When Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker set out to create Duolingo — a language learning startup based in East Liberty — they had a mission to make education more accessible.
But in order to keep people motivated to learn a new skill, they also figured they would have to make education fun.
As the company has grown since it launched in 2012 — starting as a website that offered free language lessons and growing to an app with more than 500 million downloads and 98 courses across 40 languages — Mr. von Ahn said it still seems like users are having fun.
Fifty percent of the more than 9 million daily active users have logged on to the app for more than seven days in a row.
Over 1 million learners have a streak that is longer than 365 days.
“We are obsessed with our product,” Mr. von Ahn said Wednesday during the company’s first call with investors since going public in July. “The majority of our employees are working on just making our products better.
“We work really hard to make Duolingo be something people want to do.”
In the second quarter of 2021, which ended in June, Duolingo reported revenue was up 47% to $58.8 million, from $40 million during the same quarter last year. Revenue was driven primarily from subscriptions on the app, which accounted for 75% of the total.
Paid subscribers jumped 46% to 1.9 million in the second quarter.
Daily active users increased 2% to 9.1 million while monthly active users fell 3% to 37.9 million.
The company reported a net loss of $176,000, or 0.01 cents per share, compared to a gain of $40,000 in the same quarter last year.
Company officials were careful to note that comparing this June and the one before was not so cut and dried. The app saw tremendous growth in the spring of 2020 as COVID-19-induced shutdowns and stay at home orders drove more and more people to learn from their home and their phones.
“We experienced an unseasonal uplift driven by COVID-19,” said Matt Skaruppa, chief financial officer. “In a typical year, we expect Q2 to be in line with Q1.”
The company is now back to growing at its “normal rate,” Mr. von Ahn said.
In June this year, the language learning app filed to go public on the Nasdaq under the symbol DUOL. It started trading in July at $102 per share. When the markets closed Wednesday, shares were trading around $135.
The company reported Wednesday it incurred about $1.2 million in expenses to prepare for the public listing.
Moving forward, Mr. von Ahn said Duolingo’s growth strategy is focused on two things: growing its learning base and investment in product innovation and data analytics.
To do that, the app is learning from its users.
It might be misleading, Mr. von Ahn said, since the app is “cute and gamified,” but Duo (the snarky green owl that acts as Duolingo’s mascot) isn’t the only thing keeping a record of what users do on the app.
“We know every exercise you’ve done on Duolingo — whether you got it right or wrong and if you got it wrong, why you got it wrong,” Mr. von Ahn said. “And we use that to make a model for each user…We use artificial intelligence to pick exercises that are just right for you.
“Our learners complete over half a billion exercises per day and we use all that data to improve how well we teach.”
Next quarter, Duolingo anticipates revenue will fall between $58.5 million and $61.5 million.
Lauren Rosenblatt: lrosenblatt@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1565.
First Published: August 11, 2021, 11:13 p.m.
