Duolingo’s Revenue Grew 19x in Just 4 Years

Luis von Ahn is Guatemala’s most outstanding serial entrepreneur.

When he was eight years old, his mother bought him a Commodore 64 computer, and his fascination with technology began. Von Ahn attended a private English language school in Guatemala City, which he cites as a great privilege.

At age 18, Luis von Ahn earned his Mathematics degree from Duke University and later his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. In 2000, he co-created the CAPTCHA technology we all know: a security measure that prompts users to decipher distorted text and stops bots. He later launched reCAPTCHA, which makes this protection even more useful, by helping digitize old printed books with users’ inputs.

Still, he was just getting started; In 2011, he co-founded Duolingo. The app has become the world’s most popular language-learning platform, with over 40M active users and yearly revenues of $250M. It took ten years of hard work and growth for Duolingo to finally go public last year. On its first day of trading, the market valued it at $6.5B (today, it’s down as most technology stocks are as well, to $3.1B).

Luis Von Ahn is genuinely a remarkable Guatemalan entrepreneur that has made significant contributions to our world. He has shown that it’s possible to create useful and fun things. We recommend watching his 2011 Ted Talk, where he talks about the early stages of Duolingo and how he thinks when developing new products.

Hand-selected job opportunities based on what we know about our audience (e.g., industries, job functions).

This week’s opportunity:

Duolingo is looking for a LATAM Regional Marketing Manager in Mexico City.

Requirements: 5+ years of marketing experience, excellent English skills.

Hiring Managers: Reply to this email if you’d like to feature an open role in our newsletter.