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NEXTGEN VISIONARY NEW YORK SEVERIN HACKER CO-FOUNDER AND CTO DUOLINGO
Severin Hacker dreamed of starting his own company at an early age. The Swiss-native, who grew up in a small town outside of Zurich, recalls being one of the few families in his neighborhood to have Internet. Fueled by his interest in video games, he taught himself computer programming at age 12, around 1996. Hacker’s love for computers led him to the doctorate program at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. There, his vision of becoming an entrepreneur became a reality. Two years into his doctoral program, Hacker developed the popular language-learning app Duolingo. Co-founder Luis von Ahn served as Hacker’s advisor at CMU. The pair wanted to make learning a new language accessible to everyone, so they created a free platform with 94 different language courses in 38 languages. Users have since flocked to the app, which now boasts more than 300M users—including Bill Gates. Hacker recently shared with CSQ that he’s just scratching the surface of Duolingo’s potential. Here, he speaks to his early career challenges, and why the path to IPO is a step forward instead of a step away.
SEVERIN HACKER Age 36 Hometown Zug, Switzerland Residence Pittsburgh Education B.S., Computer Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology; Ph.D., Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University First job Duolingo DUOLINGO Founded 2011 Employees 220+
Gained in Translation In less than 10 years, Duolingo Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Severin Hacker has helped his company amass a loyal base of more than 300 million users around the world. Even with talks of an IPO on the horizon, the 36-year-old has no plans to slow down. By Subrina Hudson
At what point did you realize Duolingo was becoming successful?
it wasn’t that hard. Someone showed me this article, essentially giving away pieces of your There were a few moments, but when we won job in order for the company to grow, called Apple’s “App of the Year” in 2013, I knew this “Give Away Your Legos,” and that really stuck was no longer just a research project. I mean, with me. I think over time I’ve become pretty the award didn’t directly help us—we did good at delegating things and sharing my Legos. get featured by Apple and that helped with downloads—but it felt like this is not going to What haven’t you accomplished that you’d go away anytime soon. It felt amazing at the still like to do? time because we really had no right to win. We I feel like it’s still the early days. Duolingo is were just a 15-person startup. It started out as really good at teaching beginners and at some a research project, and it was a great product, point, it levels off. You can’t become fully flueven back then. But it was still very surprising. ent just using Duolingo, but I believe that it’s possible. I believe that you can learn a language What aspect of your role as CTO do you enjoy just using a smartphone. It might involve other the most? modes of learning, maybe at some point you I enjoy all the things I do because I’m pretty have to talk to a human, but I do believe that good at not doing the things I don’t like. I’m very it’s possible to get people to proficiency using involved in hiring. I like working with really apps like Duolingo. smart people, and I think Duolingo has done a fantastic job at hiring the right people. Hiring Co-founder Luis von Ahn has said Duolingo is a lot like sales. You’re selling your company is planning an IPO next year. Has this goal to the candidate, so you need to have a good changed the way you approach the business? message. For example, what works for Duolingo We’re still just scratching the surface. There’s is the mission. Probably 60 percent of the peo- so much left to do. Basically, the way we see it is ple here at Duolingo wouldn’t work here if we we want to build a successful business—a susdidn’t have this mission of providing education tainable business. An IPO or going public, peoand making it universally accessible. That kind ple always call it an exit but we’re not planning of social-good mission is one of the big reasons to exit. So, it’s more like a milestone and you why people work here when they often have have shown that you can grow a company to offers from Google and Facebook, where they a mature public company. A lot of it is also like could possibly make more in the short-term. a marketing event, but we do what’s best for the The other thing that’s actually quite enjoya- long-term interest of the company, and if IPO ble is when you can delegate things. For me, is part of that then we will IPO. end
Innovation - Hacker
What were your early career goals, and how did your interest in computer science come into play?
My dad is an entrepreneur, and it was always a dream of mine to start a company at some point, but I didn’t know what that was going to be. What originally drew me to computers was video games and the desire to build your own games and understand how those games are built. I was somewhat obsessed. When thinking about the early years, what was the most challenging situation to overcome?
The most challenging part was hiring people— this was around 2011 or 2012 when it was Luis and me. We were still at the university back then, but it was so hard to get people to work for Duolingo. At the time, startups weren’t nearly as attractive as today, and people at Carnegie Mellon wanted to go work at Google or Facebook—one of the big tech companies. We heavily relied on friends and referrals in the early days. CSQ Q1 2020
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