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Luis Von Ahn

๐Ÿ‘ค Speaker
See mentions of this person in podcasts
1443 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

No. It's been very fortunate. First of all, we hired an amazing CFO before we went public, Matt Scarupa. And fortunately, he kind of deals with most public company stuff. I mean, I... I don't do a lot of that. And I'm very thankful for that because that's just, you know, I don't have a finance background. I have a PhD in computer science. That's what I'm good at, not finance. So there's that.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

No. It's been very fortunate. First of all, we hired an amazing CFO before we went public, Matt Scarupa. And fortunately, he kind of deals with most public company stuff. I mean, I... I don't do a lot of that. And I'm very thankful for that because that's just, you know, I don't have a finance background. I have a PhD in computer science. That's what I'm good at, not finance. So there's that.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

The other thing is I think we've been fortunate that so far as a public company, we've executed well. So I think that has given us a little bit of latitude in that, you know, we basically don't get asked very tough questions because we've executed very well. I am sure this won't be the case forever. I'm sure at some point we're going to miss a quarter. We haven't so far, but I'm sure we will.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

The other thing is I think we've been fortunate that so far as a public company, we've executed well. So I think that has given us a little bit of latitude in that, you know, we basically don't get asked very tough questions because we've executed very well. I am sure this won't be the case forever. I'm sure at some point we're going to miss a quarter. We haven't so far, but I'm sure we will.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

The other thing is I think we've been fortunate that so far as a public company, we've executed well. So I think that has given us a little bit of latitude in that, you know, we basically don't get asked very tough questions because we've executed very well. I am sure this won't be the case forever. I'm sure at some point we're going to miss a quarter. We haven't so far, but I'm sure we will.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

And when that happens, I'll probably have to answer some questions and I'll probably have to tell people that, you know, sorry, we'll be more buttoned up from now on. But so far, you know, I show up to earnings calls in a t-shirt. The day you see me show up to earnings calls in a suit, you'll know that we fucked up.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

And when that happens, I'll probably have to answer some questions and I'll probably have to tell people that, you know, sorry, we'll be more buttoned up from now on. But so far, you know, I show up to earnings calls in a t-shirt. The day you see me show up to earnings calls in a suit, you'll know that we fucked up.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

And when that happens, I'll probably have to answer some questions and I'll probably have to tell people that, you know, sorry, we'll be more buttoned up from now on. But so far, you know, I show up to earnings calls in a t-shirt. The day you see me show up to earnings calls in a suit, you'll know that we fucked up.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

You know, like, oh, so sorry.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

You know, like, oh, so sorry.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

You know, like, oh, so sorry.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

Yeah, I mean, you're right. Quality is not measurable. The way we, you know, the way we measure it and not measure it, but the way we kind of make decisions about that is we just have, particularly in our design department, we just have people who are very much sticklers about quality. And, you know, that's, we just like, nope, that's just not good enough. That's just not good enough.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

Yeah, I mean, you're right. Quality is not measurable. The way we, you know, the way we measure it and not measure it, but the way we kind of make decisions about that is we just have, particularly in our design department, we just have people who are very much sticklers about quality. And, you know, that's, we just like, nope, that's just not good enough. That's just not good enough.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

Yeah, I mean, you're right. Quality is not measurable. The way we, you know, the way we measure it and not measure it, but the way we kind of make decisions about that is we just have, particularly in our design department, we just have people who are very much sticklers about quality. And, you know, that's, we just like, nope, that's just not good enough. That's just not good enough.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

And so we just do that a lot. And in terms of investment, I mean, Honestly, with the public markets, we kind of just don't talk much about that. You know, we talk about the metrics. We kind of just don't talk too much about how the, you know... Turns out, we spent an extra month working on this feature just because we didn't really like the way the owl was animated.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

And so we just do that a lot. And in terms of investment, I mean, Honestly, with the public markets, we kind of just don't talk much about that. You know, we talk about the metrics. We kind of just don't talk too much about how the, you know... Turns out, we spent an extra month working on this feature just because we didn't really like the way the owl was animated.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

And so we just do that a lot. And in terms of investment, I mean, Honestly, with the public markets, we kind of just don't talk much about that. You know, we talk about the metrics. We kind of just don't talk too much about how the, you know... Turns out, we spent an extra month working on this feature just because we didn't really like the way the owl was animated.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

We just kind of don't talk too much about that. And I think that's fine. I don't think we're... I think that's fine. But my guess is if we went on earnings calls and spent all our time talking about how much effort we put into animating our OWL, I don't think people would like that.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

We just kind of don't talk too much about that. And I think that's fine. I don't think we're... I think that's fine. But my guess is if we went on earnings calls and spent all our time talking about how much effort we put into animating our OWL, I don't think people would like that.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

We just kind of don't talk too much about that. And I think that's fine. I don't think we're... I think that's fine. But my guess is if we went on earnings calls and spent all our time talking about how much effort we put into animating our OWL, I don't think people would like that.