplorable French. I had a browse around for Luis von Ahn and noticed that, as a child, he spent a lot of his time playing video games. I wonder if this passion for gaming influenced him, at all, while he was creating the app. Can we expect to see changes that move Duolingo more into the realm of gamificiation?

29 Sep
0 Thumbs Up!
adam brody @abrody81

Hello Scott, Great selection with the founder of Duolingo. I've used the app myself and have found it to be an enjoyable way to brush up on my deplorable French. I had a browse around for Luis von Ahn and noticed that, as a child, he spent a lot of his time playing video games. I wonder if this passion for gaming influenced him, at all, while he was creating the app. Can we expect to see changes that move Duolingo more into the realm of gamificiation?

28 Sep Posted on Duolingo’s Luis von Ahn

Luis von Ahn sounds like the prototypical venture entrepreneur, Scott. From your posting and from a quick peek at his wikipedia biography, it appears as though is always seeking new opportunities revolving around his interests and research. His previous experience with Captcha demonstrates his ability to bring a new venture past the incubation stage and into the hands of a board of directors who can bring his technology into the mainstream. Watching his TED talk, von Ahn is able to adeptly articulate within minutes what Duolingo can do and outlining a future vision for the company. He is an engaging and charismatic speaker and who seems like he would be a natural leader. With his background, passion and vision, I also believe that he is good role model for entrepreneurs.

28 Sep
1 Thumbs Up!
christopher wong @gnowsirh

Luis von Ahn sounds like the prototypical venture entrepreneur, Scott. From your posting and from a quick peek at his wikipedia biography, it appears as though is always seeking new opportunities revolving around his interests and research. His previous experience with Captcha demonstrates his ability to bring a new venture past the incubation stage and into the hands of a board of directors who can bring his technology into the mainstream. Watching his TED talk, von Ahn is able to adeptly articulate within minutes what Duolingo can do and outlining a future vision for the company. He is an engaging and charismatic speaker and who seems like he would be a natural leader. With his background, passion and vision, I also believe that he is good role model for entrepreneurs.

28 Sep Posted on Duolingo’s Luis von Ahn

Very interesting read on Luis von Ahn and Duolingo, Scott. He seems to come from humble roots and understand the value of education and hard work to the benefit of improving the language learning experience. The fact that Duolingo is actually free indicates that his venture is results-driven over profit-driven, as this could easily be at least a partially paid service. In further research I also uncovered that von Ahn turned down a personal job offer from Bill Gates to work at Microsoft because “I want to own what I do.” Pretty bold move from a young (at the time) entrepreneur, which shows the sense of ownership and impact that von Ahn wishes to have. I couldn’t agree more with your assessment that von Ahn and his team at Duolingo “genuinely care about generating social value,” and believe that von Ahn represents a strong role model for entrepreneurs. Thanks for sharing Scott! -Reg

28 Sep
1 Thumbs Up!
Reg Surette @rsurette

Very interesting read on Luis von Ahn and Duolingo, Scott. He seems to come from humble roots and understand the value of education and hard work to the benefit of improving the language learning experience. The fact that Duolingo is actually free indicates that his venture is results-driven over profit-driven, as this could easily be at least a partially paid service. In further research I also uncovered that von Ahn turned down a personal job offer from Bill Gates to work at Microsoft because “I want to own what I do.” Pretty bold move from a young (at the time) entrepreneur, which shows the sense of ownership and impact that von Ahn wishes to have. I couldn’t agree more with your assessment that von Ahn and his team at Duolingo “genuinely care about generating social value,” and believe that von Ahn represents a strong role model for entrepreneurs. Thanks for sharing Scott! -Reg

26 Sep Posted on Duolingo’s Luis von Ahn

This is a great example of going global, a true inspiration for a responsive platform that offers customers an invaluable language learning experience

26 Sep
0 Thumbs Up!
Lori Jones @lyj503

This is a great example of going global, a true inspiration for a responsive platform that offers customers an invaluable language learning experience

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