Understanding Duolingo’s quiet $10M raise

Re:Understanding Duolingo’s quiet $10M raise by ConsiderCrying on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @04:34PM (#23011624)

Huh, I had no idea Duolingo was this successful. Anybody with insight into General Atlantic that could speculate on what changes they could bring? I've read their Wiki page but it's pretty barren, although they seem to be enacting some curious initiatives like: "In 2018 General Atlantic invested in UK investment start-up Greensill in an attempt to challenge traditional lending systems"

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Re:Understanding Duolingo’s quiet $10M raise by chris11 on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @04:48PM (#23011782)

I knew they were successful, but I didn't know they were valued at 1.5 billion.

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Re:Understanding Duolingo’s quiet $10M raise by shiningdays on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @06:27PM (#23012902)

I can see this.

I moved abroad in 2018 to a non-english speaking country and just about everyone I met had Duolingo on their phone. You'd be surprised at how many would cough up for a Premium membership just to keep their streak from breaking and making the cute green owl cry.

That said, apparently their biggest market is actually people trying to learn English, which... checks out. In our modern times, english is the lingua franca. There's a bottomless pit of people who want or need to learn it.

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Re:Understanding Duolingo’s quiet $10M raise by danielscrubs on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @04:16AM (#23016724)

It's weird, because it's not very good at understanding the need of the users. If you are Chinese and want to learn English, you have to show the contrast between the grammar-points from a Chinese perspective in an meaningful way.

It really feels like: how can I, as an english developer, teach language? Instead of: -How can I, as an elite teacher, create an app to teach language?

Now that I think about it... is there any teachers with SF-developer-salary? Is there any language-teachers that talk about being the 10x teacher?

Duolingo has done some cool stuff with AI: http://sharedtask.duolingo.com/ they just don't seem to use it?

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Re:Understanding Duolingo’s quiet $10M raise by ore0s on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @05:45PM (#23012495)

When you get on the SF portion of the 101 you used to be able to see their hiring billboard with living in Pittsburgh as a plus. I wonder how how much of their being able to fly under the radar is due to their location.

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Re:Understanding Duolingo’s quiet $10M raise by freepor on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @02:54AM (#23016193)

People who speak English as a first language never grasp the true market demand for language learning since all of their language learning is recreational.

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