#135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World

Luis von Ahn (@luisvonahn http://twitter.com/luisvonahn) is an entrepreneur and computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He is known for inventing CAPTCHAs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA, being a MacArthur Fellow ("genius grant" recipient), and selling two companies to Google in his 20's. Luis has been named one of the 10 Most Brilliant Scientists by Popular Science Magazine http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2006-09/fifth-annual-brilliant-10, one of the 50 Best Brains in Science by Discover http://discovermagazine.com/2008/dec/20-best-brains-under-40, one of the Top Young Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review, and one of the 100 Most Innovative People in Business by FastCompany Magazine http://www.fastcompany.com/3018771/most-creative-people-2010/56-luis-von-ahn. Luis is currently the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo http://www.duolingo.com, a language learning platform created to bring free language education to the world. With more than 100 million users, it is the most popular way to learn languages in the world, and it is the most downloaded app in the Education category on both iTunes (5-star average, 3,300+ reviews) https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/duolingo-learn-languages-for/id570060128?mt=8 and Google Play https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.duolingo&hl=en. I first met Luis as an early investor in Duolingo https://angel.co/tim, and every time I meet him, I learn something new. In this conversation, we talk about: What 2-3 books and resources he'd recommend to entrepreneurs Language learning tips The clever way he caught cheating students at Carnegie Mellon Early mentors and key lessons learned The story of building and selling reCAPTCHA How to recruit and vet technical talent Duolingo's most surprising sources of users, and much more... Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service http://99designs.com/tim. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run. This episode is also brought to you by Headspace https://www.headspace.com/tim, the world's most popular meditation app (more than 4,000,000 users). It's used in more than 150 countries, and many of my closest friends swear by it. Try Headspace's free Take10 program https://www.headspace.com/tim — 10 minutes of guided meditation a day for 10 days. It's like a warm bath for your mind. Meditation doesn't need to be complicated or expensive, and it's had a huge impact on my life. Try Headspace for free https://www.headspace.com/tim for a few days and see what I mean.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  No, what is the appropriate time?

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. When your business needs a logo, website, business card, thumbnail, or any other design, I recommend checking out 99designs. I use them myself. I've used them for many years. I use them to create book cover prototypes for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller. I've also used them for banner ads, illustrations, and much more. With 99designs, you get a variety of original designs from designers around the world, give your feedback, and then pick your favorite. Your happiness is guaranteed. So check out some of my competitions in designs and some of your competitions in designs from fellow Tim Ferriss Show listeners at 99designs.com/tim. And right now, you can get a free $99 upgrade on your first

• 1:06Tim Ferriss?

  design. So check it out, 99designs.com/tim.

• 1:12Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Headspace. More than 80% of the people I have interviewed, world-class performers across the military, entertainment, sports, and beyond, all have some type of meditative practice. I tried for years and years and failed miserably. The key is making it simple, and you can dramatically improve your life in just 10 minutes a day, and technology can help you. This change comes through guided meditation, and Headspace is by far the most popular app for this purpose. More than 4 million users. It's meditation made simple. So what I recommend is that you take this practice, meditation, which is rooted in thousands of years of tradition, supported by thousands of scientific

• 1:54Tim Ferriss?

  studies, and try it for 10 minutes a day for 10 days. That's all you need to do. You could also check out the founder, Andy Puddicombe's TED Talk, which has more than 5.5 million views. His last name is P U D D I C O M B E. If you want to look that up, but otherwise, download the free Headspace app, I have it on my phone, and begin their Take 10 program for 10 days of guided meditation, completely free, 10 minutes a day, that's all it takes, you should give it a shot. Headspace.com/Tim, just go to Headspace.com/Tim.

• 2:31Tim Ferriss?

  Hello ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where my dog is yawning and it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of various types, from military to entertainment to academia to sports, chess, everything in between, and tease out the routines, habits, favorite books, etc. that you can use. In this episode, we have Luis Von Ahn, or Luis Von Ahn, V-O-N-A-H-N, who is an entrepreneur and computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He is known for inventing CAPTCHAs, and we'll get into that, being a MacArthur Fellow, which is often nicknamed the genius grant, and selling two companies to Google in his twenties.

• 3:13Tim Ferriss?

  Luis has been named one of the 10 most brilliant scientists by Popular Science Magazine, one of the 50 best brains in science by Discover, one of the top young innovators under 35 by the MIT Technology Review, and one of the 100 most innovative people in business by Fast Company Magazine. He has many things, many interests, that keep him busy, but the primary is Duolingo. Luis is currently the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo, a language learning platform created to bring free language learning to the world. They have more than 100 million users, including yours truly, and that makes it the most popular way to learn languages in the world, and it is the most downloaded app in the education category on both iTunes, where it has a five-star average and more than 3,300 reviews, and Google Play.

• 3:58Tim Ferriss?

  I first met Luis as an early investor in Duolingo. I tracked them down, which was very hard. I tracked Luis and his co-founder Severin down after you guys, my fans, actually told me I had to see it. It was in beta at the time, and via Twitter and Facebook, you guys informed me. I reached out to them. That's how that came together, and every time I meet Luis, I learn. Learn something new and certainly I hope you will learn a lot in this episode. We talk about his favorite books and resources he'd recommend to entrepreneurs, language learning tips, the very clever way he caught cheating students at Carnegie Mellon, which is a great story, early mentors and key lessons learned, the story of building and selling companies like Recapcha, how to recruit and vet technical talent,

• 4:41Tim Ferriss?

  the most surprising sources of users for Duolingo and it goes on and on. So we talk about quite a lot. Please say hello to Luis on Twitter, @Luisvonahn, L U I S V O N A H N. Say hi on the interwebs and please enjoy my conversation with Luis.

• 5:03Tim Ferriss?

  Luis, welcome to the show.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me, Tim.

• 5:08Tim Ferriss?

  And I thought we could start where a lot of people start in the morning, which is breakfast. You mentioned this briefly when we were doing a sound check. What did you have for breakfast this morning?

• 5:17Speaker 03

  I had a Greek yogurt.

• 5:19Tim Ferriss?

  And you added some context. Is that the, you've had the same thing for breakfast for the last year?

• 5:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, possibly two or three years. It's the identical Greek yogurt. It's the Faye Greek yogurt, the one they have to combine the fruit, but the spoon never fits in there. That's the one.

• 5:37Tim Ferriss?

  And do you, do you have meals that you repeat for lunch and dinner? I mean, are you, do you, have you standardized your daily routine in other ways besides breakfast?

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Not, not that well. I, breakfast is pretty standardized. My, my, my lunch is pretty different every day. We get free lunch, a Duolingo and I just, I eat that.

• 5:59Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Now standardized, the word makes me think of testing. And when I think of testing, I actually got pinged by a former student of yours. And the student said, ask him to explain how he catch, how he catched. Boy, here we go. I need to study English.

• 6:18Speaker 03

  Well, was him or was it you catched?

• 6:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, catched. No, I said this unfortunately. Caught cheaters in your, one of your classes at Carnegie Mellon. And I was hoping maybe you could explain how that went.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, I did, I did quite a bit. So I used to teach this class. I'm on leave. I'm a professor, but I'm on leave. I used to teach this class called Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science, which is,

• 6:45Speaker 03

  Kind of the hardest class most people have ever taken in their lives. Um, and it's, it's basically discrete math and, and it's pretty hard now. A lot of people used to cheat. It's, it's a large class. It's about 200 kids. Uh, a lot of people used to cheat in, in different ways and I started becoming, I, I started becoming really obsessed with catching people cheating. I, I, it was, it was, I, I didn't even do anything bad to them after I caught them cheating. It was more like a fun game for me.

• 7:17Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  Um, so for example, one of the things they couldn't do is they, they, some of the assignments I said, it is against the class policy to Google. Um, um, now you can think what you want about that policy. I don't think it's that great of a policy, but that's a policy that I inherited. That class has always basically said you cannot Google for assignment solutions. Uh, so one of the things I did was, um, I, uh, I, I would, you know, sometimes I would assign, um, homework and I would actually seed the answers to some of the things in, in websites that were crawled by Google, but that I owned. Uh, and I could tell people's IP addresses and, and everything. I, I would catch people cheating that way.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  I basically set up Honeybox for people to cheat and, and, you know, you could say that's entrapment, but that's, that's what I did.

• 8:05Tim Ferriss?

  Do you recall any examples offhand?

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I mean, I, well, of the exact websites, I, I don't know where they are.

• 8:12Tim Ferriss?

  Or the terms, I mean.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I mean, one of them was, um, uh, there was, there was one that was called, uh, Guerra Mcristos Puzzle. It's, it's made up, but I, I made that word up beforehand. I made sure there was not, no such thing on Google. And I, I, I made a website that had the right solution, but it, it, it recorded everybody's IP address. And at CMU, you can figure out, you know, their dorm from their IP address. So I could figure out which, which person was actually checking. Turns out that time of the 200 students, about 40 Googled for the answer. Um, and, and that, that was fun. Uh, I, I used to do all kinds of things like that. And then the students were pretty, um, they were, they were all usually scared of, of almost everything being a trick.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  Uh, so I, I would do that in the first one or two assignments and then afterwards they would, they would learn not to, not to cheat.

• 9:05Tim Ferriss?

  So, so the, the story, the progression I've heard is that you would, you would bring up slides silently. Did you do this? Or it was like

• 9:13Speaker 03

  I did do that.

• 9:14Tim Ferriss?

  A screenshot of whatever it is, the Glorblar problem or whatever circled, then a screenshot of your, like your, the who is for the domain site or the domain that people would go to with your name circled since you own it?

• 9:27Speaker 03

  Yep. Yep. That's when you could see the whole class. You could, you could see their faces change. It was, it was pretty fun.

• 9:36Tim Ferriss?

  Now, but you didn't have to actually hunt down each identity, right? I mean, you, did you offer them a choice? I mean, tell me if this is true. So the, the, the story, the lore is that you would, you offered them the option of confessing and take a zero for the homework. Otherwise they would get reported or was that, or is it not? Is it not?

• 9:58Speaker 03

  Who have you, who have you been talking to?

• 10:02Speaker 03

  That, that was the case. That, that was exactly the case because it took a little bit of effort to go and figure out who was who. Uh, so I would just, I would say if you, if you just confess, you get a zero on the assignment and, and all kinds of people confess. I even had some people confess that didn't even actually do anything. They just said, well, you know, I don't know what the hell I was doing. So I'm just going to throw my name in there. I'd rather take a zero on the assignment.

• 10:26Tim Ferriss?

  So if we rewind the clock, so that's as a professor, when did you become, at what age did you become a professor at Carnegie Mellon?

• 10:36Speaker 03

  I was probably 25.

• 10:37Tim Ferriss?

  25?

• 10:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:39Tim Ferriss?

  And was it clear that you were going to be involved with computer science from a very young age? Could you describe for people where you grew up, a little bit about your childhood?

• 10:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure. I, I grew up in Guatemala, uh, which is, by the way, that's not where they keep the prisoners. That's Guantanamo.

• 10:57Tim Ferriss?

  Do you get that a lot?

• 10:58Speaker 03

  I get that a lot. It's like, is that why they keep the prisoners? No, it's not. It's also not where they invented the avocado sauce. That's guacamole. Different. So, the, yeah, I grew up in Guatemala. I started liking computers at about age eight. My mom, I really wanted a Nintendo because everybody wanted Nintendo. Or my friends all had Nintendos and I told my mom, but my mom instead got me a Commodore 64.

• 11:25Tim Ferriss?

  I remember Commodore 64.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:28Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of Spy Hunter on Commodore 64.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  Yes, I played a lot of games there. But at first, when I first got it, I was pretty pissed off because I thought, man, I want a Nintendo. But instead she got me that and she said, well, you figure that out. And so I had to figure out how to use the computer to play games. And then I started trying to figure out, you know, because she only would buy me a couple of games a year. And I would get bored of them. I started trying to figure out how to get more and more games. And, you know, the best way to do that was basically to copy them from other people. So I started doing that at a young age. I think the statute of limitations has passed by now, but I was basically pirating games and in large scale in Guatemala City is basically what I was doing.

• 12:12Tim Ferriss?

  And what did you, what did you learn in those early days of copying games? That, that helped you later or gave you an indication that you had a proclivity for using computers and computer science?

• 12:25Speaker 03

  I was pretty good at, I mean, I, you know, most of these things had some sort of copy protection. Usually it was like hidden files or something that if you just knew how to list a directory with, by showing the hidden files, you could see them. So it was, it was not that hard, but basically I started getting good at using computers and I was usually the better kid in my class anything having to do with computers. And I think that's kind of what got me going.

• 12:48Tim Ferriss?

  When did you leave Guatemala?

• 12:51Speaker 03

  I was seventeen, I had just turned seventeen. I came here for college. Um, I, I wanted, I wanted to become a math major and it turns out in this little country, there was no way to become a math major. Uh, and so I left for college. Um, I thought I would return four years later, but then I, I started liking it here. The whole not, um, not being scared of kidnappings, et cetera, that was pretty nice.

• 13:13Tim Ferriss?

  The luxuries.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  The luxuries of life, like, uh, you know, electricity reliably. Uh, all that stuff was nice. So I kinda stuck around.

• 13:24Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, what did your parents do? And what was your, what was your upbringing like?

• 13:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, my, my parents were both doctors, medical doctors, but my mother, um, she was a doctor, but she only practiced for like six months. Um, after that she inherited a candy factory from her mother. So my mother owned a candy factory. Uh, and that's what she did and it was pretty awesome. It was like I grew up basically in a candy factory.

• 13:51Tim Ferriss?

  So it's like, uh, there were, I assume no Oompa Loompas or any some such Willy Wonka elevators, which, which would be nice, but like you said, electricity not reliable.

• 14:01Speaker 03

  No, there was none of that, but there were, there were huge machines that, that made humongous pieces of candy that had to be cut off and it was, it was fun. I didn't, I didn't really like it cause I, I, I guess I ate way too much of it at first and then I stopped liking it. Uh, but it was really fun to take the machines apart and I guess people didn't like that, but I, it was fun to take the machines apart.

• 14:20Tim Ferriss?

  So you worked on taking the machines apart?

• 14:22Speaker 03

  I, I, I did not work on putting them back together cause I had no idea how to do that.

• 14:25Tim Ferriss?

  But you took them apart?

• 14:26Speaker 03

  I did.

• 14:27Tim Ferriss?

  Must have been a real crowd pleaser with employees.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:31Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, did your, did your parents do anything in particular in, in terms of parenting style? Or interacting with you that you could see doing with your own kids at some point?

• 14:43Speaker 03

  Uh, my mom was great. I mean, she was, she really, uh, you know, one of the things she did was she always, um, told me, you know, I've, I've read this after the fact, but I noticed she did it. Um, she always told me, you know, when, when you congratulate your kids, you always tell them, oh, you're so smart. She, she would say that I was smart every now and then, but most of the time she would say something like, oh, you worked hard on that.

• 15:05Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 15:06Speaker 03

  And that, uh, she did that a lot. And I guess that's probably why I'm now a workaholic. Uh, but that, yeah, she did that a lot.

• 15:13Tim Ferriss?

  So, so that, I think I want to say Carol Dweck, uh, I might be getting this researcher's name wrong, wrote a book called Mindset about this, how,

• 15:21Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 15:22Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, if kids believe that their intelligence is a fixed trait and they're told you're so smart, you're so smart that when they fail, they assume it is a, a, an unfixable problem, right?

• 15:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 15:35Tim Ferriss?

  And when you're told you worked really hard, congratulations, then you become more resilient and adaptable when facing setbacks and whatnot. Uh, what, uh, what did your path look like through college and then immediately after graduation? Where did you go undergraduate?

• 15:53Speaker 03

  I went to Duke. Um, I, I, I had never been to North Carolina before I showed up. Uh, I, it was, I did not really realize that North Carolina was the South.

• 16:04Tim Ferriss?

  Does have north in the name.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  It does have north in the name, but, uh, yeah, I, you know, the first day I showed up, I, I, I went to McDonald's because, you know, I had heard a lot. I, well, I mean, we have McDonald's in Guatemala, but I, it was a restaurant I knew. So I went to McDonald's and I could not, I, I spoke English, uh, but I could not understand the person, uh, asking me what I wanted to order. Uh, that, the, the southern accent was way, way too thick for me. Um, but I was, I was at Duke. I, I was there. I, I studied computer science. Um, uh, I loved it. I loved basketball while I was there for exactly four years. And then the day after I graduated, I stopped liking it. But, but I, I loved it while I was there.

• 16:41Tim Ferriss?

  That's the religion.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Then I then I then I went to get a PhD in computer science at Carnegie Mellon. I I went to Carnegie Mellon because of my PhD advisor, who's a guy named Manuel Blum, who is, you know, many people consider him the father of cryptography. You know, like encryption and all that stuff. He so that he's he's amazing. So I came to Carnegie Mellon to study computer science.

• 17:07Tim Ferriss?

  Where where is is Manuel Blum originally from the US or is he from outside of the US?

• 17:12Speaker 03

  He was born in Venezuela, but he lived there for like a year and then he grew up in New York City.

• 17:17Tim Ferriss?

  What did you learn from him? Are there any lessons in particular or or or principles or takeaways that you've carried with you or that you can remember from working with him?

• 17:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, I learned I learned a lot from him. I mean, he's he's very funny. He's he's um, he's an older man now. I mean, he's um, he's in his late 70s. And he's he he always, you know, by when I met him, which was like 15 years ago, I guess I was he was in his 60s. But um, he always acted way older than he actually was. He just acted acted as if he forgot everything. He he really was, he really acted like he forgot a lot of things.

• 17:57Tim Ferriss?

  Meaning like an absent minded doc from Back to the Future type of person?

• 18:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I think it was it was a bit of an act. Because because at first, so you know, um, at first, the the way the way he treats his PhD students is he meets with them once a week and they have to like explain to him what they're doing. So I had to explain to him what I was working on, which at the time, by the way, what I was working on was this thing that became very popular, which is Captchas, these distorted characters that you have to type all over the internet.

• 18:26Tim Ferriss?

  To prove you're not a robot of some type.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  Right, this is very annoying. That was that was the thing I was working on. And I had to explain it to him, but it was very funny because usually I would start explaining something and he, you know, in the first sentence, he would say, I don't understand what you're saying. And then I would try to find another way of saying it and the whole hour would pass and I was not, I could not get past the first sentence and he would say, "Well, the hour is over. Let's meet next week." And this happened for like, this must have happened for months. And at some point, I started thinking, "I don't understand why people think this guy is so smart." I mean, he's one, like, for example, you know, there's no such thing as the Nobel Prize in Computer Science because I guess there was no computers when Nobel was around.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  So there's a thing called the Turing Award and he won the Turing Award. So he's like, basically won the Nobel Prize for Computer Science. And I just could not understand how people thought this guy was smart. But it turns out later, now I understand, this is basically just an act. I mean, essentially, I was being unclear about what I was saying and I did not fully understand what I was trying to explain to him. And he would just, he was just trying to drill deeper and deeper and deeper until I realized every time that I actually, there was something that I didn't have clear in my mind. And that's something that, you know, he just, he really taught me how to think deeply about things. And I think that's something that I just, I have not forgotten.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  And when you understand something really, really deeply, you can explain it in a really short way, usually, and that's great.

• 20:04Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's part of the reason, particularly since I'm incompetent when it comes to physics, but I've always had a lot of respect for teachers who can develop a style like that of the late Richard Feynman, right? Being able to take very perceived as complex concepts in theoretical or applied physics and explaining them using, say, an apple and a pencil to a third grader and being able to have them get it, not just get it, but remember it.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that's true understanding. I think when you're able to explain something so simply that almost anybody can understand it, that means you really understand it.

• 20:42Tim Ferriss?

  And for anyone who hasn't seen it, it's a little hard to find. I have found it on YouTube before. I'm sure you can find it on some Chinese version of YouTube somewhere. But the joy of finding things out, which was a Nova program, it's not that long, which is an interview of Richard Feynman about his experience with his father, among other things, and how his father taught him to explore the world. Really fascinating. So you mentioned CAPTCHA. Could you...

• 21:12Tim Ferriss?

  Walk us through, or not walk us through, but what were the milestones for captcha? And what ended up happening to it?

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Sure, so that was, um, so the way this whole thing got started, it was about the year 2000. I had just started my PhD at Carnegie Mellon. I was looking for a PhD thesis project. I mean, I had just started and I was looking for something. I really didn't have a research project. And this guy, um, a pretty awesome guy, his name is Udi Manber. He was the chief scientist at Yahoo, you know, works at Google. But at the time, he was the chief scientist at Yahoo. And Yahoo at the time, in the year 2000, was really the biggest thing in the world.

• 21:47Tim Ferriss?

  Sure. Udi Manber?

• 21:49Speaker 03

  Manber.

• 21:50Tim Ferriss?

  How do you spell it?

• 21:51Speaker 03

  M A N B E R.

• 21:53Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  Uh, he, he came to Carnegie Mellon to give a talk about 10 open problems that Yahoo did not really know how to solve. And I, my guess is he was, this was a recruiting talk. Now that I understand how the world operates. My guess is he was coming to recruit engineers of some sort. But, you know, he gave a talk about 10 problems that they didn't really know how to, how to solve. And there were a bunch of different problems there. I went home and I tried to, you know, I said, well, I'll try to figure out how to solve all of these. I was, I had no idea how to solve any of them, except for one. And I, I didn't really know how to solve it, but I thought, hmm, I could probably come up with something for that. And the problem that he, that he had, that they didn't know how to solve is that at the time, they had a free email service. I guess they still do.

• 22:38Speaker 03

  Where you, the, the problem they were having is that people were writing bots to sign up for millions of email accounts. That's what they were, that's what they were trying to do, or that's what they were doing. And then the people at Yahoo did not know how to stop this. They, they were trying all kinds of things and whatever they did, the people who wrote the bots would kind of one up them. And so, uh, I kind of thought about it. I thought about it with my PhD advisor Manuel. And together, uh, we came up with this, this solution, which is why don't we test whether the thing that's trying to sign up is a human? Or a computer that's trying to sign up for millions of accounts? And we came up with this idea of a test.

• 23:19Speaker 03

  Uh, and the test is basically just giving some distorted characters and having the, the entity read it. And it turns out humans can read these pretty well, whereas computers can't, can't read it as well. Uh, and that, that, that was it. That's, um, uh, it took, it took a few months to, to come up with this idea. Then we developed it and then uh, we showed it to him, uh, to Udi Member, uh, and he had it running on Yahoo, uh, you know, like two weeks later. Which I also now in retrospect realize how big of a problem this must have been for them. Yeah, that's a miracle for that to be implemented. Because it's a miracle for any large company to do anything in two weeks. Uh, but he had it running pretty quickly after that. Um, and, and from then on, every other website started using these. Um.

• 24:05Speaker 03

  And so, so that, that happened, um, then, uh, by, uh, this, this was still a year about two thousand. By the year about two thousand and five, uh, I had gone on to work on other things. Um, but by then, uh, uh, essentially every single website was using it. And, uh, at some point I did a little back of the envelope calculation about how, um, how many, how many of these were typed by people around the world. Um, and it turns out it was, it was, the, the number I came up with was about two hundred million. So about two hundred million times a day, somebody would type one of these captchas. Uh, and that's when I, that's when I started thinking, I, I wonder if we can you do the, something with this time because the thing is, you know, each time you type one of these, uh, not only are they annoying, but also they waste about ten seconds of your time.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  And if you multiply ten seconds by two hundred million, you get the humanity as a whole is wasting like five hundred thousand hours every day typing these annoying captchas. So I started thinking, you know, can we do something? I, I started feeling bad first of all, because it's like five hundred thousand hours and it's kind of my fault. Um, so I started feeling bad and I started thinking, you know, can we do something good with this or, or useful? And that's when I came up with the idea. It's kind of the, the second round of captchas. It's a system called Recaptcha, which the idea is that we're, um, and not only are people authenticating themselves as a human as they're, as they're typing these, but they're also helping to digitize books. Um, and, and the way that works is that, okay, so first of all, digitizing books, there's, uh, so Google, for example, is digitizing all of the world's books or had, was digitizing all the world's books,

• 25:33Speaker 03

  where the idea is you start with a physical book and you scan it. Now, scanning a book, literally what it consists of is sending the book to India and somebody in India taking a digital photograph of every page of the book. That's literally what scanning a book is. Now, the problem is that the next step of the process, the computer needs to be able to decipher all of the words in these pictures of the pages. But computers can't do that very well, or not as accurately as humans. So what we do is we take all of the words that the computer cannot recognize in these scans, and we get people to read them for us while they're typing captures on the internet. So that's the idea of Recaptcha. As people are typing these captures, they're also helping to digitize books.

• 26:14Tim Ferriss?

  And what, from the conception and development of Recaptcha, to its... it was the technology was acquired or licensed? What was the ultimate?

• 26:26Speaker 03

  Recaptcha turned into a company. So it was a company that what we were doing, so we... at first, this was Carnegie Mellon. I was a professor at Carnegie Mellon, and it was Research Project Carnegie Mellon. But then at some point, we realized that we could digitize a lot of things, you know, in a large scale. Because what happened is, we... so we launched this Recaptcha service. Pretty quickly, Facebook started using it. So basically, anybody who signed up for Facebook was helping us digitize one word out of something. And then...

• 27:00Tim Ferriss?

  Who provided the books? Was that...

• 27:02Speaker 03

  Right. So at first, nobody was providing the books, really. We just had kind of some small amount of scans that we had gotten from somewhere. But I was giving a talk somewhere, and in the audience was the CTO of the New York Times. He said, "Hey, we have archives of the New York Times. We have 130 years of New York Times archives that we have scanned, but we just cannot finish the digitization process because the scans are not very good. So maybe you can do this for us?" And I said, "Sure." So pretty soon, we started digitizing the New York Times and started charging them for doing that. And that was, at that point, we had to leave the university because we were doing...

• 27:46Speaker 03

  apparently, you cannot do work-for-hire inside a nonprofit university. Who knew?

• 27:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 27:52Speaker 03

  Uh, and so we had to, we formed the company mainly because the New York Times wanted to pay us to digitize their archive. And so they started paying us, um, they were paying us quite a bit, um, they were paying us, uh, it's about $50,000 per year of content. Um, and so

• 28:08Tim Ferriss?

  A hundred and, yeah, a hundred and thirty years.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  For a hundred and thirty years. Yeah, so, so that, that was, we didn't need any

• 28:13Tim Ferriss?

  Valuable contract.

• 28:15Speaker 03

  Right. We didn't need any venture funding or anything. That's how we spun it out into a company and we were in the middle of that contract and we were going at it, but at some point, Google was having the exact same problem with their book digitization process that it, it, you know, their, the computers were not as accurate, um, as humans, so they kind of approached us and, and we ended up deciding to sell the company to them.

• 28:36Tim Ferriss?

  Question on Carnegie Mellon and

• 28:39Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 28:40Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, technology transfer. So for those people who are not familiar, if you were to go to say a place like MIT or, uh, many, many universities, i- if you develop, and, and I'm sure this varies in the fine print, but if you are a faculty member or maybe even a student and you develop technology at the university, in, am I correct in saying that in some cases that is the intellectual property of the university? How did you

• 29:05Speaker 03

  That is correct.

• 29:05Tim Ferriss?

  So how did you navigate that with

• 29:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:08Tim Ferriss?

  Carnegie Mellon?

• 29:09Speaker 03

  So most universities, most universities, what happens is, uh, if you are an employee of the university, uh, or if you're a student and you are funded, uh, somehow through the university. So for example, PhD students that are funded through, through grants or something, uh, then the university can take or, can, can if they choose so, take ownership of your intellectual property. Uh, and usually also universities have a, some sort of licensing agreement in case you want to form a company out of a university. So I mean, this is actually what happened with Google. Google was developed inside Stanford, uh, and there's many other, you know, companies like that. And usually there's some sort of licensing agreement where, uh, if you start a company,

• 29:50Speaker 03

  the university now owns a certain fraction of your company and that varies per university and exactly the terms of this vary per university. At Carnegie Mellon is pretty nice. Uh, it is, um, what's nice about it is that it's, it's really simple. It's Carnegie Mellon owns 5% of your company, uh, period. Now that, if you raise funding, their, their ownership dilutes, but at the time of company formation, if you're, if you're taking technology out of the university, they own 5% of the company. And that's it. And that's what what's nice about that is you don't have to fuss with them. I mean, many others have some sort of like, you know, negotiation or variable amount depending on milestones or whatever, and you end up having to negotiate all kinds of things. But here it's just a standard thing.

• 30:36Tim Ferriss?

  Very simple.

• 30:37Speaker 03

  Yep. So Carnegie Mellon owned 5% of Recaptcha. That's what happened.

• 30:41Tim Ferriss?

  And looking, looking back at, I want to say Yuri, but I guess it's Yuri's presentation and the 10 open problems and how you recognized it later in retrospect as a recruiting trip, most likely, for engineers. Have you developed a particular approach or what is your approach for recruiting engineers for your startups? Like, for instance, in the, in the current day, or when you were just putting together the initial team for Duolingo? How do you, how do you recruit and vet engineers?

• 31:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was so. The initial team was actually relatively easy at Duolingo. I basically took, because I was a professor and essentially I was teaching a class that every single student had to take in computer science. So I pretty much knew who the best students.

• 31:32Tim Ferriss?

  You got to see all the fresh meat coming in.

• 31:34Speaker 03

  I, I knew who the best students are were in the whole university. I mean, I knew that. So it was relatively simple at the beginning. I essentially just emailed, you know, my top 10 that I knew. And that was it. And, you know, some of them already had jobs. And some of them were very interested and I hired some of them. But those I didn't even have to interview because I knew them. I mean, I had taught them and I knew how good they were. That things changed after that. Now that we have to hire more. Now with Duolingo, we have about 60 people. And, you know, what we do, we go to universities, we recruit from usually kind of East Coast universities. So MIT, Harvard, Princeton, CMU, etc. We usually go there, we give a talk, and then we get a

• 32:18Tim Ferriss?

  What type of talk?

• 32:19Speaker 03

  Usually, you know, technical but entertaining. But I think what's most useful is showing that you have really difficult problems. That is what, that is what works the best.

• 32:32Tim Ferriss?

  So because difficult problems attract good people?

• 32:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, difficult problems. They're like, oh, I'm intelligent. I have to, you know, I'm gonna go solve difficult problems. So, you know, you basically pick the hardest problems that your company is working on. And give a talk about how they're so hard and and your solution and how your solution is so clever, but still could be improved and it could be improved by you if you come work for us. Um, so that's, that's usually the type of the talk that you give. Um, and then, and then, uh, we got a bunch of resumes. Um, and then we interview, we're very strict on the interview. This is something that really matters. Um, we're pretty strict on, on our interview in terms of making, uh, making it, uh,

• 33:14Speaker 03

  a high bar for, for hiring. I think that's, that's something that I've learned over the years that hiring mistakes are, are very expensive.

• 33:21Tim Ferriss?

  So what, what would be an example of that strictness? What is it, uh?

• 33:26Speaker 03

  Well, we do things, it's, this is, you know, a lot of technology startups follow a very similar routine. I mean, and, and, you know, Google follows a very similar routine. It's basically, so we do two phone screens. Uh, so the first thing that we do is we, we call them. So first of all, we do a resume screen. So we look at what university they went and, you know, did they have a good GPA, have they had good internships, et cetera. And after that, we, the, the better ones, we, we call them on the phone and we say, you know, we, we do a, a, an interview. And it's usually, because it's on the phone, it's not that difficult of a problem, but it's something, you know, some computer science problem that they have to solve, like, uh, something to the effect of like, I give you some, uh,

• 34:05Speaker 03

  I don't know, I give you some numbers in some way, can you sort them in some other way by only doing this type of operation or something like that? Uh, and, uh, you, you give a problem. I usually, we do it through, uh, uh, you know, Google Docs. So they have to write their solution so that we can watch it while they're writing their solution.

• 34:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  Uh, so we do that. We do two of these phone screens. So if they pass the first one, we do a second one. Um, and then after that, we bring them onsite and then we do, uh, usually four, four different interviews onsite where we, you know, some of them, they have to solve some problems on the board. And these are problems of the form, I don't know. Um, this kind of logic type problems that are related to computer science. Um, and, uh, and then, and then afterwards, they have to, um, do a pair programming with one of our, with one of our engineers. So they sit there and actually try to fix a bug, well, that, an actual, an actual bug that, you know, it's usually the same bug, but an, an actual bug that has occurred at Duolingo, they have to, they have to fix it.

• 35:06Tim Ferriss?

  Now, so pair programming, uh,

• 35:10Tim Ferriss?

  For those who aren't familiar, it's often talked about as a great way to learn how to code or to get employees up to speed, right? So you have pivotal labs and other companies like this that can bring on,

• 35:23Tim Ferriss?

  say, coders who know one language and get them up to speed in the language you need them to be proficient with in a startup and do so very quickly and help them to build prototypes and so on. But in this case, you're using it to to vet someone. So you have to, you have one of your engineers sitting at a computer and then you have someone else sitting right next to them. And what are they doing?

• 35:43Speaker 03

  Well, usually we let the interviewee drive. I mean, they're the ones using the computer. And so our engineers usually helping them, you know, of the form, oh, you know, because they're, because they're navigating our code base. So our engineers usually telling them, oh, you know, go, go, go to this directory to open that file. That's where that would be. And then they essentially have to track down a bug and solve it, you know, fix it.

• 36:06Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  That's usually what what they do. And it is amazing how much you find out from from doing that for just 45 minutes.

• 36:13Tim Ferriss?

  And do you then take people for any additional test drive? For instance, Matt Mullenweg has been on the podcast, one of the lead developers of WordPress and now CEO of Automattic. And when they hire people for Automattic, which is fully distributed, they do text or IM, I guess it would probably be IM interview as opposed to voice. And then they'll audition them for two weeks. And I think the standard rate is something like $25 an hour, whether it's a CFO or an entry level customer service person or a coder. And they just, they do it in off hours, you know, at night or on the weekends. But do you audition people after that or is that?

• 36:51Speaker 03

  We don't. That's it. After, after we do two phone screens and and four onsite interviews, we are, we are done. We've, we've, you know, we've, we've tried the auditioning. At first, we were kind of doing that, but we found that a lot of people would, you know, would tell us, well, you know,

• 37:10Speaker 03

  I have an offer from Google.

• 37:13Tim Ferriss?

  Right, yeah. I'm not going to put up with this circus.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  I'm not going to put up with two weeks of crap from you. I'm also in school, you know, especially for fresh grads, right? I'm also in school and I have like finals coming. And so we found that they just were pretty, they were, they were not that open to that.

• 37:29Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. I'm saying got it a lot today. I guess that's my catchphrase. It's like my Buzz Lightyear to infinity and beyond for this conversation. Well,

• 37:37Speaker 03

  But it's got it.

• 37:38Tim Ferriss?

  I also never realized that Tim Allen did that voice. For those people who are wondering who Buzz Lightyear's voice is actually attributed to in real life, but I digress. I wanted to ask you if you were advising, say, a very bright,

• 37:57Tim Ferriss?

  young would be entrepreneur who is going to be starting their first tech company. Could be any type of company, but if you could just give them two or three books or resources to to help increase the likelihood of them succeeding, what would you point them to?

• 38:16Speaker 03

  Let's see. So I like, okay, I like Peter Thiel's book Zero to One.

• 38:22Tim Ferriss?

  Zero to One, yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  I love that. You know, one that I've recently started really liking, I guess I like it because it's kind of, it makes me feel good because they have very similar problems that I've had. It's the Startup Podcast.

• 38:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Gimlet Media guys.

• 38:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I love it. Because they, you know, it's a lot of times it's just like, yep, we had that exact same problem. And I love the fact that you guys completely fumbled it, and so did we. And now I feel better about myself. And so I think it, at the very least, makes you feel good about yourself.

• 39:00Tim Ferriss?

  So Zero to One, Startup, the Startup Podcast, which everybody can find on iTunes or in a podcast player. I like Overcast quite a lot for listening. What else might you?

• 39:12Speaker 03

  I like this one, but it's not for very new entrepreneurs. I found it very useful. I actually, I didn't really read it. I don't read books. I just listen to them. Uh, reading, I, I don't know, for some reason I, I just stopped reading like 10 years ago. Um, but, but I, I quote unquote, read, um, twice, uh, the hard thing about hard things.

• 39:34Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, right, that's, uh.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  Ben Horowitz. Yeah, the first time I found it not very useful. Um, because it just was stuff that was just not, it was not applicable to me. Because, uh, you know, I, I was not at the time running a company really, and, and I had never really run a company. You know, recaptcha only reached, you know, like nine people. So that, that was it. And whereas, uh, he talks about problems of, you know, companies with hundreds of people. Um, but now I recently read it again, uh, you know, in the last like month or so. Uh, and it is amazing how much good advice there is in there. Um, for somebody that is running a company of, of around, you know, in our case, 60 employees. Uh, the, it is amazing. I, I, I was, I, I, I, I loved it.

• 40:20Tim Ferriss?

  So what, what would the profile be of, and the entrepreneur for whom that book would be appropriate? Or most useful, do you think?

• 40:29Speaker 03

  I think somebody that is running a company that has already, you know, more than like 30 people is my guess. Um, that, that's my sense.

• 40:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the hard thing about hard things has been recommended to me. Maybe not within this podcast, but certainly offline by at least four or five of the best. Uh, tech entrepreneurs who have been on this podcast, it's come up repeatedly. I mean, but these are people who are also running is by definition, larger organizations. Uh, the zero to one book by Peter Thiel is fantastic. And I would also encourage people who are interested in digging even deeper to try to track down the Blake Masters. Transcriptions or notes from the original class that was taught at Stanford, which formed the basis for that book.

• 41:17Tim Ferriss?

  Because Peter goes very, very deep into specific hiring decisions and equity and negotiating term sheets and things like this. He gets very, very granular on things that were not put into the book because they wouldn't be applicable to a very broad audience necessarily. Would it seem to inside baseball? But the original class notes are just fantastic. And he brings in guest lecturers and so on, who are a lot of the icons in Silicon Valley that the both of us would recognize. Silicon Valley. So Silicon Valley has this vaunted mythological place in the minds of a lot of people. It's the Mount Olympus of tech, the epicenter of all good things related to innovation, et cetera.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 42:00Tim Ferriss?

  Why have you chosen to remain in Pittsburgh? And what have the benefits, the pros and cons been of staying there as opposed to going to SF or New York City?

• 42:11Speaker 03

  Listen, Pittsburgh is absolutely the best place on earth.

• 42:15Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 42:19Speaker 03

  No, I actually, I like Pittsburgh quite a bit. And I'll tell you, it is really unclear. One of our board members, Bing Gordon from Kleiner Perkins, he visited us. And he said to me, would you start Duolingo in Pittsburgh again?

• 42:38Speaker 03

  And I said to him, honestly, I don't know.

• 42:43Speaker 03

  Well, his answer at least made me feel good. He said, well, you're like in the 99th percentile of startups. So things seem to have worked out for you. So you're fine. But at first, we started here because I was a professor at Carnegie Mellon and Carnegie Mellon is a top school for computer science. And we were around here and we kind of just never left. And what we tell ourselves is, and I think it's true. It has been a pretty awesome recruiting tool for engineers. We've been able to recruit really amazing engineers. You know, as a company, when we were only 20 people, we had like eight people with PhDs in computer science,

• 43:29Speaker 03

  which is a pretty hard thing to do anywhere else, including Silicon Valley. So I think we've had a great time recruiting engineers. I think for that, it's been very helpful. I think it's also been very helpful in terms of being able to.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  You know, we're we're not affected so much. You know, one of the things that I noticed about Silicon Valley is there's there's definitely trends that happen that come and go. And we're not affected too much by that, and I like that, that we're, you know, we're kind of, we know what we're doing with Duolingo. We know what what kind of company we're creating. And we're sticking to it. And, you know, it's not the case that next time there is the next whatever. Yik Yak or whatever app is the next awesomest thing, you're you're you're changing your whole product to look more like theirs.

• 44:25Tim Ferriss?

  Right, yeah, you're outside of the the echo chamber.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that I think that has been helpful for us. And now, can I tell you for a fact that we would have been less successful in Silicon Valley? I have no idea. And I and another thing is, we're now really starting, I think up until now, I don't think it has been a problem that we've been in Pittsburgh, but we're now starting to have a couple of issues. One of them is in terms of the infrastructure of things. So, for example, finding office space here was a pain in the ass. Because we everybody here wants a 10 year lease.

• 45:01Speaker 03

  Because that's who they rent to, you know, 10 year leases. And we're like, yeah, we cannot take a 10 year lease. I assure you that in 10 years, we will either have gone away or, you know, massively grown, but we're not going to be the same size. So, you know, the infrastructure here is just not not the same. And the other thing that we're having a harder time is with people with previous startup experience. There's not very many here. It's there's Google has a pretty, people don't know this, Google has a pretty big office here, it's about 600 engineers.

• 45:34Speaker 03

  And so we can hire good engineers from Google, for example, even even, you know, seasoned engineers from Google, but people with previous startup experience, especially outside of engineering, there's not very many here.

• 45:46Tim Ferriss?

  It's uh, I was having a chat with the, uh, the founders of Shopify not too long ago. Because I was the first advisor to Shopify in 2008 or 2009. And you know, they IPO'd six or 12 months ago, something six or nine months ago, I guess. And they've done very well and they're based in Ottawa, Canada.

• 46:06Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 46:06Tim Ferriss?

  And they had, uh, they, they said it's actually been a huge gift in a way because they are the only game in town. So from a recruiting standpoint, not only are they the go-to tech company in a lot of respects, but on top of that, they don't have a lot of attrition. Because people are settled in Ottawa and they're not getting poached by Facebook, Google, Uber. They're not, they're not going into that, that bloodbath of bidding wars.

• 46:36Speaker 03

  So we see exactly that. For us, that's great. I mean, so, you know, it's funny, we sometimes go to events. I, you know, a lot of times these tech events or, or sometimes our investors have events. For, for example, one of our investors is Union Square Ventures. They have these amazing.

• 46:51Tim Ferriss?

  I'll try to throw a picnic with some paper plates for you guys.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, you should. You're, you're also one of our investors. You have not had us in any of your events, okay?

• 47:00Speaker 03

  So one of, you know, Union Square Ventures, they're, they have these great events where they, they bring in everybody. You know, for example, they, they have a, a marketing event and it's all the people that are in the portfolio companies that do marketing. Or they have a design event and it's all the people that do design in their portfolio companies. And so we send people to all of these events and it's pretty amazing how, um, when you're talking to people, it really does seem like the average, uh, tenure of a person in one of these companies and a lot of them is like a year and a half. Like after a year and a half, it's like, oh, going to the next one. Whereas for us, I mean, people really don't leave. I mean, there's just that because we, we really are the, in terms of startups, we're not exactly the only game in town.

• 47:43Speaker 03

  I mean, that's unfair to say, but there, there's not very many games in town.

• 47:48Tim Ferriss?

  Do you, what do you think the likelihood is that you will stay, that your, the, your HQ, the majority of your employees will be in Pittsburgh in, say, two years' time?

• 48:00Speaker 03

  I think that's pretty high. Um, we're, we're, we're, we just started, um, an office in, well, if you could call it an office. We, we just started an office with two people in San Francisco. You met one of them, Gina?

• 48:12Tim Ferriss?

  I did.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  Um, and they're, um, they're, they're, they're there. They're working off of the Google Capital office for now, but they're, they're getting, they're getting their own office pretty soon. And I think we're gonna have, I think we're probably gonna have about, in the next year, we're probably gonna staff it with about 15 people. So, you know, it's not gonna be super tiny, but it's, it's still not gonna be the, the biggest one.

• 48:32Tim Ferriss?

  And for, for those people who are not familiar with Union Square Ventures, uh,

• 48:38Tim Ferriss?

  Fred Wilson, who's one of the, I think he, he's still a general partner there, isn't he?

• 48:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:43Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, he has a fantastic blog for people interested in, in tech and venture capital entrepreneurship, which is AVC. And I think it's just AVC.com if I'm not mistaken, but you could certainly Google Fred Wilson and AVC and it'll pop right up. Is, how many employees did you have at Recaptcha when the company was, was absorbed by Google?

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Um, uh, we were between seven and eight. And then inside Google, we started, you know, the team grew, but that was, that was it.

• 49:16Tim Ferriss?

  And between that point, I assume you kind of vested in peace for a while, as they say. Uh, I mean, you had, did you remain, were you at Google for a period of time?

• 49:25Speaker 03

  I was at Google for, for about a year and a half.

• 49:28Tim Ferriss?

  Year and a half. And when did, and how did Duolingo get started? I mean, what were the, when did that idea start to germinate?

• 49:41Speaker 03

  That started right after, right after the acquisition with Google. I mean, I was in a, I was in a pretty good place in my life where I didn't really have to work anymore. And I was, I, I wanted to do something that was related to education.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  And, and I started, you know, at the same time, I had a PhD student, Severin, who was my co-founder. He was my PhD student. Uh, we, we went, we wanted a PhD project for him. And I thought, well, you know, I really am, I'm passionate about education. Let's try to do something related to education. Uh, now my, my views on education have always been, Very influenced by where I'm from, because I'm from Guatemala, and it's a very poor country. Uh, now, the thing, the thing about Guatemala is, uh, and, and, and, and poor countries, um, a lot of people say that education is, is the thing that can bring equality to the different social classes. Uh, but I always saw it as quite the opposite. I always thought that, um, uh, e- e- education was actually was something that brought inequality.

• 50:38Speaker 03

  Because what happens is the people who have money, uh, can buy themselves the best education in the world. Uh, and because of that, they remain having a lot of money, whereas the people who don't have very much money, uh, barely learn how to read and write. And therefore, remain not having very much money. So I wanted to do something with education that would give equal access to everybody. That's, that's what I wanted. Uh, now, education is very general, uh, so we decided to, uh, to, to concentrate on just one type of education, which is learning a foreign language, which, you know, if you're in the U S, it doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but outside of the U S, or generally outside of English-speaking countries, this is a massive deal. Uh, generally, learning English, um, there's, there's one point two billion people in the world learning a foreign language.

• 51:20Speaker 03

  Um, and so, um, you know, we decided that, that we wanted to do something to, to teach foreign languages, but it, uh, this is a funny market, the, the language learning market, um, the majority of the people learning a foreign language, eight hundred million of them, um, satisfy three properties. First of all, they're learning English. Second, the reason they're learning English is to get a job or a better job. And third, they're of low socioeconomic conditions. Okay, so most people are trying to learn English in order to get out of poverty. That's, that's the people who are learning a language. But at the same time, most of the ways they are to learn a language are usually very expensive, like, well, especially before Duolingo came around, like Rosetta Stone, for example, think about that. It's like between five hundred and a thousand dollars. So, you know, this was kind of the irony. It seemed like you needed a thousand bucks in order to get out of poverty.

• 52:04Speaker 03

  Um, and so we thought we could do better, and, and that was the idea with Duolingo, was to give a, a, a one hundred percent free way to learn languages. That's what we wanted to do.

• 52:13Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh,

• 52:16Tim Ferriss?

  How did you develop the idea or the model? And what did those early conversations look like?

• 52:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, first we started thinking, well, if it's going to be free, we got to figure out a way to pay for it.

• 52:29Tim Ferriss?

  Get a good idea?

• 52:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, we hadn't discovered what we now know, which is you can always raise more VC funding. I'm kidding, that's not a good way to pay for things.

• 52:43Tim Ferriss?

  Eventually, mom and dad, i.e. VCs on the board, stop giving you allowance.

• 52:48Speaker 03

  Well, you know, somebody on our board said a good thing. He said, eventually you can't find a bigger fool.

• 52:58Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right.

• 53:00Speaker 03

  I think that's about right. So yeah, that's not our business model. But at first, we had a business model, which we've actually moved away from. It was a, I thought, a pretty clever business model. But there are reasons for which we've moved away from, which I'll tell you about. But our first business model that we thought was, okay, here's what we're going to do.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  Much like the idea with recapture, where as people are typing captures, we're actually capturing some value from them, could we do the same for learning a language? Could we get people to give us something of value while they're learning a language? And what we thought, the answer to that was yes, and we thought we could get people to help us translate stuff while they were learning a language. So the idea, and this still works, and we're still doing it. So the idea is the following. After, you know, after somebody would learn a lesson on Duolingo, they would learn, you know, a lesson about food. Like they would learn all the food words. At the end, we would say, hey, if you want to practice the things you just learned, here's this document that comes from the web that is related to what you just learned.

• 54:07Speaker 03

  So in this case, it may be like a food blog or something. And we would say, it's in the language you're learning, and you want to help us translate it to your native language to practice. And what would happen is some people said yes to that. And a number of people would get the same document and they would kind of all translate it together, kind of edit each other's translations, et cetera. And they were translating from the language they are learning to their native language. And at the end, we would come up with one translation and that was a translation. And in some of the cases, those documents came from, for example, CNN. CNN is one of our clients. They wrote all their news in English. They sent it to us and we had our people who were learning English translated into their native languages.

• 54:49Speaker 03

  And then we would send the translations back to CNN and CNN would pay us for having translated their documents. This is still, this is still going on. CNN is still one of our clients. It's been about two years and they're still at it. So that means the, the quality of the translations is high enough that they haven't fired us. So that was the business model and it was a pretty good business model. But we moved away from it because we realized the more we, the more we worked on it, the more we realized we, we started work, turning into a translations company as opposed to an education company. So, because that's kind of where the money came from. So we started just more and more developing translation and translation and not working on the education side. And at the same time, we realized that also translation is a crappy business to be in. Because it's, it's kind of a race to the bottom.

• 55:35Speaker 03

  How much you, you charge for translations. You know, if you can do it for one cent a word, you can always find somebody else that can do it for half a cent a word. So we decided to move away from that.

• 55:45Tim Ferriss?

  Or is willing to try for half a cent a word.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. So we, so we decided to move away from that. And now we have different business models, but, but that was our original one.

• 55:57Tim Ferriss?

  Can you elaborate on the other business models?

• 56:01Speaker 03

  Sure, we have two now. The, the main one, the one that we're, we've been at it for longer. It's English language certification. Well, generally language certification, but what matters here is English. So the idea is this, there are.

• 56:17Tim Ferriss?

  Just to, sorry, not to interrupt, but, but I will briefly because I think that to, to put in perspective for native English speakers who might not get the magnitude. And maybe you can, you can call BS on this or confirm, but I've heard, for instance, that in China alone. I mean, we could talk about a place like Brazil also, but there are more people learning English in China than all the native speakers of English combined.

• 56:41Speaker 03

  Yes, there are four hundred million people learning English in China.

• 56:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so for those people listening, big market.

• 56:47Speaker 03

  No, I mean, learning English is humongous, right? I mean, this is, this is, this is for teaching languages, that is what you want to teach. I mean, there are, you know, it's funny, there are companies in China that are venture funded, that are only, that only teach English, and that only teach English to hotel employees. That is a big enough market for a startup.

• 57:07Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 57:08Speaker 03

  So I mean, that's how big the market is in China for learning English, but.

• 57:12Tim Ferriss?

  I threw you, I threw you off course that you were talking about the certification.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the thing is this with certification, so, you know, exactly with English.

• 57:21Speaker 03

  People need to learn English, but after they've learned English, they also need to prove that they know English, in particular to get a job or to go to school, etc. So about, but two years ago, we started getting a lot of emails like that, where people saying, thank you for teaching me English. I, you know, I did not have the resources to, to, to, to pay for, for English software or for classes or something, and now I can learn it because of Duolingo, but now I have a problem. I need a certificate that says that I know English, because I need to apply for a university, or I need to get a job, etc. And they're requiring some sort of certificate that says that I know English.

• 57:57Speaker 03

  And, and so we thought, well, let's look into this whole certifying that people know English, this whole market. It turns out this is a humongous market. It's about fifteen billion dollars a year are spent on people certifying that they know English. You use that, for example, if you wanna, if you're from outside of the US, and you wanna apply to enroll in a US university, you have to take a test that proves that you speak English. That test is called the TOEFL. If you wanna get a job at a multinational corporation in, in, in a non-English speaking country, you usually have to take a test to prove that you know English. If you wanna get a work visa in the UK, you have to take a test that proves that you know English. So there's these standardized tests. In total, fifteen

• 58:41Speaker 03

  billion dollars are spent a year on these tests. They're all very similar to each other. There's, there's a few of them, there's like three or four that are big one, that are the big ones. They, the way this process works is, you have to, it's, it's kinda similar to taking the SAT. You have to take this test, you pay about two hundred and fifty bucks for it. Uh, you usually have to take it, well, you always have to take it at a testing center. So you have to go to a, a place to take the test. Because of that, you usually have to make an appointment, you know, several weeks in advance. And so several weeks in advance, you make an appointment, you pay two hundred and fifty bucks, you go somewhere. You take a test and you get your results another maybe four weeks later. So at the end, you spend eight weeks, you spend two hundred and fifty bucks.

• 59:25Speaker 03

  And you have a certificate that says, you know, this is your test score for English. And that's, this, this measures your English proficiency. Now, so that's the process. Um, and this sounds kind of annoying, but it's actually way worse because most of the people that are taking this are uh, in developing countries. Now there, eh, the thing is two hundred and fifty bucks in a developing country is a month's salary. Uh, also, the testing centers are not in every city. They're just in certain cities, so you have to travel to take a test to prove that you know English.

• 59:55Tim Ferriss?

  Right, and just to also add some color to that, I mean, traveling might not be, it's not hopping on a bus and going twenty minutes necessarily. If you're in, in a vill- like a Shipibo village in Peru and you're trying to get to Lima.

• 1:00:11Speaker 03

  Several hours.

• 1:00:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:12Speaker 03

  And it also costs you money. Um, so this actually happened to me when I was applying to come to school here in the US. I had to take this test to prove that I knew English. Um, what happened is Guatemala ran out of tests. They, they, they, there were no more seats for that year in the testing centers. So I had to fly to the neighboring country of El Salvador to take the test. So for me, this, this costs a thousand bucks and, and it involved a trip outside of the country. So that, we thought, you know, when we saw that, we thought, man, we can do a lot better than that. That's, that's really ridiculous. Uh, it seems like, uh, technology from a hundred years ago.

• 1:00:51Speaker 03

  So we launched this thing called the Duolingo Test Center, which is basically an app. Uh, it's also a website that helps you certify your knowledge of English. And the idea is that it's only twenty dollars, it's not two hundred and fifty dollars. And also, you take it from a device, you don't have to go to somewhere to take it. So you don't have to go to a testing center. And now the tricky thing here was that when, you know, the reason people have to go to a testing center to to take the test is to make sure that they're not cheating. Um, because, you know, you, for example, instead of you, you could, for example, send your cousin to take your test instead of you, or you could show up with a bunch of books. Um, so the way we, you know, we had to prevent cheating with our test.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  Uh, and the way we've decided to prevent cheating is, uh, or were able to do it is, um, when when you're taking the test from your phone, we actually turn on the front facing camera and the microphone, and we actually record you taking the test. So we record your face and and the ambient noise and everything, and then a real human proctor watches you take the test and makes sure that you were not cheating and you were actually looking at the screen, et cetera. Uh, and it turns out this works.

• 1:02:01Tim Ferriss?

  That's very cool. And, um, how, how hard has it been or how, let me ask a better question. How have you been able to get buy in from companies to accept this?

• 1:02:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's been, that's the hardest part, probably. You know, the technology, we, we, we figured that out relatively easily. The, the, the hardest part has been getting, you know, getting accepted by, uh, universities and companies, et cetera. But we're, we're getting, we're making good traction. Um, we're, let's see, um, we, so in terms of universities, so some departments of Harvard University take it, some departments of Carnegie Mellon University are starting to take it, uh, some departments of the Max Planck Institute in Germany are starting to take it. And this year, we're going to run a study with 12, uh, very well-known name brand universities here in the U S, like, you know, Yale and that, that type of name. Um, uh, so 12 of them are going to be running a study where all of their applicants, uh,

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  are going to be, um, taking both the standard test that they're taking and our test. And the idea is they're going to look at the correlation between that. And if it's high enough, then all these universities are also going to start accepting our test, uh, in addition to the other one. So we're doing that. We've been also doing a lot of work with different companies. So Uber, for example, is a good one. They have, in many countries, they're starting to roll out a new Uber service called Uber English, which is, you know, your driver speaks English. And we're, we have a partnership with them where the idea is that in order to certify that the drivers speak English, they have to take the Duolingo test. So we're, we're doing a few of these companies. And the way, the way we're, we're getting it done is basically

• 1:03:41Speaker 03

  by, by going at first to kind of the blue chip places, you know, the, the, the, the Harvards of the world. And, you know, after that, the sale is much easier because you say, look, it's, it's good enough for Harvard. Probably should be good enough for you.

• 1:03:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that, the H, the H name works in a lot of places. MIT too, the very powerful in Asia.

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:04:03Tim Ferriss?

  The, the, see, we've been talking about English. What other languages are currently available on Duolingo for people to learn, for English speakers to learn?

• 1:04:12Speaker 03

  There's a bunch. You know, I used to know them all. Now I don't. So, you know, we have the big ones like Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese. We have some lesser known ones. We have like Irish, Esperanto. Esperanto is a funny one. Danish, Swedish, Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish. We, we, you'll, you'll notice, we have no Asian languages right now.

• 1:04:39Tim Ferriss?

  Why is that?

• 1:04:40Speaker 03

  It's because it's harder to teach them. We're, we're working on it, but it's just we're, it has not been our highest priority because it's kind of low ROI in the following respect. The, the investment is high because they're actually harder to teach them and the return is not very high because if you actually look at from, for English speakers, for example, for English speakers of the people who are learning a language that are in English speakers, 52% of them are learning Spanish. 26% of them are learning French. Then the next big one is German at 6% and Chinese is somewhere at 4% or so. So, you know, it, ROI is not super high and this is why we haven't done it. But, but, you know, we want to do it. But.

• 1:05:25Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of my, a lot of my fans want Japanese. That's been a very common.

• 1:05:28Speaker 03

  I know. That's the most requested one. It's the most requested one. And it really is just, we're on it. We're on it.

• 1:05:35Tim Ferriss?

  Now, if you, when you develop.

• 1:05:39Tim Ferriss?

  The ability or the curriculum, you code the program for, say, English speakers to learn Japanese, does that, how much additional work is required, like percentage wise, to have it move in the opposite direction, to teach Japanese people English, for instance?

• 1:05:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:59Tim Ferriss?

  And does that dictate which Asian language you might choose? For instance, I know that Korea, well, China would be a huge market, I would imagine, for teaching English.

• 1:06:10Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:06:11Tim Ferriss?

  But Korea as well, right, where they have super teachers who fill up entire stadiums for particular subjects. That's a lot of, that's a mouthful of a question, but does, if you develop it in one direction, does it, does it make it easier to then teach in the opposite direction?

• 1:06:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it does, and we've done that for a lot of languages. So we do already teach English to Chinese speakers, we teach English to Japanese speakers, and to Korean speakers, and Vietnamese speakers, and Indonesian speakers, so we do teach English to most Asian, large Asian languages. So that makes it easier to go the other way around. I mean, truthfully, the main problem that we have not yet really worked on solving, it's not that, it's not impossible to solve it in terms of, you know, ideas, it's just we just haven't gotten to it, is teaching you the writing system?

• 1:06:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the orthography is tricky.

• 1:07:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's pretty tricky, particularly for, for the ones that don't have an alphabet, I mean, like Chinese, that is, it's pretty tough. And, and so that's just, we just, we just, you know, we have a long list of priorities, this is somewhere in there, but it is not the highest one.

• 1:07:18Tim Ferriss?

  I bet a lot of folks out there who would want to learn Japanese, I mean, speaking as someone who's studied a lot of Japanese and lived there, I would imagine a lot of folks who are hoping to learn Japanese are doing it for, out of cultural interest, they're doing it, speaking of English speakers, or conversational interest, they may not be, I would imagine if you gave them the choice, and maybe people can tell you, it's just @Luisvonah on Twitter, right?

• 1:07:45Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:07:46Tim Ferriss?

  So that's @L U I S V O N A H N, maybe folks who are listening can, can let Luis know, but.

• 1:07:54Speaker 03

  Thanks, Tim.

• 1:07:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, if you, well, no, if you gave them the option, say, of conversational Japanese without any.

• 1:08:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:03Tim Ferriss?

  Writing system, no Hiragana, no katakana, no Kanji. In a year or six months, whatever it might be versus say the entire ball of wax, the whole nine yards with writing systems in hypothetically two or three years, I bet a lot of people would take the former.

• 1:08:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, and we've seen that we've actually started. So you know what we what we have started doing? So we did this with Russian. So Russian, you also have to teach the alphabet. It's much easier because there's

• 1:08:28Tim Ferriss?

  The Cyrillic, yeah.

• 1:08:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, much easier, though. I mean, there's only it's only about 15 letters that are different. So you basically just have to learn 15 letters. But we started doing this. We basically have started teaching romanizations. For people who don't want to learn the alphabet, we just romanize it. And that seems to be working out relatively well. So we may end up doing that something, something like that for Chinese like pinyin. We may end up doing that.

• 1:08:56Tim Ferriss?

  Pinyin can work here. I'll throw, you know what? If I would be so happy if this happened, and I think people would probably come after me with pitchforks. But there is a separate romanization approach to Chinese that I think is actually better. For Mandarin, this is how I learned it, but it's less standard, which is why most people default to pinyin. So with the pinyin, you'd have to deal with the diacritical marks, meaning the slanting lines to indicate tone, right? So in Chinese, you have four tones for people who aren't familiar. So you'd have like ma, ma, ma, ma, which are all different things.

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  They sounded like four things of the same thing.

• 1:09:29Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly. And so Chinese tongue twisters are a bitch. They are crazy. But there is there's a system called GR or Guoyu Romadz. So it's like, I think it was developed in Taiwan. And what's cool about that is they build the the tone into the spelling. And so if you remember the romanization, and I'm highly visual, so I remember the spelling of words, then you automatically remember the tones.

• 1:09:55Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 1:09:56Tim Ferriss?

  So students who are taught using GR have a, in my experience, and this is what was used at Princeton, which has a very good East Asian Studies department, one of the best in the world. The retention of tones and consistency of tones of Princeton students was outstanding compared to many other schools that used Pinyin. Of course, that wasn't the only difference in the pedagogy, but for instance, if you had like "guo", which is country, or like "guo", it's like past tense, kind of "I have gone", you know, "you'll去过", something like that, then you would have, and I haven't done this in so, so long, but it would be like GWO would be the second tone, "guo", and then first tone "guo" would be GUO, and then fourth tone would

• 1:10:40Tim Ferriss?

  be like GUOH, and that H at the end indicates it's a falling tone. And I'd really want to resurrect and popularize this system because I feel like it's so much more effective. It's just not as common, so it's not often used. Anyway, that's my, I'll throw that one.

• 1:10:58Speaker 03

  That's, that's good to know. You know, sometimes when we do things, we've done some things that are a little, you know, kind of unexpected, and we end up getting really good results. I mean, for example, we started teaching Irish, which I think a lot of people were very surprised by the fact that we launched Irish before, like, you know, I don't know, Turkish or Russian or Japanese.

• 1:11:18Tim Ferriss?

  Right. So how do you justify that investment?

• 1:11:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, it was very easy was the, was the, was the point. The, you know, that was actually done by volunteers, not by, not by us. And we didn't have to make a single change to the app. That was just, our system just allowed it to just go through with the volunteer. So it was just done by volunteer. So we didn't, we didn't have to be involved almost at all. So that was, that was, that was, the reason was just because it was relatively easy. But, you know, one of the funny things is when we launched it, there's 94,000 native Irish speakers, but we have about a million people learning Irish on Duolingo, like actively.

• 1:12:04Tim Ferriss?

  That's wild.

• 1:12:04Speaker 03

  So we're, you know, we, if we put something there, a lot of times, we can actually have a big impact on the language itself, just by, just by putting it there.

• 1:12:15Tim Ferriss?

  Huh, so Duolingo ostensibly at some point could, I could have a role not just in preserving, but even resurrecting languages.

• 1:12:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, we've thought about that. We've thought about doing, I mean, we have a few, well, you know, one of the funny ones we're working on is, well, not us, but volunteers at Klingon. That one's, that's an interesting one.

• 1:12:35Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any plan, do volunteers have any plans for Dothraki or anything like that?

• 1:12:39Speaker 03

  Well, you know, a few of those, a few of those, they're, they're kind of, I think they're like copyrighted or something.

• 1:12:45Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah, you're right. I remember I tried to do something in, I spoke to the gentleman who developed Navi or the language for the Navi people in Avatar.

• 1:12:54Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:12:54Tim Ferriss?

  Which is largely based on Japanese. People might find interesting to know. But yeah, so it's icy. So you might not have the ability. That's so stupid. Wow.

• 1:13:04Speaker 03

  I'm not, not, we're, we kind of asked for permission for Dothraki and we were told, no. And then, you know.

• 1:13:11Tim Ferriss?

  For that massive Dothraki textbook market that they want to capitalize on.

• 1:13:15Speaker 03

  I know. We, and we thought, you know, we probably thought we could like anyways do it, but we didn't really want to get into trouble. So whatever.

• 1:13:21Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Don't really want to fight HBO or whoever owns the copyright over that.

• 1:13:27Speaker 03

  I still want to watch their shows is the thing. So.

• 1:13:32Tim Ferriss?

  Now, this is a bit of a left turn, but actually before we move on, I wanted to flashback to Google for a second. But how do you know, or do you know how Duolingo compares to say college instruction for, for any language?

• 1:13:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, we spend time, we actually have a, we spend quite a bit of time measuring how well Duolingo works. We have a, we have, we have a team that's whose job it is to do that. The, we have a lot of internal studies. The one that we have that's external, so done by somebody else, not Duolingo people. What they did is they come, they, they, they measured how, how, how much people learn on Duolingo. And the way you measure how people learn is basically you do this, this thing called pre and post test. So you, you have people take a test before they start doing Duolingo, then they do Duolingo for a while, then you take, then they take the test again. And then you see how much, how much they improved. And the, the measurement they got was that if you use Duolingo for 34 hours, you learn the

• 1:14:37Speaker 03

  equivalent of one semester of college, the first semester of college of instruction in that language. Um. So that that that's a that's that's the semester and usually a semester takes a lot longer than thirty four hours of active time. So that's, you know, that we think that that's pretty efficient.

• 1:14:57Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any and feel free to pump this if you don't want to get into it, but I've had enough people ask me that I figured I would relay it. Do you have any plans for allowing people to practice conversation or oral skills?

• 1:15:14Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, we have plans. Um, it is not what you would think. Everybody, this is, everybody would like us to do this one thing, which is basically pair up our users with each other or pair up our users with teachers of some sort and do kind of a video, you know, like a Skype type thing. Um, a lot of people have asked this question, you know, have asked us for this. A lot of people inside the company have thought that this would be a good idea, but that is not what we're gonna do. But we are gonna do conversation. I I think within, we've been working on this for a while and we're we're pretty happy with where we're at. And I think we're gonna, you know, we've been working on it mainly in terms of, you know, the hardest part has been just coming up with a with the right

• 1:15:57Speaker 03

  way to do this. Um, and we think we have a pretty good way of doing it that we're probably gonna launch in maybe, I don't know, three, four months.

• 1:16:05Tim Ferriss?

  That's exciting. All right.

• 1:16:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's gonna be, it it I'm very excited about it because it's really, I think that's the main thing that Duolingo is lacking right now, like the ability to actually practice real conversations. Um, and I think I think we're gonna be able to do it pretty well.

• 1:16:22Tim Ferriss?

  Very cool. So this is, we're recording this mid-January two thousand sixteen, so hopefully, I guess, Q two, Q three.

• 1:16:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're hoping, I'm hoping, so this is gonna be one of those things that's gonna get better over time. Uh, I I think that we're gonna have something in Q two. So let's say, you know, May-ish, but the the that I think every month, it will just get better over time.

• 1:16:48Tim Ferriss?

  The next question that I've been asked surprisingly often, which may not be surprising to you, is, does Duolingo have any plans, or could you foresee Duolingo moving from teaching just languages to teaching anything? And for whatever reason, a lot of people have asked about philosophy, which I would be curious to see actually implemented. But how do you answer that question?

• 1:17:15Speaker 03

  Yes, we do have plans. We definitely have plans. From the beginning, our goal was to do all of education. We've stuck around with only languages for a while, but we do have plans. So we're on it. I can tell you, we are going to launch another app this year. I cannot tell you what the app is about, but we are definitely going to launch another one. It is not philosophy. That is not the second subject that we are going to teach.

• 1:17:47Tim Ferriss?

  Irish philosophy, that's a big one.

• 1:17:49Speaker 03

  Yes, it's Irish philosophy of the 17th century. No, it's not that. But we are going to launch another app this year, that's for sure. So we're definitely going to get into other areas of education. And the way we see this, for one, if you look at education, the education category of either iTunes and Google Play, we're consistently, in the vast majority of countries, we're the number one app in all of education. And we only teach languages, whereas I think there are many of these education apps that teach like everything, basically.

• 1:18:31Speaker 03

  And with Just Languages, we've been able to do a pretty good job. So we think that this approach of not a MOOC, not video lectures, but a really kind of gamified, mobile native app.

• 1:18:49Speaker 03

  To teach you something. We think that that approach is a is a pretty good approach. And and we're gonna try to replicate it with other things. It's not gonna look just like Duolingo. It's gonna, you know, they're gonna look like the, you know, they're each each each subject requires different things. I have no idea how you would teach philosophy. But uh, but I I can give you pretty good ideas of how you would teach, you know, certain certain areas of math, certain areas of uh physics or uh reading and writing. Uh, a lot of these things can be taught pretty well with with a with a uh an interactive app.

• 1:19:20Tim Ferriss?

  Can't wait to see it. I'm going to hit the rewind button to go back because I I wanted to pick up on this and it the the story may or may not be interesting. But you mentioned you were at Google for one and a half years.

• 1:19:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:33Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, does that mean you left before you finished vesting?

• 1:19:37Speaker 03

  That is correct.

• 1:19:37Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so for people who, can you explain how that usually works to people who aren't familiar with? When when companies get acquired?

• 1:19:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, usually when companies get acquired. So when you hear of an acquisition price, and this is, by the way, I'm gonna, I'm gonna generalize a lot here because every deal is a little different. But when you hear of an acquisition price, let's say your company was acquired for a hundred million bucks by a larger company, you know, like a Google or a Facebook or something. Usually that acquisition has uh usually two components, kind of an upfront payment. Uh, that is some fraction of it. And then the other component is what they call a stay bonus. Which is uh, basically you get it if you you get it over over time if you stick around for a while. Um, and it makes a lot of sense for companies to do this because when they acquire another company, they don't want everybody to

• 1:20:30Tim Ferriss?

  Split the next day.

• 1:20:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, and especially especially for, you know, a multimillion dollar acquisitions where, you know, there's several tens of millions of dollars. And especially the founders, usually after, you know, the next day, they're they see themselves sitting there, you know, with several tens of millions of bucks in in the bank. Uh, you wouldn't want them to leave the next day. So that's why the, you know, you you hold out for another another. Large chunk um that says, you know, if you stick around for one year, you get this much. If you stick around for two years, you get this much. If you stick around for three years, you get this much, etc.

• 1:21:04Tim Ferriss?

  What would be a typical percentage of the total payout?

• 1:21:09Speaker 03

  You know, I don't know what I I can I I have sample size of well, I of the ones that I actually have knowledge of, I have sample size of three. So and there is variance. So I don't know. I mean, uh.

• 1:21:23Tim Ferriss?

  Would it be fair to say that it's often more than 50%?

• 1:21:26Speaker 03

  No, the the stay bonus is often less than 50%.

• 1:21:30Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:21:30Speaker 03

  It's from my experience, but not a lot less. Let's say, you know, this, I'm just going to throw out, but let's say it's 40%.

• 1:21:37Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 1:21:37Speaker 03

  Uh, but it, you know, I've I've heard enough variance, and this is something that gets negotiated. I mean, of course, the the the startup that is being sold would like that stay bonus to be zero. And the big company that is buying it would like that stay bonus to be 100%. And so some sort of, you know, negotiation happens. But that's usually that's usually the case.

• 1:22:01Tim Ferriss?

  So how did you? Why did you decide to leave after a year and a half?

• 1:22:05Speaker 03

  Because of Duolingo. Um, uh, it was I was very excited about it. Um, and it was it was something that was so my student was so I was at Carnegie Mellon for a while, you know, as a professor. Then I started Recapta, and I went on leave from Carnegie Mellon to have this startup. Then I went to Google, and I was still on leave at Carnegie Mellon, but I had a PhD student, Severin, who this whole time he was a PhD student there.

• 1:22:32Tim Ferriss?

  What's his last name?

• 1:22:33Speaker 03

  Hacker, which is awesome.

• 1:22:34Tim Ferriss?

  Name of all time. It's like Harry Potter meets the computer age. It's amazing.

• 1:22:39Speaker 03

  It was crazy, because when he, you know, the first time I met him, he showed up to my office. And he said to me, hi, I'm Severin Hacker. And I just looked at it with such confusion. And I said, wow, you're hired.

• 1:22:53Speaker 03

  I did not make a mistake, fortunately, but yeah, he's um so he was he was a PhD student while I was at Google. And in that time, I was working on as a it was his PhD thesis Duolingo. But at the time, you know, we weren't really going to turn it into a company. At first, it was just really his PhD project. But then at some point, you know, I after I had been at Google for about a year and a half. And we had a, you know, we had a meeting and we thought, yeah, we see a lot of future on this. Um, let's do it. And but in order to actually develop it, I had to leave Google. Um, I was actually quite happy at Google. I love Google as a company. Um, I and now there are investors and I really love them. Um, but I was much more excited by this next thing.

• 1:23:36Tim Ferriss?

  What for for people who are using Duolingo or thinking of it? What is have you seen any optimal usage schedule or frequency of use?

• 1:23:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:49Tim Ferriss?

  For Duolingo, I mean, just like lifting weights or workout. I mean, it's.

• 1:23:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:54Tim Ferriss?

  It's not always a more is better.

• 1:23:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, so what here's what you need to do. Forty eight straight hours when you start is a winner. Do not stop for forty eight hours.

• 1:24:04Tim Ferriss?

  How often are you using it over forty eight hours?

• 1:24:07Speaker 03

  Not.

• 1:24:07Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:24:08Speaker 03

  I'm kidding. No, I actually, we see a lot of people binging when they start. That is not a good strategy. Um, so so these people that when they start, you know, they go on for like several hours. Um, that's usually not a good strategy for learning anything. Um, so what we see is is most successful. This is from our data, just kind of looking at traces. Um, we see about between twenty and thirty minutes a day.

• 1:24:37Speaker 03

  Between, you know, at least five times a week. That seems to do a pretty good job. Um, if you want to kind of really be serious about it.

• 1:24:47Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm just taking a, taking a note. Do you find, are there any other type, any other tools that people use in conjunction with Duolingo to accelerate progress, uh, progress in any way?

• 1:25:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, some people, um, so let's see, some people do flashcards of some sort.

• 1:25:07Tim Ferriss?

  Like a, maybe they use a super memo or an Anki or something like that.

• 1:25:10Speaker 03

  Right, super memo, Anki, some, some go old school and just flashcards like.

• 1:25:15Tim Ferriss?

  That's me, I'm, I'm really analog and old school.

• 1:25:18Speaker 03

  Right, like a flashcard, yeah, so some people do that, so, so some form of flashcards is something that people do. Another thing that I've heard a lot of people complimenting it with are a couple of things, um, podcasts in the language that they're learning. Uh, there's one that's like news in slow Spanish or something like that, that I've heard.

• 1:25:35Tim Ferriss?

  Very cool.

• 1:25:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've heard of a lot of people listening to that, um, and, and movies in the language that they're learning, those are pretty great. Um, uh, because usually, you know, even if you're like watching the, you know, not like a, a movie made originally in that language, but just watching the Hollywood blockbusters, um, those are pretty great, uh, for, for learning a language.

• 1:25:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I, uh, actually prefer to watch English native, uh, I mean, English spoken movies with subtitles in my target language.

• 1:26:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:26:09Tim Ferriss?

  So that's actually my preference because if you, if you miss something in the written word, you can always go back and pause. If you miss it in the spoken word, but you can't discern it, just like a robot trying to read a captcha.

• 1:26:21Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 1:26:21Tim Ferriss?

  If, if you don't, if you lack sort of the phonetic familiarity to pick it out of, of the spoken word, then you'll oftentimes just be lost in the dark, just have a gap in the understanding, right? If you're watching, if, if you're trying to watch a movie in Mandarin, for instance, with English subtitles and you miss a sentence, you might just be screwed, whereas vice versa, you could watch Die Hard with Mandarin subtitles that maybe not the best example, since you have to learn the characters, but say Spanish subtitles. And that's actually how I, that's how I raise my languages from the dead. When I'm going to travel, I'll spend two or three weeks each night watching a film with subtitles in my target language.

• 1:27:03Speaker 03

  Uh huh. Yeah, that I think that's that's pretty good. I mean, and we've, yeah, we hear of people doing that a lot of some, some, some sort of strategy with movie subtitles.

• 1:27:14Tim Ferriss?

  And for people who want other tips on language learning, highly, I've written a lot about this and obviously I'm a fan of Duolingo, but you could search

• 1:27:25Tim Ferriss?

  just language learning in my name. Also, if you go to fourhourblog.com, that's, that's my blog and search Benny Lewis is another one. There's actually an entire topic category, which is just language learning. If you really want to dig into all sorts of little tips and tricks. Let me shift gears just a little bit. Actually, complimentary question. Do you have any other tips for how to best learn languages? Any other recommendations?

• 1:27:53Speaker 03

  So this is, this is a recommendation, but it's really hard. I, I, I just, it, I'll tell you what it is. It's really hard and we've really noticed this. The people that we've noticed are best at learning a language are usually not because they're smarter, not because they're anything. It's really just that they have no trouble sounding stupid. Uh, and so they just speak. Uh, and I think that, that, you know, if you're able to get yourself to just say stuff and speak it, I think that that, that is, that makes a huge difference because those people are just getting way more practice.

• 1:28:32Speaker 03

  So what happens is that, you know, when they start, they're gonna, they're gonna sound kooky, of course, but, you know, over time, they're just gonna get way more practice than the quiet person who is waiting until it's, they're perfect to speak. And that's just gonna take a really long time. Uh, I, I say it's hard because that really depends a lot on your personality and there's just some people that just can't do that. But, but if you can, just get yourself to speak. I mean, this is, for example, Benny Lewis, this is, I think that's one of the reasons he's so good is he just, he just starts speaking.

• 1:29:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think that a way to deliberately do that, if your personality does not, is not predisposed to being the class clown.

• 1:29:14Tim Ferriss?

  Right, uh, is to, this is what I do is, I'm naturally, people wouldn't guess this perhaps, but I'm very naturally introverted. Myers-Briggs is INTJ. I spend a lot of time alone recharging. And it's, it is not actually natural for me to kind of be, run around being the, the, the class clown or life of the party, kind of making a fool of myself. I do make a fool of myself accidentally a lot, but in foreign languages, I will go out of my way in the beginning to learn a few expressions that locals find funny.

• 1:29:44Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:29:44Tim Ferriss?

  And, right, once you get them laughing, you feel less inhibited because the entire interaction is less serious, right?

• 1:29:51Speaker 03

  That's a really good trick.

• 1:29:52Tim Ferriss?

  And, and another way, another way you can make it even funnier is if you have a weird regional expression. So for instance, in Argentina, if somebody gives you a compliment, you can say, mentime que me gusta, mentime que me gusta. And they get all excited and they're like, lie to me because I like it. Lie to me, I love it, you know?

• 1:30:09Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, they get excited because they're like, oh man, that's really regional.

• 1:30:12Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, yeah, and, and people find it so weird, especially because it's Argentine Spanish, right? So the menti, menti is the like a command form is really weird. And, um, but I use that and it breaks the ice with any Spanish speaker. They're like, what? Like this guy looks like he's from American History X and he's using weird Argentine like slang. Or I'll be like, yeah, soy argentino trucho, and what are you gonna do? And they're like, what the hell? Like where are you? What is your story? Uh, but you can do that, a very easy way to do that is to find some funny proverbs and you have to make sure that people actually use them.

• 1:30:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, not like from 50 years ago, right?

• 1:30:48Tim Ferriss?

  Not, yeah, not from like 50 years ago or like the equivalent of Middle English and Japanese, because people are just gonna be confused. But, you know, the, the, the expressions like, uh, sarumo kikaro chiru, right? So monkeys also fall from trees. It's kind of like, no matter how good you are, you still stumble, right? That's a Japanese expression. So you can pick up like one or two of these in German or whatever it might be. Like, uh, there's a good one in German, like even the devil eats flies, which is a funny one, which is sort of like desperate times call for desperate measures. And, uh, people just love it. It gets them to laugh a little bit because it's so weird. And then the ice has been broken. So I will deliberately look for stuff like that. For instance, in, I think it's in Greek where if you're like bidding someone farewell, I kind of picked up

• 1:31:33Tim Ferriss?

  what I understand is a very like archaic kind of Shakespearean way of doing it that is still universally understood. But you say like, "Stoipan edidin, stoipan edidin." I do this like really melodramatic bow and then like walk off and people are like, "What the fuck?"

• 1:31:48Tim Ferriss?

  But if I would do that at the hotel, like automatically the person at the front desk thought I was hilarious, even though I just premeditated the whole thing.

• 1:31:54Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:31:54Tim Ferriss?

  And then you can, you feel free to experiment. So that's, that's been an approach of mine. Let me ask you some questions that I like to ask all guests. When you hear the word "successful," who is the first person who comes to mind and why?

• 1:32:12Speaker 03

  Oh, man. Probably Larry Page.

• 1:32:17Tim Ferriss?

  Why is that?

• 1:32:18Speaker 03

  Well, I, you know, I am, I am a huge fan of Google. I just think that everything they do, you know, they don't always succeed, but usually the approach they take, I'm like, "Yeah, they're smart."

• 1:32:34Speaker 03

  So yeah, I'm a huge fan. And yeah.

• 1:32:38Tim Ferriss?

  Is there, if you had to choose, who would your second person be?

• 1:32:42Speaker 03

  Boy, who, who would my second choice be? Successful?

• 1:32:51Speaker 03

  I mean, it's the usual ones, you know, I'm so into the main, you know, mainstream culture of success in startups, that it's the usual people that everybody I think thinks of. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg and, you know, when you say the word "success," that's kind of what I think. Yeah.

• 1:33:10Tim Ferriss?

  Elon Musk, as they say in Silicon Valley, the show?

• 1:33:13Speaker 03

  I've, I've heard of this name, yes. I'm familiar.

• 1:33:17Tim Ferriss?

  What's, what is the book or books that you've given most often as a gift? Or what, or what do you gift if not books, all them?

• 1:33:24Speaker 03

  You know, I, because I don't read very much, I really just listen. I haven't, I haven't really gifted books. I mean, I recommend, I really do recommend Zero to One to people. I say, "You should really read Zero to One." Um, uh, I, let's see, what do I gift? Um, my, my gifts are, are, are usually pretty lame uh, to people. I, I give gifts cards because they're, I don't have to think much about them. Uh, and I compensate by giving higher amounts of, of, of money. I, I compensate by that. I'm like, that's easier. I just hear.

• 1:34:00Tim Ferriss?

  Very Chinese.

• 1:34:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:02Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, do you listen to any fiction?

• 1:34:06Speaker 03

  I do. Um, I do. Not as much. I, you know, I mainly kind of read, uh, as well, not read, listen to, uh, nonfiction books. Um, I, I have listened to fiction, uh, just not a, as often.

• 1:34:19Tim Ferriss?

  Um, do you have any favorite fiction?

• 1:34:22Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, I, I used to really like, um, Borges.

• 1:34:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Jorge Luis Borges.

• 1:34:28Speaker 03

  Yes, I used to really like it. Um, but I have just not, really, over the last like three years, I just have not. I, I've really only listened to, you know, what I do is I, I, I listen to books, uh, while I'm working out in the mornings. That is the sole time when I listen to books and it's always just some sort of nonfiction thing.

• 1:34:47Tim Ferriss?

  What is your workout in the mornings?

• 1:34:49Speaker 03

  It's, well, it's a crazy, some people, some people say I'm gonna have a heart attack. Um, I basically run at absolute maximum speed that I can, which is about nine point eight miles an hour, uh, for about sixteen minutes. That's it.

• 1:35:07Tim Ferriss?

  That's it.

• 1:35:07Speaker 03

  That is my workout.

• 1:35:08Tim Ferriss?

  And now, do you have a warm-up lap or anything like that, or you just go for it?

• 1:35:12Speaker 03

  Go.

• 1:35:12Tim Ferriss?

  You just go?

• 1:35:14Speaker 03

  I, I, I, I'm not saying that this is recommended. This is just what I do. And it has worked. I lost, I lost forty pounds.

• 1:35:20Tim Ferriss?

  That's a lot.

• 1:35:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And so, uh, from then I stuck with it. And I, I just, I just go is, uh, mainly, I'm trying to be optimal with, uh, with time that I spend. Well, I don't know if it's optimal, but I'm trying to save time.

• 1:35:32Tim Ferriss?

  So for those people who haven't, uh, heard of Jorge Luis Borges, B O R G E S, uh, highly recommend at least checking out some of his short stories. And I think there's one where he sits down at the bank of a river and meets his older self or his younger self, one of the two, and they're sitting side by side. Uh, people can find it on Google, but fantastic writer. Speaking of Argies, I believe he's Argentine.

• 1:35:58Speaker 03

  He's Argentine, yep.

• 1:35:59Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any favorite documentaries or movies?

• 1:36:03Speaker 03

  Um, well, my favorite movie is still The Matrix. I it's it's old school by now, but it is. It's just my favorite movie. I I my mind was blown when I watched that.

• 1:36:18Tim Ferriss?

  And documentaries, do you do you watch any documentaries or do you have any?

• 1:36:22Speaker 03

  Um, I like, you know, the one I saw relatively recently, a lot of people have seen it. I saw it's uh Jiro Dreams of Sushi. I like that a lot.

• 1:36:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, Jiro Dreams of Sushi is fantastic.

• 1:36:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:36:31Tim Ferriss?

  I had a chance to go to Tokyo and uh.

• 1:36:34Speaker 03

  Oh, did you eat there?

• 1:36:35Tim Ferriss?

  I I didn't eat at his restaurant. I ate at his younger son's restaurant, which is the mirror image of his because one of them is right-handed and one of them is left-handed.

• 1:36:44Speaker 03

  Is it really? Oh, that's hilarious.

• 1:36:45Tim Ferriss?

  And there was a cancellation. We ended up being the earliest table. And so I got to talk with his youngest son. I was the only Japanese speaker there because I was with a few friends who were all native English speakers with no no Japanese. And so we sat there and I just got to talk to him for about an hour. And the coolest guy ever is his restaurant is in Roppongi Hills.

• 1:37:04Speaker 03

  Uh, I've been there. Yeah, I've been there.

• 1:37:05Tim Ferriss?

  I usually don't spend a lot of time in Roppongi, but this restaurant was great. And he we ended up really bonding well and he recommended a number of restaurants in Okinawa that we ended up going to. And he's like, tell them I sent you. And so, of course, that turned into its own adventure, which was just fantastic. We went to this restaurant with and it was in a grandmother's house with three or four tables. People traveled all from all over Japan just to have a meal there. And she was a former radio personality, but she would dress up in traditional sort of kimono and come out and sit at each table for like 10 minutes each and just rotate through. It was it was amazing.

• 1:37:45Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:37:45Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, really, really surreal. What $100 or less purchase has most positively impacted your life in the last six months or recent memory?

• 1:37:57Speaker 03

  Well, uh, man, you know, I don't buy much. I really just don't buy much for myself. Um, do I have, I, I, I don't know. I don't think this was, uh, under a hundred, but it was close. I, I bought a Tumi backpack that really, uh, has, uh, changed my life in terms of travel. I, I, I, I just need it a lot.

• 1:38:22Tim Ferriss?

  Does it have a, it has a separate compartment for the laptop and all that?

• 1:38:25Speaker 03

  Yes, that, that is, well, the key is to make it so that it is easy to take out when you're going through the stupid security thing.

• 1:38:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that I need to replace my backpack for that reason exactly. Do you remember, do you have it within arms reach? Do you know which?

• 1:38:37Speaker 03

  I, I do not. I do not have it within arms reach, but it, it, it really is very nice that you can easily take it out and put it back in. Uh, that, that just makes, you know, I don't know what it is. It's not like it saves that much time, but it just makes your life a little better.

• 1:38:50Tim Ferriss?

  It's just, I, you know, your, your life is the small things repeated often, if you travel enough.

• 1:38:57Speaker 03

  Yes. Oh my God. And the security is just, uh, yup.

• 1:39:01Tim Ferriss?

  What, um, what time do you tend to go to bed and wake up?

• 1:39:06Speaker 03

  Um, eleven thirty, go to bed, uh, wake up at about six thirty.

• 1:39:12Tim Ferriss?

  What are the, what are the first things that you do in the morning? Like the first thirty to sixty minutes of your day? What does that look like?

• 1:39:18Speaker 03

  I wake up, I check my email. Uh, I, let's see, basically I, I open my laptop. I check my email, I check, uh, some sort of Duolingo metrics.

• 1:39:32Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, from, what type of, uh, dashboard do you guys use for that?

• 1:39:36Speaker 03

  Um, we have our own dashboard that we made. It runs on top of this thing called Mixpanel. Um, and, uh, we have our, you know, so I, I usually open it to see the previous day, how we performed, et cetera. Um, I don't know if this is a smart move or not. I do it, but I don't know if it's a smart move because it, it really determines my mood for the first several hours. Uh, in terms of, you know, if we did well the previous day, it's like, uh, I'm, I'm a happy camper. If we did not do well the previous day for some reason, like, you know, somehow traffic is a little lower than the previous, than, than the day before that or something. I'm not in a great mood, so I think I'm gonna stop doing that. I don't think this is healthy. Uh, I do that and then I, then I go work out for sixteen minutes.

• 1:40:18Speaker 03

  Uh, and then I eat a yogurt. That's my, that's my morning routine.

• 1:40:22Tim Ferriss?

  And then off to the office or what's after that?

• 1:40:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I shower and then I, I go to the office, basically.

• 1:40:27Tim Ferriss?

  What metrics do you pay the most attention to? And, uh, well, no end. Let's keep it to one question for a change.

• 1:40:35Speaker 03

  Um, the, so the, we pay, we pay a lot of attention to two right now. Uh, one is, uh, how well people are learning, the way we measure that. We, we basically, some of the exercises we're giving you are, are not there for teaching. They're, they're literally, they were just testing you. And we're testing previous things just so that, you know, just to know whether we're, you know, how well we're teaching you. Um, and we do, you know, we make changes to try to make it so that you will answer these test questions. Uh, you know, correctly more often. So we, we pay attention to this, to, to this, you know, we have a kind of composite score of how well our users are learning. I, I pay attention to that. I, that one doesn't change that much per day.

• 1:41:20Speaker 03

  That one really only changes whenever we do an experiment and we do multiple experiments a week, but it doesn't change like that per day. The one that is less, a little less outside of our control um, is, uh, the, the number of active users that we had the previous day.

• 1:41:34Tim Ferriss?

  Active daily users.

• 1:41:36Speaker 03

  Active and by, uh, but by active, I mean not, they didn't just look at the website. I mean, they completed a lesson on Duolingo. Um, so I, I, I look at that.

• 1:41:46Tim Ferriss?

  What have been your most surprising sources of users?

• 1:41:51Speaker 03

  Oh, whoa, um, we have had, well, let's see, um, what are, what are good ones? Um, surprising sources of users, we've had, um,

• 1:42:05Speaker 03

  you know, sometimes we get users that we, we get hu- huge spikes that we cannot explain. And later we figure out that it's TV. Uh, those are, it's very funny that we cannot even see tweets about it. We see nothing and somehow there's just a huge spike. Um, we, we had a

• 1:42:21Tim Ferriss?

  Television in the US or, uh, outside or both?

• 1:42:24Speaker 03

  Outside, uh, usually outside. I mean, some in the US, but that, that one we can, you can usually find on Twitter. Um, we get a lot of users on, uh, St. Patrick's Day, learning Irish for one day. They don't stick around. So it's funny, we do see, we do see that that type of thing where, you know, this is another one which was interesting. When the Paris attacks happened, our French course got a bump of users in the, in the week after that.

• 1:42:56Tim Ferriss?

  Makes sense to me.

• 1:42:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, so that that type of thing happens. What are others that are, that are interesting? We get, what are, what are others? Well, we've been in, we've been, this one's just, I guess, interesting. We've been in fashion advice magazines. Sometimes we're there for some reason and we get a bunch of users. Oh, another one was also interesting. Shawn Mendes.

• 1:43:26Tim Ferriss?

  You should help me out.

• 1:43:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's the thing. It shows that you are not a seventeen year old girl.

• 1:43:33Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, I'm guessing what Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube?

• 1:43:36Speaker 03

  No, he is supposedly the next Justin Bieber, but he's clean, you see. That's like a shtick. He's, he does have a pretty catchy song. It's called Stitches. I actually had heard the song, but I didn't really know who he was. But then there were some people in the office who were, let's say they were female and they were younger. They all knew who he was and they were like, oh, my God, I cannot believe. So he started using Duolingo. He started tweeting about it a lot. He started basically saying, you know, tweeting a lot about how he was using Duolingo and how he is learning Spanish, etc. And that was, that was an interesting source of users. We got, I don't know how many users we got, but we got a good number of them from him just tweeting a lot that

• 1:44:21Speaker 03

  he was learning Spanish. You know, those are the ones that come to mind.

• 1:44:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's pretty good sampling. Do you have any evening routines? Anything you do to wind down?

• 1:44:35Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I bought it. Well, no, I didn't buy them. Somebody gave them to me in the office. Somebody from the office heard that I was having some trouble sleeping. And they gave me these glasses that block out blue light.

• 1:44:46Tim Ferriss?

  Are they orange? What color are they?

• 1:44:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're like these big orange glasses because I wear glasses, so they're gonna go on top of my glasses. So I look like I'm like, you know, ninety years old.

• 1:44:57Tim Ferriss?

  Or ready to go to the shooting range.

• 1:44:59Speaker 03

  Or ready. Yeah, so I put that on for the last like hour of the day that I'm awake. You know, I hate to admit it because I made a lot of fun of this before. Until this person in my office gave me the glasses as a gift. I kind of made fun of this, but it really does seem to work. After I started putting those on for one hour before I go to sleep, I really can sleep a lot better.

• 1:45:27Tim Ferriss?

  Very cool. I might have to try that. The other laptop equivalent, and it might be on on mobile as well, is Flux.

• 1:45:37Speaker 03

  Yes, a lot of people in the office use that.

• 1:45:40Tim Ferriss?

  Flux, F dot L U X, for people who want to type it into their browser is very cool. It changes the the type of light or the spectrum of light that is emitted from your laptop. So that it it changes based on sunrise and sunset.

• 1:45:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know what? Our designers started using that, and now we get cookie colors. Because.

• 1:46:05Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, because they're thrown off when they're designing at after sunset.

• 1:46:10Speaker 03

  Now, now when they, you know, I'm like, I want to see it tomorrow morning, please.

• 1:46:16Tim Ferriss?

  That's hilarious, actually.

• 1:46:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that could be really dangerous for designers now that I'm thinking about it.

• 1:46:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:23Tim Ferriss?

  And how did you guys come up with the green owl, by the way?

• 1:46:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, so that was, there's a story behind that. There's, um, we were, um, we were just getting started with Duolingo and, and, um, we had hired a Canadian company to help with our branding. Um, at the time, we didn't really have any designers, but it's an awesome company. It's called Silver Orange. They made the Firefox logo, for example.

• 1:46:45Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, great logo.

• 1:46:46Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, so this is a great company. Um, we love working with them and, uh, you know, in, in one of our first, uh, meetings about the branding of the company, um, my co-founder Severin, uh, he said, you know, I don't know much about design and I, I don't particularly care, but I'll tell you this. I hate the color green. I hate it.

• 1:47:08Speaker 03

  We all thought it would be hilarious if,

• 1:47:13Speaker 03

  if our, our mascot was a green thing. And so, uh, that's, that's why it's green. It's literally, it is, we are playing a joke on our co-founder. Ever since then, every day of his life, he has to see this.

• 1:47:29Speaker 03

  He shouldn't have said that.

• 1:47:30Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, man, that, that is funny. And the owl, was that the, the, was that?

• 1:47:36Speaker 03

  It's kind of knowledge.

• 1:47:36Tim Ferriss?

  Knowledge, wisdom.

• 1:47:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's funny because now, you know, when we started, it was kind of, you know, we were here and knowledge, wisdom makes sense. But now that we're expanding, we, or we've expanded to the whole world. This is not true in every other country, right?

• 1:47:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, are owls like bad luck in certain cultures or, I mean?

• 1:47:52Speaker 03

  You know, I, I don't know if they're bad luck, but certainly in China, people are like, why an owl? And no, actually in China, because it's green, they're like, why are you using a parrot?

• 1:48:04Tim Ferriss?

  A fat parrot?

• 1:48:05Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:48:07Speaker 03

  This happened.

• 1:48:08Tim Ferriss?

  That actually would kind of make sense, actually.

• 1:48:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:11Tim Ferriss?

  The parrot.

• 1:48:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:12Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, that's another one of those jokes, uh, that, uh, I use to try to disarm people if I'm gonna make a fool of myself in Spanish later is, is the, the, I mean, in certain Spanish-speaking cultures, people are very polite. It's kind of like Japan. I mean, if you were like, I hungry, want food, please. And they're like, oh, your Spanish is so good, you know? If that's how you sounded in Spanish, they're very polite. And, um, and so my thing, you know, I would say, well, I'm just a really good parrot, right? So I'd just say, you know, soy un papagayo, papagacho, depending on where, if I'm in Argentina or not. And, uh, so that makes, that makes sense to me that it could be a parrot.

• 1:48:51Tim Ferriss?

  Have you, what have you changed your mind about in the last few years and why?

• 1:48:57Speaker 03

  You know, that's a good question.

• 1:49:05Speaker 03

  You know, probably. The I don't know exactly how to phrase it, but it is way harder to build a good organization than I thought before. You know, before I kind of worked that I always worked at a at a company or something that somebody else had made the culture or the organization or something. And it's so easy to find.

• 1:49:29Speaker 03

  Bad things about things about, you know, company cultures.

• 1:49:32Tim Ferriss?

  Pick out the flaws when you.

• 1:49:32Speaker 03

  It's so easy. Yeah, nothing's perfect and you're just like always. But now that I'm the one in charge of building, you know, an organization, it is really hard. And I am, I am now even more impressed at the people who have built companies, you know, with 10,000 employees. It's just impressive how, how, you know, like the culture at Google still remains. It's just impressive.

• 1:49:58Tim Ferriss?

  It is astonishing.

• 1:49:59Speaker 03

  Because it's just, you know, when, when you're just here, you know, we have 60 employees and already we see like just all kinds of issues.

• 1:50:11Speaker 03

  You know, one of the standard things that people that startups go through and we fortunately, we went through it and it worked out well. But at the beginning, it's it's flat. Everybody has a. You know, there's no management, nobody really has a boss. It's kind of flat.

• 1:50:25Tim Ferriss?

  There's no hierarchy. It's a flat work chart.

• 1:50:27Speaker 03

  This sounds great. This really sounds great. We are a flat company, etc. Unfortunately, this just does not work after a certain number of employees. And you, you, you get to chaos at about, you know, 25 employees, it starts becoming chaotic. And so you have to start coming up with some sort of structure and some sort of hierarchy. And out of every startup that I've heard, there is an allergy against that. Because it's like, oh, man, you know, now we're going to have managers.

• 1:50:56Tim Ferriss?

  You're a critic.

• 1:50:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, what's next? Are we going to have to start filling out DPS reports? And like, what is going on here? So, but it takes a little bit of time to really convince people that this is actually worthwhile. But fortunately, we've gone through this now and we're fine. But this was, this was much harder than I thought it would be.

• 1:51:15Tim Ferriss?

  What resources, people, books, anything did you find? Have you found helpful in thinking about building an organization?

• 1:51:26Speaker 03

  Well, this is one of the ones where the hard thing about hard things was helpful. He talks a lot about building organization and how to do that.

• 1:51:36Speaker 03

  I found, let's see, in some cases, I found

• 1:51:47Speaker 03

  a few blogs. Well, Fred Wilson's blog is great.

• 1:51:54Tim Ferriss?

  Which came up earlier, AVC.

• 1:51:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, so that one was good. And also our board members, I mean, we have really good board members for Duolingo. And we're, I've basically, I've asked them a lot of questions. I mean, the latest one, our board member from Google Capital, Leila, she's amazing. She, she basically, I sat with her and I'm like, okay, we're going to reorganize the company. Let's do it. And we basically just sat there for a few hours and came up with a reorg of the whole company. And that was, that was pretty useful.

• 1:52:26Tim Ferriss?

  I want to say it was either a biography of Home Depot. Might have been both, or it was a little outdated now, but the making of a Blockbuster, which was about Wayne Huizenga, if I'm saying his name correctly, and the, the building of Blockbuster when it was just the behemoth.

• 1:52:45Speaker 03

  When it was awesome.

• 1:52:46Tim Ferriss?

  When it was awesome. Yeah, well, back when it was awesome. But he was very good at acquiring companies. And as he absorbed all these companies, of course, that he needed to incorporate

• 1:52:58Tim Ferriss?

  all of the bits and pieces. And I want to say that he hired one of the top people from McDonald's, either as consultant or a full-time employee. And the first thing he did when he met them is he said, all right, help, help draw or draw the org chart for me. Like, I want to see what the org chart looks like. And that was one of the most consistent questions. And I never thought. It didn't strike me until much later, in fact, in the last few years, how important that is. And so when I meet people who seem to have very smoothly operating companies, that's one of the first questions that I ask. If it seems like a decent opportunity, so I'll just say, what does your org chart look like? Like, draw your organization for me?

• 1:53:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's, it is, it is amazing. For somebody who has never had to design an organization, it is amazing how hard that is. It's not, it's not easy.

• 1:53:52Tim Ferriss?

  It's not intuitive.

• 1:53:53Speaker 03

  No, it's not.

• 1:53:57Tim Ferriss?

  Is there anything that you believe to be true, even though you can't prove it?

• 1:54:06Speaker 03

  What is something that I believe to be true even? I'll, I'll, I'll say this. I believe that it was a good choice to start Duolingo here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I can't prove that, but I believe it was a pretty good choice.

• 1:54:25Tim Ferriss?

  If you could put one billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say?

• 1:54:30Speaker 03

  Yes, it would be, this, this, this I can answer. Because I've, I've thought about this. It would be a billboard right across the street from the Google office here in Pittsburgh that says, "We at Duolingo are hiring, and yes, we can match your salary."

• 1:54:50Tim Ferriss?

  Google would love that.

• 1:54:53Speaker 03

  Sorry, Google investors, but yes, that is the billboard that I would put, because I have thought of this.

• 1:55:00Tim Ferriss?

  That seems achievable.

• 1:55:03Speaker 03

  It is, it is very achievable. I just don't know how they would feel. There are investors and everything. I just.

• 1:55:07Tim Ferriss?

  That's true. That whole, that whole dynamic is something I didn't think about. You could get into some real, some real trench warfare where you create the, you could, you could get one of those billboard cars. And park it right out front. Alice Cooper, the musician's career was launched in a way by getting one of those and having it, quote, "break down," end quote, in the middle of, I think it was Piccadilly Circus in London, a few days before one of his concerts. For those people who haven't seen it, I think it's just called "The Legend of Shep Gordon." But the Super Mensch is the name of the documentary.

• 1:55:47Tim Ferriss?

  It was done by Mike Myers of Wayne's World fame about this incredible eclectic, extremely eccentric and hilarious music manager, I suppose is what he would be, talent manager named Shep Gordon. But yeah, I didn't think about the investor angle. That could be a little thorny. What advice? How old are you now?

• 1:56:10Speaker 03

  I am 36.

• 1:56:11Tim Ferriss?

  36. What adv... And Duolingo started how many years ago?

• 1:56:16Speaker 03

  Uh, four.

• 1:56:17Tim Ferriss?

  Four. Okay. What advice would you give to your 30-year-old self, then? So that would be two years before starting Duolingo.

• 1:56:25Speaker 03

  Boy, um, when you do start Duolingo, make an Android app sooner rather than later. That would have been good advice for us to have.

• 1:56:38Tim Ferriss?

  Is that just because of the market size, or?

• 1:56:40Speaker 03

  It's crazy. I mean, we're, um, you know, that was the last app we made. So we started, well, not technically, I mean, we didn't make a Windows app after, but we started with a website, then an iPhone app, then an Android app. Today, 55% of our traffic is Android. So we should have done Android sooner. I guess one piece of advice, I probably would tell myself to work less, to be honest. I think, I think that I would tell myself to do that.

• 1:57:07Tim Ferriss?

  Because there's a, there's a point of diminishing returns?

• 1:57:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've, I've, you know, I've, I've really gotten much better at this over the last year. And I think I, I still have, this is kind of one of the things I want to do this year. It's, um, really be better at not working all the time. I, I actually think I am more... Effective, not just efficient, obviously more efficient, but also more effective. Uh, in general, if I don't work all the time. Um, and it's for a couple of reasons. One is like personally, I just, um. I feel, you know, more rested, et cetera. But actually. I've realized that this is, you know, this is one of the things that is really helping me scale the company. It's, you know, it used to be the case that I really was on top of everything. And it actually helps when I'm not on top of things. Uh, because other people really rise up.

• 1:57:56Speaker 03

  Um, and I think that that has, that is actually a good thing for Duolingo that I'm not working, uh, all the time. And I think that that's probably, and I should have probably done that earlier. Uh, I probably would have had a, a, a more enjoyable life too.

• 1:58:12Tim Ferriss?

  Do you think you will be able to work less by simply resolving to work less? And the reason I ask is that. Type A personalities and builders that I know are only able to do that if they displace work with other activities.

• 1:58:28Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So it's not, you can't just say like, I'm gonna just not, I'm just gonna go home now. You can't quite do that.

• 1:58:36Tim Ferriss?

  That won't work. Yeah.

• 1:58:37Speaker 03

  No, I just have to get. Into something else. So, you know, it's the type of thing I've gotten more into. Yeah, I've gotten more into podcasts. I've gotten more into learning about different things. Um, you know, I'm, I'm. Just trying to, to learn all kinds of different things. And I think that that's. That's something I actually wanna start. A separate project that is not a company of any form, um, that just to occupy myself more so during the weekends. Um. So that I, so that I'm really spending less time on, on, on, on being on top of every single little thing at Duolingo.

• 1:59:15Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, you could try indoor rock climbing. I bet in Pittsburgh they have.

• 1:59:19Speaker 03

  They do. They have pretty awesome ones. Yes.

• 1:59:21Tim Ferriss?

  They're so much fun and you can do bouldering because it doesn't require a ballet partner and that's just fantastic way to get out of your head.

• 1:59:27Speaker 03

  I've done it. I've done it. I've done it. We, I, I, in fact, I was doing it quite a bit. It's, uh, really great for strength.

• 1:59:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's outstanding. It's also mobility, hip mobility, everything in it. And it it requires you to do the opposite of what you do when seated at a desk or at a laptop. It causes you to look up and arch your thoracic and use your legs. It's fantastic exercise. And I'll give you a podcast recommendation also, which is Hardcore History.

• 1:59:56Speaker 03

  Hardcore History?

• 1:59:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And start with, there's a series called Wrath of the Khans, which is about Genghis Khan.

• 2:00:03Speaker 03

  The Genghis guy?

• 2:00:04Tim Ferriss?

  Genghis Khan, as Dan Carlin, the host says, but it is amazing. And you will get sucked into that. Most people do. It's just incredible.

• 2:00:12Speaker 03

  I'm writing this down.

• 2:00:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. When people ask me, what's your favorite podcast? I say, there are a lot of good podcasts out there. By far and away, no close second place. Hardcore History is my favorite.

• 2:00:22Speaker 03

  I like that. That is awesome. You know, I liked the first season of Serial.

• 2:00:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it was, I mean, it's impressive any way you slice it. I just, the, I like Hardcore History because not only is it, it scratches the nonfiction addiction that I have, the I should be learning something useful, voice that nags when I'm doing fiction sometimes. At this, but at the same time, you have entertainment in the form of Dan Carlin's storytelling and his what if, you know, imagine if, blah, blah, blah, X, Y, and Z. And simultaneously, you're learning lessons. I think there's a lot to be learned from Genghis Khan, and not learned.

• 2:01:08Speaker 03

  The Jang, the Jang.

• 2:01:09Tim Ferriss?

  In, in terms of how he built and ran an organization. I mean, it's really, there's a lot, there are a lot of leadership principles.

• 2:01:15Speaker 03

  An organization that consisted of like, you know, 10% of the world or something like that.

• 2:01:19Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it's, it's just, I mean, mind boggling. And in fact, I'm not going to mention names because these were in private conversations, they might not want to be named, but a number of the most impressive tech icons have recommended to me a book called Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, and said it was their favorite book of the last year. So that's another.

• 2:01:40Speaker 03

  Are these people really, are they trying to be the Genghis Khan of today?

• 2:01:44Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, if they are in terms of dominance, then they're getting close, or they already are. These are people who are, like, everybody listening would know these names.

• 2:01:54Speaker 03

  That's great. Really, let's copy Genghis Khan.

• 2:01:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I mean, minus the like raping and pillaging, probably a good idea. Uh, but, but, uh, but, uh, nonetheless, uh, hardcore history is a good way to, to get, keep your hands away from the keyboard, maybe for a few hours. Uh, and, uh, you could listen to it while you're rock climbing.

• 2:02:15Speaker 03

  So I need, I, I need, okay. So these are two things. Uh, what about a hobby? I really need like a hobby.

• 2:02:20Tim Ferriss?

  Hobby, I would suggest drumming. I would suggest some type of drumming. Yep. It could be hand drumming. It could be like a djembe.

• 2:02:32Speaker 03

  Why, why is that?

• 2:02:33Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, well, and I'm projecting a little bit here personally, but drumming, drums are an instrument that you can have fun playing, relieve stress playing and sound decent playing, even if you suck balls. And, uh, that is hugely reinforcing for someone like me who's very impatient. I don't want to sound terrible on.

• 2:02:56Speaker 03

  I see. But you're not talking about like the big drum set for like a rock band, right?

• 2:02:59Tim Ferriss?

  No, you could. I mean, you could do a five, like a five piece, uh, which would be a, you know, a kit.

• 2:03:04Speaker 03

  Or are you talking, you're talking about like the little, little kind of ethnic thing that you've?

• 2:03:08Tim Ferriss?

  I love that. The guy from Guatemala is calling this ethnic.

• 2:03:11Speaker 03

  Hey, listen.

• 2:03:15Tim Ferriss?

  You could do something like a djembe, which is a really nice floor drum. That's a hand drum nonetheless. Uh, D J E M B E. Uh, but I think that the, I think you would appreciate just knowing you, uh, on some level as I do, I would say you should actually take a lesson with the five piece because the coordination of hands and feet just utilizes your brain in a way that you probably haven't utilized it before. It's, you will feel, you will feel like you have runner's high or it'll, you'll have a combination of fatigue, like you've just played a chess game or go or something like that, probably closer to go. Uh, you'll have that mental fatigue, but you'll also have a, the feeling of runner's

• 2:03:59Tim Ferriss?

  high after say an hour long session on the drums where you're using your feet to work the hi hat and the bass and hitting the snare drum. And so on. It's a, I think that is something that would be, it would give you enough reinforcement early. That you might continue to carve out time for it. So I would just prepay for, you know, five to 10 lessons with a good drum. Teacher. I think that would be a good hobby to try to tackle.

• 2:04:23Speaker 03

  So.

• 2:04:24Tim Ferriss?

  Because my, my objective would be to keep you off of laptops.

• 2:04:28Speaker 03

  Right. So the, so the rock band game is not enough for, for learning how to do this?

• 2:04:32Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, it's, it's not as gratifying as the crack of a, of a nice snare drum and the thump of a, of a bass. It's hard to compare. Just the kinesthetic feedback is, I think, an integral piece of the entire experience.

• 2:04:46Speaker 03

  Well, next time we see each other, I will give you a concert.

• 2:04:49Tim Ferriss?

  We'll have.

• 2:04:49Speaker 03

  An amazing drumming concert.

• 2:04:51Tim Ferriss?

  We'll have a, uh, yeah, or you could, or you could try to pick up breakdancing. We can have a breakdance battle. We could do that also.

• 2:04:57Speaker 03

  That, that I assure you.

• 2:04:58Tim Ferriss?

  Will not happen.

• 2:04:59Speaker 03

  Going to do. This, this will not happen.

• 2:05:02Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe locking or popping for those people who want to get into it, but don't want to break their shoulders. Uh, popping and locking is not a bad way to go. Uh, well, this has been a lot of fun. I have just one or two more questions.

• 2:05:17Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, let's, let's go with advice to your 20 year old self. What advice would you give to your 20 year old self? Or 25, you can choose.

• 2:05:26Speaker 03

  30, but 20 year old self.

• 2:05:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, 20 or 25, and you can choose, and then you can tell us where you were at the time.

• 2:05:33Speaker 03

  Boom. Um, wow, that's a, let's see, what would I have said to my? Okay, to my 20 year old self, I probably would have said, um,

• 2:05:48Speaker 03

  learn more about, um, how to run a business in college. There's probably some good classes. I mean, when I was in college, I was just, all I took was like, you know, kind of, either, either computer science classes or English classes, uh, for writing. I really liked, I don't know, writing. Um, but everything else, I just, I did not want to take any classes and I should have taken advantage of. I'm sure there were some great classes in how to run a business. Um, that's, that's advice I would have given to my 20 year old self. Um.

• 2:06:22Tim Ferriss?

  Specifically, if you had to choose what aspects of running a business?

• 2:06:27Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 2:06:30Speaker 03

  You know, probably just um generally how to be a manager. Right. I think I think that that um that I think I I've had to learn. You know, I've had to learn over the years, kind of in the through the hard way, how to be a manager. I think it's it's been um, you know, giving giving somebody feedback. Uh, when especially when it's not positive is uh tricky. Uh, firing somebody is is really, I I've I've learned, I now know how to do this pretty well. Uh, but I sucked the first few times I had to fire somebody. In fact, there was somebody that I had to fire like three times because they did not understand that I was trying to fire.

• 2:07:17Speaker 03

  Oh, God. I was that bad. Terrible. I I was terrible. I've learned and really the trick is to start the conversation by saying, I'm going to have to let you go. Like, you just start that. And and if you do that, then there's no, see, working up to it is bad. Because if you start by trying to build up an argument and so that at the end you say, and that's why I'm going to have to let you go. The problem is, they start arguing midway. Like, you say, well, you know, last week when you did that, they're like, no, that's not what happened. And then after they argue three or four of your points, your your whole, your your your whole thing is gone and you cannot. Lead up has been derailed. It's over and you can't and you you always, you know, usually you don't have as much information as they do.

• 2:08:01Speaker 03

  And so, you know, you're not getting all the details right and uh, no, it's usually much better to just get it over with and then, you know, explain or whatever. So I I've I've gotten much better at that. So, yeah, um, classes on how to manage would have been great. Got it for your twenty year old self and then twenty five? Um, start working out. I did not start working out until I was like thirty one, thirty two, and that was I between ages twenty five and thirty, I gained forty pounds. And then I lost them again at around age thirty one. And that was uh, that was not good.

• 2:08:38Tim Ferriss?

  Kettlebell swings, folks. Two-handed kettlebell swings. Everybody's got time. Everybody's got space for one kettlebell.

• 2:08:46Tim Ferriss?

  Search the perfect posterior on Google and I'm sure some torrented version of that of that chapter in my book will pop up.

• 2:08:53Speaker 03

  What do you think of the seven-minute workout? This is a question I had.

• 2:08:56Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, the app that I've seen people using, is this the calisthenic workout that people?

• 2:09:01Speaker 03

  The thing, uh, this is the thing that you search for, like, it was on the New York Times and everything. It's just the thing that you just search for seven-minute workout, where it's like some push-ups and some sit-ups and like a plank and...

• 2:09:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'd have to check it out. I mean, I'm sure it's better. The best workout is the workout that you do, right? So if, if the seven-minute workout in concept, in presentation, gets people to actually follow the protocol, then I'm all for it. I don't have a huge, I don't have any real familiarity with it, but suffice to say, you don't need to exercise for a long time to get into great shape. Losing fat is dietary, it's dietary-driven. Like, if you want to lose fat, you lose fat in the kitchen, you build muscle in the gym. That's it, period. End of story. And, uh, the, at least from an effectiveness standpoint.

• 2:09:51Tim Ferriss?

  So, I would say, if it's just a time restriction, I would actually go back to kettlebell swings. I think if you do kettlebell swings, two or three times per week, 50 to 75 repetitions, building up to doing it in a single set, taking breaks as needed in the beginning, and let's say, just arbitrarily, obviously, talk to your orthopedic surgeon before you do this.

• 2:10:14Speaker 03

  Yes, I have one of those.

• 2:10:15Tim Ferriss?

  So you don't, or your PT trainer, whatever. I don't play a doctor on the internet, but generally speaking, women can start with a 35-pound kettlebell, men with a 53, if they're of sort of bell curve, you know, top of the bell curve weight. And, uh, if you do that...

• 2:10:33Tim Ferriss?

  Building up to a total of say 75 reps and doing that Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or even Monday, Friday, if you don't recover very well, you can get into incredible shape doing that and it should not take you more than five to 10 minutes to complete the entire exercise. You're done. And the initial, say 10 to 15 kettlebell swings with two hands serve as your warm-up, assuming you don't have any outstanding injuries. It's just a fantastic exercise. And there are videos online where I demonstrate basic technical pointers and whatnot because you want to do it correctly. But you can absolutely get in great shape. They're also high with less than 10 minutes per exercise session.

• 2:11:17Speaker 03

  Let me ask you another question now that I have you here. What's the best way to get a six pack?

• 2:11:23Tim Ferriss?

  Best way to get a six pack is to lose fat that's covering them up. And diet is going to be 99% of that.

• 2:11:35Speaker 03

  So really dieting?

• 2:11:36Tim Ferriss?

  Dieting, meaning not caloric restriction, although a lot of people would argue this point and say that intermittent fasting, or paleo, or fill in the blank, any diet is really just caloric restriction in disguise, even if they don't realize it. I disagree with that. A thousand calories of lard does not equal a thousand calories of Coca-Cola does not equal a thousand calories of sugar. I mean, the body metabolizes and treats those substances very differently. And if you were to follow a paleo diet, for instance, I think this, I mean, I'm biased, but I do think the slow carb diet, which is in the Four Hour Body, is designed, first and foremost, to have a high level of compliance and convenience.

• 2:12:20Tim Ferriss?

  And maybe you sacrifice 5 to 10% of the fat loss you would experience with a strict paleo diet, but it's very easy to follow, even if you're traveling.

• 2:12:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is the problem with diets and traveling. Oh, my God.

• 2:12:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So the slow carb diet is very easy. I mean, and there are people who absolutely have six packs and eight packs after following a slow carb diet and following a minimal effective dose of exercise like kettlebell swings. You do need a base level of musculature underneath, but we all have abs. They're just covered.

• 2:12:48Speaker 03

  That's kind of just there.

• 2:12:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, they're there. The, I guess it's what the rectus abdominis, you know, that's the six pack. Is there, but planks don't hurt, but the exercise is not going to burn the fat. The fat is going to go away through choosing, making, replacing your current default meals with better default meals. And it doesn't have to be difficult at all.

• 2:13:12Tim Ferriss?

  And drinking enough water so that your liver is not preoccupied with dehydration is also very important.

• 2:13:18Speaker 03

  Oh, really? So drinking a lot of water, that's easy.

• 2:13:20Tim Ferriss?

  That's easy. That's easy. I mean, it's, that's not too terribly difficult to do. And if you're following a lower refined carbohydrate, lower starch diet. If you have hypertension, talk to your doctor, but I will, and this is something I picked up from Kelly Starrett, actually. He was a very famous CrossFit guy, and this, this does make a lot of sense. It's sprinkling a little bit of salt, just a little pinch of salt into your water when you drink it. You won't notice the taste, but on these lower carbohydrate diets, I think it's for every. Let me think about this. For every gram of glycogen, meaning carbohydrate that you store, I think you can, you can hold four grams of water. So when you deplete yourself of glycogen or otherwise don't ingest a lot of carbohydrates, you tend to experience a lot of diuresis. You tend to pee a lot. You just, the water just goes straight through you.

• 2:14:05Tim Ferriss?

  So a little bit of extra sodium will help you retain that, as will, say, potassium from avocados. But even avocados, people think of them as pure fat, that they will, like an avocado, I'm just guessing here, but probably eight grams of carbohydrates, that will knock you out of, say, ketosis if that's what you're trying to go for. But the nutshell answer is slow carb diet, kettlebell swings, two or three times a week. And I think that you can get to a six pack without too much difficulty. You can definitely get to, you know, 10 to 12% body fat. And for most people, that will show enough abs to make them happy. Although you can go lower if you want, just requires a lot more fine tuning.

• 2:14:47Speaker 03

  That, that's good. That's great. I'm, I'm going to change my, I'm going to change my, my keg for a six pack.

• 2:14:54Tim Ferriss?

  Last question is, do you have any ask or suggestion request for everybody listening?

• 2:15:01Speaker 03

  Oh, boy.

• 2:15:05Speaker 03

  I don't know if I do. I don't, you know, there's the shameless plug of using Duolingo, but I, other than that, I don't have anything great.

• 2:15:16Tim Ferriss?

  No great, no, no great.

• 2:15:18Speaker 03

  No great asks.

• 2:15:19Tim Ferriss?

  Request for the masses. All right. Well, uh, my request then would be, can you let people know how to find you uh, on the internet? How could they, how can they follow what you're up to? Of course, duolingo.com. Uh, and you can find Duolingo everywhere for people who want to check out the app. Uh, actually before we, uh, Shit Duo Says, is that the Twitter handle?

• 2:15:42Speaker 03

  Shit Duo Says is a pretty awesome Twitter handle.

• 2:15:45Tim Ferriss?

  So at Shit Duo Says for people who want to get a good laugh. Actually, I won't even explain what it is. They can just check it out. But where can people find you on, uh, social and on the internet if they want to follow what you do?

• 2:15:56Speaker 03

  On Twitter, it's Luis Von Ahn, at, uh, L U I S V O N A H N. Um, that's, that's where I am on Twitter. I, I should tweet more. Um, I just did a Quora thing yesterday, so I'm, I'm pretty, they have like their own version of an AMA on Quora now, and I just did that yesterday. So I'm, I'm recently active on Quora. Uh, you can just search for my name there. Um, and, uh, I guess on Facebook too, uh, slash Luis Von Ahn on Facebook.

• 2:16:28Tim Ferriss?

  Perfect. Well, uh, Luis, always a pleasure and I look forward to drumming, breakdance battling and, uh, rock climbing next time we meet.

• 2:16:37Speaker 03

  With a six pack. I will show it to you.

• 2:16:38Tim Ferriss?

  With a six pack and, uh, and thanks for making the time.

• 2:16:43Speaker 03

  All right. Excellent. Thank you.

• 2:16:44Tim Ferriss?

  And everybody listening for links to books and so on, podcasts, blogs and whatnot mentioned, you can go to the show notes, uh, which are available for this episode, every other episode at fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out. Fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening.

• 2:17:11Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 2:17:53Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

• 2:18:15Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Headspace. More than 80% of the people I have interviewed, world-class performers across military, entertainment, sports, and beyond, all have some type of meditative practice. I tried for years and years and failed miserably. The key is making it simple and you can dramatically improve your life in just 10 minutes a day and technology can help you. This change comes through guided meditation and Headspace is by far the most popular app for this purpose. More than 4 million users. It's meditation made simple. So what I recommend is that you take this practice, meditation, which is rooted in thousands of years of tradition, supported by thousands of scientific studies, and try

• 2:18:58Tim Ferriss?

  it for 10 minutes a day for 10 days. That's all you need to do. You could also check out the founder, Andy Puddicombe's TED Talk, which has more than 5.5 million views. His last name is P U D D I C O M B E, if you want to look that up. But otherwise, download the free Headspace app, I have it on my phone, and begin their Take 10 program. For 10 days of guided meditation, completely free, 10 minutes a day, that's all it takes. You should give it a shot. Headspace.com/Tim. Just go to Headspace.com/Tim.

• 2:19:35Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:20:19Tim Ferriss?

  So check it out, 99designs.com/tim. And until next time, thank you for listening.