Duolingo CEO: You Only Need 2 People and 6 Months to Build the Next Big Product

Hey guys, welcome to Silicon Valley Girl. We are about to interview the

Girl. We are about to interview the founder of Dualingo.

Oh.

Oh, no. No, no, no. Do not you. No, no,

no. Do we have the actual founder?

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Your employees are getting a little creative.

We pay that guy and he has his own personality. He just does what he wants.

personality. He just does what he wants.

AI is not going to take your job.

Somebody using AI is going to take your job.

This is Luis Vonan, CEO of Dualingo.

Recently, two of his employees built a chess course with AI in six months. No

engineering background, no knowledge of the subject. It became the fastest

the subject. It became the fastest growing course in the company. There are

a lot of rumors large companies firing people. They say it's AI.

people. They say it's AI.

We have never done a layoff. Despite

what the internet may think, it is important to continue hiring people because a single employee is just way more productive now than they used to be. I'm going to name five professions

be. I'm going to name five professions and you're going to make some predictions. Gone in five years are not

predictions. Gone in five years are not going anywhere.

There will be fewer and fewer.

Please, you told your team that nobody gets hired unless team proves AI can do the work first. Can you tell me how you

actually track that? As a founder, our goal here is to use AI uh to benefit our users. Internally, we have this

our users. Internally, we have this golden rule. We're only going to use AI

golden rule. We're only going to use AI to benefit our learners. Some people may imagine that, you know, some companies may be firing people and and having AI do their job. That's not what we're

doing whatsoever. Our team has gotten uh

doing whatsoever. Our team has gotten uh significantly better at using AI over the last, you know, couple of years. And

that has allowed us to do a lot more. It

has allowed us to uh put out a lot more content, a lot more learning content, etc. We as a management team are not necessarily tracking like oh are you doing something that AI can do or not.

We're just really trying to tell everyone uh try to be as as efficient as possible with AI and and our employees are doing that.

And can you give me some of the best examples from the team for someone who's watching this and they're like okay my manager tells me to start using AI but I have no idea how to do it. Do you have like best case examples?

It depends on what your job role is. I

think most of our engineers um have basically really changed their workflows. They're using AI coding

workflows. They're using AI coding tools. A lot of our product managers,

tools. A lot of our product managers, what they've decided to do is using AI to make prototypes of things. So the

product manager may not be implementing the thing in the full production app, but rather than coming to us with a written document, they come with a prototype. Now that's way better because

prototype. Now that's way better because it allows for much better decision-m.

So, if somebody comes to me with a written proposal and says, uh, you know, I'm going to do a a way to teach Spanish better, it's hard for me to know what that actually means. But if they just show me the prototype and I can see that

it really does seem to teach Spanish better, it's much easier to to give approval to that type of thing. So, it

it depends a lot in the role.

Do you give them any guidance like okay, instead of doing this, do that next time or how how do they even find out they can do these things with AI? We try to do some things in the whole company um

to try to you know we had for example uh a few months ago we had um a day where everybody in the company had to vibe code something not just engineers every

single person people from you know HR people from the finance team everybody had to v code something um so everybody could see the power of it we also have a lot of documentation about best

practices but generally people here in dualing are pretty smart. They're always

finding new things and I think what happens is rather than management telling them what to do, they tell each other what to do. There's we have a lot of Slack channels that you know one of them is called best AI practices and so people are just saying stuff. We

also have another one that's called AI fails which is all the times all the things that people is an incredible thing very empowering for people who are like oh my god I made you know usually they're very

small apps but it's like I made an app.

One of the things that has happened inside this company is everybody has made their own dashboard for their KPIs or something.

Yeah. For whatever it is, whatever it is they're tracking. I mean, I see a few

they're tracking. I mean, I see a few product managers that have vibe coded a whole thing with like our users in every country and what they're doing.

That's that's super impressive. And is

that how you track AI proficiency?

Because now it's part of performance reviews, right? At Dualingo,

reviews, right? At Dualingo, for a while it was part of performance reviews. We decided not to do that. And

reviews. We decided not to do that. And

I'll tell you why. I sent a memo to the company that said you know part of your performance review is going to be usage of AI and we found that people were I don't know if they were doing that but

they were kind of asking like do you just want us to use AI for AI's sake and at the end we backtrack and we said no look the most important thing in your performance is that you are doing you

know whatever your job is as well as possible a lot of times AI can help you with that but if it can't I'm not going to force you to do that so I think we backtrack from that because it really it felt like rather than being

held accountable for the actual outcome, we're trying to just push something that in some cases did not fit.

And um do you have a specific example where somebody did something in a week without AI and then with AI they kind of multiplied the uh output?

We now teach chess on Dualingo. So you

know for a long time we only taught languages, now we teach a few other things. Chess is the latest course we

things. Chess is the latest course we added. This course got started by two

added. This course got started by two people, neither of whom knew chess, neither of whom knew how to program. They basically

vi coded the first prototype of it. Now

the final version that is actually in the app, of course we put some engineers in there, etc. But they really got very far in a span of about 6 months. They

created the whole curriculum for chess.

They created a prototype of the app all uh entirely with with AI. And again,

these people did not know any chess.

And whose idea was that? Was it their idea to It was their idea to do that. They also,

it was well, they're the ones who wanted to add chess. Uh, by the way, they came to me a year earlier to say, "We want to add chess." I said, "I don't want to add

add chess." I said, "I don't want to add chess." Um, because it's just a game and

chess." Um, because it's just a game and we're an education app. But what

happened was that um, a few months later, I talked to the minister of education of my country. I'm from

Guatemala. And she said to me, "Our education system, our public education system in Guatemala is so broken that I'm considering sending every student a chessboard so that at least they'll learn logical thinking." And when she

said that to me, I thought, "Oh, wow.

Okay, this is actually part of education."

education." Yes. So then, uh, this is when I told

Yes. So then, uh, this is when I told them, "Okay, you can add the chess course." But I said to them,

course." But I said to them, but I don't have any engineers to give you, so go ahead. And they they figured it out.

6 months, right?

About 6 months. Yeah.

And now it's your fastest growing course.

Yeah. It's I mean at this point we have seven million daily active users that are learning chess.

Wow, this is fascinating. Uh can you tell me step by step what was their process? So if somebody's watching and

process? So if somebody's watching and they're like wow if Dolingo is able to do such a spin-off which is kind of different from languages. If I want to start something with AI and build a fast growing product, what are the like five

steps they need to take? These two guys, the first thing they did was probably learn chess probably because they didn't know any chess and that's one of the reasons they wanted to add it because they themselves wanted to learn chess.

But after that, what they did is they really started looking at, you know, kind of the different tools that are out there for learning chess that they were basically doing market research trying

to figure out what's out there for learning chess. They found that really

learning chess. They found that really what was out there was not all that great. And then they decided to start

great. And then they decided to start vibe coding something. To be fair, this person does have some technical knowledge. They're not an engineer, but

knowledge. They're not an engineer, but they have some technical knowledge. Um,

and so they downloaded cursor and at first they made just chess puzzles. Um,

then they realized that the AI was not very good at making chess puzzles. So

then they decided to train it with some there's a there's an online database of a lot of different chess puzzles. So they trained the AI with

puzzles. So they trained the AI with that and it got a lot better. And then

after that what they started doing was just more and more mobile prototypes for me to play with until I told them that it was kind of good enough to to really put it in the app.

And then you put it in the app and then did you give it an external push or people just started discovering it. And

by putting it in the app very quickly a lot of people came but chess really has a big draw. I mean we put other courses in the app that have not grown as as much. For example, it turns out chess is

much. For example, it turns out chess is more fun than math. So someone a student who just heard about your chess course that was spun out so quickly and they want to start building something with AI

today. What advice would you give them?

today. What advice would you give them?

Well, the biggest advice I can give them is to start. You know, a lot of people talk a lot about starting. They they're

like, "Oh, I have an idea, but I biggest thing is just sit down and do it. You

will learn a lot by just trying to do it." So that's that's the biggest thing.

it." So that's that's the biggest thing.

Um, other than that, you know, try to learn how do some of the best tools work. Certainly, vibe coding will help

work. Certainly, vibe coding will help you a lot, but it's not just vi coding.

I mean, trying to make, you know, the uh initial designs for it. Now, you can have AI tools to make the initial screens and everything. So, use it all and try to make try to make the thing. I

mean, I I haven't haven't quite yet seen somebody who knows nothing about uh programming to really make a good app, but I have seen people who know a little bit about programming make,

you know, make apps. So, I I would tell you it's still worthwhile learning kind of the structure of programs. Um, that seems important. So, even even though

seems important. So, even even though you may you may not actually need to program like word by word, just knowing how things work. for example, knowing the difference between the server and

the client, like just these very basic things. I think that's important.

things. I think that's important.

Did Did it give you more ideas to add more courses that are non- language related?

Yeah, it's given us a lot of ideas. We

are not we are not yet working on other stuff, but we have a long list of things that we, you know, we want to teach all kinds of things, K through 12 science, we want to teach, again, we're not yet working on that. We want to teach K through2 science. We want to teach how

through2 science. We want to teach how to draw. There's all kinds of things,

to draw. There's all kinds of things, but at the moment, we're not really working on them because we want to continue working on chess, math, music, and languages.

Got it. But then any employee can just go and VIP code one of these courses and show you and maybe yeah that's what I tell the company by the way. A lot of times people come to

the way. A lot of times people come to me and they're like what course are you going to add next? And I you know what one of the things I tell them is I wanted to add K through2 science and

then we added math. I I wanted to add K through 12 science and then we added music. I wanted to add K through2

music. I wanted to add K through2 science and then we added chess. At this

point I also want to add K through2 science. But it turns out that what

science. But it turns out that what people do here is somebody comes up with a really good idea and if it's good and they're passionate about it, we let them do it.

Yeah, they do it. Let's go back to the actually the AI failure chat. Can you

recall any examples of AI actually failing in a task?

Oh, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of things where it's where it's failing. I

I'll tell you the biggest one which I think we're starting to see a difference here, but it wasn't the case a year ago.

If you were to look at Twitter um and just read what people are saying on Twitter. Two years ago I should have

Twitter. Two years ago I should have fired all our engineers because on Twitter they're like AI is better at coding than engineer. This is kind of for the last two years this is what they've been saying on Twitter and it was an interesting thing because I would

come here and I would not really see a speed up on engineering.

Uh and I'm like well what's the disconnect why? You know there's all

disconnect why? You know there's all these people saying that AI is better at coding than humans. And the reality is it's not yet the case that AI is better at coding than humans. I think you still really need engineers and you're going

to need them for a long time, I think.

But we've just seen a lot of cases where uh you know, you tell the AI to to program something and sometimes it works, but the other I don't know what fraction of time it doesn't work, but when it doesn't work, there's a real

problem in that because you don't really know what it did, it's really hard to debug it. And that's kind of what has

debug it. And that's kind of what has happened that you get into the the happy path is really fast. Okay, it worked.

But the unhappy path makes it so that it takes so long that you end up spending more effort on that than the time you saved on the other things. So we've seen that quite a bit. We've also seen AI not

be able to generate things like narrative like stories. Sometimes it

does a good job, sometimes it doesn't do a great job and it just comes up with things that don't make any sense. You

know, it's interesting because when you see a demo and you ask it to come up with a story, somehow those demos always look amazing. But then when you try to

look amazing. But then when you try to come up with a hundred stories, you realize that only like 30 are good and the other 70 are so human still needs to check and select.

Oh check. Yeah. Yeah. All our content needs to be there. There there's a lot of steps to try to either check it or spot check it or or something to make sure that the quality is high.

So if we compare today and a year ago, how much more productive the company is with AI?

I don't know. It's more in pockets. And

I don't know if any larger company that has seen like a 10x speed up in like I don't think so. I think startups really see it because when you're a one person team then you work one person can do a lot of stuff. With a

larger company it's harder. It just

turns out for example most engineers don't spend eight hours a day coding.

They have to go to meetings. They have

to so there's a part of it that you just cannot speed up. Then there's the part that they spend coding. Okay maybe you can speed that up but you cannot speed it up. At least at the moment you cannot

it up. At least at the moment you cannot speed it up by a thousandx.

I don't know.

We're not we're seeing some speed ups here and there in different pockets of the company. But again, it's what you

the company. But again, it's what you said. One person companies are a lot

said. One person companies are a lot faster, but it's because you don't have to interface with all the other parts of the company, etc. Also, AI is not as good with existing code bases rather than with a brand new codebase. We've

been talking a lot about how AI is changing the way people learn and retain information. And that got me thinking

information. And that got me thinking about something I changed in how I organize my own daily life and work.

Someone told me once, if you're not capturing everything that happens in your calls with your team, you're actually losing to other companies.

You're losing decisions that were made.

You're losing context that gets dropped, things you're committed to, and then you just forgot. team sanks, strategy

just forgot. team sanks, strategy sessions, call with investors, even a quick conversation with a contractor. It

all disappears the moment the call ends.

And uh I don't know about you, but I'm on calls every single day. Sometimes I

forget to press record. Sometimes I

don't think the conversation is worth recording, but then after the conversation, I realize I had to actually record that. One of my friends told me, "Marina, you should start using Granola. You'll be blown away." And now

Granola. You'll be blown away." And now I use it on every single call. Now, it

is an AI notepad for meetings, but it's not a bot that joins your Zoom and makes everyone uncomfortable. It transcribes

everyone uncomfortable. It transcribes your computer's audio in the background while you stay completely present in the conversation. It listens to every call

conversation. It listens to every call automatically. And if it's a recurring

automatically. And if it's a recurring call, emerges them by folders. So, by

the time the meeting ends, you have clean, structured notes ready to go. And

after the call, I chat with my notes.

I'm like, "Okay, uh, we just had this conversation. can you uh create a

conversation. can you uh create a follow-up email that I'm going to send to Monica, my manager. Uh we're going to proceed with this, this, and that.

Creates the email and I just send it.

Takes 15 seconds. It works across Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams. It's one of those tools I genuinely can't work without anymore. And I don't think

without anymore. And I don't think you'll be able to either once you try it, try it on your very first meeting after this episode. Head to

granola.ai/marina

to get three months of Granola for free or enter the code marina at checkout. I

left a link in the description. And now

back to my conversation with Lewis. What

about you as a founder? Does AI help you make decisions or any workflows that work for you?

Research? Sure. It used to be the case that whenever I had something that needed to be researched, like I don't know what is the chess landscape in India, for example. You know, it used to

be the case that I needed to either spend a lot of time myself or get a team of people to help me. Whereas now I can I can get a pretty good idea by just asking Gemini or something like that.

Um so research I do a lot more by myself. That has helped me but

myself. That has helped me but ultimately the decisions are made by made by me. It's not like I asked the computer what would you decide? Okay.

I haven't.

So you don't use it as a coach or you haven't vipcoded your own KPIs or whatever.

I've done a bunch of I coding for things but yeah certainly my KPIs but it's not decisions I still make myself.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. I interview a lot of cool people on this podcast. In the past three weeks, I had Reed Hoppin and Bill Gurley who are legendary investors and I asked them a question. What is the first market that's going to be

completely changed by AI and market you should be looking at? And they told me language.

Thank you so much. You know, it's been my thing for 10 years. What do you think?

Uh I don't know what that means change.

So uh like you don't have to learn a language because everything is translated.

Oh, no. I just don't buy that. Um if you look at our users, uh we have more than 100 million active users. Um half of them are learning as a hobby.

It's a hobby.

Whether AI can do it or not, it's a hobby. Actually, chess is a great

hobby. Actually, chess is a great example. You know, computers have been

example. You know, computers have been better at chess than humans since 1997.

A lot more people are learning chess today than they were in 1997. It's a

hobby. So for half of our learners, it's a hobby. And I don't think whether

a hobby. And I don't think whether computers can do it or not, I don't think it'll matter. The other half are learning English. And I think anybody

learning English. And I think anybody who tells you that people don't want to learn a language has not had to learn English.

It's interesting how you say like 50% they're probably learning other languages. Hobby. Yes. English

languages. Hobby. Yes. English

necessity.

Yes. But that's how it is in the world.

Like if you're learning I'm sure there are I'm generalizing here, but generally if you're learning French, it's a hobby. It's not always true. I'm sure there are people who

true. I'm sure there are people who actually need to move to France, but it's a small fraction. The majority of people in the world that are learning French, you know, want to feel cool when they go to Paris so they can order a croissant. And that's our uses. And

croissant. And that's our uses. And

again, somebody who's lived their entire life in the US, has, you know, has never had to learn English because that's their native language, etc., will say something like, well, languages are unnecessary, etc. But somebody who's had

to learn English, it's a different thing. It's just you just need to learn

thing. It's just you just need to learn English. And and you may want to move to

English. And and you may want to move to an English speaking country. You may

need to do an educational like you may need to go to a university. Nobody's

going to be allowing you to go to a university with like a a phone that translates everything the professor says. Like that's just not

says. Like that's just not Yeah.

So I I'm just not particularly worried about that.

Is there a fraction of the market? So

I'm thinking about translators for example. Somebody spends like four years

example. Somebody spends like four years learning that.

What would you say to those people?

Depends on on what it is. But there are fractions of the market that are probably going to change quite a bit.

Also, in terms of the demand, I agree that some people may have wanted to learn a little bit of a language if they were going to, you know, just visit Germany for 2 days that maybe now they're just not going to do that

because they can just but I at least when you look at dualingos users, that's a very small minority of our users. The

majority really are hobby or English.

Um, so I'm just not worried. I'm not the other thing about language translation is that simultaneous language translation has been really good for

this is not an LLM thing like LLMs are good at it too but Google translate did not use LLMs and it was really good 10 years ago so I I just you know we've seen the demand to learn a language

actually go up as opposed to go down so this is not something that we internally are worried about but I understand people say that yeah I'm also thinking like if you have glasses for example that are smart and they translate everything for you

automatically. I haven't seen the case

automatically. I haven't seen the case with the headphones. I don't think people really use the the AirPods to translate. No.

translate. No.

Then I'm thinking maybe it's glasses that translate the signs. I don't know.

It's cuz when we came to Silicon Valley, I think 2015, we were pitching our company Lingua Trip that does like language travel, language courses.

And I think 50% but to your note, American investors were like, "Oh, this is not a market. Oh, this is going to go down."

down." We've had this problem at the entirety of the company of Dualingo. We are a company based in the United States. you

know a when we first pitched Dualingo to investors here you know I don't know however many years ago the most common thing is like nobody really wants to learn a language math though people want

to learn math and that's you know I'm sure investors think that because they are good at math and they wanted to learn math but the reality is there are more people learning languages in the world than there are people learning math what was your mindset when the smartest

people in the world tell you that you're like I don't care I just I mean I you know I grew up in Guatemala I could see what it was to have to learn English look it is a huge thing to learn English. It changes people's lives.

English. It changes people's lives.

I know that's my my case as well.

It changes people's lives.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Do you have another worry that So, you have an app, right? But now we're in the era when anyone can bite code an app for themselves. What if I go to like I'm

themselves. What if I go to like I'm learning English, I go to Claude and ask, can you gify my experience, create me an app that's personalized to me, you know, my interests, you know, my hobbies. Do you worry about that?

hobbies. Do you worry about that?

A little bit, but not not really. I mean

this it's funny inside the company we never talk about this this is you know we see again we see Twitter talking about that or investors talking about that but we internally don't talk about

that look ultimately I think you can ask AI to make you an app but making a really good app um is not that easy you

know ultimately we for example have data from uh hundreds of millions of people about how they learn a language every single day more than a billion exercises are answered on Dualingo and we use that

data to teach you better and so we just have a lot of data on how to keep you motivated. You know there's probably two

motivated. You know there's probably two 3,000 language learning apps in the world. They've been there and now with

world. They've been there and now with vibe coding now there will be probably 20,000 rather than 2 3,000 but at the moment we're just not particularly concerned. You know something may

concerned. You know something may happen.

Is there anything concerned? Because I'm

asking a question about it because I talked to people and they're like a this is going to be eliminated. This going to be we're done. And you're like it's fine.

No I don't I wouldn't say that it's like all is fine. I do think a lot of things are going to change.

What do you think is going to change?

What are you preparing for?

I think that user expectations are going to change and I think we have to stay ahead of it.

So, a good example is, you know, one of the things we have in the app is uh conversation practice uh with AI. When

we first put that out there, the cost of it was high for us. So, we put it behind the most expensive tier. So that so you have to pay a lot of subscription to get the conversation practice.

At the moment the cost of that has come down enough that we're going to start giving it to a much cheaper tiers and we are probably going to eventually give it away for free.

Mhm.

We're doing that because I believe that customers are going to start expecting that like I think there will be apps that start doing this for free and if we don't do it now we'll be forced to do it in a few years. So that's the type of

stuff we're doing to prepare for this because I I again I think we just need to stay ahead.

Yeah. So users will expect more from I think users will expect more. I think

I think users will expect the apps to be a lot more intelligent which they should.

Yeah.

We're undergoing kind of a platform shift here and what ends up happening in platform shifts is that the companies who were the winner before the platform shift may or may not remain the winner

after that. So I hope that we can do

after that. So I hope that we can do that. Also talking about uh AI and

that. Also talking about uh AI and workforce. I just talked to Gary

workforce. I just talked to Gary Vaynerchuk and I really like what he said like there are a lot of rumors of people and news people firing like the large companies firing people and they say it's AI. Then Gary said something

that struck me because he said like if I fire 100 people my competitor hires them and they still 10x their output like I'm dumb for firing them. How do you think about that?

We have never uh laid anybody off here.

We have never done a layoff despite what the internet may think. The internet may think that we misunderstood yours.

We've never done a layoff here. Um I

think that it is um important to continue hiring people because now you know the way I see it is a single employee is just way more productive now than they used to be. So you know I get

better return on investment by having another employee. So that that's how I

another employee. So that that's how I see it. Um I mean my sense I of course

see it. Um I mean my sense I of course cannot speak about the very specific companies but I my sense is that at least in some of the cases AI is just um an easy PR reasoning.

Yeah. I mean usually what happened is you overhired and when you overhired you're like okay because of AI we're going to do that.

I don't at least at Dualingo the way we run the company I I am surprised that there are companies doing that because I see no reason.

Yeah. I talked I was just at Davos and I was talking to somebody who releases their jobs report. All the layoffs are structural like overhired during COVID.

So it's not really a lot of companies overhire during CO and I understand that and then you know if you overhired you probably don't need these people but you know blaming AI is is an easy scape goat.

It is it is what he just said actually worries me the most. Everyone's talking

about like AI replacing jobs and big companies firing people. This is not what's happening here, right? He's

actually hiring people, but he's hiring those who know AI. Same for me where we're just hiring a social media manager. And the questions I was asking

manager. And the questions I was asking them during the interview, how you going to automate this? How are you going to use AI in this process? Founders are

looking for people who utilize AI in their work. And this is actually what my

their work. And this is actually what my newsletter is about. It's called future proof. And every week I share what we

proof. And every week I share what we learned with AI. Like my uh PR person just vipoded the whole website with all the transcripts from this podcast. And

uh we share things like that in the newsletter. So first of all, subscribe

newsletter. So first of all, subscribe to this channel and second subscribe to the newsletter. Can we talk about the

the newsletter. Can we talk about the stock price because I when I was preparing for this, I saw the 82% collapse of the stock. But what I really want to talk about because you explained

that to your shareholders.

Can you walk me through your mindset as a founder when you make such decisions who make your users happy but they don't make your investors happy?

Well, the decision was made by AI. Oh,

I'm kidding. That is a joke. That is not what happened. Uh, I made that decision.

what happened. Uh, I made that decision.

Uh, my look, we made a conscious shift in how we run the company. I made a conscious shift

the company. I made a conscious shift and certainly the executive team was behind me. But we got to a point where,

behind me. But we got to a point where, you know, if you look at over the last 5 years, we've grown a lot. We became a public company in 2021. uh we have grown

our user base by more like our active users by more than 5x since then. So

we've grown a lot. We've also grown our revenue by a similar amount etc. We've grown a lot but two things happened. One

is that throughout 2025 we we've been still growing but we were growing slower than we're growing in previous years. So that's one thing that

previous years. So that's one thing that happened like our user base was growing slower than in previous years. The

second thing that happened is because of AI I really do believe that education is going to change quite a bit. and we are a really uh you know important player in

the education category and I want to be in in a situation where we can lead some of that change through AI. So the

combination of I want to lead through that change in AI and our user growth slowing down told me we need to do something important change how we operate so that we continue grabbing as

many users as possible. Now that comes with a cost which is we are not going to be monetizing our user base as much as we were before and investors don't love that

but we knew you know when we made this decision we talked to of course all internally our finance team everybody agreed this is going to decrease our stock price did you expect that number like 80 82

I didn't know exactly what to expect honestly but I knew that it was going to be a lot um so we we we knew that but we made the decision consciously because we think that if we continued operating the

way we were operating, you know, we probably could have continued growing a little bit, etc., but at some point it was going to be capped. Whereas, I think if we really try to get a much larger user base, we're going to be a much

larger company in the long term. And the

thing is, I'm operating this company. I

mean, I'm hoping that this is my last job and this is the last thing that I do. Uh, and I have many more years of

do. Uh, and I have many more years of energy left.

And you never regretted the decision.

Oh, no. No. That is amazing because as a founder again hearing from the market what they think about your decision is tough.

It's tough. Wow.

I know. I agree. I I agree. Look, it's

not that it hasn't been tough. I mean, I I don't regret the decision because I believe that it is the right decision, but it it's you know, yeah, it's been tough. I I really still am very convinced this is the right decision.

Do you feel like cuz you're founder of a publicly traded company, does your mood defended your stock price? It used to when we first went public, it used to I learned to stop looking

uh like at least every day. I mean, it's not that I don't It's not that I don't know the the ballpark, but I don't look every day. It used to be the case the

every day. It used to be the case the first the first year or so. It'd be like it went up by a dollar, it went down by a dollar. now

a dollar. now like you're used to it because as a creator my self-worth depends on how my last video is performing which is not

right which is not good for my mental health. I'm learning how to not look at

health. I'm learning how to not look at it.

Uh well I will tell you this uh the same is true for me but not with our stock price. It's with daily active users.

price. It's with daily active users.

So you still have the same I just moved it to daily active users.

So, every every morning, yes, it's growing and everything, but every morning I, you know, our daily active user report for the previous day comes at 5:00 a.m. Exactly. I am I wake up very early. Every morning at 5:01 a.m.,

very early. Every morning at 5:01 a.m.,

my mood gets set.

It's not good.

Do you think you should adjust it for a second?

Yeah, it's not good mentally, but hey, I prefer this than the stock price, though. This This makes more sense. At

though. This This makes more sense. At

least this is something you can control.

This is something I can control, and it's an actual measure of the health of this company. the stock price some of it

this company. the stock price some of it is you know over the long term it is a good measure of the health of this company but on a day-to-day basis you know we used to there used to be days that the stock price went down because

like oil prices changed and I'm like okay how is that related to me any other mental hacks because I'm I'm talking to you again you're not really

worried about AI you learned how to make stock price not control your mood uh do you have any mental life hacks that you developed as a founder during these What helps you? What do you think? But

what what do you do when something goes bad? Do you go on walks to create ideas?

bad? Do you go on walks to create ideas?

I mean, don't get me wrong, when something goes bad, I you know, it gets to me. I

It definitely gets to me. Um I try to really think about the long term. One of

the things that has helped me the most is really thinking about this. This is

not just about the company. This is in general. And of course, I didn't invent

general. And of course, I didn't invent this. This is a lot of people say this.

this. This is a lot of people say this.

Thinking about anything. Will this

matter in six months?

The vast majority of things will not matter in six months. The vast majority of things. So sometimes I get really

of things. So sometimes I get really upset and I think about it. Will this

matter in six months? Some things will, but the vast majority of things will not matter in six months. And I that that makes me feel a lot better because I think, okay, I'm I'm upset for no reason because this is going to fizzle out.

What about um other things like marketing or content? Do you think it matters for a founder?

Depending on what type of company you're doing. Uh certainly if you're doing a

doing. Uh certainly if you're doing a consumer company, marketing is going to end up mattering.

One of the most important things.

It's going to end up mattering a lot. I

mean, I love our marketing team. They

are excellent. They've done some really creative things over the years and have helped us grow a lot. I don't know of any hacks. I mean, ultimately, you need

any hacks. I mean, ultimately, you need to figure out how to get the word out for your product. I will say I have seen um many people try to cover a bad

product with good marketing and that can only get you so far. The reality is if you want to really succeed, your product has to be good.

Yeah.

Um I think good product, bad marketing is not very good, but bad product, good marketing is worse.

Do you have time set for yourself every week when you play with the new AI tools or you just discover on the go?

No, I I don't know if I have time that I've set for myself like that, but I mean basically what happens is I talk to some of the employees.

I know who in the company is at the forefront and I talk to them and then they tell me, "Oh, you should try that. You should

try that." And then I go, you know, I I try it. And

try it. And And for someone who's employed at a company and they want to hear advice from a founder whose company's using AI, what would you say to them? How do they start uh implementing AI in their job?

Again, it depends a lot on their job. A

lot of different tools for a lot of different things. It's not that hard to

different things. It's not that hard to find the right tool for your job and then try to use it and see if you can automate parts of your job with it. I

mean, a lot of our employees have automated part of parts of their job.

Not the whole thing, but parts of their job.

I like that they're doing this by themselves. That actually says a lot

themselves. That actually says a lot about the way you hire.

Yeah, people are doing this by themselves.

And when you're doing interviews now, are you asking about like We do ask. We want people here is to be open to it. I mean, we really are, you know, you do see the people who are just

a lot more open to using AI versus the people who are like, nah, we want people who are more open. I mean, there's a good thing that somebody said that I pretty much believe AI is not going to take your job. Somebody using AI is

going to take your job. And I believe that is mostly true.

It's 10x more productive.

This is way more productive tools. Yeah.

Uh do you believe that in 10 years we'll have millions of AI agents in our companies?

Probably. I mean it's what I've learned in the last especially the last few years is that predicting the future is has gotten much harder because of AI. If

you talked to me 10 years ago, I I sort of could have told you what the next year was going to look like or what the next three years were going to look like. It's probably we're going to have

like. It's probably we're going to have a new version of the iPhone. It's going

to have a better screen. It's like it it was just not that hard to predict. It

was kind of boring. It was not that hard to predict.

Whereas now, I'm very bad at predicting what's going to happen.

But you're not nervous.

I am nervous not for the immediate term and not necessarily for this company, but I am nervous about I do believe that some shift is going to happen and I I'm nervous in that I just don't know what

that's going to be. I mean, there's if you listen to different founders, everybody's telling you things that are pretty self- serving. Like, you know, if if you work in a company that makes AI for lawyers, they'll tell you lawyers are going to disappear. Like,

everybody's saying all these self-s serving things. I don't know what they

serving things. I don't know what they are, but I do think something's going to change and I'm nervous cuz I don't know what that is.

Nobody knows. Go with the flow.

Nobody does. And I think the best thing you can do is try to adapt as pos as fast as possible. And by the way, I I am glad that I'm not having to choose a college career right now because I have

no idea what I would choose.

Yeah, it's even tougher now.

Yeah, I I have no idea what I would choose.

I have a blitz for you. So, I'm going to name five professions and you're going to make some predictions. What do you think?

Oh, man. Predict. I'm very bad at that.

Well, like what your gut tells you. Gone

in five years, gone in 10 years, or not going anywhere.

Let's try social media manager.

You mean for like a company?

Yeah. like coming up with scripts and I I don't think that's going anywhere.

That's what I think. I don't

translator.

I think there will be c see gone is a hard term because I think there will still be cases where we're going to want real human translation, but there will be fewer and fewer. But I do think that

for certain situations, we're going to want that.

It's a very it's going to turn into very premium.

Yeah. Um

but for most, you know, everyday uses, yeah, it's going to go away.

Okay. Um teacher,

oh, not going away. I mean, look, are we going to have more language teachers? You think

teachers? You think teachers serve a lot of things and I cannot imagine they're going to go away. So, I

have a lot of thoughts about this. I

mean, I'm a former teacher. I used to be a professor.

I think AI is going to be great at teaching certain parts, certainly giving you a lot of repetition, maybe even adapting to what you learn, but ultimately teachers are great at putting

things into context. They're also really great at um making people want to do something. They're very inspiring. When

something. They're very inspiring. When

I was growing up, I wanted to be like my teachers. And it's kind of hard to want

teachers. And it's kind of hard to want to be like an AI. Like I don't I don't really want to be like an AI, but a teacher. They're very inspiring. They're

teacher. They're very inspiring. They're

um they put into things into context. I

mean, at the moment, I'm pretty certain that if you have a really great teacher, um, that is better than not having a really than not having a teacher. Again,

not all teachers are equally good, etc., etc. But, by the way, today computers are not as good at teaching as a really great teacher. That has not yet

great teacher. That has not yet happened. I think it may start getting

happened. I think it may start getting to the point where in certain aspects they're about as good, but I think having a teacher will always be better than not.

I agree.

That's what I think. So, I I don't believe that it's going anywhere. We're

gonna learn with AI, like do some stuff, but we still need someone a human to reply to.

This is what I think. This is what I think. I It's also It's incredibly hard

think. I It's also It's incredibly hard to keep people motivated, and teachers are have ways to get people motivated to do certain things. Uh, and and just, you know, they start noticing things like,

"Oh, that student feels left out. I'm

going to do something about it."

This is pretty hard to do with AI. So, I

I just can't imagine this is going to go away but wrong.

Strategist. I don't know if you tried AI for strategy, but for me it's good.

So good. Sometimes it notices things I wouldn't even think about. Like it was like you were not working on Jio for your podcast.

I'm like, "Oh shoot, yes, I am not."

Uh, and I'm not appearing in any searches.

I recently asked the Slack has a Slackbot and it sees all my conversations and I asked it uh to give me uh what are my areas for improvement and it was excellent.

That's a very good prompt. told me

exactly what like it basically told me exactly what my 360 told me but in a much more concise way and certain things is really excellent. Um strategy I don't know I don't I don't know the answer to

that question. I I would say there's

that question. I I would say there's probably still some you know the thing about AI is that it's really good at kind of known things. I still think that

there's going to be some amount of human ingenuity necessary for certain types of strategy. So again, it may be that it

strategy. So again, it may be that it just becomes a very premium thing.

Okay. Project manager.

Oh no, I don't think that's going to go away. In my experience, project

away. In my experience, project managers, if you need multiple people working on something, really good project managers have really good EQ and

end up figuring out why a project is not working. And a lot of times the project

working. And a lot of times the project is not working because that person doesn't get along with that person. Like

stuff like that.

Um I think that's going to be hard. Again,

there's parts of the the of the process that are that can be automated, but in general, I I I can't imagine that the AI is going to be really good at, you know, sitting two people there and being like,

you two are not getting along. You need

to start getting along. That seems hard.

So, as someone who's running a company, do you think there there are any positions that are going away in the nearest future, or they just going to be transformed?

I think most of it is going to be transformed. And I think what I think

transformed. And I think what I think will happen is that some companies, particularly companies that are not growing a lot are going to find that they can do the same with fewer people.

So it may not be very specific professions, but it will be like do we need a 100 people doing customer service or can we do so with only 10?

I think that will h happen. Um the

entire profession going away is kind of hard. I mean even customer service with

hard. I mean even customer service with a lot of people say like ah customer service is going to go away. you

probably still need a couple of humans orchestrate the Yeah, you probably still need some people to orchestrate it. So,

I I do think that uh you'll find some companies that will need fewer people over time.

Yeah, I totally uh totally feel that we wanted to hire someone who would do my scripting for Instagram, but then I'm like, okay, I'll just try Claude.

And then I created a Claude project and it was so good. I'm like, okay, I don't need to hire anyone. We can my social media manager can just do that now. So,

it's basically doing more with less people. Would you want to start again in

people. Would you want to start again in 2026 if you could like if you could go back to your how old you were when you started?

Um, I probably would start again, but if you ask me to choose between whether I want to start today or 15 years ago, I'm very happy we started 15 years ago.

If you ask Yeah. Because we we now got to this point where, you know, with Duolingo, we have we have a lot of money because we're profitable. We have like I don't know more than a billion dollars

in the bank. We have a large user base.

We have a large install base. So I I feel pretty good about the situation that we're in. Whereas if we were to start today, boy, I don't know. I It's

pretty hard to start today. I think I mean I would do it, but I What would you start? Same thing.

If Dualingo didn't exist, yeah, I mean given that Dualingo exists, I don't know if I would start that. I would

Would it be languages or something else or like teaching people AI or chess?

No, I would start with languages. Um uh

interestingly I am personally not a major language learning nerd. I'm not uh neither is my co-founder Sein. Um what

is interesting is that in retrospect I'm very happy we started with languages. I

don't know of another subject even though we've done a lot of research. I

don't know of another subject that gets learned as much. If you look there's about two billion people in the world learning languages. That's the number.

learning languages. That's the number.

There's any other subject is less. I

mean math math is a billion one billion people. It's math is basically you know the number of people learning math in the world is highly highly correlated like identical

almost as the number of people in the world that are in K- through2 education.

This is about a billion. Nobody is

learning.

So nobody's learning math for pleasure as a hobby.

I mean I'm sure there are but this is a tiny fraction of the population. Um so

math has about a billion. Uh anything

you know chess is like 100 million something like that. Um any subject K through2 science is a few hundred million. Programming is like 20 million.

million. Programming is like 20 million.

And when it comes to spending money is so language is 60 billion. It depends on who's spending the money.

Yeah.

Governments are spending a ton teaching math, but it's governments and that's hard.

That money is hard to get to because governments are but so there's probably more spend on math, but it's because it's the governments.

And what about consu? So consumers the language.

I I think so. By the way, of those two billion people that are learning language, about 1.8 billion are learning English.

Yeah. So, English is just really big.

It's crazy. I didn't realize that cuz I thought it would be like math or now AI, maybe software engineering.

You and I live in a bubble.

We do. We live

in a bubble. Cuz we got out of their cultures into this bubble and now we're here. We forget.

here. We forget.

I mean, maybe programming right now with AI coding, who knows what's going to happen. But a few years ago, whenever we

happen. But a few years ago, whenever we would meet investors, they would be like, you know, the thing everybody wants to learn is coding.

Yeah.

It's about 20 million people in the world that were learning coding. That's

it. That that's it.

Maybe they're willing to pay more. Like

if you want to take a programming course, you you probably pay like a th00and 2,000 because you know you're going to get a job. Yes.

With language, it's a long long journey.

Yes. 100%. Now if we're an app, this is one of the things we one of the reasons we never did programming. We as an app cannot charge $10,000. It's an app.

Yeah.

Like we charge $6 a month. That is how much we charge. Maybe we could charge $20 a month. We can't charge $10,000. So

this is why we go for things that have hundreds of millions of people learning them because we need to be a larger business and so these these things that require people paying like service business.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow. That's fascinating. Thank you so much. Thank you for being positive in

much. Thank you for being positive in 2026. That's really rare.

2026. That's really rare.

Okay. Well positive. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Thank you. I'm nervous but it's no use to be thinking like the world's going to end going outside Silicon Valley. You see

how you like I I was expecting you to say, "Oh, I use open claw to automate all the reports. I'm not writing my emails." Like, you're not saying that.

emails." Like, you're not saying that.

Same same Gary Vaynerchuk. I was

expecting him to do like, "Oh, this my client is full automation." But he said, "I just hired two copywriters."

Yeah.

I'm like, "Okay, New York is very different from Silicon Valley and it's very refreshing." And for everyone who's

very refreshing." And for everyone who's watching, it's a great idea to start a a business like helping people learn AI outside Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you so much.

I mentioned Gary Vee uh several times throughout this episode. I actually

filmed a podcast with him on the same trip when I filmed Lewis. He's thinking

positively about everything that's happening right now. So, if you're someone who wants to start a business now, but if you're afraid that a bigger company is going to take over, watch that episode. It's going to give you a

that episode. It's going to give you a lot of enthusiasm about starting in 2026.