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

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About this video

​ ​ 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.

(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

Where to find Cem: