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Pieter Cranenbroek 
Pieter Cranenbroek
Senior News Editor at LinkedIn
Published Aug 15, 2024
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Duolingo, the app for learning languages, has turned the process into a game in which students have "lives", gain experience points and build streaks. The US-based edtech company, which is valued at $7.7bn (€7bn; £6bn), has acquired 34m daily users by offering services for free, and later adding a paid tier to use the app ad-free. However, while Duolingo is 12 times bigger than its main rival Babbel by downloads, its annual revenue of $531m (€482m; £413m) is only about three times higher than its German competitor's earnings. Just 8.6% of Duolingo users are paid members, but they account for 80% of the firm's income, according to The Wall Street Journal. To increase that share, the company is using AI to analyse data and encourage people to become more active and prompt them to upgrade.
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Anirudh Madhavan
Athlete ⇢ Engineering ⇢ Design ⇢ Growth
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Do you know the story of Duolingo?Currently, they have:• $531 million in total revenue in 2023• Approximately 31 million daily active users• 50% year-over-year growthIt all began when a college professor realized that not everyone could afford to learn English.In 2009, Luis von Ahn, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, noticed the high cost of learning English in his home country of Guatemala. Teaming up with his student Severin Hacker, they began developing a free language learning platform.Initially, they considered making the company a nonprofit. However, von Ahn ultimately decided against it, fearing it wouldn't be sustainable.They began thinking about ways to generate revenue.Duolingo experimented with different business models: - Crowdsourced translation services- Certification- Ads- Subscriptions.In the end, they decided to raise funding. The startup raised $3.3M in 2011 and launched publicly in 2012 to around 500K users.In 2021, Duolingo went public with a $3.7 billion valuation.Today, Duolingo has around 73 million monthly active users and is valued at approximately $7.23 billion.What turned Duolingo into the powerhouse it is today?Two words: creative social.Here's the magic behind their social media strategy:1. Double down on humor and personality:I bet you’ve seen the Duolingo mascot before: Duo the Owl.Duolingo is not afraid to be playful and humorous on social media.They gave Duo the Owl a distinct character by putting him in entertaining and often "unhinged" content.2. Intense social listening:You can only create great social content if you a) know your audience well and b) up to date with the hottest trends. Duolingo's social media team, led by Zaria Parvez, spends significant time identifying trends and create relevant content.3. Community engagement:Duolingo understands the power of community and word of mouth.Duo's interactions in the comment section, including playful jabs at other brands (or even their own users sometimes!), help humanize Duolingo and make people relate to the brand even more.4. Focus on viral potential:You may not have used Duolingo, but chances are you've seen Duo the Owl. It went viral multiple times.How did this happen?Duolingo creates authentic, entertaining content that resonates with TikTok and other social media users.They don't do direct promotion on social media unless it makes sense in context. When you focus on originality and entertainment, virality is just around the corner.If there's one thing I've learned about Duolingo's growth, it's this:In this era of social media where brands play it safe, being unashamedly original and unhinged is be your best bet to win it all.If you like this story, feel free to repost or give me a follow!
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Michael Simmons ⚡️
Servant Leader | Marketing | Operations | Creative | Strategy | MBA
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How Duolingo Turned a Free Language App Into a $7.7 Billion Business wsj.comAny Duolingo Max users out there? My wife and I picked up an moved to Costa Rica after grad school to enroll in a Spanish immersion course.Both of us had studied German or French in school for years and neither spoke with any level of confidence. Less and less the further from school we got.But, immersion was different. We were thrust into a situation whereby we could only speak in Spanish. That approach got us beyond our school-based learning in only 3 months.The ability to carry on a conversation with an AI "person" as Duolingo Max offers could deliver the same type of learning and it sounds amazing. Will it work?The Wall Street Journal did a 7-minute rundown of the Duolingo business model.You may need to borrow someone's WSJ login to watch.Buried in the article is also some great advice for marketers and mobile app developers.You should be A/B testing everything. We know that. The problem with A/B testing is some programs are expensive. Gifting for example, our solution at Sendofy ⚡️, could cost between $500 and $5,000 per test. For a big company, that's not a problem. SMB may struggle. But, dang...the learnings are huge for any business. Look at what Duolingo has been able to do with AI.Amazing AI analysis is going to change your marketing. If you still haven't jumped on the AI bandwagon just know it is not a bandwagon. It's the future, now.Also, our mobile app company did something similar to Duolingo's bandit testing. We called it monkey testing and later used it VLG Marketing to test responsive websites.Imagine you took a smart phone to a zoo and handed it to a monkey. How would a monkey navigate your website or mobile app? Chaos, right? It proved to be a good way to find bugs and avoid putting something broken into production.
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Ronnie Nielsen
Imagining and building the tax authority of the future
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How Duolingo Turned a Free Language App Into a $7.7 Billion Business wsj.comThis The Wall Street Journal video on Duolingo use of #AI and #behavioralinsights contains food for thought for tax authorities and other data-rich organizations 🎬Tax authorities are no strangers to AI or behavioral insights. They use a variety of advanced analytics techniques (including machine learning and more sophisticated forms of artificial intelligence) to fast-track or automate low-risk transactions, select cases for audits, and augment case workers in complex investigations. They also have a long history with using “nudge letters” (sometimes adapted to other channels) to encourage compliance with filing and payment obligations.Yet there is potential to go further. The convergence of AI and behavioral insights (and the near-perfect fit with wider tax administration trends) offers exciting opportunities to fundamentally rethink tax processes by embedding compliance as a more likely default outcome, upstreaming compliance interventions, and systematically learning from taxpayer interactions. 🔮 We already see glimpses of the future. Tax authorities in Denmark, Norway and Australia are for instance using prompts in the filing interface for individuals to encourage taxpayers to reconsider implausible or risky entries before submitting their returns.The taxpaying experience will never be like a gamified version of learning a new language, but it certainly can be made a lot more enjoyable and productive 🤸♂️#futureoftax #fiscalsystemsHenning Jensen Thomas In Sook Holmen Alex Burrows Jillian Wanner Roger Lee Ravi Ranjan Magnus Andresen Vegard Holmedahl Alfredo Collosa Susanna Wanander Andreas Woxberg Nadeem Gulzar Aske Hven-Jensen Marek Rucinski Tina MacLean Alicia Miller Shrupti S. Kasper Hulgaard Karen Boll Lotta Björklund Larsen
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