
Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M - shacker
http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/10/duolingo-raises-45-million-series-d-round-led-by-google-ventures-now-valued-at-470m/
======
copsarebastards
This is the kind of startup I believe and hope will survive when the current
tech bubble bursts. They have a real technical solution to a real problem and
are making their money by charging people for a service that is worthwhile
enough to pay for. They're contributing to humanity in a meaningful way that's
worthwhile.

All these social media sites that make their money off advertising or selling
user data can all go bankrupt as far as I'm concerned. Their users are coming
to their websites for the short-term dopamine rush brought by the novelty of
social media interaction: these websites are not different in any meaningful
way from drug dealers, and they're costing millions of people happiness and
productivity. They sell themselves as communications platforms but in reality,
they compromise on privacy and as a result some of the most important forms of
communication are hampered by their influence. As developers I think we have
an ethical imperative to work for organizations like Duolingo who are pushing
humanity forward and not social media companies who are holding humanity back.

~~~
Balgair
Yes, like Youtube, Duolingo has what it takes to function in a capitalistic
system. For capitalism to work, you ( _very grossly_ ) need 3 things: Capital
(ships, factories, stamp machines, etc), Laborers (gardeners, secretaries,
miners, etc ), and Customers (vinyl collectors, beer drinkers, tourists, etc).
Many companies in tech confuse 2 or more of these things as the same. Twitter
boasts of it's users, which one thinks of as customers, but those are in fact
the capital. Twitter's real customers are who pays to advertize on it.
Facebook is just the same, their customers are businesses. That bears
repeating, FB is a business-to-business style enterprise.

Youtube, however, is better off. Laborers are the people that upload videos
and workers at Youtube, Capital is the servers and all the software and
somewhat the content creators, Customers are people watching and businesses
trying to advertize. Though it is not as clear cut as a sandwich shop, it
makes more sense than Yo or the myriad other tech startups out there that
confuse these 3 key groups.

Duolingo is also 'unconfused'. Capital is the language service, website, and
software of repetition. Customers are, again, the people using the service and
other companies and people trying to get translations. Labor is, again, the
people translating and the employees. In lieu of being paid for the
translating, the users are 'paid' in the free service provided. Overall, I
think it works pretty well, and, according to the OP, so do many other people.

~~~
learc83
>Customers are people watching

Why do you classify youtube watchers as customers and facebook users as
capital?

The _vast_ majority of youtube's revenue is from ads, so to me that says that
youtube is in the same category as facebook.

~~~
sah2ed
Well, you don't need a Google account to consume content on YouTube (yet), but
without a Facebook account and a decent number of friends, there would be no
impulsive need to check your news feed on Facebook.

~~~
alaskamiller
That was how Facebook used to work but now they're basically an RSS reader,
the sources being either your friends published content or anything and anyone
else for that matter.

~~~
Balgair
Good call! I had not thought of FB as that, but you are right. I guess the
next step for them is to then try to transition into a bank or some other
enterprise that tracks and stores value. That usually seems to be the way
these things go.

~~~
alaskamiller
They already are. They're an identity store.

You leverage your facebook profile to gain access to properties, be given
permissions or access, and your value is measurable by the input output of
your usage.

Travel around the world right now and show either your government
identification or a printed copy of your facebook profile and wouldn't it be
weird if a young person you meet takes more credibility from that printed page
than the validity and authority of your government id?

------
shkkmo
I am currently in Uruguay learning Spanish and Duolingo is one the the 4 tools
I use on my phone for it. The other three are:

Ankidroid: A flashcard app for adding vocabulary I need and phrases I want to
come more fluidly.

Spanish Trainer: A spaced repetition verb conjugation app as Duolingo doesn't
give me enough practice with this.

Google Translate

What would speed things up for me is the ability to easily import translations
from Google Translate into my flashcard app.

Duolingo needs to provide better user control of the spaced repitition input
and some setting for the skills practice sessions. I would love the ability to
make a certain drill or word as Finished or Very Confident so I don't have to
waste time practicing stuff I already know. I would also love the ability to
mark certain words or drills as important or useful so that they get repeated
more frequently when practicing skills.

(Edited for formatting and the friendly grammar red cross :))

~~~
steveridout
> What would speed things up for me is the ability to easily import
> translations from Google Translate into my flashcard app.

You might like to try my webapp for reading and learning a language:

[http://readlang.com](http://readlang.com)

It allows you to read shared texts or upload your own (.txt or .epub) or read
any web page with a Chrome extension
([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readlang-web-
reade...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readlang-web-
reader/odpdkefpnfejbfnmdilmfhephfffmfoh?hl=en))

You can click or drag across any word or phrase to get an instant translation.

Every translation is converted into a flashcard, along with the context
sentence.

You can practice with Readlang's own spaced repetition flashcards or export to
Anki if you prefer.

Hope you find it useful!

(I've been bootstrapping this for the past 2.5 years)

~~~
shkkmo
That looks helpful I'll give it a try, what source do you use for your
translations?

~~~
steveridout
The in-line translations come from Google Translate. People often dismiss
Google Translate but it's very good between English and the other major
European languages. The quality isn't as good for less popular languages, or
if one of your languages isn't English.

If you aren't satisfied with the translation, you can refer to another
dictionary in the reader sidebar (or a popup window in the Chrome extension).
The default for Spanish-English is WordReference, but users can customize this
if they have another favorite ([http://blog.readlang.com/2013/11/07/custom-
dictionaries.html](http://blog.readlang.com/2013/11/07/custom-
dictionaries.html)).

On top of that, you can edit all the words you translate, and if in future you
click the same word, you'll get your personally edited version instead of
Google Translate. So you're effectively building up your own large translation
dictionary. One idea for the future is to use all these edits to crowd source
better translations, but there's plenty of lower hanging fruit to get through
first!

------
probably_wrong
Since there are so many Duoling fans here, I have to ask: am I the only one
who finds the app almost unusable because there's no theory?

For German I used to try the exercises on my commute, but suddenly the app
expected me to use "dem" instead of "der" without any explanation. I can't be
the only one with this problem, right? Or is there a "new concepts" tab that
I've never seen?

~~~
beejiu
It is arguably the best way to learn the language; after all, it was the way
you learned your first language. I think a great deal of people find 'theory'
boring, and would otherwise not be interested in learning a language. Duolingo
is fun and practical.

~~~
NhanH
> It is arguably the best way to learn the language; after all, it was the way
> you learned your first language

It took me ten years to be as proficient as a ten years old kid in my first
language. So I don't think the way we learn our first language is necessary
the best way to learn language in general.

~~~
ajkjk
You were also pretty dumb at the time, and not trying to learn it very
actively.

And, I would say I was passably proficient by about 7. At least enough to read
relatively simple non-picture books.

~~~
cthalupa
You've got multiple advantages to learning a language as an adult as well, and
there's really no reason to go through the extremely inefficient method of
learning a new language the same way you did as a kid

1) You have the ability to translate. You already know the concepts and ideas
- you don't have to abstract meaning from noises - you already know the
meaning, you just have to correlate it

2) You understand grammar concepts. It may be quite different in your target
language - I have been learning 日本語 for some time, and grammar is wildly
different from English - but there's still a lot of things you only need to
learn a few differences of, vs. having to learn the concepts from scratch

With our first language, we have to sit there and learn by what sounds right
vs. what sounds wrong. This is so hilariously trial and error and completely
inefficient that it makes the entire process far slower than it would be if we
had any other way to do it.

How long does it take you to figure out verb conjugation the way you learn a
first language? Quite some time. You probably don't get it fully right in all
cases until you later enter classes that go over the grammar rules. In
Japanese, I was conjugating verbs, including irregular and negative forms, at
multiple politeness levels, in about two hours of learning conjugation. And I
rarely made mistakes after that. Why? Because I already understand verb
conjugation. It's a concept I have a solid grasp on in my native tongue, and
only needed to learn a few new rules to graft onto the existing framework.

------
smaili
Anybody else feel a little nervous when a free language tool is valued in the
hundreds of millions?

~~~
mbesto
_So you might ask “how can you make money giving away a learning app?” This
past week DuoLingo answered that question with the commercial release of the
DuoLingo Test Center.

The DuoLingo Test Center is currently free but it won’t be for long. Give it a
try if you’d like to see how it works. Once the DuoLingo Test is accepted at
schools and employers, the company plans to charge $20 to take its test.

There’s an established incumbent (monopoly) in this market called TOEFL. If
you’ve come to the US to study, you’ve probably taken this test. It’s a lot
more expensive than $20 per test and DuoLingo is out to prove it can do this
testing less expensively and better._

[0] - [http://avc.com/2014/07/freemium-in-
education/](http://avc.com/2014/07/freemium-in-education/)

~~~
rkrzr
I hope they succeed in taking away some market share from TOEFL. The TOEFL
test is ridiculously overpriced for what they provide and your results
_expire_ (no joke) after 2 years. Since clearly you will have forgotten
everything you knew about that language in 2 years time... Go Duolingo!

~~~
Grue3
>Since clearly you will have forgotten everything you knew about that language
in 2 years time...

They are not wrong. I passed Duolingo Spanish course (it might have been
extended since then) and barely remember anything now. I was also studying
German in school, and later French by myself to the point where I could even
speak with native speakers a little. Hardly remember anything either. English
is the only foreign language that I haven't forgot because I use it
constantly. But if you're not using a foreign language, after passing the test
you _will_ completely forget it in 2 years.

~~~
raverbashing
This, to me, is very telling

I spent a lot of time barely using certain foreign languages (+ than 2 years).
Of course you get 'rusty', but _far_ from forgetting everything.

And it came up back quickly

This tell me Duolingo doesn't make you learn it, but rather memorize their
game.

~~~
Someone1234
And while that may be the case, it is ultimately a free Rosetta Stone. So if
it fails to work you're only out just time, with Rosetta Stone you're out time
and also hundreds of dollars.

I'd love to see a independent study into its reliability/retention. But even
if it is completely useless, it is still no more wasteful than any other
mobile game people play daily.

~~~
bayesianhorse
There is one referenced on their homepage. On average, 34 hours of study in
the Spanish course would be equivalent to a full semester of language
education in college. For me that would be about a month of practice.

I have seen the effects myself. After a month or so, even though I had learned
some spanish before, native speakers suddenly slowed down (in my perception).

An important clue: Use the "Strengthen your skills" button frequently to keep
the tree golden. Duolingo itself doesn't nag you enough to do that, but it's
essential for mastery of the language.

------
orthoganol
Only complaint is they appear to have no priority in supporting languages of
the East, where the majority of the world lives. I guess their main demo, at
least at one point, was Western students, who aren't typically taught those
languages in school.

In the least, teaching Mandarin should be a higher priority than half the
languages they support.

~~~
Balgair
True, but the issue is the keyboard. Notice they don't have really any
Cyrillic languages either. Trying to get people used to using many ALT and key
combos is a tough starting point for a lot of gamified learners. Japanese has
been on the block since Duolingo began, but again, the keyboard is the main
hurdle.

~~~
aphedox
They offer cyrillic with the new Ukrainian course.

~~~
Balgair
Fantastic new, I'll have to try it out then and see!

------
bayesianhorse
To me this looks a bit like a "charity" investment. I've heard rumours
Duolingo was running thin on capital while frantically searching for a
business model.

However, despite not being profitable yet, Duolingo is doing a tremendous
amount of good. I know quite a bit about language learning and learning in
general, and I have never seen a better tool for learning the languages they
offer. The combination of words, sentences, smart repetition and text-to-
speech is pretty much unique, and the courses I've seen are quite well
designed.

Caveat: No, Duolingo alone is not enough to get fluent in a language, but if
you used it as your only (or major) tool, you'll get very close.

~~~
drpgq
Yeah I have to wonder how great Duolingo would have been if I had it as a kid
as a learning tool for French (I'm Canadian). I generally got good French
marks, but I think Duolingo would have boosted my actual ability.

~~~
bayesianhorse
I think Duolingo is great for exactly that kind of situation, where multiple
languages exist in one country, and that is actually the norm, rather than the
exception.

For example there is also a course in the incubator teaching Catalonian for
Spanish speakers, Catalonian being a language spoken in a part of southern
Spain.

------
jasondc
Duolingo is the best learning platform I've ever used. Even better than Khan
Academy (and Khan Academy is really really good). Happy to see them doing so
well!

~~~
happyscrappy
Totally agree. I am finally shoring up my Spanish and it is fairly painless.

------
joshdotsmith
Duolingo is pretty nice, but often the voices are odd and I'm not so sure the
pronunciation detection is accurate. Hard to complain for a free product, of
course.

Lingvist is fairly new and French-only for now, yet I feel like I'm making
more progress with that than I did with Duolingo. Not sure why that's the
case.

I'm pairing both with French vocabulary decks on Brainscape, which is an Anki-
like SRS app. Lingvist claims it will switch to a paid model soon, and
Brainscape decks are in-app purchases. Lingvist is both mobile and web, though
I always prefer the web interfaces when I have access to them. Wish it also
had a speaking component.

I've started using Verbling for having conversations but so far they seem
pretty unstructured and not worth the money. This will, of course, depend on
who you choose. There don't seem to be a lot of French to English options
there.

If anyone has suggestions for alternatives, I'd love to hear them. I'd like to
rapidly improve my French before a trip at the end of August.

~~~
tbrake
FWIW I saw on /r/duolingo that French could be getting a new TTS soon
[http://i.imgur.com/haowkeG.png](http://i.imgur.com/haowkeG.png) \- for
certain values of soon.

edit: ah sorry, missed the August bit on the last line. Probably not the value
of soon you need.

------
coob
In order to pull in $50m revenue per year, Duolingo are going to need to sell
2,500,000 certifications. Is that doable?

~~~
j_baker
$50 million seems like an arbitrary amount of revenue to expect DuoLingo to
pull in. How do you come up with that number?

~~~
balazsdavid987
I think it came from dividing the $470M valuation with 10 and rounding up.

------
darkstar999
I was hoping to find Japanese last time I checked their site. Any good way to
learn it?

~~~
brobinson
Start out with Michel Thomas' Japanese course. It's just speaking/listening,
no reading/writing. I learned more from that in two hours than I did in a
month of self-study using other programs. You can probably find it for free on
Youtube. The venerable Mr. Thomas is no longer with us, unfortunately.

------
micheljansen
What amazes me most about all this is just how badly Rosetta Stone missed the
boat. I used one of their (rather expensive) lessons years ago, but the lack
of a mobile version meant I could only use it at home and not on the go, when
I actually had time to spare. It seemed like such a no-brainier to me at the
time. In a time where people were paying £300 for their retail software, they
could easily have sold loads on the App Store.

Now I use Duolingo multiple times per week on my phone and I wouldn't even
think about paying for Rosetta Stone anymore.

~~~
bduerst
Speaking of Rosetta Stone, their market cap is only $189m and they made $260m
in revenue last year.

I get that DuoLingo has a nice mobile interface, but do they have a larger
marketshare than Rosetta Stone?

------
dccoolgai
Not mentioned in the article is IMHO the most important thing they are
currently working on: Language testing/validation/badging. In the context of
the "end of college" era, this work in microcredentialing may be the most
valuable thing they are doing. Not _teaching_ language, but validating as a
trusted 3rd party what an individual knows.

------
emergentcypher
Still waiting for their Russian course!

~~~
nandemo
Hey, you can't hardly expect them to provide a course for such a minor, exotic
language. Maybe you should try Irish or Ukrainian instead?

~~~
schnevets
I'm patiently waiting for their Polish course to progress beyond 17%
completion...

Their volunteer translation system may seem unreliable, but it's probably the
only way smaller languages will ever get attention. At this point, I'm
probably better off picking up some Polish books, learning a bit on my own,
and contributing to their project.

------
ionforce
Great to see them doing so well.

Personally, I'd like to see language learning apps explore the parts of
language learning that Duolingo isn't good at.

Also a high-quality, open source version of Duo would be awesome for super
minority, low infrastructure, and/or conlang languages.

~~~
Balgair
Well, they are coming out with Klingon sometime in the next year. Granted,
it's a small language, but it seems they are amenable to conlangs. Maybe, they
will also have an ability to add your own conlang, so that you and friends can
communicate and expand the lang.

------
ctrager
With regards to learning Spanish, here's a free resource I like:
[https://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/](https://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/)

Short, graded videos with transcripts and translations.

------
tabrischen
Have been a fan of Duolingo for a long time. I see it as an important enabler
of people who're aspiring hypergots or polygots. I can't wait for Esperanto to
become available within the app.

~~~
VLM
Memrise is about the same and has some courses.

[http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/esperanto/](http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/esperanto/)

------
buster
That's really good to hear. And it's a shame that such a company "only" raises
$45M where Wunderlist gets 100-200 (i like Wunderlist but i think there is so
much more value and potential in Duolingo!). I tried several Android apps for
learning new languages and duolingo was by far the best, imo.

Now, can i have German->Japanese in Duolingo, please? :)

------
iKenshu
Duolingo is my best tool to learn English <3

~~~
bradbeattie
I don't mean to nitpick, but the phrase "my best" sounds strange. "It is my
favourite" or "It is the best" sound notably better.

~~~
shkkmo
To me, a "duolingo is the best tool I have for learning english" sounds more
natural to me as an american.

------
euoia
Here's a little web app I made for practising French verbs:
[http://practicefrenchverbs.com/](http://practicefrenchverbs.com/)

The code is on GitHub: [https://github.com/euoia/node-
reverb](https://github.com/euoia/node-reverb)

------
edgarvaldes
It's really great to see a platform that provides so much real value doing so
well.

------
fataliss
If they could add some Asian languages, at least Korean which uses an alphabet
and would probably not require as much special dev as something like Chinese
(mandarin) would, that would be super sweet!

~~~
jfoster
Prior to having seen Duolingo, I started a service that is similar to
Duolingo, but only for Mandarin Chinese. It's only free for the first 60 words
(then $5.99/mo), and I don't think the proposition is quite right yet. It's at
[http://fastchinese.com](http://fastchinese.com) if you'd like to check it
out.

Feedback appreciated here or via the site.

------
zackery616
We made a language exchange social app that's the complete opposite of the
Duolingo approach. You learn and exchange more than 120 languages with native
speakers from close to 200 countries.

www.HelloTalk.com

------
aikah
I miss livemocha , I met a ton of people in real life thanks to that app.
Rosetta Stone just killed everything that was good about it.

------
tonydiv
Goes to show that you can still try to figure out a business model after
having raised this much money. Even with a superstar CEO.

~~~
ajmurmann
I learned on Silicon Valley that you don't want any revenue anyways, because
people will just expect insane revenue growth once you have any revenue. I
didn't know if I was supposed to laugh or if someone just had spoken some
truth everyone in the valley is too correct to actually say.

------
Enzolangellotti
Has any of you tried Pimsleur and Assimil? I'm learning French, Hebrew and
Russian, and so far it has been great.

------
c0wb0yc0d3r
I wish Duolingo had a Vietnamese course.

You can translate the site to Vietnamese but they can't teach it to you, come
on.

~~~
bayesianhorse
I think there is a Vietnamese course hatching.

~~~
c0wb0yc0d3r
That would be great. Is there a source for this, or is it just whispers on the
Internet?

Edit: Found it,
[http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/vi/en/status](http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/vi/en/status)

------
changg
Hope one day my wife can learn English with it.

------
thanatropism
Duolingo ist sehr gut, sehr gut!

------
NN88
is this any good?

