I listen to startup podcasts so you don’t have to.
When we started Duolingo, I can best describe us as communists. We did not want to make money... The reality and what we have found is... when we started making money, we were also able to invest more in teaching more people.
" • Early monetization can support mission growth. • Financial sustainability enables greater impact. • Don't avoid revenue generation out of misplaced ideals.It just turns out that talking to people in a language that you're not comfortable with, like 90% of people don't want to do that... people don't really know what they want... what you have to look at is... their behavior.
" • Recognize the gap between user intentions and actions. • Prioritize features based on usage data. • Don't overinvest in features users claim to want but won't use.You know, if you have a scarce resource, you can really do that... if you have too much demand, you can get people to pay you to put your machine there.
" • Leverage scarcity to create demand. • Consider unconventional revenue streams. • Expand cautiously while ensuring quality.I'm still stuck on the idea that your pricing is such an interesting thing... I think you can just set your own price and just say, look, we're high-end... I think you want to get to a position where your profit margins are high.
" • Evaluate if higher prices better reflect your product's value. • Higher prices can lead to better margins and sustainability. • Positioning as a premium brand may attract the right customers.It took me a long time to realize that there are certain shortcomings that I have... what you do is you just hire people who are great at that and let them do that. So most everybody in my executive team is excellent at something that I'm really bad at.
" • Recognize and accept personal weaknesses. • Hire team members who complement your skill set. • Delegate responsibilities to experts for better outcomes.We don't really look at what competitors, particularly in language learning, are doing too much... What we mainly compete for is time. So for us, what we look at is, we look at what Instagram's doing, we look at what mobile games are doing...
" • Identify all activities vying for your users' attention. • Benchmark against platforms capturing user time. • Design products that engage users amid broad competition.When you're a private company, nobody's really looking at how you operate... But if you're a publicly traded company, you have a lot of guests, so basically it really forces you to make sure that all your processes are... well structured.
" • Public companies require more transparency and accountability. • Operational excellence becomes critical. • CEOs must adapt to new stakeholder expectations.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... but what didn't work was apps on Apple Watch.
" • Avoid investing heavily in unproven platforms. • Focus on established markets to reduce risk. • Learn from others' experiences with new tech.Our users or users in general, people don't really know what they want. They'll tell you all kinds of things, but what you have to look at is not their words, but their actions, like their behavior.
" • Focus on user behavior over survey responses. • Analyze data to understand actual user preferences. • Observe actions, not just words.