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How Duolingo turned the free language app into a $7.7 billion business?

Author

Chintankumar Maisuria
September 23, 2024

In partnership with

Read time: 4 minutes.

Welcome to the 65th edition of The Growth Elements Newsletter. Every Monday, I write an essay on growth metrics & experiments and business case studies.

Today’s piece is for 5,100+ founders, operators, and leaders from businesses such as Shopify, Google, Sage, Hubspot, Zoho, RateGain, Zaggle, Servcorp, and Apollo.

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Duolingo turned the free language app into a $7.7 billion business.

[1] 𝐔𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐞, 𝐔𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐀𝐩𝐩 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐞

  • 34 million people use Duolingo every day

  • Some users retained for over a decade

  • Top app on the Apple Store 10 Yrs in a row

  • 13 billion learning exercises every week

  • 12X bigger than their competitors in downloads

[2] 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

  • 3 million app downloads in just a few years

  • Streaks gamification helped with the activation

  • Progress bar with app visit frequency

[3] 𝐑𝐞-𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭, 𝐀𝐈 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐀/𝐁 𝐓𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠

  • New screens/designs go through dozens of A/B tests

  • 10,000+ active A/B tests on activation, re-engagement and retention activities

  • AI sorts and quantifies what is working, the time of day, segments, and profiling.

[4] 𝐏𝐮𝐬𝐡 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

  • 100s of micro tests on push notifications to bring users back to the app

  • Bandit algorithm figures out which message worked; the user comes back to the app and starts learning

  • Tracking and testing 100s of messaging and pushing the ones to broader segments that worked

  • On average, it gave a 3% increase in the retention rate

[5] 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞, 𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐀𝐝 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

  • $531 million annual revenue

  • 8.6% of users are paid subscribers

  • Almost 8 million users on the paid tier

  • New Duolingo Max is a premium plan to boost AOV.

  • 8% of revenue comes from Ads

  • 80% of revenue comes from 10% userbase

  • Valuation: $7.7 billion

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That's it for today's article! I hope you found this essay insightful.

Wishing you a productive week ahead!

I always appreciate you reading.

Thanks,
Chintankumar Maisuria

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