Reid Hoffman: Duolingo’s Luis von Ahn

Crowdsourcing is more than a group of people interested in the same cause; it’s a way to tap skills and scale that you don’t have. And when it works, it can be the rocket fuel that launches you further than you could have ever imagined.

No one knows this better than Luis von Ahn, founder and CEO of Duolingo. Duolingo is a language app with over 300 million users worldwide who complete over 7 billion exercises a month. It’s their passion for learning that drives them to create even more content for the app, igniting the rocket fuel that Duolingo needs. 

Sharing a clear mission and motivation with the crowd can lead to unexpected business growth through crowdsourcing. The failure of the free gym idea demonstrates the necessity of aligning missions and motivations when scaling businesses.

Crowdsourcing can help scale a business and tap into unique skills, but alignment with the company’s goals is crucial for success. Duolingo’s success story shows the power of crowdsourcing done right, while mismatches can lead to disastrous outcomes.

CAPTCHA technology was created to prevent bots from accessing websites and online accounts by presenting a “unsolvable” problem that only humans could solve. The technology was shared for free with Yahoo by Luis and Manuel, who were motivated by the challenge of creating an innovative solution to a major online problem.

The success of CAPTCHAs led to them being used on countless websites and seeing an estimated 200 million uses per day. While the technology was successful, Luis felt responsible for the millions of hours of lost productivity that result from completing a CAPTCHA.

Nevertheless, the alignment between crowdsourced motivation and company mission made CAPTCHA a worthwhile solution to combat spam.

Crowdsourcing can solve complex problems, but clear communication of the mission is essential to avoid negative sentiment. Use people’s annoyance to address important challenges and effectively communicate the purpose of successful crowdsourcing.

Duolingo’s success was achieved through a blitzscaling approach and offering handcrafted language courses. Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web out of his interest in hypertext and desire to create a “web of information.”

DuoLingo added languages rapidly by asking passionate users for help. Maintaining engagement was critical, so they put out user-generated courses that meet rigorous standards. Assessing course effectiveness requires research and expertise. Customer satisfaction isn’t the same as mission effectiveness.

Duolingo uses sophisticated methods to measure course quality and legally assures contributors that their work is owned by them, while still allowing Duolingo to use it forever, thus creating a committed community.

Game designers are experts in influencing behavior, and gamification can work wonders when tailored to the user’s needs. Duolingo’s success lies in making learning fun and lighthearted, keeping users engaged while smoothing out their journey towards language fluency.

To ensure effective gamification, define clear goals and regularly assess whether gaming elements align with the mission. Adjust game dynamics and address issues promptly to keep goals and missions aligned.

The idea of a free gym using the power generated by gym-goers to sell back to the grid is not viable due to humans’ inability to generate enough electricity. Moreover, traditional gyms rely on people signing up and never showing up as a major source of revenue.

Crowdsourcing can be effective if the mission is perfectly aligned with the crowd’s motivation, and there is a shared sense of purpose and commitment.

Aligning the mission and motivation can lead to unexpected business growth. In summary, the failure of the free gym idea highlights the importance of shared missions and motivations in scaling businesses through crowdsourcing.

Apple named us the iPhone app of the year. We didn’t expect that, and it just kept growing and growing and people started asking for a ton of languages. And literally, every day we would get requests, multiple requests for, hey, can you add this language or that language?