Pilas Pues!: EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY with Luis Von Ahn

No, I didn't want to be an entrepreneur. What I wanted to be since I was 13 was a university professor in mathematics. When I graduated from high school in Guatemala, I thought about staying in Guatemala, but at that time, the mathematics career only existed at the University of San Carlos and at Del Valle. And in both universities, there was the problem that very few people were studying the career, so classes weren't offered. You had to wait until there were enough students, and it turned out that it took like 10 years to graduate because classes weren't given. So I said, well, I want to study mathematics, and that's what made me come here to the United States. I came, studied mathematics, but it turns out that halfway through my studies, I decided that I preferred computer science over mathematics. So I continued, finished the mathematics degree, but from there I got a doctorate in computer science. And I became a university professor of computer science. That's what I did. But at some point, I started developing technology that could be sold. So I started a company, the first company I started was just me, one person, and I sold it to Google. Then I started another company, which was reCAPTCHA, which had like 20 people, and I also sold it to Google, and then I started Duolingo. But the idea was never to start companies, it was to do projects, but at some point, it was always like, well, this can become a company, and it became a company.

It always started with a purpose. Yes, for example, with Duolingo, the purpose was to develop education and give it to the world for free. It turns out, and we started as a university project, not a company, but at some point, it turned out that it was easier to get money and funds to pay for the entire operation being a company rather than a university project, so we decided to make it a company.

Well, quite a few over time. The first was coming to the United States. It wasn't easy, but it was a challenge. After that, in terms of companies, for me, the hardest part is starting at the beginning. It's very difficult to start because at the beginning you don't have a team, there's no one, so hiring the first person is very difficult because who wants to work for a company that doesn't exist? Yes, just the idea. So it's hard to hire people at the beginning. At Duolingo specifically, the biggest challenge we had was how to start making money. The first years, Duolingo wasn't making any money; we simply had venture capital investment, risk capital, I think it's called in Spanish. We had venture capital investment, but we weren't earning any money. We offered a language learning app totally free, so people didn't pay us and we didn't make money. In 2016, when we had been offering the app totally free for about 4 years, we decided it was time to start making money, to commercialize it to really cover the operation. And that was a real challenge because we wanted to do two things. We wanted to make enough money to cover the operation, which by then cost about 100 million dollars a year, which is a lot of money. We wanted to make enough to do that and at the same time we wanted to offer free education. That's difficult to do both at the same time, but fortunately, what we decided to do worked: anyone can learn on Duolingo totally free, but if they don't pay, they have to watch ads, and the ads pay us a little money, but not much, honestly. On the other hand, if a user doesn't want to watch the ads, they can pay us to subscribe. And it turns out that 7% of our users pay us to subscribe. But that 7% gives us like now about 500 million dollars a year. So that worked, but the majority, 93% of our users use Duolingo totally free, and that's what we wanted.

I think it can be both. I think there are people who want to be entrepreneurs since they are little. Yes, in my case, I didn't want to be an entrepreneur. More specifically, I didn't want to be an entrepreneur. But I think it can be done if someone really wants to develop an idea, I think it can be done. I've seen entrepreneurs who are very different from each other, so there isn't just one way to be an entrepreneur. It could be that someone is very good at hustling, and that helps them be an entrepreneur. There are other people who are very good at technology and very bad at hustling, but that helps them understand. There are other people who are very good managers. Everyone has their things, and in the end, you can be an entrepreneur in many ways. In my case, when I started with this, I wasn't very good at managing people. In fact, I had never fired anyone and didn't know. The first time I fired someone, they didn't understand that I had fired them and they laughed the next day. My skills were elsewhere. I was bad at it, but I was good at technology, and over time, I've learned how to handle people, etc. But I believe that one can become an entrepreneur.

The first thing I would say is that your idea is probably not very good. This is true for everyone's ideas, including mine, and the most important thing to do is to be open to changing it and at the same time start working on it. What happens to many people is that they say, 'I have a great idea,' but I'll start tomorrow, I'll start next year. And what ends up happening is that life passes them by and they never start. Even if the idea isn't very good, what you have to do is start, and then when you start, you begin to realize, oh, this doesn't work, but you can change it a little so that it does work, or change it. That has happened to me in all the companies I've made. That definitely happened at Duolingo, where at first, in fact, at first we didn't even want to teach languages. At first, the idea was that we would teach other things, we wanted to teach mathematics, etc. And over time, we realized it was better to start teaching languages, and we've changed a lot of things. But the thing is, if you're not doing it, it's very difficult to come up with the perfect idea because you haven't tried it. It's better to get moving than to have everything planned. It's better to get moving because the problem with having everything planned is that you can never plan everything because you don't know what will happen. You start working and suddenly realize that this didn't work. Or it turns out that you hire the first employee, and the first employee doesn't know how to do what you wanted, but knows how to do something else, and you decide, 'Ah, let's do this.' That definitely happened to us with Duolingo at the beginning. Duolingo was just a website, not an app. And about three months after starting, we hired someone who was very good at developing apps, and we said, 'Why don't we make an app?' And today, about 95% of our users are on the app and not on the website, but that wasn't planned.

Oh! It's very hard to know what to do. That happens to us today at Duolingo. We have several projects we are working on. Some are working very well, and some are not. And it's very hard to know whether to keep working on that or stop and work on something else. In my case, what ends up happening is that if I still believe in the idea, or if someone around me that I trust still believes in the idea, we keep working on it, and the thing is to keep working, but at some point when I no longer believe in the idea, or everyone around me no longer believes in the idea, we cut the project. That's what ends up happening.

Yes, it symbolizes stress, but I think it's important to know that most things fail. This is true for me, it's true for everyone. Most things that people try fail. So you have to fail. And it's better to fail quickly than to fail after 10 years. Better to fail quickly. So, I think it does symbolize stress, but I think it's important to be comfortable with failing and starting something new.

Yes. For us here at Duolingo and for me in terms of projects, most things we try fail. But that's okay. There's no problem.

In general, the project that fulfills me the most is what we are doing with Duolingo, but in general, not just with languages. The idea with Duolingo is to develop the best education possible and give it to the world for free. That's what we want. And for me, this excites me a lot and gives me great pride. About 5 years ago, in one week, I learned of two things that together are what has given me the most pride in my life. The first was that Duolingo was being used by literally millions of Syrian refugees in Europe to learn the language of the country they had gone to. Usually, Syrian refugees have zero money; they are people who have nothing and went to Sweden or Germany or whatever, and they were studying with Duolingo to be able to get jobs. That filled me a lot. But the same week, I learned that Bill Gates was using Duolingo, and for me, what gave me great pride is the combination of these two things: that Duolingo is being used. On one hand, at that time, Bill Gates was the richest person in the world, and on the other hand, by Syrian refugees who don't have a cent. That's very rare. Usually, people with money have better education, have access to more things, but in our case with Duolingo, the idea is that the same system was being used by the entire socioeconomic spectrum, and for me, that's what I want to achieve: that everyone has access regardless of context. Yes, that's what I want to achieve, and that's what we are working on today. There are more people learning languages on Duolingo than on any other system. In fact, there are more people learning languages on Duolingo in the United States than in the entire U.S. public education system. And that's what we want to do: reach everyone and really teach them. We are doing it with languages; now we are starting with mathematics and music, and eventually, we will do a lot of subjects.

It depends a lot on what type of entrepreneur. I think if someone is going to be an entrepreneur, when the company grows quite a bit, I think it's important to be a good communicator, because the bigger the company, you have to communicate with all the employees. I think that's a very important skill. I think another important skill, I don't know if it's a skill, but being able to gain people's trust is very important because if someone works for you and they don't trust you, it doesn't work well. So, you say there are certain things you're born with, other things that need to be reinforced, but in a way, there are specific topics that help to succeed as an entrepreneur. Yes. And the other thing that is very important is to always know what things you are good at and what things you are not so good at, and try to improve the things you are not so good at. That can be known by asking people how I can improve.