How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing • Hacker News Board

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#21

Post by dhbradshaw » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 1:26 AM UTC

davemel37 wrote: post #8

Where does this idea of glorifying not spending on marketing come from? I think it involves a fundamental misalignment of the point of building a business. I view a business as an investment vehicle and marketing is how you turn over that investment. I would be much more impressed with a business that can consistently arbitrage advertising into profits at scale. In reality anything that touches a prospect, customer o…

I think that saying that something does well without marketing is making an implicit argument that it's doing well for some other reason. A basic model might be success = (value + delta) * ( marketing + epsilon). If you give success a large number and say that marketing was zero then the model leads you to guess that there is substantial value in the product itself.

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#22

Post by encoderer » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 1:27 AM UTC

davemel37 wrote: post #8

Where does this idea of glorifying not spending on marketing come from? I think it involves a fundamental misalignment of the point of building a business. I view a business as an investment vehicle and marketing is how you turn over that investment. I would be much more impressed with a business that can consistently arbitrage advertising into profits at scale. In reality anything that touches a prospect, customer o…

To your first point, I do think leanness is a virtue. Especially in a young company where product market fit isn't yet targeted it can be easy to burn investor money without roi.

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#23

Post by pg_is_a_butt » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 1:43 AM UTC

spend money on chinese botnet instead? what does 110M users cost now? $5?

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#24

Post by newman314 » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 2:17 AM UTC

I really wanted to use Duolingo but it appears that Japanese for English course is still not available (I would settle for just be able to speak and not read/write Japanese).

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#25

Post by jpatokal » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 2:49 AM UTC

> It uses the same tactic as a casino, where a slot machine increases your chances of winning on the first couple of tries to give your brain a dopamine rush to go for more.

Is this really a thing? Sounds exploitable, and I thought the randomness of slot machines is quite carefully vetted.

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#26

Post by trjordan » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 3:21 AM UTC

maroonblazer wrote: post #9

The title of the article belies its content. Several examples of marketing are cited: - They identified a market: people who want to learn a language as quickly, easily and inexpensively as possible. - They analyzed and understood the needs and desires of the target market. Presumably they further segmented the market. - They created an offering that met the needs of the segment(s) they were going after. - They delib…

Also PR. It's not just this article, either -- the founder gives talks and interviews pretty regularly, it appears.

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#27

Post by soared » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 3:41 AM UTC

sampl wrote: post #20

soared wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the title was changed but the title now says without /spending/ on marketing. Your examples were, in theory, all free.

It costs money to pay people to do those things. Maybe we can say "without advertising or promotions"?

I think marketing spend is the right term. They pay for marketing salaries, but had no marketing spend.

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#28

Post by davemel37 » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 3:43 AM UTC

encoderer wrote: post #22

davemel37 wrote: post #8

Where does this idea of glorifying not spending on marketing come from? I think it involves a fundamental misalignment of the point of building a business. I view a business as an investment vehicle and marketing is how you turn over that investment. I would be much more impressed with a business that can consistently arbitrage advertising into profits at scale. In reality anything that touches a prospect, customer o…

To your first point, I do think leanness is a virtue. Especially in a young company where product market fit isn't yet targeted it can be easy to burn investor money without roi.

If you view marketing as an expense, you have a valid point. I view marketing as an investment and in that context, if you need to be lean, investing intelligently in marketing is one of the most important things you can do to increase cashflow.

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#29

Post by talideon » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 3:44 AM UTC

zantzinger wrote: post #5

resoluteteeth wrote: post #4

The gamification aspects of Duolingo are a nice touch, but even if it didn't have this it would probably still be popular. I don't think there has to be some sort of "one weird trick" here. It's not perfect, but Duolingo 1) is free, 2) has no ads, 3) has both a website and apps, 4) is interactive with audio and voice recognition. There really isn't any competition to this. Lots of people want to learn languages; is i…

Memrise ticks (1) (2) (3) and (4), although I believe it is now a fremium model.

While Memrise and Duolingo might seem similar on the surface, the focus of Memrise is more on vocabulary, whereas Duolingo is a bit more holistic.

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#30

Post by Trundle » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 4:07 AM UTC

davemel37 wrote: post #8

Where does this idea of glorifying not spending on marketing come from? I think it involves a fundamental misalignment of the point of building a business. I view a business as an investment vehicle and marketing is how you turn over that investment. I would be much more impressed with a business that can consistently arbitrage advertising into profits at scale. In reality anything that touches a prospect, customer o…

I think soared's answer mostly explains it but also I think the demographic/general theme of this particular site has something to do with it. Tales of growth hacking and doing much with little are more interesting and relevant to people interested in starting their own businesses or having success with their own projects than tales of big marketing spends are.

I'm highly unlikely to find myself in a position any time soon where I've got a $500m marketing budget. So someone turning that in to $1b+ is of less interest to me than the guy who went from 0 to whatever cheaply.