Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO
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Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO
#2I was a Duolingo launch user, when revenue was driven by crowdsourced translations. I used Duolingo to learn basic phrases in some languages over many years, but I had to stop using the app. There were too many basic mistakes in grammar and vocabulary. Duolingo innovated by bringing a structured language course with spaced repetition to mobile early in the previous decade. It seems they will need another burst of innovation, this time in novel language apprehension techniques, in order to stay relevant beyond this initial public offering.
Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker brought language learning to the global, mobile masses. I hope they will succeed again in the next phase of language technology.
Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO
#3Quick look at financials, they lost $25M in trailing 12 months, lost $14M in the previous year, lost $10M in the year before.
How is Duolingo supposed to become profitable?
How is a $6.5B valuation justified?
Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO
#4Honestly from using duolingo pretty heavily for a couple of years, attending language classes and doing my own individual study I've found duolingo pretty useless. It's "fun" and gives one the sense of progress without really accomplishing much.
Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO
#5Honestly from using duolingo pretty heavily for a couple of years, attending language classes and doing my own individual study I've found duolingo pretty useless. It's "fun" and gives one the sense of progress without really accomplishing much.
I moved on to Babbel.
Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO
#6Quick look at financials, they lost $25M in trailing 12 months, lost $14M in the previous year, lost $10M in the year before. How is Duolingo supposed to become profitable? How is a $6.5B valuation justified?
You can just put a variable where you mention duolingo based on the recent market.
Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO
#7Honestly from using duolingo pretty heavily for a couple of years, attending language classes and doing my own individual study I've found duolingo pretty useless. It's "fun" and gives one the sense of progress without really accomplishing much.
It serves as a useful tool for learning some fairly basic words and phrases, not much else. Languages have many subtle nuances that simply can not be taught via spaced repetition.
Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO
#8Honestly from using duolingo pretty heavily for a couple of years, attending language classes and doing my own individual study I've found duolingo pretty useless. It's "fun" and gives one the sense of progress without really accomplishing much.
I moved on to Babbel.
Thanks for the pointer.
Quick search gave this review: The main differences between Babbel vs Duolingo are: Babbel is best for learnings looking to completely master a language, whereas Duolingo is better for sporadic learners who want to dabble. Babbel offers lessons with conversational practice and cultural immersion, whereas Duolingo offers adaptive learning lessons.
Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO
#9Honestly from using duolingo pretty heavily for a couple of years, attending language classes and doing my own individual study I've found duolingo pretty useless. It's "fun" and gives one the sense of progress without really accomplishing much.
My personal experience leads me to disagree. I've been using Duolingo to learn Chinese for about 400 days now. I recently took another step and started taking private zoom lessons and my tutor said a few of her students have come from the same path. Duo has given me a good understanding of sentence structure and raw vocabulary. Even though my pronunciation needs work, Duo has given me so much for watching a few ads and I hope to continue with it. Given everything, my tutor said I would pass HSK 1 and maybe level 2.
Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO
#10Honestly from using duolingo pretty heavily for a couple of years, attending language classes and doing my own individual study I've found duolingo pretty useless. It's "fun" and gives one the sense of progress without really accomplishing much.
I'm trying a language learning startup and surveyed a lot of people. The response is universal that everyone's tried Duolingo, and it didn't work for them in actually learning, despite monster streaks.
I think it's masterful as a dopamine machine and employing habit building tactics. Perhaps it's a good icebreaker for people in language learning, as long as people are resourceful enough to look beyond Duolingo.