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''Beg for your life in Spanish,'' says the green Duolingo owl popping up on your screen because you forgot to do your lesson. But he's not always threatening. Sometimes, the messages are more passive-aggressive.
But are Duo's threat's responsible for Duolingo generating a revenue of $116 million in 2023 Q1, a 42% increase from 2022? Or is the mascot's menacing stance why the company has reported a 62% DAU (Daily Active Users) growth year-over-year?
Maybe and maybe.
But we believe Luis von Ahn's vision and the company's focus on A/B testing had a bigger role in its success. Here's what we mean.
Nowadays, many entrepreneurs believe the formula to success is to focus on a niche market, and we're not saying that's wrong. But Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker, the founders of Duolingo, did things differently.
Before Duolingo was even a thing, Rosetta Stone was all the hype in the language learning industry, raising $112.5 million on its first trading day. But here's where the company went wrong: it targeted only a small group by charging hundreds of dollars for its subscription plans.
The Duolingo founders were of the belief that ''true equality is when spending more can’t buy you a better education.” That's how the idea of a free language-learning app came into being.
Duolingo was able to give its competitors a run for their money by simply finding untapped potential. The idea was to let people learn languages for free. And it worked!
Today, everyone uses Duolingo, from a student who wants to learn Spanish to work at a call center to Bill Gates and Khloe Kardashian.
And von Ahn considers it a success that the ''richest man in the world is using the same system as the lowest people on the economic scale.''
As of 2022, Duolingo had 3.3 million paid subscribers and 49.5 million monthly active users. That includes Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, and Syrian refugees living in Turkey.
Duolingo repeatedly says that it's a data-driven company. Because it is.
Micro changes have been the prime reason Duolingo's user base increased from 120 million in 2015 to 575 million in 2021. One example of this is the optimization of Duolingo's signup page.
The company noticed many users open the app but don't sign up. So, they experimented with different signup screens.
Eventually, they discovered that letting people use the app for a while before asking them to sign up would work. And it did, increasing the DAUs by 20%.
The team did the same with streaks. They quickly realized that even after sign-ups, it was hard to get people to open the app every day. So, they introduced streaks, urging users to come back every day.
Tweaking the stream notification copy alone increased DAUs by 5%.
Had von Ahn kept Duolingo stagnant like Rosetta Stone, it would have never become the sensation it is today. Here's how quickly and consistently Duolingo evolved:
We would love to hear your feedback on this post, as this was our first. Any and all suggestions are welcome!
But are Duo's threat's responsible for Duolingo generating a revenue of $116 million in 2023 Q1, a 42% increase from 2022? Or is the mascot's menacing stance why the company has reported a 62% DAU (Daily Active Users) growth year-over-year?
Maybe and maybe.
But we believe Luis von Ahn's vision and the company's focus on A/B testing had a bigger role in its success. Here's what we mean.
Target to a Large Market (sometimes).
Nowadays, many entrepreneurs believe the formula to success is to focus on a niche market, and we're not saying that's wrong. But Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker, the founders of Duolingo, did things differently.
Before Duolingo was even a thing, Rosetta Stone was all the hype in the language learning industry, raising $112.5 million on its first trading day. But here's where the company went wrong: it targeted only a small group by charging hundreds of dollars for its subscription plans.
The Duolingo founders were of the belief that ''true equality is when spending more can’t buy you a better education.” That's how the idea of a free language-learning app came into being.
Duolingo was able to give its competitors a run for their money by simply finding untapped potential. The idea was to let people learn languages for free. And it worked!
Today, everyone uses Duolingo, from a student who wants to learn Spanish to work at a call center to Bill Gates and Khloe Kardashian.
And von Ahn considers it a success that the ''richest man in the world is using the same system as the lowest people on the economic scale.''
As of 2022, Duolingo had 3.3 million paid subscribers and 49.5 million monthly active users. That includes Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, and Syrian refugees living in Turkey.
Be Data-Driven and A/B Test Everything.
Duolingo repeatedly says that it's a data-driven company. Because it is.
Micro changes have been the prime reason Duolingo's user base increased from 120 million in 2015 to 575 million in 2021. One example of this is the optimization of Duolingo's signup page.
The company noticed many users open the app but don't sign up. So, they experimented with different signup screens.
Eventually, they discovered that letting people use the app for a while before asking them to sign up would work. And it did, increasing the DAUs by 20%.
The team did the same with streaks. They quickly realized that even after sign-ups, it was hard to get people to open the app every day. So, they introduced streaks, urging users to come back every day.
Tweaking the stream notification copy alone increased DAUs by 5%.
Never Stop Evolving and Experimenting.
Had von Ahn kept Duolingo stagnant like Rosetta Stone, it would have never become the sensation it is today. Here's how quickly and consistently Duolingo evolved:
- CNN and Buzzfeed Partnership: Duolingo partnered with CNN and Buzzfeed, earning through user-translated content. The partnership worked because Duo's pricing - at 4 cents per word - was cheaper than the industry average of 6 to 10 cents/word. Users also seemed to have a lot of fun, with 600 articles being translated daily.
- Duolingo Incubator: The company introduced an Incubator program where contributors could create a course for a language unavailable on the platform. In just three years, contributors created 87 courses that benefitted more than 150 million people.
- Test Center: In 2014, Duolingo released its Test Center, a TOEFL or IELTS-like test that users could take to get their English language certification for foreign employment and educational opportunities. Many universities and employers, including Uber, accept this test.
- Duolingo for Schools: It's a free service that allows teachers to teach languages in classrooms. About 100,000 teachers signed up for Duolingo just a few months after this feature's release.
We would love to hear your feedback on this post, as this was our first. Any and all suggestions are welcome!