How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

https://www.techinasia.com/how-duolingo-got-110-million-users

by vmalu • 10 years ago

158 63 10 years ago

fthd• 10 years ago

"without spending a dollar on marketing"

Yet their crunchbase profile shows they have a head of marketing. That's basically like saying I didn't spend a dime on engineering because I built the app myself.

aikah• 10 years ago

They got most of the Livemocha audience as the former turned to total sh--t. Livemocha used to be a great platform for learning. Then it was bought by Rosetta Code which sells expensive and obsolete language learning material.

ionforce• 10 years ago

What exactly was Livemocha? I heard a lot about it but by the time I did, they had already changed their site. What was their original approach that was so well received?

resoluteteeth• 10 years ago

The gamification aspects of Duolingo are a nice touch, but even if it didn't have this it would probably still be popular. I don't think there has to be some sort of "one weird trick" here.

It's not perfect, but Duolingo 1) is free, 2) has no ads, 3) has both a website and apps, 4) is interactive with audio and voice recognition. There really isn't any competition to this. Lots of people want to learn languages; is it surprising that it has tons of users?

zantzinger• 10 years ago

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

anaccountimade• 10 years ago

Have you seen Wanikani? It's the best! Before I used Wanikani, I was struggling to learn Nihongo, also known as Japanese to you non-anime experts. I was able to get my katakana and hiragana down, and I was also a pro at romanji, but I just couldn't get myself to study the kanjis! By the way kanjis are like the Japanese alphabet if you were wondering. Anyways, I spent 2 years working really hard on my Japanese listening ability by listening to native material, but try as I did, I couldn't get anywhere, but then I used Wanikani, and WOW did it boost me up to a whole nother level! I'm starting my 4th year now learning the language, and I'm still working on Wanikani. Some people do it faster, but I'm happy with my pace. Anyways, I now know 756 kanjis thanks to Wanikani! It's definitely joyous to see all the progress I've made! Once I get through the rest the kanjis, then I'm going to learn the grammar, which should be easy due to all of the vocabulary and kanjis that I'll know. I do know basics, but I still have a lot of work left for my grammar.

Yeah, I really feel like technology is bringing us into a whole new era for language learning. At least it has for me.

みんなさん、どうもありがとう！

talideon• 10 years ago

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

jfoster3• 10 years ago

Being freemium is almost certainly the way Duolingo will eventually go, too. Though they do seem to be resisting it and raising investment to push it further off, their business is currently unsustainable & if not freemium, it is currently unclear how they will make it sustainable.

philfrasty• 10 years ago

The only other (software) company I can think of in the language space with a recognized brand is Rosetta-Stone and it has traditionally been very expensive. Currently retails for a little less than 400€ (450$) for one language course on Amazon.

So I think the user-value from a price-perspective is gigantic if you want to get into a language (not sure how deep Duolingo dives into the language though).

dirktheman• 10 years ago

I took a Russian duolingo course, it was surprisingly thorough and well made. It teaches you the alphabet, basic phrases and a decent amount of grammar (verbs, tenses, prefixes), colloquial, etcetera. More than enough to get by in daily life, strike up a conversation and read some literature.

The website is very user-friendly, and the app has been designed specifically for mobile screens, so a lot less typing, and a lot more swiping.

It feels like a paid app, and I can't think of anything that comes close in value. If I were the CEO of RS I'd lose a lot of sleep over duolingo...

graeme• 10 years ago

I think this headline must have meant "without spending on advertising".

Marketing is a far broader category than advertising.

mful• 10 years ago

The title here is misleading -- the article barely talks about Duolingo's marketing strategy, touching briefly on word-of-mouth and gamification...

This is really just a fluff piece about Duolingo and the founder...

davemel373• 10 years ago

Where does this idea of glorifying not spending on marketing come from? I think it involves a fundamental misalignment of the point of building a business.

I view a business as an investment vehicle and marketing is how you turn over that investment. I would be much more impressed with a business that can consistently arbitrage advertising into profits at scale.

In reality anything that touches a prospect, customer or user is marketing!

A better question is... how much further would duolingo be if they invested in advertising and focused more on marketing? Would they have billions of users instead of 110M ?

Further, how many of those 110M are like me that downloaded the app, used it once or twice and than never opened it again? How many users like me would use it much more if they did invest in communicating its value to me at ideal times. (i.e. when it sees I am visiting Cabo, or Cancun, two trips I took with the app on my phone and never touched it?)

jsonne2• 10 years ago

What it comes down to is this. Spend money on marketing, or don't, but always focus on ROI.

soared4• 10 years ago

Where does this idea of glorifying not spending on marketing come from?

Its probably playing on some peoples notions that marketing is evil, and therefore money shouldn't be spent on it. Obviously not true, but there is a general dislike for marketing.

dhbradshaw• 10 years ago

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

encoderer• 10 years ago

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

davemel373• 10 years ago

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

Trundle2• 10 years ago

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

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

davemel373• 10 years ago

If your $500m budget is only returning $1b you are probably losing money and are wasting a ton of your budget.

For what it's worth, Duolingo raised $83.3M , so it's not like they bootstrapped to that growth.

The growth hacking you are referring to has a large cost too. You need disciplined and very creative engineers, copywriters, analysts, a culture of testing, social psychologists, marketing experts, directors, etc... I bet Duolingo's marketing costs are well into the millions a year in Human Capital.

The stories of guys going from 0 to whatever cheaply are not the same stories as a company with 83 million in funding.

maroonblazer4• 10 years ago

The title of the article belies its content. Several examples of marketing are cited:

- They identified a market: people who want to learn a language as quickly, easily and inexpensively as possible.

- They analyzed and understood the needs and desires of the target market. Presumably they further segmented the market.

- They created an offering that met the needs of the segment(s) they were going after.

- They deliberately positioned their product so as to attract as large a share of the addressable audience as possible .

- They increased awareness and trial of their product via word-of-mouth, an age-old marketing communications tactic.

This is marketing.

beambot• 10 years ago

Not to mention a high-profile TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/luis_von_ahn_massive_scale_online_...

INTPenis• 10 years ago

Yes, word of mouth comes cheap when you're a recognized professor and inventor.

jhanschoo• 10 years ago

s/marketing/advertising/ would be useful.

maxxxxx• 10 years ago

And they created a product that is useful and fun to use.

soared4• 10 years ago

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

sampl• 10 years ago

It costs money to pay people to do those things.

Maybe we can say "without advertising or promotions"?

trjordan• 10 years ago

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

jfoster3• 10 years ago

Indeed. I suspect the PR played the larger role, actually. Before anyone seeded a word-of-mouth chain about Duolingo, they likely read an article about it.

2pointsomone• 10 years ago

I think you are being overly critical here unnecessarily (really don't know why such wit is needed). The point the title is trying to make is they didn't spend on traditional ad channels. Most startups who start with zero users on day one can't use these very organic marketing means to reach that number.

tudorw• 10 years ago

Thanks for that, nicely summed, I get many clients who think marketing is promotions, they've already missed the boat and it's a tough job to pull them back far enough to re-assess their market.

blubb-fish• 10 years ago

You are nit-picking.

Marketing refers in this context to not or semi-directed advertising like ...

... ads. You know those stinky blinky patches of moving colors next to a text you would like to read. Never seen them do that.

Duolingo only relied on organic and peer-to-peer advertisement - very healthy - I like this a lot - kudos to them!

ucaetano• 10 years ago

No, he's not. Duolingo didn't spend on advertising, but spent a lot in marketing.

And if the article is mixing the two, the article is just plain wrong.

masukomi• 10 years ago

Marketing: noun, the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.

The keywords there are "action", and "promoting". The first 4 items you list are not marketing. They are preparing for the market. The only thing there that is actually marketing is "They increased awareness and trial of their product via word-of-mouth" and that only barely counts because most of it is OTHER people marketing it for you, without your consent, control, or even input. So, it's not Duolingo marketing themselves. It's Duolingo's users marketing it for them. That's usually referred to as Evangelism and Guy Kawasaki has made his career out of explaining and promoting that idea http://guykawasaki.com/

maroonblazer4• 10 years ago

You - and the article - are conflating advertising with marketing. From the man who literally wrote the book on marketing management[0]:

"Marketing is the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit. Marketing identifies unfulfilled needs and desires. It defines, measures and quantifies the size of the identified market and the profit potential. It pinpoints which segments the company is capable of serving best and it designs and promotes the appropriate products and services."

I.e. advertising and promotions are just one part of marketing.

[0]http://www.kotlermarketing.com/phil_questions.shtml

GBond• 10 years ago

Leave it to HN to get all pedantic. Yes, its a bit link-baity, but I "got" what was meant by the title.

vorg• 10 years ago

Besides confusing advertising and marketing, this marketing article contains a few other inaccuracies. E.g. it says: "In China alone, points out Luis, there are 400 million people learning English who require some form of certification to prove their proficiency for a job or studies abroad."

Perhaps it should read "... people learning English who may require some form of certification ..." because not all of those 400 million Chinese are looking to work or study abroad.

jsonne2• 10 years ago

They have marketing people working for them, so they're obviously spending money on "marketing". Advertising, which I think the article is alluding to, may or may not be worth it. ROI in your ad dollars is really where the trick is with paid acquisition.

newman314• 10 years ago

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

schakraberty2• 10 years ago

Duolingo primarily uses a text interface, so knowing the script is a key part of their methods. Japanese and Chinese scripts are among the hardest. So we'll probably see those added on late. Hebrew is a recent addition, and Hindi is on the anvil.

raverbashing• 10 years ago

Yes, I guess they would probably show you what you have to type amongst choices and not make you type Japanese in your mobile phone

nonuby• 10 years ago

Would be awesome to see Thai available too..

jpatokal• 10 years ago

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

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

patio11• 10 years ago

That's illegal as hell in Nevada, and I would assume in most jurisdictions in the US that permit casino gambling. The machines are very, very carefully engineered to give exactly the odds reported to the regulator. If you don't, that's a corporate death sentence; if Nevada refuses to certify your machines you can't sell them anywhere.

The difficulty of certifying a machine / game / etc is so high that the industry mostly uses a few basic games which are proven (both from a legal and operational perspective) and then reskins them endlessly to keep players coming back. Vampires were in for the last few years, apparently, thanks to Twilight. (Anecdata based on walking through a few casinos while in town for Microconf. It's vampires, TV shows appealing to older Americans, and a lot of very very obviously US-company-attempts-to-do-China games.)

sheepleherd• 10 years ago

Don't want to go all academic on you all, but what they taught us in school is: "marketing" entails every aspect of interaction with customers, so if customers hear about your product, that's marketing. If you have a product... that's marketing.

The article means to say "promotion" or "advertising" or "PR" or any of a myriad of "marcomm" activities that have a budget, but if you design a product to meet customer needs and bring it to market, you are marketing your product. If you think marketing has a negative connotation, you're doing it wrong, same as if your product is poorly designed or dangerous or simply ineffectual.

Approach your marketing program from the point of view of "meeting customer needs".

jfoster3• 10 years ago

There's also the opportunity cost of foregoing revenue in order to make a product free. I don't doubt that they'll eventually be profitable, but they are definitely paying for their userbase, just indirectly.

dschiptsov2• 10 years ago

By offering a valuable, no-cheating service, so users would talk about it.

It is actually a heuristic - as long as you see a costly marketing, the product is either crap or fraud. SAP is the best example.

If you see an established product, such as Facebook, advertising itself, think of it in a users-data-mining stage, instead of offering a valuable service which gives growth without deceiving maladverticing.

afarrell• 10 years ago

Beware of judging costliness by frequency though. I see advertisements for DigitalOcean and Linode fairly frequently, but their offerings are certainly not crap.

dschiptsov2• 10 years ago

These "small guys" are re-selling metered resources of leased hardware, and has a lot of competition, so they need ads. Their ads are usually factual, not deceiving or cryptic-misleading, like that AWS nonsense-marketing-speak.

kriro• 10 years ago

Since I was curious it seems like they were valued at about 470 million in June 2015 (where it seems they had roughly 100 million users). I don't know how they plan to monetize (certified tests are mentioned and it seems they dropped their idea to crowd source translations) but it seems like they focus hard on staying free to grab even more users. Probably a decent case study for "defending VC" against bootstrapping.

TechCrunch article on their series D: http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/10/duolingo-raises-45-million-...

ommunist• 10 years ago

The title is misleading. The very article is a clever piece of marketing. And it certainly cost something to someone to get it online. Perhaps the correct title is "without spending on advertising"?

yodsanklai• 10 years ago

I've been using Duolingo everyday for 2 months now (to learn Spanish). Some thoughts: It's entertaining. You don't need much motivation to "play" everyday. Whenever I want to procrastinate, I feel it's a better option than reading the news and so on... However, it's too simple (which is why it is addictive). By itself, it's not enough to learn a foreign language. It's a good complement, and a great way to get started though.

schakraberty2• 10 years ago

Having a marketing department to get the word out is very different from running expensive marketing campaigns through digital marketing platforms. The sense of the heading is clear enough - that building a good product and telling a cool story about it does more for your marketing than many paid campaigns.

How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

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