He Sold Two Companies To Google, Won A MacArthur 'Genius Grant' And Launched Free Duolingo App
Luis von Ahn is the cofounder of Duolingo, the free language learning app. Photo: Nina Roberts
Published in Forbes on May 24, 2017
“I think it has to do with where I’m from,” explains Luis von Ahn about creating Duolingo, the free language learning app: “I’m from Guatemala.” Although von Ahn didn’t grow up impoverished, he saw how the country’s poor—more than half live below the poverty line—had no access to high-quality education, no path out of poverty. Providing free language courses was the driving force behind Duolingo, which he cofounded with Severin Hacker.
Sporting an oxford shirt and jeans while visiting New York City from Duolingo’s Pittsburgh headquarters, von Ahn rattles off a couple language learning statistics. Approximately 1.2 billion people are learning a new language and 800 million of those people are learning English to get out of poverty. “In most countries you can earn 25 to 100% more by knowing English,” says von Ahn.
Duolingo launched in 2012, and according to von Ahn there are 170 million users worldwide. In look and feel, Duolingo is cheerful, lighthearted and fun without being cloying; lessons are short and have a game-like quality. Users have the option to use it solo or interact with fellow learners. Duolingo works on iPhones and iPads, mobile devices that use Android or Windows, as well as desktop computers.
There are lessons to learn the popular E.U. languages, as well as Swahili, Arabic and Turkish, among many others. English for Spanish speakers is the most popular Duolingo lesson plan with 115 million users, followed by Spanish for English speakers with 90.1 million users. Japanese lessons for English speakers was launched last week in iOS. Many other languages are in the pipeline, including Hindi and Korean, even Klingon from Star Trek, which should make Trekkies happy if they’re not already fluent. “There are 94,000 native speakers of Irish,” von Ahn notes, “and we have over a million people learning Irish on Duolingo.”
When Von Ahn initially conceptualized the app, he envisioned helping those stuck in low socioeconomic conditions in developing countries. But in 2015 when the Syrian refugee crises exploded across the E.U. countries, he saw a new use for Duolingo, the need for German, French and Swedish language lessons for native Arabic speakers was epic.
Duolingo launched German for Arabic speakers in March 2016, and according to von Ahn, the course has been used by nearly 330,000 people in Germany; Swedish is the most popular Duolingo language to learn in Sweden.
Fueling Duolingo’s success are 300 vetted volunteers living all over the globe who help Duolingo’s 75-person staff create lessons. “The first few languages we did ourselves,” says von Ahn, but realized it would be impossible to scale-up at the speed they wanted to if they had to hire each lesson writer. “We decided to open it up for the community,” says von Ahn, “so now all the languages that are added on Duolingo are done by volunteers.” It's called the Duolingo Incubator.
Von Ahn has tapped into the ideal community, as active polyglots tend to be passionate, intensely curious, enthusiastic and even showoffs at times. “They like talking!” remarks von Ahn. Why would volunteers contribute to Duolingo’s lessons without pay?
Mohanad Djaber is a 25-year-old Duolingo volunteer in Algeria who helped develop 27% of the French lessons for Arabic speakers and 28% of the Spanish lessons. Djaber explains via email that he “fell in love with the site” from the first time he discovered it in 2015 and his life has been intertwined with Duolingo ever since. In addition to the community of like-minded people he’s found, Djaber believes his Duolingo experience will help him achieve his goal of becoming a software engineer. Each volunteer has a profile and it shows how much they’ve contributed to a particular lesson plan.
Many volunteers used Duolingo themselves and want to give back. Osama Haggag is a 28-year-old Egyptian data scientist living in Berlin, Germany. In 2013 he used Duolingo to learn German for English speakers while studying in Stuttgart. At the height of the refugee crises he helped create 17% of the English for Arabic speakers lessons and 27% of the German lessons. “It is indeed a lot of work,” explains Haggag in an email, “but the potential for making a difference (even if a slight one) in so many lives around the globe is what usually keeps me going. Especially for my fellow Middle-Easterners who may not have had access to good education.”
Von Ahn, now 37-years-old, first came to the U.S. as a freshman at Duke University. “I wanted to get a college degree in math,” says von Ahn, “and there was no way to do that in Guatemala, it just did not exist.”
He later earned a PhD at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is now also a professor, currently on sabbatical. While a student, Von Ahn helped create CAPTCHA the online test typically used when making purchases to prove the user is a human rather than a bot. And no, he didn’t make any money from it since it was an academic project. However, von Ahn later sold two tech companies to Google, one in 2005, the other in 2009 that was a reworking of CAPTCHA called reCAPTCHA; von Ahn managed to win a MacArthur “Genius Grant” in between.
Duolingo aims to turn a profit in 2018. It’s currently operating on $83.3 million venture capital money from companies like Union Square Ventures , Google Ventures and New Enterprise Associates, among others.
It might be assumed that Duolingo sells its data to finance free language lessons. But Duolingo doesn’t sell its data and doesn’t plan to in the future. Duolingo monetizes in creative ways.
Duolingo users can purchase extra bells and whistles. Users have “streaks,” for example, 40 days of use equals a 40-day streak. If the streak is broken, users can pay $5 to restore their streak. “It’s all psychological,” says von Ahn. “It’s just a number.” He adds, “We’re making 5,000 bucks a day. Because we have so many users, these little things can make quite a bit of money.”
Duolingo also incorporates a sprinkling of clearly marked sponsored content. So instead of Juan y Maria simply going to “la playa,” they might go to La Riviera Maya, thanks to a department of tourism.
Von Ahn discovered there is a $10 billion dollar industry around English language certification, so Duolingo jumped into the game, but with a twist. The average test, like TOFL, can cost $250 per test. “Most people taking these tests are in developing countries,” says von Ahn. “$250 is a month’s salary.”
Duolingo created its own certification and test called Duolingo English Test (DET), which costs $50. In addition, users can take the test from an app, monitored through the camera, instead of traveling to a test center. More than 60 universities now accept Duolingo certification, from Yale University to the University of Notre Dame.