Inside Duolingo Unhinged Growth to a $500M Business | Cem Kansu (Duolingo)

My guest today is Cem Kansu. Cem is the Head of Product at
Duolingo. Over 8 years, he helped Duolingo grow to 100M+ monthly
active users and $500M+ in annual revenue. I had a super fun chat
with Cem about Duolingo's unhinged product culture, the top
drivers of Duolingo's user and revenue growth, and whether AI
will democratize education. Timestamps: (00:00) We love being
unhinged with our owl (01:26) Duolingo is a game and this is our
core loop (03:46) The top 3 drivers of Duolingo's growth to 100M
users (05:55) Passive-aggressive push notifications work! (08:12)
How Duolingo onboards new users to maximize retention (13:11) Our
winding path to $500M+ in revenue (17:25) We've figured out how
international expansion works (21:13) Will AI kill Duolingo?
(26:20) We made Lily an AI emo teenager on purpose (32:41) How to
A/B test without sacrificing quality (37:09) What the best PMs at
Duolingo have in common Get the takeaways:
https://creatoreconomy.so/p/inside-duolingo-unhinged-growth-to-500m-cem-kansu
Where to find Cem: X: https://x.com/cemkansu LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cemkansu/ Subscribe to this channel –
more interviews coming soon!